InfoQ Homepage Agile Content on InfoQ
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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.
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Health Check: Has Your Team Got Rhythm?
Agile work keeps things simple by putting in place some basic patterns. Sometimes, when problems arise within the process, complex solutions can be averted by simply re-establishing a rhythm in the cycle of releases, iterations, days, stories/features. Agile Journal, in their Metrics edition, published three articles which mention the importance of rhythm as a diagnostic.
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19 Pitfalls of Technical Leadership
Hacknot's list of Great Mistakes in Technical Leadership, while not particularly intended for an Agile audience, contains some sage advice - good leadership is not restricted to Agile teams. As always, Agile teams still need to balance advice from traditional sources against Agile values and principles.
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Minimalism: Creating Manuals People Can Use
Yes, documentation is not "working software". That being said, a certain amount of documentation is often necessary. But where do we start, to lighten up our documentation processes? JoAnn Hackos' workshop on July 11/12 teaches a disiplined minimalism, allowing teams to leverage structured writing, etc. to create just enough documentation - the right documentation. Almost sounds agile :-)
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FIT Acceptance Testing Primer
Do you think automated user acceptance testing is a cool idea, but impossible or not worth doing? Have you been bogged down by the traditional record/script/replay approaches and unable to automate until the code is complete? This article will show you how the Framework for Integrated Test (Fit) makes it easy to overcome these challenges and practice test-first design from the user perspective.
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"Agile People Do Get It" -- Uncle Bob
Last week, Cedric Beust ranted against the way Agile test practices, particularly TDD, are evangelised in "Agile People Still Don't Get It". He complained about "Agilists' dishonesty ... They offer you all these nice ideas, but they never - ever - disclose the risks and the downsides". He raises a valid point. This week Jeff Langr (the Agile culprit), Bob Martin and others blogged responses.
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A More Holistic View of Organizational Change
Change in the workplace affects more than just our nine-to-five lives. We sometimes feel it at a very deep level, and it's a good bet we'll take that stress home. On the Future Of Work blog, Charlie Grantham has proposed that we lose valuable opportunities to facilitate change when we ignore the deeply personal, or spiritual, aspects of workplace change.
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Agile at Dr. Dobb's Conference
Every year, Dr. Dobb's Architecture and Design World features important thinkers and teachers. Taking place this year from July 17-20 in Chicago, the roster includes a dozen speakers working in the realm of Agile, including Robert. C. Martin, Scott Ambler, Rebecca Wirfs-Brock, Brad Appleton and James Hobart. We've compiled the full list of Agile-related sessions to help you plan.
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"Literate Testing" for Readable JUnit Tests
How much time do you spend puzzling out the intention of a test? Robert Chatley, Tom White and Brian Marick have been using a more natural sentence style to make Java tests easier to read, calling it "Literate Testing".