project planning

Articles

A Product Owner’s First Glimpse of Agile
Kent McDonald introduces us to Arthur, a middle manager and product owner in a medium-sized insurance company who has been assigned to take on an agile project. For those unfamiliar with agile, the terminology and techniques of agile approaches can seem strange and often a little silly when not accompanied with an explanation as to why those techniques exist. Kent explains the challenges product owners like Arthur face and how to make product owners understand agile better.
Hoarding: How to Prioritize Features to Clean Up the Clutter
Hoarding is an incredibly common—but usually unnamed and invisible—phenomenon in corporate software development. If you’ve been doing agile for a while, you are no doubt aware of the cost of hoarding and you’ve probably removed much of it, but what happens when you aren't doing agile yet? Clarke Ching explains how to counter hoarding by prioritizing the right features.
Did You Know That Your Product Portfolio Is in Trouble?
Based on his own work experiences, Anupam Kundu has found some patterns (or anti-patterns) that explain why product managers and product teams have a hard time managing their portfolios.
Function Point Analysis and Agile Development: A Hands-On Example
In an earlier article, Dan Horvath explored some history and definitions of agile and how Function Point Analysis (FPA) can be used in the measurement of agile projects. Dan emphasizes that the definition of the project is critical to this process. In this article, Dan demonstrates the use of FPA in agile development through a hands-on example.

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Better Software Magazine

Simplicity and Precision: Test Planning in Agile Projects
Test planning is often thought unnecessary in an agile project. However, if our mindset is on "planning" rather than "plans," we see that test-planning activities happen throughout the project, taking advantage of levels of precision, i.e., what is absolutely necessary at each level.
Controlled Flight into Terrain
Entering a holding pattern on a project can give you the opportunity to gather additional information about a problem. But, sometimes, holding consumes valuable resources with disastrous consequences.
Filling The Blank Page

Having trouble starting projects, understanding scope and business processes, or with estimation? Mark shares some tips and techniques to avoid common business analysis pain points at the early part of a new project assignment.

Forget What You Think You Know

The transition to lean-agile can be challenging for traditional project managers because traditional competencies and practices can conflict with the core principles that explain why lean principles work. To help prepare project managers transitioning to lean-agile, this article exposes five counterintuitive practices that challenge standard project management beliefs.

Enterprise Agile and The Business Analyst
Agile is making its way into the enterprise as a project methodology for industrial-strength projects. Why the popularity? The answer lies in the requirements paradox: “We want requirements to be stable, but requirements are never stable.” Discover some key agile concepts as they affect business analysts.
Sometimes Perception Is the Problem
High on a mountain twenty years ago, a wise man shared secrets of problem solving that have served Payson Hall ever since. In this article, Payson passes along a simple definition that offers insights into problems and potential solutions.
Hearing ''No''

"No" can be disappointing. Sometimes we have difficulty hearing or dealing with No. Can we learn how to cope with No with less pain and angst? Can we learn how to prevent No at least some of the time? Yes and yes!

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Interviews

Effective Risk Management: An Interview with Payson Hall
We recently sat down with Payson Hall ahead of his upcoming 2012 Better Software Conference East presentation titled "Twelve Risks to Enterprise Software Projects - And What to Do about Them" in order to learn more about his experise in the field of risk management.
Project Portfolio Management: An Interview with Johanna Rothman
Johanna Rothman is a management consultant, regular StickyMinds.com columnist, and AgileConnection’s technical editor. In this interview, Johanna talks about the year in software, the rise of project portfolio management, and whether we will continue to see organizations adopt agile in the new year.

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TechWell Stories
To Estimate or Not to Estimate—That Is the Question
Removing Waste in Software Projects
Create a Vendor Contract While Keeping Agile
How Agile Teams Use DevOps for Deployment
Build a List of Things—But Don't Call It Agile

Recommended Web Seminars

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Featured Resources

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