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Agile Users Groups in the USA: Communities of Practice
One area of the Agile ecosystem that is gaining traction these days is Agile user groups. This year, established groups are growing, and new groups are forming. Established groups are taking shots at larger conference-style events. The Scrum Alliance has a new user-group community liaison. It appears that user groups are starting to play in influential role in the worldwide Agile community.
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Do ScrumMasters need to be Technical?
Does a ScrumMaster need a technical background? Do they need to be able to read code and coach developers on their day to day work?
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State of the Practice - 2010
A number of leading authors, practitioners, and speakers in the area of software development were asked a series of common questions about the state of software development practice in 2010. The interview took place at the Better Software / Agile West concurrent conferences in June 2010.
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Eclipse Helios Simultaneous Release
The Eclipse foundation today announced the release of Eclipse Helios, bringing 39 different projects to the same station for the seventh annual release train. The Eclipse projects are managed in an agile fashion, releasing seven milestone builds throughout the year and then a number of release candidates in the weeks leading up to June each year.
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The Rugged Software Manifesto
Security, is often either an oversight or an afterthought for most software projects. Most development teams would rather focus on getting more functionality on the table than spend time to evade a possible security breach. In order to help developers realize the importance of rugged software Joshua Corman, David Rice and Jeff Williams founded the Rugged Software Manifesto.
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FXCop 10 was Shipped with Windows 7.1 SDK
For .NET developers who want the rigor of code analysis without the expense of Visual Studio Premium, FXCop is the tool for choice. But with FXCop 1.36 pulled from Microsoft Downloads without warning, many developers were left wondering what happened. Fortunately this tool is still available if you know where to look.
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Agile Development Conference Delivers the Goods
The Agile Development Practices conference was held this past June 6-11 in Las Vegas. Hosted inside the Caesar's Palace Conference Center, this event showcased excellent sessions, speakers and content. Several good sessions on testing, a keynote by Johanna Rothman on people and culture, and some fine presentations on Scrum and Kanban made for an excellent conference.
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Architexa aims to make UML quick and easy
Architexa is a new Eclipse-based UML modeling tool that allows developers to quickly gain insight into code relationships through UML diagrams, and share what they find with others.
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Naresh Jain Discusses "Simple Design & Testing" And The Conference Dedicated To It
"Simplicity" is a core agile tenet, particularly when it comes to software design and testing. Since 2006, Naresh Jain has been running a worldwide conference, the Simple Design & Testing Conference, for practitioners to collectively push the boundaries on the topic. Naresh tells InfoQ what's going on behind this small, but well-known conference and why he is so passionate about the topic.
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The Decision to Refactor
Refactoring is the process of changing a software system in such a way that is does not alter the external behavior of the code yet improves its internal structure. The idea of improving an already written code is appreciated in most Agile teams. Continuous improvement is is something that these teams strive for. However, improving the already existing code involves time and money. Is it worth it?
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Agile Teams as Cohesive Communities
Agile projects are (should be?) highly collaborative team environments built on a foundation of trust and open, honest communication. Such collaborative environments don’t just happen, and they can be easily disrupted. There are many commentators who provide advice on how to establish and maintain collaborative teams. This article summarizes the advice from a few of them.
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Differences and Learning: the PMI-Agile Project Heats Up
The PMI-Agile project's mission is to bring agile knowledge and skills to all PMI practitioners. Yet what has emerged is much more interesting than that. The project's Yahoo group has evolved into a place where worlds collide. There is some "heat" developing as a result of the differences and diversity found in this forum. InfoQ explored this in detail, and spoke with Ron Jeffries to learn more.
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Consistently Not Done, Done, Done at the End of Sprints?
Do you consistently have stories that don't meet your "definition of done" at the end of your sprints? Is the team tieing the hands of the product owner?
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Handling Team Changes
Change is constant, yet people fear change. It is mostly the fear of unknown and loss of comfort zones that makes the perception of a change painful. Though Agile teams are well prepared for change, however most of them are not comfortable when the change affects the team.
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How to Pay the Author: Flattr Micropayment Service
Earlier this year the micropayment service flattr (a wordplay of flatrate and flatter) went live. The principle is simple but could change the way in which we reward quality content on the net. Flattr was initiated by one of the founders of The Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde, who also presented it at social media conferences like re:publica.