InfoQ Homepage Culture & Methods Content on InfoQ
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Nailing Down Non-Functional Requirements
Non-Functional requirements are often associated with the state of the system and not with the functionality that the system has to offer. General 'ilities' of the system such as scalability, interoperability, maintainability, portability, performance and security fall under this umbrella. Agile teams usually struggle with defining and estimating the non-functional requirements in their projects.
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GitHub Releases OSX Client
GitHub have launched a desktop client for Mac OS X called simply GitHub for Mac.
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Commercial Interests Censoring Failures
Philippe Kruchten described the Agile movement as "The agile movement is in some ways a bit like a teenager: very self-conscious, checking constantly its appearance in a mirror, accepting few criticisms..." and shared a list of twenty elephants in the room - uncomfortable issues that are ignored on purpose. The first of these unmentionables is that commercial interests are censoring failures.
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Can Earned Value Leverage Agile Methods?
The debate over the value of Earned Value Management (EVM) and integrating it into agile rages heavy as agile penetrates into more large scale IT projects that require EVM. Opinions vary but some believe that not only can agile projects apply EVM; EVM with agile is better than EVM without agile.
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New Books on Software Architecture
Software Architecture is one of the important topics for software engineers, because many failures of software development projects are caused by inadequate design. Thus, it is essential to learn more about architectural issues in theory and practice. Interesting new books that have been published recently or in the near future could be very helpful
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Agile and Architecture Conflict
There is a constant tussle between following Agile techniques and still managing to do enterprise architecture. While Agile development focuses on adjusting the design as more insight is gained, architecture establishes the technology stack and addresses quality attributes. Combination of the two is successful when agile techniques are leveraged to drive towards the desired architecture.
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Questioning Team Accountability
Glen Alleman describes the business management process they use and describes his discomfort with the idea of team accountability instead of having one person be accountable. He questions the effectiveness of having a team accountable and what that means when there is no single point that is responsible for success or failure.
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QCon San Francisco November 14-18 - tracks announced & registration open
QCon San Francisco 2011, taking place November 14-18, is now open for registration ($700 savings until June 22nd). QCon is an enterprise software development conference for team leads, architects, and project managers covering architecture & design, Java, Mobile, functional programming, Lean and Kanban, Cloud Computing, Big Data & NoSQL, emerging languages, and other timely topics.
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Learning from History - or not
Consultant and author Gerald M. Weinberg has been in the computer industry for over 50 years; he raises concerns about the seemingly inevitable hype cycle associated with new techniques and how the industry so seldom seems to learn from previous cycles. In a similar vein Elisabeth Hendrickson recently blogged about the impact of "fake agile". They also provide some advice on how to improve.
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Will Machiel van der Bijl make manual Software Testing obsolete?
Machiel van der Bijl from the University of Twente in the Netherlands recently introduced a Model-based testing approach which is supposed to automate software testing.
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The Buzz Around the Lean Software & Systems Conference 2011 (LSSC11)
The Lean Software and Systems Consortium conference 2011 was held May 3-6 in Long Beach, California. This year, there seemed to be a strong focus on visualization, leadership, and real world solutions.
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PMI Agile Certified Professional Body of Knowledge
There is no single central reference for those seeking to prepare for the new Project Management Institute - Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) test; instead the PMI provides a list of test areas, and reference books, which taken together constitute the body of knowledge for the certification.
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Do We Need an Iteration Zero?
There are usually multiple things which need to be done before the start of a project. Teams usually use 'Iteration Zero' to put all necessary systems in place in order to start delivering business value in subsequent iterations. Is this the right way?
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Building Trust with Your Team
Wanjun Zhuang asked the members of the LinkedIn Agile Coaching group about earning trust with his new Agile team. His team members consider him a manager and are not open with sharing because they consider him someone who is checking up on them. There has been a significant amount of diverse advice that is potentially very useful to any (software) team.
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Erich Gamma Has Joined the Microsoft Visual Studio Team
Erich Gamma, one of the four co-authors of Design Patterns, known as GoF (Gang of Four), has joined Microsoft Visual Studio team.