InfoQ Homepage Agile Techniques Content on InfoQ
-
Health Check: Has Your Team Got Rhythm?
Agile work keeps things simple by putting in place some basic patterns. Sometimes, when problems arise within the process, complex solutions can be averted by simply re-establishing a rhythm in the cycle of releases, iterations, days, stories/features. Agile Journal, in their Metrics edition, published three articles which mention the importance of rhythm as a diagnostic.
-
"Agile People Do Get It" -- Uncle Bob
Last week, Cedric Beust ranted against the way Agile test practices, particularly TDD, are evangelised in "Agile People Still Don't Get It". He complained about "Agilists' dishonesty ... They offer you all these nice ideas, but they never - ever - disclose the risks and the downsides". He raises a valid point. This week Jeff Langr (the Agile culprit), Bob Martin and others blogged responses.
-
"Literate Testing" for Readable JUnit Tests
How much time do you spend puzzling out the intention of a test? Robert Chatley, Tom White and Brian Marick have been using a more natural sentence style to make Java tests easier to read, calling it "Literate Testing".
-
Security and Reliability Techniques Revealed for Agile Teams
Agile methods such as Extreme Programming (XP) and Agile Unified Process (AUP) do not explicitly address security and reliability, yet these are issues which are often critical to your success. It is possible to address these issues, and more, on software development teams while still remaining agile.
-
Article: Reducing Legacy Code Woes
Incremental Test Driven Development is fine for new code... but few get to start from scratch. Jared Richardson, author of "Ship It!", shows how to handle the legacy code that everyone eventually inherits. Use his Build, Automate, Test approach to create a safety net that helps you identify and eliminate unintended side effects, to ensure your code continues to work the way you want it to.
-
Strategies for Remaining Focussed on Your Project's Goal
Catalysts' Christoph Steindl describes strategies for how you can stay focused on the true goal(s) which your project team is chartered to achieve via effective use of strategic objectives maps and related agile project management strategies.
-
Strategies for Initiating an Agile Project
This article describes what happens during "Cycle 0" to kick off an agile project. This includes feasibility assessment, initial requirements modeling, initial architectural modeling, building the initial team, and initial estimating and planning.
-
Watir Adds Support for Modal Dialogs
Watir is a very popular testing tool for web apps. The newest release adds support for Internet Explorer modal dialogs, which are common in enterprise applications.
-
Should We Manage Both Features and Tasks?
Although it keeps people busy, managing tasks is neither interesting nor useful. Managing value created provides greater leverage and greater risk management. Jon Kern blogged last week on creating good features (rather than tasks) by focusing on value and testability. But do we sometimes need to manage tasks, too? David Anderson used the Theory of Constraints to back an unexpected answer.
-
Keep those Stand Up Meetings Short and Sweet
Keeping the daily Scrum, or standup meeting, short is a challenge. Many of us are familiar with the "Talking Stick" used by some indigenous peoples to run run well organized tribal meetings. It's an elegantly simple way to keep a group focused and respectful. Kane Mar, a west coast XP coach has blogged about how a number of teams have adapted this idea. But seriously - using a Pig?!
-
Imagine the End, to Begin Well
Agile trainer and coach Andy Pols has reported that at SPA2006, retrospectives guru Norm Kerth described the practice of "Kick-Off Retrospectives", which ask participants to imagine how they will answer at a future retrospective: "What was so good about this project that you'd like to repeat it on future projects?" This can set expectations and inform the team's planning for collaboration.
-
"Simple Ain't Easy"
The idea of simplicity has recently been explored in relation to subjects such as charity, time management, and home design. In concert with this movement, simplicity also surfaced in 2001 in the Agile Manifesto. But the term is deceptive - surely simplicity should be, well, simple? Brad Appleton has blogged at length on the subject, exploring "Myths and Misunderstandings about Simplicity".
-
Fun: The YAGNI Development Assistant
Some days it's harder than others to remain focused. Darren Smith has specced out a new feature which most IDE's are missing: The YAGNI Development Assistant. Based on Microsoft's Clippy, it provides key advice for staying agile as you're programming.
-
Automating "All" Tests
Sure, test automation is a good thing. But we can't, and shouldn't, automate them all. Why then, ask people to "automate all tests"?
-
Distributed Teams Can be Effective...Enough
Scrum, being an Agile approach to teamwork, emphasises team co-location. So why is Esther Derby, ScrumMaster, writing about distributed teams? They pose real communication challenges, but are a reality in many organisations adopting Agile, and Esther notes "you can't just hope that communication will work." In this article, she offers Five Tactics to Compensate for Distance on Distributed Teams.