Articles

Agile Change Management: Using Agile to Lead Change

Resistance to change in the business world limits the ability of organizations to transform, adapt, compete, and succeed in an advancing marketplace. It's important for today's leaders to adopt an agile approach to change management, being willing to risk, practice, and drive change from a visionary perspective.

Navneet  Saasan's picture Navneet Saasan
Ship's helm The Agile Advantage for Last-Minute Changes

Companies using heavyweight development processes manage change by limiting or locking down scope, but this has negative consequences for our products and our customers. Agile takes a different approach by recognizing the value of last-minute changes and making it inexpensive and straightforward to make changes to software, even late in the development cycle, using continuous integration.

David Bernstein's picture David Bernstein
Train off the track Signs Your DevOps Initiative Is Off the Rails

There’s lots of confusion about what DevOps is. This has resulted in the emergence of DevOps “antipatterns”—DevOps patterns of behavior that will not result in success. There are often clear signs that what you are doing isn’t going to work. This article delves into some of them in hopes you can avoid these mistakes and successfully implement DevOps principles and practices.

Jeffery Payne's picture Jeffery Payne
Speedometer 8 Keys to Transforming into a High-Performance Agile Team

Following an agile process alone will not guarantee your teams will be high performers. Teams undergo various challenges while transforming into a highly productive team. This article looks at the areas where teams generally struggle in adopting agile principles and the typical root causes for those struggles, as well as eight behaviors that can help drive teams toward greater success.

Uday Varma's picture Uday Varma

Better Software Magazine Articles

handstand The Power of Thinking Upside Down

Software developers can become bogged down trying to keep up with agile process and procedures. Get better results by rethinking your approach to balancing focus, agility, management, and testing.

Paul McMahon's picture Paul McMahon
Do You Really Want to Be a Manager Do You Really Want to Be a Manager?

The majority of managers are promoted due to their software development expertise. But becoming a successful manager requires a drastic change of focus. There is a set of expectations to consider before making that leap to the “dark side.”

Ron Lichty's picture Ron Lichty MW Mantle
Scaling Agile Helping Organizations Scale Agile across the Enterprise

Transitioning a software organization to agile isn’t easy. Kirk Botula believes that incorporating an enterprise-wide performance improvement model strengthens the application of agile throughout your company.

Kirk Botula's picture Kirk Botula
Balance and Flow Continuous Process Improvement Using Balance and Flow

Finding a balance between too much and too little process can be quite a challenge. Tom Wessel shows how to apply lean change management and kaizen principles to achieve continuous process  improvement. Also, Tom suggests the use of simple metrics to verify that improvements are actually taking place.

Thomas Wessel's picture Thomas Wessel

Interviews

Bob Galen Getting People to Embrace the Change Required for Agile: An Interview with Bob Galen
Video

In this interview, Bob Galen, an agile methodologist, practitioner, and coach, explains why in order to become agile, people need to overcome their resistance to change. Bob details why agile works, how people's jobs will be safe, and why "change from the bottom up" can only get you so far.

Jennifer Bonine's picture Jennifer Bonine
Neal Ford Evolve Your Software Architecture for Agile and DevOps: An Interview with Neal Ford
Podcast

In this interview, Neal Ford, a director and software architect at ThoughtWorks, explains why software architecture has traditionally been so difficult to change later on in the process and how you can adapt your modern architecture to be much more evolvable.

Josiah Renaudin's picture Josiah Renaudin
Jay McFarling and Danielle Roecker talk about making mainframe technology agile Make Your Mainframe Systems and Technology More Agile: An Interview with Jay McFarling and Danielle Roecker
Podcast

Jay and Danielle talk about their presentation at Agile Development and Better Software Conference West 2014, why teams should care about their mainframe systems going agile, the role of legacy tech in an agile world, and some ways that teams can modernize their development practices.

John Holmes and David Nielson talk about transitioning to agile at the organizational level The Organization Must Change Before Going Agile: An Interview with John Holmes and David Nielson
Podcast

In this interview John Holmes and David Nielson talk about their upcoming presentation, what it takes for your organization to really go agile (and to stick with it), the role of technology in organizational changes, and the importance of marrying your agile and Scrum with change management.

Conference Presentations

STARWEST 2013: Creating a Better Testing Future: The World Is Changing and We Must Change With It
Slideshow

The IEEE 829 Test Documentation standard is thirty years old this year. Boris Beizer’s first book on software testing also turned thirty. Testing Computer Software, the best selling book on software testing, is twenty-five. During the last three decades, hardware platforms have evolved...

Lee Copeland, Software Quality Engineering
An Interview with Linda Rising: ADC-BSW 2013 Interview Series
Video

Committed to covering the latest trends and approaches for anyone investigating or implementing agile development practices, processes, technologies, and leadership principles, Agile Development & Better Software Conference West offers their 2013 interview series. 

Linda Rising, Independent Consultant
An Interview with Jennifer Bonine: ADC-BSW 2013 Interview Series
Video

Committed to covering the latest tools, trends, and issues regarding software development approaches, plan-driven development methods, and process improvement programs, Agile Development & Better Software Conference West offers their 2013 interview series.

Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA Inc.
STAREAST 2012 Keynote: Bridging the Gap: Leading Change in a Community of Testers
Video

When Keith Klain took over Barclays Capital Global Test Center, he found an organization focused entirely on managing projects, managing processes, and managing stakeholders—the last most unsuccessfully.

Keith Klain, Barclays Capital Global Test Center

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