InfoQ Homepage Agile Content on InfoQ
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Changing of the Guard at the APLN
The Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN) held their first Leadership Summit in parallel to this week's Agile2006 conference. The day ended with Jim Highsmith receiving the "Superhero of Agile Process" award, as a thank-you for two years of leadership in creating and developing the APLN. Agile2006 chairperson Todd Little steps up to the challenge. Update: view the list of 2007 board members.
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Jim Highsmith Proposes An Adaptive Performance Management System
Jim Highsmith, Director of Cutter Consortium's Agile Project Management Practice told the APLN Leadership Summit audience yesterday: "...to achieve truly agile, innovative organizations, a change in our approach to performance management systems is necessary... 'Conforming to plan' while delivering scant business value will seriously impede agility, whether in projects or the entire enterprise.
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Recognition Awards Presented at Agile2006
The 2006 Gordon Pask Awards for recent contributions to Agile Practice were presented this evening at the Agile2006 conference closing banquet in Minneapolis, recognizing three outstanding contributors to the Agile Community. In addition, a special award was given to Todd Little, outgoing Conference Chair, for his many contributions to the Agile Alliance and the APLN.
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New Release of V1: Agile Enterprise Development Suite
This new release from VersionOne allows all project stakeholders -- project managers, executives, developers, product managers, customers, and testers -- to collaborate and coordinate plans and progress much more effectively. With extended support for the Agile life cycle, this tool offers better visibility into the entire software development process.
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Digital Focus Unveils Market Survey Results at Agile2006
The survey finds Agile Software Development gaining momentum: interest in Agile methods is growing across the IT landscape with 81 percent of those surveyed either actively using Agile development within their organization or looking for opportunities to do so. Launched at the Agile 2005 Conference to assess the state of agile adoption, this year 136 execs in 128 organizations responded.
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STIQ Simplifies Story Tests for Web Apps
SolutionsIQ launched their latest product this week at Agile2006. A mashup of the popular open-source acceptance test tools FitNesse and Selenium, STIQ is used for writing acceptance tests while developing web applications. It features a simple command language, wiki-based editing and pluggable features.
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Ken Schwaber: Sacrificing Quality should be an Executive Management Decision
At Agile2006, Co-founder of the Scrum methodology Ken Schwaber argued that as professionals we should not accept business requests to sacrifice quality in order to meet timelines, and if quality does need to be sacrificed such a decision should be made by executive management and reflected in the financial statements of the company.
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Agile2006 Day One Podcasts
The Agile2006 Conference got a kick-start from industry veteran Peter Coffee, who challenged a standing-room crowd to reject the idea that broken software is normal, and to "shun mediocre attainments" . Bob Payne has been recording interviews and sessions at the conference, including the entire keynote.
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InfoQ Article: Exclusive Excerpt from Practices of an Agile Developer
Andy Hunt, one of the originators of the Agile Manifesto, and Venkat Subramaniam have written a compilation of the habits, ideas, and approaches of successful Agile software developers in "Practices of an Agile Developer". InfoQ brings you a free excerpt on Agile Debugging.
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Agile Delivery at British Telecom
Methods and Tools has a 3-part article by Ian Evans of British Telecom outlining the challenges of software development at BT and the approach they took to switch to an Agile approach. Going from a well-established waterfall-based delivery approach to Agile takes patience and time, as well as a lot of commitment. But despite the challenges, few at BT would go back to their old ways.
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Online Discussion on Scrum Requirements Basics
The ScrumDevelopment list has seen lively discussion lately on Requirements issues frequently faced by new teams: "Can the ScrumMaster be the Product Owner too?", "How do we prioritize our Product Backlog?" and "QA's role in a SCRUM process". New teams quickly discover that a poor-quality Product Backlog can frustrate and undermine a team that is otherwise raring to start delivering value.
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Patterns for Daily Stand-up Meetings Published
Jason Yip has published "It's not just standing up", Patterns for Daily Standups on Martin Fowler's Bliki. In the article he discusses the benefits and consequences of common practices for daily stand-ups. The patterns are intended to help direct the experimentation and adjustment of new practitioners as well as provide points of reflection to experienced practitioners.
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Synergy: Agile and User Experience Design
Scott Ambler believes that User Experience Design (UED) is critical to the success of agile software development techniques, because it increases a team's chances of building the right software to meet customers' real goals. This article describes how Agile and UED communities can work together closely for project success.
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Studies Concur, Small Teams Are Best
Knowledge@Wharton asks: Is Your Team Too Big? Too Small? What's the Right Number? Decades of research suggest the sweetspot may be between 4 and 6, though corrections to team size are unlikely to resolve all of a team's problems.
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Agile Testing Practices Overview
Jon Kern, one of the original authors of the Agile Manifesto, has written a good overview of Agile approach to software testing. In it he talks about mixing different kinds of tests - including manual tests - and testing techniques.