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Communication During a Crisis[article]

When a crisis hits a business, you've got to work hard and fast to mitigate the negative consequences--a process which includes communicating with your clients. In this week's column, Payson Hall reminds us that keeping clients in the know is critical to a successful recovery and will stabilize the clients' faith in you, even when all has failed. Drawing from a recent crisis in which he was the client, Payson gives us key points to consider the next time we are overwhelmed by customers who want to know when business will return to normal.

Payson Hall's picture Payson Hall
Test Patterns: Nine Techniques to Help Test for a Greater Variety of Bugs. [magazine]

Building on his earlier columns covering James Bach's Heuristic Test Strategy Model, Michael Bolton delivers nine techniques--each of which affords a different way of modeling the product--to help you test your systems for a greater variety of bugs.

Michael Bolton's picture Michael Bolton
Fooling Around with XP[magazine]

True confessions of a certified project manager, tempted to abandon all she has been taught for her one true passion.

Michele Sliger's picture Michele Sliger
Best Practices In Global Agile Development For Product Innovation[article]

Agile over the wire and how to make it work.

In our experience, pure-play Agile development is destined to fail in a global delivery model. The basics of Agile, such as the emphasis on face-to-face communication, close interaction between teams and an adaptive approach to product development, are not possible while engaging an offshore team. However, by injecting process adaptations, Cognizant has successfully enabled some facet of "specially customized" Agile methodologies. In fact, a large percentage of Cognizant's software product innovation services use Agile practices in some form or the other.

TechWell Contributor's picture TechWell Contributor
Iteration and Release Retrospectives: The Natural Rhythm for Agile Measurement[article]

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly. (Agile Manifesto principle 12)

A cornerstone of agility is the team's commitment to continued reflection and adaptation. For most teams, there is a natural cadence to this process as iterations occur frequently, typically every one to two weeks apart, and releases occur every two to four months. As such, the iteration boundary represents a frequent opportunity for immediate feedback and quick mid-course correction, primarily focused on the team's ability to simultaneously define, code and test new functionality in a time box. At the release boundary, the measures move to those things that reflect the team and the organizations ability to move that functionality from "inventory" to delivered product or system. In this article, we'll describe a set of iteration and release metrics that have been used to good effect by a number of agile teams. In our experience, teams that are effective in using these iteration and release metrics have the best chance to achieve the maximum benefits of agile.

TechWell Contributor's picture TechWell Contributor
5 C's of Agile Management[article]

By focusing on the 5 C's of agile development: Courage, Context, Course, Cadence, and Cost - software will never become "easy" but it will become easier, and better managed. Learn how each of these aspects cannot be ignored to run a successful project.

TechWell Contributor's picture TechWell Contributor
a WBS for a fictional development project Calculating Earned Business Value For An Agile Project[article]

It is apparent that agility works, whatever that may mean. However, many software projects remain artifact-driven and waterfallish. Why is this? The most common excuses are that agility is too developer-centric, that it is too lightweight, and that feedback to business is hard to understand. In particular, many managers in larger companies miss their metrics. In this paper we address this last problem by defining a new metric, Earned Business Value (EBV), that replaces standard Earned Value Analysis (EVA) metrics, and can be calculated in an agile project. Using EBV, teams can gain better understanding of a project's progress and determine when and where to reallocate resources or change course.

TechWell Contributor's picture TechWell Contributor
Rhythms as Agile Diagnostics[article]

A healthy agile project has several typical rhythms such as releases, iterations, stand-up meetings, builds kicked off by continuous integration, and the red-green-red test cycle of a developer. These rhythms have healthy ranges (such as a stand up meeting lasting less than 15 minutes) and characteristics (such as that same stand up meeting not containing design discussions). When they fall out of these ranges or do not display the appropriate characteristics, they indicate that something is wrong with the agile process.

TechWell Contributor's picture TechWell Contributor
Behavior Modification[magazine]

Novices are often hampered by test-driven design's legacy terminology and notation. Behavior-driven development shifts the emphasis from testing to specification. Dan North describes how behavior-driven development makes established agile practices more accessible and effective for teams new to agile.

Dan North's picture Dan North
Understanding Introversion and Extroversion[article]

Personality differences often pose challenges for people who need to work together. One such difference is that which separates introverts and extroverts. Just by being themselves, introverts and extroverts can drive each other crazy. But they can also benefit from each other's strengths. In this column, Naomi Karten explains this personality difference and helps introverts and extroverts better understand and appreciate each other.

Naomi Karten's picture Naomi Karten
Venkat Subramaniam - Practices of an Agile Developer - NFJS Tour 2006[article]
Podcast

Venkat Subramaniam talks about his new book Practices of an Agile Developer during the NFJS Tour 2006 in Reston, Virginia. The practices are laid out in a way that eases adoption for people new to Agile and improves the practices for those who have been doing Agile.

Bob Payne's picture Bob Payne
The Test Team Paradox[article]

Successful testers need to be continually critical of other people's work. Yet this critical approach can spill over into other aspects of our work. Therein lies the paradox within every test team. How do we prevent that continual criticality from denting our own motivation and leaving the test team dispirited? In this article, William Echlin helps us look to the bright side of testing.

William Echlin
Jay Zimmerman - No Fluff Just Stuff Tour 2006[article]
Podcast

Bob Payne talks with Jay Zimmerman at the end of the No Fluff Just Stuff conference in Reston, Virginia. Jay talks about the Java roots of NFJS and discusses the inclusion of Ruby and Agile Methods into the conference tracks.

Bob Payne's picture Bob Payne
Mark Richards - FDD & Agile Architecture - NFJS2006 Tour[article]
Podcast

Mark Richards and Bob Payne sit down to discuss agile architecture in this podcast. Mark shares his thoughts on feature-driven development, among other topics in this informative discussion.

Bob Payne's picture Bob Payne
Going the Distance: Five Tactics to Compensate for Distance on Distributed Teams[article]

Teams communicate quickly and freely when they work in the same room. There's no time wasted walking down the hall, going to another floor, or waiting for a return email or call back. Collocation is the most effective arrangement for teams, but that's not always possible. Esther Derby shares five tactics that help teams compensate for distance.

Esther Derby's picture Esther Derby

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