Articles

Agile Coaches have a big job.

"Support the team but not too much and not too little."

"Be available but don't be overbearing."

"Offer ideas but don't get too involved."

"Coach, don't manage."

All this advice can be confusing, even contradictory. No wonder Agile Coaches fall into less-than-desirable behaviors as they try out new things to help teams. The problem is that these behaviors can subtly undermine a team's ability to organize, improve and, eventually, reach high-performance. That's why they are called failure modes.

The New Challenge in Agile Adoption

The good news is: Agile is going mainstream; it is not some fad nor is it just for unwashed coders. Managers get it. The not so good news is: this means the approach to introducing Agile needs to change.

Agile Software Development started at the code face. Kent Beck's original Extreme Programming had little - if anything - to say about the wider organization and the role of management. Developers could - and did - just adopt practices like test driven development and stand-up meetings.

White Paper: Qualitative Productivity

This paper reveals the correlation between testing productivity and testing quality. It also explains why it is important to establish the correlation between these two factors.

White Paper: Design of Database Security Policy for Enterprise Systems

This paper discusses how data integrity should secure the customer's data and/or processes against unauthorized access. This paper also details how to adopt strong security standards based on the customer and end user's security policy.

The Value of Positive Testing

Is there any value to positive testing? Some experts say No! I think there is--and here's why...

Reducing Friction

Tasks and processes often have hidden costs ("friction") that escape our notice. Learning to recognize and reduce needless friction can make a big difference on project cost and schedule, as well as team morale.

A Word with the Wise: Expanding Testing Horizons

In this Sticky ToolLook interview, Danny Faught shares insight onto his earliest days as a tester, the skills he's acquired throughout his career, and skills and tools he believes every tester should posses.

Making Retrospective Changes Stick

Retrospectives become a waste of time if the changes and improvements agreed upon in the meeting are never accomplished. Esther Derby believes in the power of retrospectives. And she knows firsthand that it's easy to talk about a change, but not always easy to actually do something differently. In this week's column, Esther shares experiences that illustrate this point and offers advice on how to make changes stick.

CM: THE NEXT GENERATION of Build Management

The very first generation of CM tools dealt with support for build operations. Typically, this was through the inclusion of a facility such as a Make utility, and perhaps some tools to help build Make files. But as we move into the next generation of CM tools, it is also more important to be able to manage the builds at an information level. Build Management moves from the earlier build operation support and tagging functions, to wider traceability and better information accessibility. And beyond the build operations themselves, there are additional benefits as we move into the next generation of Deployment Management.

Think Like a Tester

After more than thirty years in information technology, the last fourteen spent focused on testing and quality assurance, Dale Perry has come to believe everyone can benefit from thinking like a tester. In this article, Dale offers comical, yet serious, insight on how a tester views airport bathroom stall designs.