InfoQ Homepage Agile Content on InfoQ
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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.
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Gordon Pask Award Nominations for 2009
The Gordon Pask Award recognizes two people whose recent contributions to Agile Practice make them, in the opinion of the award committee, people others in the field should emulate. The Agile Alliance funds each recipient's travel to two different suitable conferences on two different continents. This year's committee needs your help to identify the next two Gordon Pask Award winners.
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Guidelines for Better Unit Tests
Jimmy Bogard, Charlie Poole, Lior Friedman, Charlie Poole and others give their guidelines for more readable and useful unit tests.
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Using the RFP Process to Hire Agile
In large organizations and projects, it's not unusual for an Agile team to find itself shackled to a non-Agile partner/vendor/supplier. Friction ensues, energy is wasted. While the solution might appear to be: "hire better teams", Scott Ambler goes to the root of the problem, providing a strategy for creating better RFPs: ones that attract Agile teams.
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Slow Down to Speed Up Profits
General understanding suggests that, if everyone on the team works at top capacity then the team would be most productive. Contrary to this, Steve Bockman discussed that this assumption might not always be true. In some cases, it may be necessary to slow down and work at less than top capacity in order to boost productivity.
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Opinion: Agile Coaches Frequently a Source of Adoption Problems
Increasingly there are reports of initial success followed by failures with Agile adoption. Sometimes these problems are inadvertently caused by Agile coaches.
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Coping with Bugs on an Agile/Scrum Project
An often asked question is how does Scrum recommend a team to handle bugs? Should they be placed on the product backlog? Or on a separate bug list? If they’re on the backlog, does the Product Owner get to set their priority or are they automatically the most important items? Should there be a separate bug fixing sprint?
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ScrumMaster Interview Tips
The ScrumMaster or Iteration Manager is a crucial role on Agile teams, and selecting which organisation/team to work with is important – when considering taking on a new project it’s important to set the environment up for success. This article provides interviewing advice for ScrumMasters considering taking on a project or team.
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The PMI Agile Community of Practice
Agile and the Project Management Institute (PMI). For many years and for many people this combination of terms rings a similar connotation as "oil and water"; they don't mix. But, is this justified? Jesse Fewell, Dan Mezick, and others say no and are aiming to bring agile into the PMI with the new 'PMI Agile Community of Practice'.
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Ensuring Success for Self Organizing Teams
Self organization is defined as a phenomenon in which the internal organization of the system increases in complexity without being guided or managed by an outside source. However, successful self organization needs the right level of support from not only the team members but also the management and the organizational environment.
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Debugging Tips for Selenium Test Failures
While Selenium has gained wide acceptance as a useful tool for automating browser-level tests, tracking down the cause of test failures can take significant time. Daniel Wellman has shared two of his best tricks to greatly reduce debugging time for failed Selenium tests.
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What is Velocity Good For?
A recent discussion on the ScrumDevelopment Yahoo! group discussed the different uses and misuses for velocity. Should velocity be used a metric for productivity? Should it be used for iteration planning? What about longer term release planning?