InfoQ Homepage Agile Techniques Content on InfoQ
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Evaluating the 'Ease of Use'
Mostly usability of a system is ascertained on gut feel rather than being based on some statistical analysis. In a recent discussion on the Agile Usability group, members discuss various ways to evaluate system usability in an objective manner.
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A Comprehensive Collection Of Agile Mailing Lists
As a participant of the Agile community here on InfoQ, you've already shown you are interested in learning more about agile, and likely have ideas of your own that you're interested in contributing back. This is what you can experience in the various mailing lists that exist related to agile development. But what lists are available? Mark Levison helps to answer that question.
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Automated Acceptance Tests - Theoretical or Practical
There have been sporadic reports of successes in writing requirements as acceptance tests and automating them. This practice is only used by a small minority of the community. Are automated acceptance tests written at the beginning of each iteration just a theoretical assertion that have been proven ineffective by the lack of adoption?
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Top Ten Reasons to Love Agile Testing
What are the top ten reasons that Tester's love Agile Testing? Kay Johansen recently asked this question and got responses from many of the leading testers.
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Atlassian Acquires GreenHopper Adding Agile PM to JIRA
Atlassian announces acquisition of GreenHopper from Pyxis Technologies to add agile development support to JIRA. Also announced, the availability of a new Website, "agile@Atlassian," where the community can share perspectives on agile software development and where Atlassian engineers can explain their techniques and experience.
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Is Measuring Hyper-Productivity a Waste of Time?
In a presentation about Shock Therapy, Jeff Sutherland mentioned that Hyper-Productivity is at least Toyota level of performance which is four times the industry average. In a recent discussion on the Scrum Development group, members debate whether it is both fruitful and possible to accurately measure productivity across sprints.
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Presentation: Beyond Agile - Cultural Patterns
Willem van den Ende and Marc Evers introduce different cultural patterns you can find in software organizations, based on Gerald M. Weinberg's work, and tell how to recognize them, what behavior to expect, and how you can handle unexpected events and change. They show how different agile processes like Scrum, XP, and Lean fit in, while explaining some common agile failure modes.
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Article: Pulling Power - A New Software Lifespan
Elizabeth Keogh looks at how Kanban and Feature Injection can play into Behavior Driven Development, to work together to help identify the most important software, reduce unnecessary artifacts at each stage of development, and produce the minimum necessary to achieve a vision.
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A Good Velocity
Buddha Buck recently asked the Extreme Programming list if there were a velocity range that could be considered 'good' for a team of about seven people doing two-week iterations. He felt that a velocity of eight or below indicated that the team's stories might be too big. The resulting discussion provided some answers to the question, and the questions behind the question.
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Feature Injection Comics
Chris Matts, well known in the Agile community for his work in bringing option theory to software development, has been writing about feature injection in a comic-book format on the Agile Journal. He explains how, by changing the way information flows through your software development process, you can significantly improve performance.
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Article: Where To Now With Build Automation
Most developers nowadays are familiar with the basic tenets of Continuous Integration, but arguably only a small proportion of these are fully benefiting from an optimized CI set up. This article, by John Smart of Atlassian, discusses Continuous Integration practices that can take CI beyond merely being a glorified cron job and make it an effective, productivity-enhancing hub for development.
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Interview: Jeff Patton on Embracing Uncertainty
In this interview with Jeff Patton at Agile 2008, he talks about three strategies that can help product owners do their job more effectively by embracing the inherent uncertainty in all software development. Namely they are understanding the ultimate goals of the project, delaying decisions until the last responsible moment, and scaling up by building quality.
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Comparing Kanban To Scrum
Kanban has been gaining serious interest as a valid approach to implementing agile for your development organization. As such, many people are asking the question "how does Kanban compare to Scrum?". Henrik Kniberg has taken a stab at answering this question
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Presentation: Born to Cycle
Agile development is not about doing a set of practices, it's about a way of "being," it's about learning. How is this learning accomplished? By taking brief pauses after small experiments, even large problems can be solved. In a recent Harvard Business Review interview of Toyota's president, he observed, "...when 70 years of very small improvements accumulate, they become a revolution."
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Presentation: Agile Mashups
It is rare to come across a team that are following an agile software method such as Scrum or XP by the book. Most teams create their own "mashup" of agile practices to suit their unique situation. This talk highlights what's on offer in the different agile methods, where different agile practices add value and how to go about blending them into your current approach.