InfoQ Homepage Culture & Methods Content on InfoQ
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Agile Delivery at British Telecom
Methods and Tools has a 3-part article by Ian Evans of British Telecom outlining the challenges of software development at BT and the approach they took to switch to an Agile approach. Going from a well-established waterfall-based delivery approach to Agile takes patience and time, as well as a lot of commitment. But despite the challenges, few at BT would go back to their old ways.
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Refactoring your Rails application to be RESTful
Scott Raymond writes about how his life became easier when he refactored the application behind IconBuffet.com to using RESTful URLs.
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Online Discussion on Scrum Requirements Basics
The ScrumDevelopment list has seen lively discussion lately on Requirements issues frequently faced by new teams: "Can the ScrumMaster be the Product Owner too?", "How do we prioritize our Product Backlog?" and "QA's role in a SCRUM process". New teams quickly discover that a poor-quality Product Backlog can frustrate and undermine a team that is otherwise raring to start delivering value.
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Patterns for Daily Stand-up Meetings Published
Jason Yip has published "It's not just standing up", Patterns for Daily Standups on Martin Fowler's Bliki. In the article he discusses the benefits and consequences of common practices for daily stand-ups. The patterns are intended to help direct the experimentation and adjustment of new practitioners as well as provide points of reflection to experienced practitioners.
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AJAX, JPA, and JSF Articles Added to Java BluePrints Catalog
The Java BluePrints Catalog available on Java.net has been updated with new writeups on JSF, AJAX, and JavaEE 5 Persistence.
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Synergy: Agile and User Experience Design
Scott Ambler believes that User Experience Design (UED) is critical to the success of agile software development techniques, because it increases a team's chances of building the right software to meet customers' real goals. This article describes how Agile and UED communities can work together closely for project success.
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Studies Concur, Small Teams Are Best
Knowledge@Wharton asks: Is Your Team Too Big? Too Small? What's the Right Number? Decades of research suggest the sweetspot may be between 4 and 6, though corrections to team size are unlikely to resolve all of a team's problems.
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Agile Testing Practices Overview
Jon Kern, one of the original authors of the Agile Manifesto, has written a good overview of Agile approach to software testing. In it he talks about mixing different kinds of tests - including manual tests - and testing techniques.
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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.
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SOA Mission Accomplished--90 Percent Complete
A recent Aberdeen survey of over 120 IT firms indicates that nine of every ten companies are adopting or have adopted service-oriented architectures and will exit 2006 with SOA planning, design, and programming experience.
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TestDriven.NET Releases Professional and Enterprise Editions
The previously-free automated unit testing add-in for Visual Studio .NET, TestDriven.NET, now charges licensing fees for its use beyond the Personal edition. Note that the Personal edition is fully-featured and does not expire.
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IntelliJ IDEA 6.0 Featureset and New TeamCity Product Announced
Jetbrains has just announced the full featureset for the upcoming IntelliJ IDEA 6.0. Included are JEE, Swing, and refactoring enhancements as well as integration with their new team enviroment product TeamCity.
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Statistics on Agile Practices Problematic
Keith Ray questions the value of statistics for software processes, including Agile processes.
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Agile Topics at SD Best Practices 2006
This year's SD Best Practices conference will take place September 11-14, with the industry's top experts delivering up-to-date, relevant, practical material. The conference features over 175 classes, tutorials, case studies, roundtables, keynotes and Birds-of-a-Feather gatherings. Here is our list of over 75 sessions by or for Agile practitioners.
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Increase Your Personal Resilience to Change
"Highly resilient people are best suited for a world of constant change. They don't fight against disruptive change... they adjust to new situations quickly." Sounds useful for members of Agile teams which want to "embrace change", even more so for those experiencing the drastic change from traditional to Agile methods. Bob Weinstein's article lists some ways to increase your own resiliency.