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Most Software Development Metrics Are Misleading And Counterproductive

The software development industry has a poor track record for developing and employing useful software metrics. This is because most of the metrics selected are tangential to the true goal of software development—delivering business value—and instead focus on software attributes and accounting measures. Metrics such as lines of code per developer week, function points created, hours worked, or budget consumed appear important measures, but they have dangerous and counterproductive implications.

TechWell Contributor's picture TechWell Contributor
Managing Offshore XP Teams: Organizational Models and Tools

The essence of Extreme Programming (XP) is making the customer a part of the team who works very closely with the developers, ideally communicating on a daily basis. However, what about a situation where your development team is offshore? Is it possible to have the best of both worlds, realizing the gains of offshoring without losing the benefits of XP? How do you keep the momentum and the communication flow going, at the same time ensuring seamless integration of the deliverables into the customer's production environment at the XP pace?

Peter Vaihansky's picture Peter Vaihansky
Hurdling Roadblocks

We all encounter things at work that impede our progress. Having the skill to effectively deal with the roadblocks makes a big difference in your overall productivity. Will you get a reputation as a whiner or as someone who pushes through obstacles? In this week's column, Danny Faught offers help with two common types of roadblocks and gives suggestions for reducing the chances that any barricade will impact your schedule.

Danny R. Faught's picture Danny R. Faught
Agile06 - Ward Cunningham - Eclipse Foundation
Podcast

Ward Cunningham talks about his new position as the Director of Committer Community Development at Eclipse. He discusses the release of Callisto by the Eclipse foundation, its Agile roots and other fun tool related topics.

Bob Payne's picture Bob Payne
CASE STUDY: Band XI Distributing Agile Development

Software development organizations have evolved to meet the challenges put forth by ever increasing complexity in both the problem spaces and the technologies applied. Unfortunately, the right people for a project may not all be located in the same city or at the same time.

TechWell Contributor's picture TechWell Contributor
Agile06 - Mary Lynn Manns - Fearless Chage and Agile 2007
Podcast

Mary Lynn Manns is the co-author of Fearless Change and the chair of the Agile 2007 Conference.

Bob Payne's picture Bob Payne
Agile06 - Dot Tudor - Agile Europe/UK and DSDM
Podcast

Dot Tudor is a practicioner of DSDM, one of the early Agile Methodologies that has taken hold in Europe and the UK but has not made the jump to the states yet. DSDM has a more formalized prioritization process that is refered to as the MoSCoW process - Must Have- Should Have- Could Have - Won't Have.

Bob Payne's picture Bob Payne
Introducing XP Turns Waterfall Project Around

Conventional wisdom is that complex projects involving large groups of engineers can not benefit from the application of Agile techniques. Certain Agile practices, when properly used, can benefit even relatively large development projects with large teams. What's even more interesting, these practices can be introduced in "mid-stream" with little preparation to large teams of "old school" developers. These developers may initially resist the methodology, but the Agile practices still win people over and bring tremendous results in productivity, product quality, and team morale in a very short period of time.  

Peter Vaihansky's picture Peter Vaihansky
Combining Agile Processes in Offshore Software Development

In modern software development there are two trends that allow people to get more for less: agile development and offshore outsourcing. Agile processes are traditionally implemented in one site, where customers and developers can meet face-to-face and communicate easily. Offshore development projects, on the other hand, are traditionally implemented as fixed-bid consulting agreements, executed either using waterfall processes or at best in iterative way. However, it is possible to use agile software development process when working with offshore teams. Our successful projects have employed a mix of agile techniques and organizational models.

TechWell Contributor's picture TechWell Contributor
Enterprise Agile Adoption: The Role of Audits

Organization-wide continuous improvement programs that notably include an agile adoption and It compliance function can play a vital role in driving the levels of collaboration and reuse necessary to achieving scale. Audits can directly contribute to collaboration and knowledge reuse among agile teams.

TechWell Contributor's picture TechWell Contributor

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