InfoQ Homepage Agile Content on InfoQ
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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".
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Has Hell Frozen Over? An Agile Maturity Model?
Just as the traditionals have their Capability Maturity Model (CMM) do agilists need an Agile Maturity Model (AMM) which allows an organization to assess current state and build a business case for adopting Agile practices?
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Series: Churchill, the Agile PM
Mark Kozak-Holland is the author of the book "Churchill's Adaptive Enterprise: Lessons for Business Today". In his Gannthead.com series, he studies Churchill's history and habits, and draws parallels between events in World War II and today's business challenges. In episode 2, Mr. Churchill inherits his "project" from hell...
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AOP Used to Isolate Change on Large-scale Financial System
A large-scale J2EE-conversion project of 50+ developers at a financial services company recently had a chance to use aspect oriented programming (AOP) as a mechanism to isolate change. Vincent Frisina, revealed some of the consequences as well as some lessons learned about Agile development.
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Vacations: Creative Work Requires Rest
Summer has traditionally been a time for vacations and get-aways, a time to clear the mind and "recreate" oneself. Yet, according to a recent study, one third of people expect to take work with them on their holidays this year. Is this healthy? Can it be changed?
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Agile Project Management Just a Start
Alan Shalloway blogs about the need to look beyond agile project management: developers must also be competent at technical skills such as refactoring, agile modeling, and test driven development (TDD).
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Generalists, Brush Up Your Resumes
Good news: a) in many places, it's a job-hunter's market again; b) recruiters are looking for exceptional, well-rounded, super-smart generalists - multitalented, multifaceted, multitasking problem-solvers. Have you been updating your skillset? Work-force consulting firm Foote Partners tells us which skills are in demand.
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Security and Reliability Techniques Revealed for Agile Teams
Agile methods such as Extreme Programming (XP) and Agile Unified Process (AUP) do not explicitly address security and reliability, yet these are issues which are often critical to your success. It is possible to address these issues, and more, on software development teams while still remaining agile.