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InfoQ Homepage Continuous Improvement Content on InfoQ

  • Retrospectives Applied as “PROspectives"

    We can view situations in our work as opportunities from which to learn how to better handle similar situations in future, by looking back and asking “How will I deal with future situations like this to improve my results?” PROspectives help us to reflect more often, independently of acute, unexpected problems and without time pressure, to uncover ideas for future improvements.

  • Scrum for Education - Experiences from eduScrum and Blueprint Education

    Schools use Scrum to help students to learn more effectively and develop themselves in an enjoyable way. The self-organized student teams work in sprints to learn subjects and evolve the learning process. Results from the agile way of working are improved quality of education, higher grades and motivated students. InfoQ interviewed people from several schools involved in teaching with Scrum.

  • Interview with Brian Murray from Yammer about Lean Startup and using Minimum Viable Products

    Enterprises want early and frequent customer feedback to be able to understand their needs and be able to deliver products that create value for them. Brian Murray explains how Yammer uses Minimum Viable Products to test their business customer hypotheses, and why they focus so much attention on the architecture of their products.

  • The Essence of Software Engineering: Book Review and Interview with Ivar Jacobson

    The essence of software engineering introduces the Software Engineering Method and Theory (SEMAT) initiative, and describes how it can be used in software development to understand and improve the way of working. It uses agile principles to support self-organizing teams in adopting agile and lean development practices. An interview with Ivar Jacobson, one of the authors and leaders of SEMAT.

  • The 4 Questions of a Retrospective and Why They Work

    A Retrospective is a valuable way to improve how your team works together by reflecting on what has come before and using what you have learned to move ahead together. The authors present a structure with four simple questions to help you get started with using retrospectives in your team environment.

  • Dialogue Sheets Revisited

    Last year Allan Kelly wrote an InfoQ article about a tool for retrospectives - Dialogue Sheets. A year and over 2000 downloads later he looks at how they are being used and ways they have been adapted in the wild.

  • DevOps @ Nokia Entertainment

    DevOps@Nokia Entertainment is the first article of the “DevOps War Stories” series. Each month we hear what DevOps brings to a different organisation, we learn what worked and what didn’t, and chart the challenges faced during adoption.

  • Interview and Book Review: Essential Scrum

    Essential Scrum by Kenny Rubin is a book about getting more out of Scrum. It’s an introduction to Scrum and its values, principles and practices, and a source of inspiration on how to apply it.

  • Agile Performance Reviews

    Why go an entire year before receiving feedback? Nothing else in the Agile world waits a year, why would feedback? Struggling to make feedback objective? Perhaps objectivity is the wrong goal perhaps reviews should be subjective. Ryan Hagan offers his approach to doing performance reviews with an Agile Team.

  • Interview and Book Review : The Retrospective Handbook

    Patrick Kua has recently published The Retrospective Handbook which provides practical advice on how to make retrospectives much more effective. In this book Patrick draws upon his 8 years of valuable experience with retrospectives in real agile teams.

  • The Agile Project Manager — Voilà: The Great Reveal

    Certified Scrum Master training tells us we must conduct Reviews (aka Demo's) at the end of every Sprint. Rarely do we get guidance on how to have a great Sprint Review. Bob Galen has experienced the bad "Demos" that were only Powerpoint and helped coach them to the level where stakeholders clamoured to attend.

  • Dialogue Sheets: A new tool for retrospectives

    Dialogue sheets allow teams to hold facilitator-less retrospectives. They promote self-organization and encourage everyone to speak in the exercise. This results in great levels of participation in and higher energy levels in teams. The sheet itself is A1 in size, 8 times larger than a regular sheet, pre printed with instructions and questions to motivation discussion.

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