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Agile 2009 Coverage
Several InfoQ editors will be attending the Agile conference this week and reporting on the sessions. Stay tuned to InfoQ to read the latest about the happenings at the conference and get reports about the most interesting and provoking sessions.
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DeMarco Reflects on 40 Years of Software Engineering Evolution
40 years after the NATO Conference on Software Engineering, Tom DeMarco paused to reflect on the discipline's evolution, wondering whether the metrics orientation he championed has distracted from the real point of computing: "transformation, creating software that changes the world." Is his earlier advice valid, though? "No", he said, in Software Engineering: An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone?
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Agile Adoption: Projects Should Dive-In, Organizations Should Toe-Dip
Hearty debate abounds about whether agile adoption is better done in a gradual "toe-dipping" manner or with an all-or-nothing "head-first dive" approach. Johanna Rothman says do both: projects should dive all-in, while organizations should take it gradually.
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How to Transfer Knowledge in an Agile Project
Knowledge transfer is characterized by transfer of understanding, about a context, from one unit (individual, team, department, organization) to another. In a series of interesting experiments, Steve Bockman tried to figure out the best way to transfer knowledge in an Agile project.
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Categorizing Tests
What's the difference between unit tests, functional tests, system tests and integration tests? What about developer tests, story tests, and acceptance tests? There seems to be no consensus on naming and categorization of tests although they are central to many Agile development processes. A discussion on the TDD discussion group examines these categorizations and attempts to clear the waters.
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How Can Management Contribute to an Agile Project?
Mark Balabanian, new appointed COO of Accunote, asks the question how can a manager/management help a Scrum team. Having read one Scrum book, he was trying to understand what do next. Cory Foy, John Galvin, Peter Stevens, Lysaa Adkins and Micheal Spayd provide advice.
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Two Types of Agile Documents - No More, No Less!
The Agile Manifesto suggests “ Working software over comprehensive documentation”. This has led many teams to believe that there is no need for documentation in Agile projects. Critics of Agile use limited documentation in Agile to showcase the weakness of Agile methodologies. Eelco Gravendeel suggested that there are just two types of documentation in Agile.
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Enabling the Last Responsible Moment in Deployment
An interesting question can be asked during a design decision: "Does this approach create a commitment" rather than "is this the right design?". A conversation on the KanbanDev Yahoo! group explores this question, different approaches to implement an effective answer, and the benefits to be reaped by this approach.
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A Quick Look At The 7 Wastes of Software Development
Fundamental to Lean Software Development is the pursuit of minimizing waste. The TPS publicized 7 primary wastes of manufacturing, and the Poppendiecks have since translated these wastes to our world of software development. Jack Mulinsky has recently been posting an introductory series on these wastes at agilesoftwaredevelopment.
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Software Debt Adds Up to Substantive Costs
In a recent article entitled “Continued Delivery of High Values as Systems Age”, Chris Sterling discusses the concept of Software Debt – “Software debt accumulates when focus remains on immediate completion while neglecting changeability of the system over time.” Software Debt goes beyond technical debt an encompases a variety of aspects that impact on the ability to deliver value.
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Agile Addresses "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team"
Tathagat Varma, general manager with a large provider of IT management solutions, wondered whether Agile's productivity improvements could be linked to how it improves teamwork. His article analyses Agile values and practices by mapping them against Patrick Lencioni's business fable "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team."
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Comparing Value, Velocity and Value Velocity
An implicit assumption made by most Agile teams is that 'value' is directly proportional to the 'velocity' of the team. While this may be true in some cases, however mostly, the team velocity gives little indication on the true value delivered.
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'State of Agile' Survey Open
The fourth annual 'State of Agile' survey is open for public participation. The 6-page survey takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete and participants remain anonymous. Over the past 3 years the survey, sponsored by VersionOne, has gauged how widely agile practices have been adopted, as well as the results obtained.
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EU Software Libability lawsuit: half say unit testing is the answer
52% of the .NET developers surveyed by Typemock think that unit testing can help companies avoid law suits associated with the proposed EU software liability bill. What does this say?
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Partition Your Backlog for Maximum Mileage
Backlogs have been under constant criticism for quite some time now. Mary Poppendieck suggested that the product backlog should be eliminated if it is not satisfying the desired purpose. Serge Beaumont suggested an interesting way of partitioning the backlog such that it maps to a flow and makes the backlog worthy for existence.