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Building an Agile Team

Building an agile software development team is not easy. Many managers and team leads hire technically capable people, throw some form of an agile process at the team, and hope that everything works as well as the literature says it does. This approach is not only unrealistic, but is prone to failure. This article will describe the components of a successful team and how we built this team.

Darren Hale
on Oct 20, 2009
The Role of Project Managers in Agile

Agile, as per books does not talk of role of manager but talks of a coach/facilitator. This article first explains the role of project manager in general in any industry and then tries to map it with the role of coach/facilitator in Agile. During this discussion, the article also tries to widen the scope of being a coach/facilitator.

Vinay Aggarwal
on Sep 02, 2009
Making Scrum Stick: Overcoming Anxiety And Fear

While a team can grab on to something as simple and effective as Scrum quickly, the associated changes can cause worries. There are common issues that occur when adopting Scrum as well as nuances that will almost inevitably crop up. By being aware of these issues you can be prepared for them or, perhaps, not feel too bad that you are experiencing them yourself – they are common.

Geoff Watts
on Aug 27, 2009
Collaborative Leadership and Collaborative Management

What is the role of a leader in today’s dynamic environments? Does traditional management provide value in a market that requires agility and adaptability? In this article, we propose a leadership and management framework that fits well with the current need for innovation and distributed decision-making.

Chris Matts Niel Nickolaisen Pollyanna Pixton
on Aug 05, 2009
Coping with Change on Scrum Projects

This article surveys the expected variation of different roles in the Agile organization and proposes techniques with which to better handle the transition to Agile methodologies from traditional Waterfall. The following roles are discussed in this article: Customers/Stakeholders, Product Management, General Management, Project Management, Developers and Quality Assurance.

Agilebuddy Jack Milunsky
on Jul 30, 2009
Scaling Agile with C/ALM (Collaborative Application Lifecycle Management)

IBM Rational and InfoQ published 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.

Carolyn Pampino John Wiegand Erich Gamma
on Jun 29, 2009
Book Excerpt: Agile Testing

This book is for testers on an agile team, test and quality assurance managers transitioning to agile development, and agile teams learning how to approach testing. The book introduces agile testing, how it's different from testing on a traditional team, and what makes agile testers different. The book contains dozens of stories about the various testing-related issues faced and resolved.

Janet Gregory Lisa Crispin
on Mar 24, 2009
Successfully Adopting Pair Programming

Jay Fields takes a look at pair programming from an adoption perspective. This article is for you if you already know what pair programming is and guidance on how to get to the point of successfully practicing pair programming. Jay goes over everything from an optimal seating arrangement, to effective coaching techniques, to calling out common mistakes to avoid.

Jay Fields
on Mar 05, 2009
Case study: Distributed Scrum Project for Dutch Railways

How we customise Scrum to our local context plays a large role in the success or failure of a project. This article describes a successful, large, distributed Scrum project, which had already been scrapped once under a traditional approach. The authors share lessons learned on: project startup, product ownership, testing and the importance of estimates and effective communication.

Martin van Vliet Marco Mulder
on Aug 12, 2008
Book Review: Agile Adoption Patterns, A Roadmap to Organizational Success

Ryan Cooper reviewed Amr Elssamadisy's new book and found it a useful framework for designing customized adoption strategies. Rather than a single recipe of Agile practices for everyone, the reader is offered patterns and tools to help determine which practices will most effectively help them reach their own organization's specific goals.

Ryan Cooper
on Jul 21, 2008
Choose Feature Teams over Component Teams for Agility

Feature teams, common enough in small groups, are all too rare in large product development - but they can be a key to scaling with agility. This article analyses how feature teams resolve weaknesses of component teams, and points out key issues to address when transitioning. It is an excerpt from "Scaling Lean and Agile Development," by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde, to be published later this year.

Craig Larman Bas Vodde
on Jul 15, 2008
Improvement, Success and Failure: Scrum Adoption in China

This recent inquiry, by InfoQ China editor Jacky Li, picked 5 very different cases of Scrum adoption in China, which got different results, and asked: Why did you use Scrum? How did you adopt it? What problems did you encounter, and why did it succeed or fail? Despite the small sample size, it's an interesting comparison, pointing out that improvement doesn't ensure success.

Jacky (Jian) Li translated by Jacky (Jian) Li
on Apr 16, 2008

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