InfoQ Homepage Agile Content on InfoQ
-
Designing Agile Spaces
Agile has always stressed the need for an appropriate physical space to support the team and team practices. Ryan Martens recently wrote about the intersection of design, design thinking, and the agile environment - suggesting that open space and wall-to-wall whiteboards are just the beginning of what is needed to create an ideal agile team-space.
-
Agile Certification Arrives
The Agile community has an all-new set of certification credentials, made credible by the involvement of Alistair Cockburn, a signatory of the Agile Manifesto
-
Studies that Validate Agile and Lean Methodologies
Ralph Jocham asked: "I am searching for some references that show that Agile projects have a higher chance of success than other approaches, the references should be quotable in a government document ie. come from a trustworthy source." Luckily, there are some studies out there, summarized in this article.
-
Crowdsourced Testing, Changing the Game
Crowdsourcing is the process of requesting a large group of community, a crowd, to perform a task which is traditionally done by a select set of people in an organization, most likely employees or contractors. Crowdsourced testing is the powerful combination of combining web and cloud economics with the effectiveness and efficiency of crowdsourcing. Could this be a game changer?
-
Software Programming as Craft
The Cutter IT Journal recently published a special issue on software craftsmanship that included articles on what it means to be a software craftsman, software engineering vs. software craft, the relationship between Agile and craftsmanship, and crafting the user experience.
-
Agile Project Leaders Network Reorganizes
The APLN is an organization that supports and helps to organize Agile user groups and an Agile-related conference called the Leadership Summit. The non-profit group has recently elected new board members, realigned its focus, and announced new initiatives and plans.
-
Cost of Cross Functional Teams
Cross functional teams are the teams in which all members work on delivery of the same business value. It could potentially be the same feature or the same product. Though, Agile recommends cross functional teams due to a lot of inherent advantages, there are some caveats that organizations need to be aware of.
-
Explaining Refactoring to Management
How can one explain the importance and value of refactoring to people in management who have never coded? How can one justify the expense of slowing down code delivery?
-
The Value of Diversity
This is the second in a series of discussions looking at factors that enable Agile teams to be successful. Diversity of gender, culture, opinion, perspective, skills and background is considered to be an important factor in forming and persisting high-performance teams. This news item examines the perspectives from variety of commentators.
-
Agile Beyond Software
Agile is gaining traction outside of the traditional IT work that it is commonly associated with. Change is happening faster in technology and business, and the empirical approach is becoming more and more accepted as a productive way to manage change and respond to it.
-
Managing the Agile Team Environment
It is a well known fact that people leave managers, not organizations. Though, Agile teams are known to have camaraderie amongst team members, however the relationship of the manager with the team members and the organizational ecosystem as a whole holds the key to being an successful Agile manager.
-
Scrum In Schools
Scrum is gaining traction outside of information technology. The Scrum in Schools project is a grassroots effort to bring a free, age-appropriate Scrum curriculum to educators throughout the world.
-
Testing Techniques for Applications With Zero Tests
Agile techniques recommend having adequate unit and acceptance tests to build a robust test harness around the application. However, in the real world, not all applications are fortunate enough to have a test harness. In an interesting discussion on the Agile Testing group, members suggested ways to test applications which do not have any automated tests.
-
Learning from the creative industries - consistency to build trust
This is the first in a series of discussions looking at factors that enable teams to be successful. This post reports on a recent Wired magazine article that looks at the creative process in use at Pixar Animation Studios and how their process encourages team formation, long-term relationships and trust in a “safe to fail” environment.
-
The "Oath of Non-Allegiance"
The Agile community of full of smart people, smart ideas, opinions, positions-- and differences. Substantial differences can lead to learning, but more often than not, differences can lead directly into heated conflict. Now an original signatory of the Agile Manifesto is offering an all-new declaration-- the 'Oath of Non-Allegiance'.