Too often, software that is ostensibly designed to serve the user is designed for the wrong user. The people who sign off on your software – the client who pays the bills, or the executive committee that decides what the business needs – may be happy. But the person who spends all day doing data [...]
agile
Less Process, More Discipline
by Charlie Martin | Comments
It started, as these things often do, with someone coming into my office. We’re close to shipping a product after a long struggle with all the usual issues – hardware difficulties, operating system bugs, personnel changes – but we’re beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel without the chug-chug of an [...]
How to Improve Communication Between QA and Development
by Lisa Crispin | Comments
A couple months ago, I perused an online article which purported to tell developers what they should learn in order to communicate better with testers. Number one on the list was, “Learn to use the bug tracking system.” After I screamed, I resolved to float some more useful ideas. Programmers know they need to get [...]
25 Agilists to Follow on Twitter
by Matt Heusser | Comments
With only 24 hours in a day, you certainly can’t follow every person on Twitter, or even all of the people who claim to be experts in Agile software development. What I provide below is meant to be a starting point. This is not a list of Capital-A Agilists, at least, not strictly speaking a [...]
What Do You Mean, “Agile”?
by Lisa Morgan | Comments
Being “agile” is a modern badge of honor. If you’re agile, you’re cool: progressive, team-oriented, and customer focused. You produce better quality way faster than the turtles mired in 500-page requirements documents. You rule because you’re agile. But how agile are you, really? In discussion forums, agile developers bash waterfall, saying it’s archaic, siloed, and [...]
Stumbling Towards Agile
Agile and old-style programmers don’t have to be at each other’s throats. If Agile developers can admit that waterfall created many successful programs and waterfall programmers can see that there’s some advantages to Agile’s flexibility, they might find they have more in common than they’d thought: Creating good, solid software. It’s easy for developers to [...]
An Agile Pace
by Tim Ottinger | Comments
Anyone who has been in software long enough recognizes an ongoing need for overtime as a “process smell,” a sign of an organization needing rescue. Once there is a mandate for exceptional, regular, weekly overtime — officially instituting a “death march” project — it is past time to pull in an Agile process consultant. A [...]
Selling Agile to the CFO: A Guide for Development Teams
by Lisa Crispin | Comments
You’ve learned about Agile development, or perhaps you have even worked in an agile organization and have now moved to a traditional one. You’re convinced that by adopting Agile, your team can deliver better value to your business, more frequently, and at a sustainable pace. But Agile adoption requires a big investment by your company, [...]
