|
A Changing of the Guard at AgileConnection The AgileConnection technical editor, Johanna Rothman, is moving on from her post. Here, she reflects on what she's learned over the last six years—about writing, agile, and working with people—and she introduces you to the new person who is taking over for the site.
|
|
|
Back to Basics: Use the Heart of Agile to Frame Your Agile Adoption Somewhere along the way, agile implementations have gotten overblown and unwieldy. Managers and leaders look at all the models and frameworks and think agile adoption is too confusing or not worth the effort. To communicate what agile truly means, we have to simplify the message by getting to the heart of agile: collaborate, deliver, reflect, and improve.
|
|
|
Agile Managers: Trust Your Team and Encourage Innovation In order to fully embrace agile and create an environment where individuals want to work together as a team, managers have to move from a role of dictation to one of direction and mentorship. Instead of making all the decisions, managers need to trust their team members and empower them to solve problems on their own, innovate, and fail—or succeed.
|
|
|
Agile Straight Up: Delivering Value The next time you visit your local watering hole, give some thought to the bartenders and servers and the practices they use. From streamlining team processes to rewarding team performance to always keeping the customer in mind, there are some similarities in the principles used in the agile community and in the service industry.
|
|
|
Practice Soft Skills through Collaboration to Become Truly Agile At the core of agile is the need to effectively communicate and interact with your team members, so it's important for all roles to practice soft skills. However, there is nothing soft about them. Soft skills are probably the most challenging thing you can focus on in your technical career. Rather than struggle to improve by yourself, develop these skills through collaboration.
|
|
|
Whole Agile Teams: Beyond Resource Efficiency Which is better for your agile team: resource efficiency or flow efficiency? It may seem better to have everyone busy 100 percent of the time, but a little extra availability in everybody's schedule allows the team to able to respond to change. We need to get beyond “I do my job, you do yours” and instead focus on what the software needs to move forward.
|
|
|
5 Ways Agile Testing Is Different from Traditional Testing It’s the distinctions between agile and traditional software development approaches, as well as the adaptability of testers in these very different environments, that makes agile testing different from traditional testing. Agile demands more from its testers, and, in turn, it values them more, too. Let’s look at five main things that make an agile tester’s life different from that of a traditional tester.
|
|
|
Try Mob Programming to Inspire Team Growth If you're familiar with pair programming, you know how much it can increase code quality and encourage developers to learn from each other. You should try mob programming—the same concept, but with an entire team of up to eight people and only one keyboard. It's a great way to explore new techniques and solve problems as a team.
|
|
|
Want True Agility? Foster General Skills over Specialization Many organizations enforce systems that stifle flexibility by promoting specialization. But encouraging learning new skills and expanding outside core responsibilities promotes flow over resource efficiency, helps cover gaps in time of crisis, and lets you build a team that can deliver continually at a sustainable pace. It's the age of the generalist.
|
|
|
The Values Essential to a Scrum Software Development Practice The Scrum Guide was updated recently to make values an explicit part of the framework: commitment, courage, focus, openness, and respect. When these values are embodied and lived by the team, the Scrum pillars of transparency, inspection, and adaptation come to life and build trust for everyone. Is your team practicing them?
|
|