Design & Code

Articles

Uncertainty Reduce Uncertainty in Agile Projects with #NoEstimates Thinking

Estimation uncertainty in software projects is often not driven by the difficulty of the problem we are trying to solve, but rather by the health of our codebase, the quality of process, and how much discipline we have in our management practices. If you want to improve your estimates, then agile and #NoEstimates thinking can have the biggest impact on your team’s success.

Ryan Ripley's picture Ryan Ripley
Estimation questions Delivering Value with Agile and #NoEstimates

#NoEstimates is a challenge to the traditional thinking that estimation is essential to agile development. Ryan Ripley believes there are more interesting tools available to help us determine what value is and when we could realize it, while still staying aligned with the businesses and customers we serve. Learn some other ways to deliver value to your customers.

Ryan Ripley's picture Ryan Ripley
Tape measure Estimation: What It Takes to Deliver Consumable Value in Agile Projects

Releasing in small batches is a good way to achieve quick feedback in your sprints, but these pieces don't have all the features users need. Providing consumable value is turning those small bites into a meal, and it’s worthwhile to estimate what it will take to deliver that—asking, “What consumable value do we expect to achieve, what duration and cost should we plan for, and how likely is it that the plan will succeed?”

Andy Berner's picture Andy Berner
man bending over backwards Create an Agile DevOps Environment That Fosters Flexibility over Features

When a company makes the move from software as a service (SaaS) to an API-first platform, a change in mindset is required. The successful transitions come from those who shift from features to flexibility. Technology teams should look to remove constraints and broaden the possibilities of their platform by constantly exploring ways to make their platform as flexible as possible.

Steve Davis's picture Steve Davis
start, continue, and stop doing signs When Postmortems Meet Retrospectives: Improving Your Agile Process

If you want secure, reliable systems, you need all stakeholders actively communicating. This means involving both IT operations and developers in discussions after deployments, to ascertain if anything went wrong and can be avoided, and what went well or could be refined. Integrating your postmortems and retrospectives facilitates collaboration and improves processes.

Bob Aiello's picture Bob Aiello
organizational structure Code Factories: Making Agile Work in Large Organizational Teams

Making the transition to agile can be difficult for teams that are used to working in large groups and reporting to a single manager. Kris Hatcher suggests a new way to work: in smaller teams called code factories, which are created to stick with a specific product throughout its lifetime.

Kris Hatcher's picture Kris Hatcher
gap between two teams Business and Development: Working Together to Build Better Products

Business stakeholders and DevOps teams both have to take an active approach to app development, but neither faction should have to change practices and processes in order to get their needs across. Investing the time to establish communication between these teams will drive delivery of the applications customers demand.

Renato Quedas's picture Renato Quedas
Five ways 5 Ways Testers Can Mitigate Practical Risks in an Agile Team

Testers who analyze quality in every aspect of the team’s deliverables also have a responsibility to mitigate risks and practical issues that are bound to come up, and help the team succeed in their product as well as at being agile. Here are five such issues that testers can help the team alleviate or avoid.

Nishi Grover's picture Nishi Grover
Specifications Acceptance Criteria, Specifications, and Tests

One of the benefits of agile is how it helps specify requirements. Instead of trying to predict the future with your requests, you can wait an iteration and see if more criteria are needed. This article gets into how executable specifications, specification by example, and test automation can help further improve your requirements management.

Allan Kelly's picture Allan Kelly
Acceptance criteria checkbox Defining Acceptance Criteria for Agile Requirements

Acceptance criteria can be helpful in expanding on user stories in order to capture requirements for agile projects. However, acceptance criteria should not be a route back to long, detailed documents, and they are not a substitute for a conversation. This article tells you how and when acceptance criteria should be written and employed.

Allan Kelly's picture Allan Kelly

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