InfoQ Homepage Culture & Methods Content on InfoQ
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Imagine the End, to Begin Well
Agile trainer and coach Andy Pols has reported that at SPA2006, retrospectives guru Norm Kerth described the practice of "Kick-Off Retrospectives", which ask participants to imagine how they will answer at a future retrospective: "What was so good about this project that you'd like to repeat it on future projects?" This can set expectations and inform the team's planning for collaboration.
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"Simple Ain't Easy"
The idea of simplicity has recently been explored in relation to subjects such as charity, time management, and home design. In concert with this movement, simplicity also surfaced in 2001 in the Agile Manifesto. But the term is deceptive - surely simplicity should be, well, simple? Brad Appleton has blogged at length on the subject, exploring "Myths and Misunderstandings about Simplicity".
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SirsiDynix Case Study: Jeff Sutherland on Highly Productive Distributed Scrum
Scrum co-creator Jeff Sutherland has just finished a paper on the SirsiDynix project, which he calls the most productive large Java project ever documented. The project used Distributed Scrum and some XP practices. Although distributed teams are often expected to experience reduced productivity, this team's productivity level matched that measured by Cohn on a co-located team!
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Where Did All the Positions Go?
How can existing, experienced IT professionals fit into an Agile project? By being flexible, open minded, and willing to change.
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Clemens Vasters on Services and Business/IT Alignment
Clemens Vasters writes about the value of service-orientation (or lack thereof) for aligning business and IT.
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Rolling Rocks Downhill - in Installments
Clarke Ching has just published more chapters of Rolling Rocks Downhill, his "business novel" in the tradition of Goldratt and Lencioni. He's writing in an online "fishbowl", looking for reader feedback: a rather Agile thing to do. In chapter 21 Steve contemplates working iteratively from the start of the project - just like they do in product development. But he's got one niggling doubt ...
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Submissions Wanted on Lean and Agile Together
The Software Technology Track at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences will include an Agile subject: "Incorporating Lean Development Practices into Agile Software Development". Research papers are sought, but the deadline for submissions is close: June 15, 2006. Did we mention it's taking place in Hawaii?
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Fun: The YAGNI Development Assistant
Some days it's harder than others to remain focused. Darren Smith has specced out a new feature which most IDE's are missing: The YAGNI Development Assistant. Based on Microsoft's Clippy, it provides key advice for staying agile as you're programming.
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Converting a project from a waterfall to an iterative approach
Software developers who firmly believe in an iterative approach must work for clients who, for various reasons, are rooted in a traditional methodology. This article discusses ways to help such organizations make a transition.
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Submissions wanted for Agile Leadership Summit 2006
Deadline is May 31 for submission of Experience Reports for the APLN Leadership Summit, to be held at the Agile2006 conference in July. This is an amazing opportunity to talk all day with Agile leaders in the setting of a small conference.
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Ruby Coverage Tool Making Rapid Progress
Earlier this week, Mauricio Fernandez released version 0.4 of Rcov, his tool for simple code coverage analysis in Ruby. Rcov is fast, feature-packed and progressing rapidly.
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Planning 101 for Agile Teams
Detractors have propagated the myth that "Agile teams don't plan", which couldn't be farther from the truth. Planning is essential to Agile, because of its empirical nature: plan, execute, inspect, adapt... plan again. Stacia Heimgartner outlines the five levels of planning required to set good expectations with all levels of the organization.
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Automating "All" Tests
Sure, test automation is a good thing. But we can't, and shouldn't, automate them all. Why then, ask people to "automate all tests"?
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Distributed Teams Can be Effective...Enough
Scrum, being an Agile approach to teamwork, emphasises team co-location. So why is Esther Derby, ScrumMaster, writing about distributed teams? They pose real communication challenges, but are a reality in many organisations adopting Agile, and Esther notes "you can't just hope that communication will work." In this article, she offers Five Tactics to Compensate for Distance on Distributed Teams.
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Agile DSM Workshop at XP2006
Steven Kelley and Alan Cameron Wills are holding a workshop at XP2006 in Oulu Finland on June 19th where participants will discuss how to add domain specific modeling to an agile software development project.