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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'.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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?

  • No Easy Road to Agile Cultural Change

    A number of commentators have written about the challenges involved in migrating an organisation to an Agile culture. Ken Schwaber has estimated that 75% of Scrum implementations will fail to deliver the anticipated benefits. This article looks at some of the reasons why and what can be done to improve success rates.

  • Agile In a Flash

    Many people playfully credit the 3x5 index card as the "agilist's badge". In many ways though this is not an inaccurate or inappropriate; going through a stack of index cards is a often real hallmark of many agile activities. But what about using index cards to learn and remember agile? With their 'Agile In a Flash' project, Tim Ottinger and Jeff Langr want to help people do just that.

  • Ágiles2009 - Last call for participation

    What about joining a team of speakers that has names as Brian Marick, Diana Larsen, Matt Gelbwaks, Naresh Jain, Dave Nicolette, Alan Cyment, Alexandre Magno,and many others? Next Monday, July 6 will be the last chance for submitting a talk to Ágiles 2009!

  • Observations on Lean in Action in Japan

    What did a group of Agilists see when they "went to the gemba" in Japan to observe Lean in action? Here is a roundup of observations from bloggers and newsgroup writers on this spring's "Roots of Lean" tour to Japan, led by Mary and Tom Poppendieck. The tour visited both manufacturing and software organizations, and included Henrik Kniberg, Sune Gynthersen, & Gabrielle Benefield, among others.

  • IBM Rational and InfoQ eBook: Scaling Agile with C/ALM

    IBM Rational and InfoQ preent an eBook, Scaling Agile with C/ALM, "dedicated to all of the functional and dysfunctional organizations that are eager to break down the organizational and cultural silos, and become a finely tuned software delivery machine." The eBook explores the barriers to team integration and scaling and then shows, in detail, how to overcome these obstacles.

  • An Evolutionary Perspective of Software Development

    Memes, originally coined by Richard Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene" are cultural genes; ideas that propagate among people and affect the way we think and act. Julian Everett has suggested that we can look at software development practices, ideas, and culture as a collection of memes. By doing so, our understanding of what works and why can be turned on its head.

  • Lessons Learned from the UK Agile Coaches Gathering

    Recently, a number of European Agile Coaches gathered in the UK to discuss their craft and share ideas. Attendees included: Rachel Davies, Mike Sutton, David Peterson, Plamen Balkanski, Keith Braithwaite, Duncan Pierce, .... They covered a diverse range of subjects: Effective Coaching Styles, Why Do We Coach? Self Organizing Teams, and others.

  • A Dollar Value On Pair Programming

    "Why in the world would we use two people to do the job of one?" This is often the initial reaction to people when first introduced to the idea of pair programming. In essence, they perceive pair programming as doubling the cost of writing any segment of code. Dave Nicollete offers some quantitive ideas to help show how pair programming can save money, not waste it.

  • Resource Management in Agile Projects

    Agile projects are known to address the problems of rapid change. These may be changes in market forces, system requirements or implementation technology. One of the change, that does not gel well with Agile projects, is the frequent change of people working on the project. The idea is not to disturb the high performing teams so that they can continue to deliver high velocity.

  • Software Craftsmanship North America

    Software Craftsmanship North America is a one-day conference with the goal of introducing the Agile community to the Software Craftsmanship movement. Interestingly, SCNA will be at the same time as the Agile conference, in the same city, and have many speakers that will also be speaking at the Agile conference.

  • Agile Project Sponsorship – A Light Hand for Effective Results

    Organisations embracing Agile methods need to reassess their approach to project governance and sponsorship. Project decisions need to be made rapidly, responding to changes in the organisational ecosystem while keeping a clear eye on the project’s and organisation’s goals. Advice from commentators on project sponsorship and important metrics to keep projects on track.

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