InfoQ Homepage Agile Content on InfoQ
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Outsourcing Gone Bad - Another Reason to Consider Agile
Proponents of Agile methods suggest they can spare organizations some outsourcing nightmares, by helping in-house teams produce ROI comparable to outsourced solutions. Stories from Sprint and Sears provide incentive to at least give them a hearing.
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Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick Two
Ron Jeffries is at it again. Always on the lookout for a great opportunity, he has made an unparalled online offer: send me your money and I'll send you (some kind of) software :-D
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Collaboration Tools Free - But Vulnerable
For the classic XP team, developers and their customer all work daily in the same room. But other methodologies are less stringent, and even XP teams sometimes need to find compromises. Enter collaborative technologies - where they are allowed. But take note: Bit9, Inc. has compiled a list of the top applications with known security vulnerabilities, including Skype and 4 messenger programs.
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Agile Fixed Price Contracting
On the high-volume ScrumDevelopment newsgroup, an interesting question has appeared, once again: "Is it possible to run SCRUM with fixed price contracts especially custom projects?". Ron Jeffries, Mike Beedle and others offer replies from experience.
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Eclipse "Callisto" an Agile Success Story
Today will mark the "Callisto" release of 10 Eclipse toolsets simultaneously, remarkable in that it provides a synchronized set of releases to facilitate implementation of Eclipse for developers building their own tools and applications on top of it. A large, complex and risky undertaking, Callisto was reportedly delivered by open source developers using Agile methods.
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Getting Agile with Eclipse Continuous Integration
The Eclipse "Callisto" release includes agility-enhancing features, including a new version of the testing tools developed in the "TPTP" project. In their online presentation, project committers Scott E. Schneider and Joe Toomey say that by using TPTP in the Continuous Integration cycle developers gain more powerful test types, better/more extensible reporting, and easy platform coverage.
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An Experiment in Clear Communication
Rather than keeping customers and developers apart (to avoid "misunderstandings"), Agilists intentionally bring them together. Communication tends to improve faster than one might expect, and soon everyone is interacting constructively. But in a team or between teams, there is always room for improvement: Cory Foy blogged what happened when he tried a new idea in "The Dreyfus Model Experiment".
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InfoQ Book Review: Agile Java Development with Spring, Hibernate and Eclipse
Matt Morton asked the question "Can Java be as Agile as the Dynamics (Ruby, Python, Groovy)?" and went to Anil Hemrajani's book to find out. He found a readable, useful book, and helps idenfity the right audience for this book.
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Test Driven Development Has Become the Norm
In his June article "Test-driven development is the combination of test first development and refactoring" on Dr. Dobbs Portal, Scott Ambler cuts to the chase, as usual: TDD has become the norm. So, do you want to implement it now, or wait for competetive pressure to make it necessary? This article lays out the reasons to consider it, and debunks some widespread misconceptions.
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Examining the Declaration of Interdependence
The Declaration of Interdependence emerged in 2004, when a group of experts met to discuss ways to extend the Agile Manifesto to non-software products and management. In this month's edition of Better Software Magazine, Alistair Cockburn details the DOI's six principles and how they can benefit any enterprise.
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Personal Retrospective: How Did I Do?
Nynke Andering gives us an inside view of a process of self-retrospective, which she uses after a consulting engagement. She shares not only her questions, but her answers, in four categories: Collaboration, Learning, Consulting, Responsibility.
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How Should We Teach Design Patterns?
Design patterns are a key to productive "refactoring", an Agile practice that keeps applications stable and maintainable, and a central aspect of Agile methodologies like XP. The 5th "Killer Examples" for Design Patterns and Objects workshop will take place at OOPSLA2006 in October, and will be looking at how to teach design patterns - apparently existing materials can be challenging for novices.
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New Testing Tools Released
June has seen the release of CoView 2.0, an Eclipse plugin to assist with test coverage; Haven 1.2, for automated acceptance testing; and the new Pulse continuous integration server.
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"Agile Practice" Patterns Wiki is Up
At XP2006, Amr Elssamadisy announced a new wiki site for collecting Agile Practice Patterns. Well, it's up and ready to go, already loaded with patterns from ChiliPlop 2006 and XP 2006 conferences.
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Value-Driven Planning and Metrics
A stable Agile team can cost roughly the same each week, but value delivered changes over time. Agile planning takes into account the customer's view of value, allowing the team to deliver the most important business value right away, and allowing their customer to halt the work when cost exceeds value delivered. Why aren't all teams measuring Business Value? Dan Rawsthorne shows one way to do it.