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The State of Scrum In the software development industry and beyond, the term "agile" is everywhere. But, much like the "organic" food craze, the rise of agile has also been accompanied by considerable head-scratching. What does it mean to be agile? Certainly, not all of the organizations boasting of agile practices can actually be agile? Unfortunately, there isn't a concise definition to encompass the myriad meanings packed into the term. In fact, the definition of agile is so loose that it hardly helps in assessing which organizations are using practices that are truly agile and which are just calling traditional methods by a new name. In part, agile's fuzzy definition has to do with the fact that it is, by definition, an umbrella term: Scrum, XP, DSDM, Crystal and other agile methods have emerged as subsets of the broader "agile." But, even then, those subsets seldom include the concrete processes a team needs when adopting a new management paradigm. In that sense, the term agile has become bankrupt of meaning: It serves more as a marketing buzz word than a defined set of processes. Because organizations require those processes-as a kind of roadmap to management success-Scrum has become the most popular of the agile management methods. But before further discussing how Scrum and its iterative, incremental approach to project management have appealed to teams and organizations alike, it's worth first considering where it came from. |
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Handling Conflict on Agile Teams: What to Do When a Team Member Complains You've probably seen it on Agile teams: conflict seething just below the surface. Barely disguised disregard, sidelong glances, rolling eyes, words that halt conversation for an eternal heartbeat while people think, "Was that meant to be a put down? Did she really just say that?" |
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Group Coherence for Project Teams - A Search for Hyper-Productivity Group characteristics and group dynamics are invisible to most of us. We are not trained to detect them, let alone manage them. Our work is influenced by much more than what we see. This can make project success (and failure) sometimes appear to be random. |
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Infrastructure Envisioning I have seen many Agile projects, particularly those focused on brand-new product lines, struggle with getting their infrastructure up and running. Much of the reason is the time and effort that is needed to get infrastructure established far exceeds the time it takes to start development using an Agile method, effectively the first iteration. Typically the approach used to establish infrastructure is ad hoc and often not always aligned with the needs of the project. Therefore, a task must be identified to establish infrastructure. The question then is, how to best approach the establishment of infrastructure for a project using Agile methods? We do not want to build excessive infrastructure that may constrain us in the future yet we want to establish enough to keep us stable and productive.
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Lean Software Development: Leaning Against Perception The seven principles of Lean Software Development; eliminating waste, creating knowledge, respecting people, building quality in, deliver fast, optimizing the whole, and to defer commitment are concise principals that appeal to many developers and managers, as they are pivotal in achieving delivery of high quality software systems on time. |
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Beyond Development: Introducing Agile Techniques into Process Improvement Projects Many software engineering teams have adopted Agile. However, teams delivering process change tend to use traditional ‘lifecycle' approaches and have yet to embrace Agile. Why is that? Can the Agile approach be used to implement or facilitate process change? |
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An Enterprise Agile Journey As Borland evolved over the last 25 years, acquiring companies and shifting business strategies, the delivery organization had become a collection of teams with different cultures, processes, release cycles and levels of performance. The cost structure of the organization wasn't aligned with the strategic objectives of the company, and the teams were struggling to consistently meet delivery goals. |
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An Evolutionary Path for Agile? While doing some research for an upcoming article, some thoughts gelled about where Agile Software Development lies on its evolutionary path. I was procrastinating somewhat, and while poking around some aviation-related sites I saw an image of a jet engine used on the current crop of regional jets. |
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Software Development Screwtape Letter This is the first of many letters from Screwdisk to his protégé Virus[1]. I make no claims to the authenticity or accuracy of these letters, other than they ring true with what I have seen in the field over the last 10 years. Some of what you will read may sound a bit too familiar. It has me wondering if I have ever unknowingly been on a team with Screwdisk or Virus. I have never been able to find out who Virus and Screwdisk really are, but from what I've seen they could have been at many different organizations around the world - maybe even yours. |
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Group Coherence for Project Teams - Common Purpose In our continuing search for Hyper-Productivity, we have observed that a strong and highly adaptable shared sense of Common Purpose can increase the group's ability to execute on the project vision or enterprise strategy. Agile teams apply several methods that support this. They self-organize around a common goal agreed with the customer. This goal is most often embodied in the set of stories or tasks to be included in the next iteration. A shared definition of "done," a "living" and dynamic backlog and an involved customer all help to remove ambiguity around the goal and keep each iteration adaptable to inevitable changes. |
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