InfoQ Homepage Agile Content on InfoQ
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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".
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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.
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Interview with Robin Dymond at Agile 2008
Robin Dymond gives an overview of Lean, how it can help take Agile to the 'next level' and why organizations that fail to change will not have successful Agile teams. Robin describes an organizational mismatch between traditional hierarchies and team structures. He believes that organizations will need to reorganize around teams to get the most out of Agile.
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Managers in Scrum
This presentation explores how the role of managers changes in Scrum. It helps managers to lead the introduction of Scrum acting as role models. It presents leadership principles that provide concrete guidance such as servant-leadership, empirical management, empowerment and respect, quality-first and continuous improvement.
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Are Kanban Workflows Agile?
Karl Scotland started a discussion examining whether the workflows or stages in a kanban system are counter to the agile ideals of cross-functional and collaborative teams. He started by noting that the stages on a kanban board can look a lot like the phases of waterfall. The ensuing discussion clarified that stages are not necessarily hand-offs, and led to other insights as well.
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Father of Use Cases Says Agile Needs to Get Smarter
At the Software Education SDC conference in Melbourne, Australia, and Wellington, New Zealand, last week, Ivar Jacobson, author of the original work on Use Cases, the Unified Modeling Language and the Rational Unified Process, said that Agile development needs to “Get Smart”.
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Return on Investment for Automated Testing
Test automation is often seen as a way to reduce the costs of testing, increase test coverage and effectiveness, and shorten testing cycles. However, the transition to automated testing is rarely fast and never free, there are real trade-offs to be made. Aspire systems has created a test automation ROI calculator and made it publicly available.
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A Fresh Wave Of Agile Certification Criticism
The topic of agile certification has been a common kernel of much recurring debate within the community for a long time. Is it desirable? Is it possible? Is it a farce, a scam? There has been recent wave of discussion arguing against certification, largely in reaction to a new company claiming to provide such "agile certification".
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Critical Security Vulnerability Found in Quicksort
In what is sure to become one of the most wide-reaching security vulnerabilities yet known, a researcher with L0pht Heavy Industries has uncovered a flaw in the standard implementation of the Quicksort algorithm. InfoQ spoke with Dildog of L0pht to learn more about this vulnerability and it's ramifications.
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Ideal Iteration Length
One of the frequent questions in Agile adoption is related to the ideal iteration length. Teams usually gravitate between iteration lengths ranging from a week to two months. Choosing the right iteration length is an important decision and the success of Agile adoption depends a lot on the right iteration size.
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Focus Improvement on Bottleneck Constraints
In My Framework is More Productive than Your Framework, Ken DeLong examines approaches to making software projects more productive. He finds that despite the hype about frameworks, languages, and project management tools, these tend not to be the bottlenecks. Ken believes that the largest productivity gains are likely to come from improved communication, code readability, and debugability.
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Presentation: A Kanban System for Software Engineering
David Anderson presents a brief history of the kanban system through case study reports from teams at Microsoft and Corbis. Kanban acts to limit work-in-progress and focus the team on achieving a continuous flow of value to the customer and innovates on accepted agile management practices by providing an iteration-less process with a regular release cadence.