Articles

Please enter an article title, author, or keyword
Eye on the Prize: Best Practices for Aligning Agile Efforts with Business Goals

A phrase heard often in Agile discussions is "Let the product lead." Applied correctly, these four words powerfully focus an Agile team's energy directly on work that provides the highest business value. Deep focus on technology decisions breaks the line-of-sight with business goals, creates opportunities for over-engineering, and requires complex tracing activities, which ultimately slow the process.

Guy Beaver
RailsEdge 2007 - Bruce William - His talks and the Ruby/Rails Community
Podcast

Bruce Williams talks about the RailsEdge, Rails Plugins, and UI Frameworks, as well as the tools that are available to Ruby and Rails developers and how these combined with attitude within the community may have created the sweet spot that Rails now occupies.

Bob Payne's picture Bob Payne
Global Agile Development: How Investing in the Right Team Impacts Long-Term Rewards

Many software development organizations are electing to implement Agile development methodologies in order to take advantage of the cost, quality, and time-to-market benefits commonly achieved with this approach. At the same time, these organizations are moving software development offshore to take advantage of greater scalability and quot;round the clockquot; development cycles. However, in combining these two efforts, the highly collaborative nature of Agile is tested as teams are faced with cultural challenges and necessary work habit shifts. If you are considering implementing a Global Agile approach to software development, then it is imperative to focus on an often underappreciated aspect of this initiative: building the right team. This is the most critical step in delivering the benefits of Global Agile development.

TechWell Contributor's picture TechWell Contributor
business disruption chart Making the Case

As a test manager, you constantly are looking at what you need in order to carry out the mission of your group. You know that you need several resources to do your job, but when you go to your manager looking for resources, her eye goes immediately to the bottom line. When it appears as if there's no way to make your boss comply with your requests, Esther Derby has a tactic that will help you make your boss see things your way.

Esther Derby's picture Esther Derby
sound byte button 11 Ways Agile Adoptions Fail

Usually, when Jean Tabaka lists practices, techniques, ideas, or recommendations about software development, she sticks with the number ten. It's nice and neat and has a fine history of enumeration cleanliness dating back to the Old Testament. But for agile adoption failures, Jean thinks it is time to invoke some Spinal Tap and go to eleven. Here are her top eleven signs that your agile adoption is headed down a slippery slope to failure.

Jean Tabaka's picture Jean Tabaka
Agile SkypeCast 2007 - Bob Martin - What is Agile?
Podcast

Bob Martin answers the question of "What is Agile?" He goes back to the start, to the Snowbird meeting, the formation of the Agile Alliance, and the drafting of the Agile Manifesto. He also looks at the core principles and key practices of Agile software development.

Bob Payne's picture Bob Payne
RailsEdge 2007 - Jim Weirich - Rake Goodness
Podcast

Ruby tool expert, and creator, Jim Weirich sits down with Bob Payne to discuss about the benefits of using the Rake tool, as well as using Ruby in test-driven development. We invite you to listen to this great conversation on this podcast recorded after the 2007 RailsEdge conference.

Bob Payne's picture Bob Payne
How Not to Create Customer Satisfaction

Given a choice, most people would rather have happy, satisfied customers than angry, complaining customers. But how to create customer satisfaction is sometimes a mystery. In this column, Naomi Karten describes one person's experience that backfired and taught him some lessons.

Naomi Karten's picture Naomi Karten
Lost in Translation

Some lessons are so important that we get opportunities to learn them again and again. In this week's column, Payson Hall attends a project meeting where he relearns an important communication lesson about the meaning of words.

Payson Hall's picture Payson Hall
Top-Down Agile Adoption Strategies

This article covers the challenges that organizations may face and also recommends possible "top down" solutions that could help in quickly adopting agile.

Pages

Upcoming Events

Apr 28
Jun 02
Sep 22
Oct 13