InfoQ Homepage Agile Content on InfoQ
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26 Hints for Successful Agile Development
Keith Swenson, recently compiled a list of 26 hints for Agile software development. Keith suggested that he frequently collects nuggets of wisdom on various topics and the list is a distilled set of hints which really matter for Agile software development.
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XP or Scrum, Either, Both, or Neither?
Which is better? Scrum or XP? Is there one that is more applicable than the other or is there another alternative?
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Where has the innovation gone?
Some commentators are questioning the level of innovation happening in the Agile space. Does iterative and incremental development lead us away from innovation towards reusing old solutions, building on what we already know rather than creating truly "out of the box" solutions. Adding an R&D stream is suggested as a way to bring innovation into Agile projects.
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Dissecting Technical Debt
The term "technical debt" was coined by Ward Cunningham. It describes the obligation that a development team incurs when it chooses a design or construction approach that is easy to implement in the short run but has a larger negative impact in the long run. Agilists provide their view point on what should be considered a technical debt and how it could be classified.
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Agile Testing Requires Cross-Functional Teams and More
The first things many think about when considering Agile Testing are tools, automation, when and how to test, and the role of testers on a team. These are all very worthy topics. But which of these things are needed for success and which are nice-to-have?
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Ladies: Please, Would You Submit a Proposal?
Although it's widely accepted that diversity leads to innovation and performance, visible leadership in the IT community often doesn't represent the diversity of the community itself. What can be done to increase diversity in the leadership of our high-tech communities? One suggestion is to actively help a more diverse group to get their talks accepted at conferences.
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The 'Agile Developer Skills Workshop' Is Underway
Having a means to fairly and reliable assess the skills of agile developers has been a hot topic for quite some time. The 'Agile Developer Skills Workshop', led by Ron Jeffries and Chet Hendrickson, is now entering its 2nd day of trying to produce a real solution to the problem.
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Testing Heuristics - Thinking like a tester
James Bach and Elisabeth Hendrickson are two of the context driven testing community. James recently spoke at the STANZ conference and provided a guideline for approaching testing, and Elisabeth provides a heuristic checklist to help identify valuable testing activities.
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Agile Australia 2009 Conference
The Agile Australia 2009 conference is running in Sydney on 15 & 16 October. Over 25 sessions with local and international speakers.
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When to Extend an Iteration/Sprint
The sprint is about to finish and you discover that you can't deliver an important story. What do you do? Extend the sprint? Put the story back in the backlog? The team consistently overestimates how much work they can get done in a sprint? What to do?
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Empirical Studies on Software Quality Mythology
Microsoft has released a summary of research findings that challenge traditional software-engineering mythology. Can code coverage really improve product quality? Does TDD take more time? What impact does a distributed team have on quality? Are assertions useful?
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Feedback and Feedfoward: Best of Both Worlds
Feedback is a situation in which an output from an event of the past has a potential relevance in the future. Agile places a lot of importance on soliciting and providing feedback with every step in order to build a quality product. On the other hand Feedforward is, to give someone suggestions for the future and provide help in terms of future direction.
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QCon Keynote: Techie VCs Talk About Trends & Opportunities
In the first keynote at QCon San Francisco on Wednesday Nov. 18th, VCs Salil Deshpande of Bay Partners and Kevin Efrusy of Accel Partners will be discussing trends and opportunities that they have seen in the software development space. If you have any questions or comments that you would like to pass along please add them to this article, and Salil and Kevin may address them in the keynote.
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Forrester Releases Free Research Report on Lean for Business
Forrester Research, in preparation for their Business Technology Forum next week, has released an analyst report for free download, entitled "Lean: The New Business Technology Imperative." Aimed at management, it discusses Lean as a whole-business imperative, and its impact on IT, cautioning: "Don’t get so caught up in eliminating waste that you forget to create value and increase flexibility."
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Wrong and Right Reasons to Apply Kanban
Kanban's aim is to minimize WIP (Work-In-Process), or inventory, between processes by making sure that the upstream process produces parts only if its downstream process needs it. Of late, Lean and Kanban are growing in popularity. More and more companies are setting up Kanban Boards, limiting WIP and eliminating Muda. Michael Dubakov investigated the wrong and right reasons for applying Kanban.