InfoQ Homepage Agile in the Enterprise Content on InfoQ
-
Five Benefits of Feature Teams
Mike Cohn and others present their case to why you should consider structuring your teams around software "features" rather than software "components".
-
When ScrumMaster Becomes the Impediment ...
A ScrumMaster as the name suggests is the guardian of the scrum process. He is a change agent supporting his team and socializing Scrum throughout the organization. He ensures smooth functioning of the team by eradicating impediments and keeping the team shielded from distractions. However, in certain scenarios, Agile teams feel that the Scrum Master is the biggest impediment.
-
Do We Need an "Agile Team Lead" Role?
Patrick Wilson-Welsh, Chris Beale, Gary Baker, John Huston, Daryl Kulak, and others are attempting to popularize the idea of a new role, the "Agile Team Lead", to supplant many of the existing leadership roles found in and around agile teams.
-
When Agile Success is Eventually a Failure
It is often assumed that once the pilot Agile teams are successful, the process of Agile adoption is on the right track. Dave Nicolette shares very intriguing insights into situations where the adoption failed even after very successful pilot implementations.
-
Agile is Micromanagement
Micromanagement, often has a negative connotation associated with it. It is a management style where a manager closely observes or controls the work of his or her subordinates or employees. Usually Agile development and micromanagement may seem to be opposite ends of spectrum however, they are more related than what meets the eye.
-
What is a Good Agile Metric?
What is an appropriate Agile Metric? If traditional measures like: Earned Value, Hours Worked, Lines of Code, Code Coverage for Tests are not well suited to Agile Projects, then what is? What rules can we define that will help us choose good Agile metrics?
-
Who Moved Our Project Stakeholder
A project stakeholder for an Agile team is a person having a valuable stake in the success of the project and could also be potentially holding the cash strings for the project. However, sometimes it is very difficult to get time slices from the project stakeholder. In other extreme cases, the stakeholder might seem to be uninterested or completely missing in action.
-
Agile's "One Essential Ingredient"
There has been plenty of debate on what skills a developer needs, or what practices an organization must adopt for agile to be successful. But while undeniably important, is this really what's at the heart of agile success? Mark Schumann suggests that agile's "one essential ingredient" is not ground-level agile technique, but rather is the agile mindset within management ranks.
-
Feedback and Feedfoward: Best of Both Worlds
Feedback is a situation in which an output from an event of the past has a potential relevance in the future. Agile places a lot of importance on soliciting and providing feedback with every step in order to build a quality product. On the other hand Feedforward is, to give someone suggestions for the future and provide help in terms of future direction.
-
Opinion: Pair Programming Is Not For The Masses
Pair Programming continues to be one of the most debated and controversial practices of recent years. Most proponents don't falter in their praise of the benefits, but many of even these same people will admit they struggle to get pairing really going in their shops. Why? Obie Fernandez opinions 10 reasons why this might be so.
-
Leading Lean & Agile – it’s all about people
Mary and Tom Poppendieck have published a new book titled "Leading Lean Software Development: Results Are Not the Point" in which they examine the importance of leadership in Lean/Agile transformations and provide guidance for organisations making the transformation.
-
Handling Project Termination
Terminating a sprint in Scrum is a rare event, but it does happen. An abnormal sprint termination can be called by either the team or the product owner. Most of the times terminating a sprint or the project leaves a sense of bad feeling. Robert K. Hurley and Joseph T. Jimmerson discussed the ways to deal with the trauma of a terminated project.
-
Measuring Agile Performance with the Agile Triangle
Traditional software development teams were supposed to work within the confines of the software 'Iron triangle'. The three sides of the triangle are Scope, Schedule and Cost. Jim Highsmith suggested that the Iron triangle, imposes a lot of constraints on the flexibility of the Agile teams and suggested an alternate Agile Triangle.
-
How to Transfer Knowledge in an Agile Project
Knowledge transfer is characterized by transfer of understanding, about a context, from one unit (individual, team, department, organization) to another. In a series of interesting experiments, Steve Bockman tried to figure out the best way to transfer knowledge in an Agile project.
-
Two Types of Agile Documents - No More, No Less!
The Agile Manifesto suggests “ Working software over comprehensive documentation”. This has led many teams to believe that there is no need for documentation in Agile projects. Critics of Agile use limited documentation in Agile to showcase the weakness of Agile methodologies. Eelco Gravendeel suggested that there are just two types of documentation in Agile.