The Latest

Performance Testing Considerations in a Public Cloud Environment [article]

Testing an application's performance in the cloud begins with understanding the infrastructure of your public cloud environment. Learn which elements to watch for and how to optimize your cloud-based performance testing environment.

Survival Rules and the Lamp Lighter [article]

By understanding the context in which their existing practices were meant to work, teams new to agile can more easily decide which of those practices still make sense and which are simply security blankets.

Is This a Good Survey? Yes ( ) No ( ) [article]

Don't just shoot for yes or no answers from your customers, give them the opportunity to really share their feelings from their interaction with you. Areas where improvement is needed, or where praise should be given, will be far easier to spot, thus allowing you to really make valuable changes.

The Skeptical Tester [article]

Testers are people who ask questions, think critically about the answers, and then ask more questions—repeatedly. Fiona Charles reminds testers that their success depends on maintaining a healthy skepticism.

Agile at the Enterprise Level: An Interview with Arlen Bankston [interview]

Arlen Bankston, vice president of LitheSpeed, LLC, is a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt and Certified ScrumMaster Trainer. Heather Shanholtzer recently talked to Arlen about what it takes to apply agile at the enterprise level and the challenges he faces when team members aren’t collocated.

Building Highly Productive Teams: Work Committed vs. Done [article]

This article explains methods to build a team that will embrace "required work" and deliver robust software in a predictable fashion. It proposes a measure that helps calculate the throughput of an agile team by comparing work committed to work actually done.

Uncertainty about Uncertainty [article]

Uncertainty doesn't have to be a bad thing, but many say they'd rather know there were definitely problems coming, rather than be uncertain about whether there were or not. What do you prefer? Do you spend valuable time trying to prevent uncertainty?

How Does the Manager’s Role Change in Agile? [article]

Coming from a waterfall background, Brad Egeland found himself questioning the role of the manager on an agile project. What he learned at an agile conference helped him find some answers.

Serious Acceptance Checking [article]

Matthew Heusser goes beyond trivial examples to talk about the tradeoffs and ancillary benefits of a large-scale acceptance check automation strategy.

Pivot, Pilot, and Adapt [article]

Anupam Kundu and Maneesh Subherwal explain how to operate in a global, hyper-competitive world while avoiding risk-laden experiments and other "stupid" strategies.