Articles

Evaluation with "Excellent" checked Are You Agile? An Assessment Can Tell You

Plenty of companies want to be agile and go through the motions but are not really agile. An agile assessment allows you to evaluate how teams or even organizations are doing in their agile journey. But like any useful tool, there is no shortage of assessment options available. Here are the acceptance criteria to look for and a framework for using an agile assessment.

Joel Bancroft-Connors's picture Joel Bancroft-Connors
Cloud with tools graphic Fixing a Broken Deployment Process

When you have hundreds of applications performing various functions across several environments, it's tough to push all the code when it needs to be. Here are some steps to help your own team develop the internal tooling it requires to deploy thousands of applications if needed, all in a reliable, efficient manner.

Colleen Stock's picture Colleen Stock
Estimation questions Delivering Value with Agile and #NoEstimates

#NoEstimates is a challenge to the traditional thinking that estimation is essential to agile development. Ryan Ripley believes there are more interesting tools available to help us determine what value is and when we could realize it, while still staying aligned with the businesses and customers we serve. Learn some other ways to deliver value to your customers.

Ryan Ripley's picture Ryan Ripley
Multitasking Agile Techniques for the Multitaskers in All of Us

Multitasking can sabotage your productivity, but with all our different responsibilities, it's often a necessary evil. However, your work quality and quantity don’t have to suffer. These agile techniques can help you avoid interruptions, organize your to-do list, and regain focus after switching tasks.

Charles Cain's picture Charles Cain
Agile icon 5 Ways Agile Testing Is Different from Traditional Testing

It’s the distinctions between agile and traditional software development approaches, as well as the adaptability of testers in these very different environments, that makes agile testing different from traditional testing. Agile demands more from its testers, and, in turn, it values them more, too. Let’s look at five main things that make an agile tester’s life different from that of a traditional tester.

Nishi Grover's picture Nishi Grover
Managing for Happiness: Games, Tools, and Practices to Motivate Any Team Book Review: Managing for Happiness: Games, Tools, and Practices to Motivate Any Team

Jurgen Appelo’s useful and fun-to-read book Managing for Happiness: Games, Tools, and Practices to Motivate Any Team gives you concrete tools to identify ways to help your team be happier and to create environments where people can thrive and be more productive. Despite the word managing being in the title, the book is a beneficial read for anyone.

Steve Berczuk's picture Steve Berczuk
Failure Next Exit sign How to Guarantee Failure in Your Agile DevOps Transformation

Many organizations make the same agile and DevOps scaling mistakes year after year, then attempt to rectify them by putting together a great new strategy—only to miss the reasons causing the failure. If you want to refuse to evolve and, as a result, cause your organization’s agile and DevOps transformation efforts to deliver zero business value, be sure to follow these seven antipatterns.

Mik Kersten's picture Mik Kersten
functional testing Kanban chart Kanban for Software Testing Teams

Kanban, a highly effective agile framework, is based on the philosophy that everything can be improved. And it's not just for development teams. The QA team also can use kanban to organize tasks, identify bottlenecks, and make their processes clearer and more consistent.

Sofía Palamarchuk's picture Sofía Palamarchuk
lifecycle circle Using Agile Application Lifecycle Management to Streamline Status Accounting

Status accounting is following the evolution of a configuration item through its lifecycle. Using application lifecycle management along with agile helps prevent mistakes, but lets you have the minimum amount of red tape; the team achieves an acceptable velocity without being unduly burdened with too much process.

Bob Aiello's picture Bob Aiello
shark Estimating Business Value in the Shark Tank

You can use analytical methods to assign business value to a user story, of course, but another way is simple estimation. Allan Kelly describes an estimation exercise that combines the Scrum tool of planning poker with a TV show format to add some fun. You end up with enlightening conversation and revealed requirements.

Allan Kelly's picture Allan Kelly

Pages

AgileConnection is a TechWell community.

Through conferences, training, consulting, and online resources, TechWell helps you develop and deliver great software every day.