by Bill Rinko-Gay When I first started researching Agile Quality Assurance I was told it wasn’t necessary because Agile methods have quality built in. Agile teams developed processes such as Extreme Programming (XP) and Test Driven Development (TDD) to produce quality code in a short amount of time. Because these processes work well, it is […]
… Your company likens software development to a production (manufacturing) environment and expects people and processes to reflect the same. ??? A number of organizations use Waterfall based processes for software development that call for all requirements to be gathered at the start of a project. Software project managers and delivery departments (IT) are often […]
These are questions Agile team members ask every sprint. When a team does a retrospective, the answers to these can be very subjective. The right set of lightweight metrics provides objective, results-driven feedback that focuses the discussion on areas of highest impact. Feedback and Management Tools Here is a set of lightweight metrics that can be […]
These are questions project and program managers ask every sprint. On Agile projects, the answers are based on the team’s historical achievements and projected forward using recent results. This leads to greater and greater confidence in the information as the project moves towards release dates, and enables the manager to communicate a roadmap with high […]
As mentioned previously, this blog series will cover the basic patterns only; advanced topics may be addressed in the future.I will cover the basics on the principles and process before discussing the team and technical practices. Lean Software Development will be covered subsequently. The following topics will be covered in the order (more or less) […]
by Bill Rinko-Gay One of the advantages of Agile is the ability to deliver continuous improvements to your customer. If you have experience in traditional development paradigms you a release is usually a mixed bag filled with new functionality and new (and sometimes old) defects. This is frustrating for users and the development team. You […]
by Bill Rinko-Gay Now that your stories are chosen and the iteration has been kicked off, is there any reason not to have developers simply start in as quickly as they can on writing the code for the stories? I believe there are 3 reasons to set up a plan for delivering groups of stories […]
Recently I was interviewing candidates for a couple of positions on an Agile project. As part of the recruiting process, I had to spend considerable time (aka late nights) going through dozens and dozens of resumes in order to shortlist the ones that seemed promising enough to call for a face-to-face interview. While going through […]
What makes a successful Agile team member? I’ve been asked this question numerous times by people assembling a Scrum or XP team, so I thought I would blog about it. Simply put, attitude is everything. Sure, you need to be competent at the right technical skills, but I will take 1 person with the right […]
Read More… from Agile performance: it’s about more than skills!
In this series of posts, I will discuss common (and not so-common) problems faced by teams and their leadership trying to adopt Agile practices. Adopting Agile is a lot harder than practicing Agile! If you have had the privilege of observing a mature Scrum team, you can see how effortlessly individuals come together so that […]