InfoQ Homepage Agile Content on InfoQ
-
Dedicated Tester on an Agile Team
The need for dedicated testers on an Agile team has been long discussed and debated. In many Agile teams dedicated testers play a pivotal role where as in others developers double up as testers. A recent discussion on the Scrum Development group tries to revisit the need for having a dedicated tester on the team.
-
Scott Ambler Revisits Agile Process Maturity Models
Scott Ambler, who once wrote 'Has Hell Frozen Over? An Agile Maturity Model?', has started writing about something that he is calling the Agile Process Maturity Model. The discussion around Scott's model has uncovered another model by the same name, and renewed the debate over the usefulness of a maturity model for agile.
-
Presentation: Teamwork Is An Individual Skill
Knowing how to get things done with others over whom you have no control may be your greatest lever for career success. Learn key strategies and agile team applications from 20 years of field studies on getting things with others. Apply the Responsibility Redefined™ framework to orient, work in, build, lead, and maintain teams, partnerships, and collaborations of any kind.
-
What does Quality Mean?
Is quality supposed to mean a lack of defects that are holding us back? Mike Bria, Lisa Crispin, James Bach and JB Rainsberger debate the meaning of quality and the limitations our current definition is placing on us.
-
Do Stand-ups Stand Up for Larger Teams?
The daily stand-up meeting helps the team members make a commitment to each other about what they aim to achieve in the day and identify obstacles to progress, if any. However, many Agilists believe that the conventional stand-ups break down quickly as the team size increases.
-
Virtual Panel: Is the Backlog a Vital Artifact and Practice or Waste?
Mary Poppendieck, Ron Jeffries, Jeff Patton, David West, Steve Freeman, and Jason Yip give us their take on backlogs and their importance to successful Agile teams.
-
Lean 'Standard Work' Applied to Software Development
One component of the Toyota Production System is the concept of standard (or standardized) work. A recent post on the Kanban Development list asked if this concept carries over when TPS and lean are applied to software projects. Despite the fact that software development is not manufacturing, respondents did find value in applying the 'standard work' concept to development.
-
What Practices Make Up YOUR Agile Development?
'Agile' is an umbrella term. As the community matures, we are going beyond specific methodologies towards each team and/or organization having a tailored set of practices. Jurgen Appelo is running a survey that could give us insight into the current state of practice.
-
Transparency: A Great Leap Forward or Exposed Artery?
Agile propagandists make great claims about the advantages of being transparent about the state of their projects. They claim that this how mature relationships work and that "Honesty is the best policy". But is this true? Many of us work in dysfunctional organizations where honesty is the best way to get cheated. Surely Transparency is just not pragmatic?
-
Does a Distributed Agile Team Need Heroes?
This month's issue of the Agile Journal has a case study that suggests that if you do not have a technical wizard on your team, then distributed/offshore Agile development will fail. This goes against the grain of self-organizing teams and getting away from heroes of the traditional Agile mindset.
-
Five Ways To Build Team Trust
Many people have noted that the presence of trust in your agile team is a fundamental component in successfully implementing the Agile Manifesto value of "Individuals & Interactions". Esther Derby offers five concrete suggestions to help build this trust.
-
Is Five the Optimal Team Size?
There have been a lot of discussions and debates about the optimal team size for maximum productivity. While most Agilists agree that smaller teams are more functional and productive as compared to larger teams, however defining the optimal team size is still a challenge.
-
An Agile Approach to Code Reuse
A recent discussion on the Extreme Programming Yahoo Group explored the apparent conflict between making software reusable and the XP practice of not writing code until it is needed. Ron Jeffries and others shared insights about the costs and benefits of code reuse, as well as how and when to do it in an agile environment.
-
J.B. Rainsberger: "Integration Tests Are A Scam"
Well-known agilist and TDD expert J.B. Rainsberger has begun a series of posts to explain why his experience has led him to the thought-provoking conclusion that "integration tests are a scam".
-
Don’t Start What Cannot Be Done
Many Agile teams face a dilemma when picking up a new story towards the end of a Sprint. There is some time left but this time may not be enough to get a story done-done.