InfoQ Homepage Continuous Improvement Content on InfoQ
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Without a Defined Process, How Will We Know Who To Blame?
"A fundamental premise of the 'train-wreck' approach to management is that the primary cause of problems is 'dereliction of duty'" said Peter Scholtes in his 2003 book on leadership. Mary Poppendieck's recent article on process, people and systems asked: "Which is more important - process or people?" and showed how Lean is an alternative to certified process improvement programs like ISO 9000.
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Why do Agile Adoptions Fail?
Although agilists focus much of their energy on helping their agile projects succeed, it is helpful to periodically stop and consider what causes some agile projects and agile adoptions to fail. Armed with this knowledge, perhaps one can avoid these same pitfalls.
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Coding Dojos to Master the Art of Development
Coding Dojos are meeting places where developers can go to practice coding together and improve their development skills in a relaxed and enjoyable setting. Emily Bache and others have started to document dojos on a wiki where the public can go to get started.
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Kaizen in Lean Software Development
Lean methods employ Kaizen, or continuous improvement, to reduce waste and improve results on a regular, even daily, basis. On the leanagilescrum group, Alan asked, "Are there known techniques for facilitating kaizen activities within Lean/Agile software development?"
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Frequent Retrospectives Accelerate Learning and Improvement
When we seek process improvement by discarding traditional SDLC rules, how should we work? Retrospectives are a tool teams can use to reflect on their process and improve it gradually over time. In this article, Rachel Davies offers help for teams who have ideas for improvements but are not sure how to get them off the ground.
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InfoQ Article: Reflecting on Success: Good Agile Karma
Agile relies heavily on discipline, rather than genius. We're told that average teams, even in the early stages, can achieve dramatic performance improvement if they are disciplined. As we do these things, the effects of our words and actions actively create, and re-create over time, the environment in which our teams and projects operate - for good or ill.
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Lean Process Works at Toyota USA
Since the "Toyota Production System" emerged in the late 80's, GM, Ford and Chrysler have applied TPS ideas, but they still trail Toyota. In his article, "No Satisfaction at Toyota," Charles Fishman suggested that the key is in teaching new ideas about what success looks like. It's an interesting read for those thinking about waste reduction in software development.
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Performance Goals For Agile Teams
Inspired by Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith's book The Wisdom of Teams, Mishkin Berteig looks at the importance of performance goals for driving a team towards self-organization and accountability.
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New Book on Lean Software Offers Practical Advice
In 2003 Mary and Tom Poppendieck adapted the revolutionary principles of Lean manufacturing for software development. Their new book offers a blend of history, theory, and practice, drawing on their experience optimizing the software "value stream". They present the right questions to ask, the key issues to focus on, and techniques proven to work for those implementing a lean software process.
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Book Excerpt: Agile Retrospectives
InfoQ brings you an exclusive chapter excerpt from the recent book "Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great", by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen. These expert facilitators show how teams can run focused, helpful retrospectives themselves, without an outside facilitator. We asked the authors a few questions about the making of their book.
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Tips for Effective Kaizen Process Improvement
Agile software development and Lean Thinking go hand-in-hand for many practitioners. Six-Sigma blackbelt Mike Wroblewski has blogged some lessons learned from a recent kaizen session. People are a key variable in both manufacturing and software environments, so his lessons learned in manufacturing are also interesting for Lean Software practitioners using kaizen events for process improvement.
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Mary and Tom Poppendieck Discuss Their Next Book
Bob Payne interviewed Mary and Tom Poppendieck at Agile2006 about their next Lean book, which focuses even more on software than the last. Mary summarizes it as "So you think Agile is a good idea: now what?" saying it will help people get started with Lean, going beyond the recipes of the first book to provide practical information and case studies to help teams do their own process experiments.
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Leveraging the Wisdom of Project Newcomers
Experienced newcomers can't be onboarded like programmers just out of school. The experienced professional will have specific but difficult-to-anticipate gaps that will impede their performance. In addition, this provides a great opportunity to get a fresh but experienced feedback on your processes. Gannthead.com offers some pointers wrapped in three fictional Dr. Phil episodes... (really?)
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InfoQ Article: Exclusive Excerpt from Practices of an Agile Developer
Andy Hunt, one of the originators of the Agile Manifesto, and Venkat Subramaniam have written a compilation of the habits, ideas, and approaches of successful Agile software developers in "Practices of an Agile Developer". InfoQ brings you a free excerpt on Agile Debugging.
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Agile Work Cheatsheets Posted
It's been said before: Agile may be simple, but it's not so easy. Mishkin Berteig contributes some one-page quick-references to jog our memories and keep us focused on delivering value.