InfoQ Homepage Culture & Methods Content on InfoQ
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Improving Scrum with the Kanban-Ace Framework
The Kanban-Ace Framework welcomes Scrum, and helps teams improve their level of agility. This article explores how a Scrum team can improve by leveraging the Kanban-Ace Framework. It introduces the Akashi Bridge, a new Kanban-Ace tool that makes it possible for Scrum teams to keep the best features of Scrum while growing to higher levels of performance thanks to Kanban-Ace advantages.
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Agile Development at the Enterprise Level: Misconceptions That Jeopardize Success
Most large companies struggle to deploy Agile in the face of compliance demands, lengthy funding cycles, and the need to involve many stakeholders. Are user stories really enough? Are BAs really irrelevant? How can we give up the BRD? Successful Agile enterprises work around these and other common misconceptions by adding the structure and discipline they need to manage complexity and risk.
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Teaching Modern Software Development Techniques at University
We often hear how there is a skills shortage in the software industry, and about the apparent gap between what people are taught in university and the “real world”. This is how Imperial College London aims to bridge this gap, providing students with relevant skills for industrial software engineering careers, and teaching tools and techniques for professional developer working in a modern team.
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Internal Tech Conferences - How and Why
Software engineering today is every bit as much about the people as it is about technology - empowered teams don’t appear overnight. We need to oil the wheels of collaboration so they roll smoothly. Here, Matthew Skelton and Victoria Morgan-Smith discuss how to use internal conferences to boost your organisation’s social capital, the currency by which relationships flourish and businesses thrive.
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Proper Usage of Metrics with Flow Debt as an Example
Flow Debt is a leading indicator that provides a view of what is happening inside a delivery system; an important metric for improving software development. This article provides an example how a metric like Flow Debt can be used improperly, i.e. out of their domain, or properly, i.e. context aware usage of Flow Debt with an IT operations team.
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Ways to Make Code Reviews More Effective
Performing Code Reviews helps to increase code quality, share knowledge and responsibility, and build better software and a better team. However, the big question remains – what is it we should be looking for? There are a lot of different things to consider. This article will list a wide range of items to check, and drill a little deeper into two specific areas: performance and security.
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Standardizing Requirements Descriptions on Scrum Projects for Better Development and Testing Quality
Standardizing requirements descriptions on Scrum projects benefit development and testing quality. Without standardizing, the project may suffer. Standardizing requirements descriptions provides a minimum of eight benefits from requirements descriptions unification, which in turn positively affects testing and makes management of ongoing changes in requirements easier with the help of tools.
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Book Review: Site Reliability Engineering - How Google Runs Production Systems
"Site Reliability Engineering - How Google Runs Production Systems" is an open window into Google's experience and expertise on running some of the largest IT systems in the world. The book describes the principles that underpin the Site Reliability Engineering discipline. It also details the key practices that allow Google to grow at breakneck speed without sacrificing performance or reliability.
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Agile in the UK Government - An Insider Reveals All
The Government Digital Service (GDS) aims to transform the relationship between citizen and state, moving the UK towards becoming a world-leading digital-by-default government. Nick Tune explores what GDS has achieved with assessments, sharing agile practices and experiences, and open source software, and shares what isn’t working so well in government IT.
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The Top 5 Problems with Distributed Teams and How to Solve Them
In this article, Hugo Messer shares the top 5 challenges distributed teams face along with practical solutions. They are based on his 6 books, many workshops and a decade of hands on experience. The top 5 challenges: 1. We're thinking 'us versus them'; 2. Keeping the team in the dark; 3. Culture is a mystery; 4. We stop communicating; 5. The black box.
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What’s Wrong With Using Design Templates?
By choosing a web design template, businesses save on time and the cost of developing their website. Templates are often hard to customize and generate a range of other issues that affect the website's performance an negatively impact the brand. Contrary to custom design, templates can only serve as a starting point for creating a web presence.
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Communities of Practice: The Missing Piece of Your Agile Organisation
Communities of practice bring together people who share areas of interest or concerns. They have specific applications in agile organisations: scaling agile development and allowing individuals to connect with others who share similar concerns. Communities of practice bring people together to regain the benefits of regular contact while keeping the value of multidisciplinary agile teams.