Articles

Woman holding trophy with "2018" Top 10 AgileConnection Articles of 2018

Agile isn't something you can adopt through tooling; you have to adhere to the agile principles every step of the way. The top articles from 2018 show that people were looking to improve and refine their agile practices, with popular topics including how to enhance your daily standups, retrospectives, and planning. Check out this roundup for ways to enhance your agile operations.

Beth Romanik's picture Beth Romanik
Person crossing a natural rock bridge above the sea Agile Estimates versus #NoEstimates: Bridging the Gap

Agile teams can easily get puzzled by the heated debate happening between advocates for estimation and those in the #NoEstimates camp. However, by comparing how they solve these problems, we can identify many common practices between the two groups and see they are not truly at odds—they actually complement each other. Let's bridge the gap.

Andre Rubin's picture Andre Rubin
Product owner standing in front of a wall of sticky notes 3 Elusive Qualities of a Great Product Owner

When it comes to guiding the development of a product and ensuring you’re building what the user actually needs, a product owner is the most important hire for the team. There’s just one problem: A good product owner can be really hard to find. The characteristics that make a good product owner are elusive, but here are three qualities you should prioritize in your search.

John Yorke's picture John Yorke
A player running up to kick a football for kickoff Kickoff Meetings Give Your Agile Projects a Running Start

Agile projects are ideally a collaborative effort among the team members and with the customers, and the planning process should be a similar endeavor. Everyone should get a clear understanding of the project as well as their respective roles and responsibilities. As the saying goes, well begun is half done. A well-planned kickoff meeting sets the tone for a successful project.

Jane Thomson's picture Jane Thomson
Agile DevOps East Tear It Down to Build It Up: Using Agile in Construction Project Management
Slideshow

Operating on the philosophy that one must thoroughly know the rules before one can break them, a global company developed its own delivery model that is still as true to the agile mindset as is possible. Join Arjay Hinek in this lively session as he deconstructs his company's experiment in melding agile with construction project management to create a hybrid delivery model. At first, the teams were struggling with clear ownership, timely communication, and clear follow-through on work in progress. From modifying the user story mapping model in order to improve project initiation to dissecting and rewriting the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto, Arjay stretched agile practices to the limit to help his teams strive and grow through iterative and incremental delivery. Arjay will share the struggles, failures, and successes of this innovative experiment.

Arjay Hinek
STARCANADA Test Management in Agile—What Happened to All My Testers?
Slideshow

Substantial confusion exists about the roles and responsibilities of test management when using an agile software development process. Agile seeks to streamline project management and leadership under the role of a ScrumMaster, but what does this mean for test managers? How do they stay...

Jeffery Payne
STARCANADA Testing at 43,000 Feet: Reporting Risk That Matters
Slideshow

Testing dashboards can give stakeholders the false impression that projects are under control. But are they really? As a tester, you can see a counter indicating a high percentage of passing tests but know that you may still have critical failures in the product. Alexandre Bauduin will...

Alexandre Bauduin
Three people To Kick-Start Your Agile Project, Begin with a Minimum Viable Team

You've heard of a minimum viable product, which has only enough features to create a working model and provide feedback for further development. If you want to get started on a new project quickly, Allan Kelly suggests assembling a minimum viable team—only a few people, with only the necessary skills. They begin work right away, with a small budget and tight feedback loops, driving down risk.

Allan Kelly's picture Allan Kelly
STAREAST 2018 Behavior-Driven Development: Real-World Mind Reading
Slideshow

Imagine this scenario: Business users are excited to finally get their hands on an implementation delivery that is on schedule, (mostly) on budget, and passed rigorous testing with flying colors. Unfortunately, when working with the new app or feature, the users realize that the way they described their needs didn’t translate into what they actually needed. Sound familiar? While she may not be able to offer telekinetic mind-reading tools, Kim Tatum is convinced that leveraging a behavior-driven development (BDD) approach helps bridge the gap between domain experts and technical teams. Join Kim to discuss how natural, human-readable language ultimately creates shared accountability and reduces misunderstandings. Review how this framework is implemented on a variety of delivery projects and walk through an implementation approach and leading practices.

Kim Tatum
Lines of code Project Teams Need to Overcome Their Fear of Coding

Many organizations appear to suffer anxiety at the thought of programming. They want to get everyone but the programmers in a room to discuss a project down to the minute and the dollar, without a full understanding of the coding required. But a few hours of code experimentation generates far more understanding than days of debate by architects and analysts. Don't be scared of programming.

Allan Kelly's picture Allan Kelly

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