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Tech support representative at a desk with several computer monitors How to Implement an Agile Methodology into Tech Support[article]

Tech support is notorious for having a bad reputation about their service, both on the receiving side and the serving side. Fortunately, the situation is improving, particularly in innovative organizations that are adopting an agile approach to tech support. Agile is helping customer service teams prioritize tasks, collaborate, and continuously improve. What can you do to be agile in your organization’s tech support?

Ashley Wilson's picture Ashley Wilson
Rocks stacked on a stable surface Effective Release Management Starts with Stability[article]

Release management is an evolving process that needs continuous improvement, and there’s no such thing as a “perfect” release process. The best you can do is find one that works for your organization, which takes time, effort, and a willingness to evolve. However, teams can adopt a strategy that accelerates this trial-and-error period and helps deliver organizational consistency around a common goal: stability.

James Smith's picture James Smith
2020 letters and confetti 7 Agile Testing Trends to Watch for in 2020[article]

With 2020 upon us, software development firms seeking to increase their agility are focusing more and more on aligning their testing approach with agile principles. Let’s look at seven of the key agile testing trends that will impact organizations most this year.

Nick Karlsson's picture Nick Karlsson
Person holding a sparkler with fireworks in the background Top 10 AgileConnection Articles of 2019[article]

Agile isn't something you can adopt through tooling; you have to adhere to agile principles every step of the way. The top articles from 2019 show that people were looking to enhance and advance their agile practices, with popular topics including how to empower your team throughout agile adoption, using metrics to improve, refining Scrum practices, and scaling agile. Check out this roundup for ways to boost your agile operations.

Beth Romanik's picture Beth Romanik
Laptop screen showing test data analytics Applying Data Analytics to Test Automation[article]

Testers gather lots of metrics about defect count, test case execution classification, and test velocity—but this information doesn't necessarily answer questions around product quality or how much money test efforts have saved. Testers can better deliver business value by combining test automation with regression analysis, and using visual analytics tools to process the data and see what patterns emerge.

Harsh Vardhan's picture Harsh Vardhan
Melissa Benua Continuous Integration and Process Management: An Interview with Melissa Benua[interview]

Melissa Benua, a senior technical lead at mParticle, discusses the wide range of topics she will present at the STARWEST conference, including continuous integration, containers, and process management. She also shares details of the projects her team is working on with deep back-end core features, qualities, and dev tools. Melissa also talks about her involvement with Women Who Test, why she made sure to expose her kids to the events at a young age, and how it reinforces the importance of a work-life balance.

Jennifer Bonine's picture Jennifer Bonine
Person taking a sticky note with testing activities on it off a backlog wall Tackling Testing Challenges in an Agile Transition[article]

Even though jumping onto the agile bandwagon is tempting for businesses, it is not always easy, and a transition to agile is likely to come with a slew of challenges for testing in particular. In order for agile to enable delivery of quality products at speed, testing has to begin much earlier in the process than ever before. Enabling certain practices will help your organization achieve a more successful transition to agile testing.

Hemanth Yamjala's picture Hemanth Yamjala
Agile + DevOps East Become the Person Everyone Wants to Work With[presentation]
Slideshow

Drawing from her own experiences across twenty years in a range of industry roles, Jaimee Newberry shares true stories of at least a dozen tiny but important things she still sees every day that could make all the difference in how people work with you. 

Jaimee Newberry
Agile team member pointing to metrics on a piece of paper Using Metrics to Track the Efficiency of Agile Teams[article]

Choosing agile metrics that will be most effective in measuring application success is a challenge, and then tracking those metrics can be tricky as well. But with a good strategy, agile metrics can be a powerful tool for sharing the team’s progress and identifying existing and possible roadblocks. These meaningful metrics can reduce confusion and bring clarity throughout the application development cycle.

Vinati Kamani's picture Vinati Kamani
Andy Glover Open Source at Netflix: A Conversation with Andy Glover[interview]
Video

Andy Glover, director of delivery engineering at Netflix, chats with TechWell community manager Owen Gotimer about a couple of Netflix's open source projects, the benefits of open source, and a few open source lessons his team learned along the way. Continue the conversation with Andy and Owen (@owen) on the TechWell Hub (http://hub.techwell.com/)!

Owen Gotimer's picture Owen Gotimer
Secure padlock Embedding Security in a DevOps World[article]

Faster DevOps processes also create new challenges. It was difficult enough to add security into a traditional waterfall software development lifecycle with monthly or quarterly releases, but now software updates are released several times a day! What can developers do to build and maintain more secure applications? Here are some ways to encourage better security practices throughout the DevOps lifecycle.

Alex Humphrey's picture Alex Humphrey
Person creating a "continuous" infinity sign with a sparkler Bringing Continuous Testing to Your Organization[article]

Continuous testing means all your tests are executing all the time, providing continuous feedback into the quality and health of your applications. In order to achieve continuous testing, you must first adopt the right test automation strategy. Understanding how to bring in all different types of test automation practices as efficiently as possible enables you to get started down the path of continuous testing.

Chris Colosimo's picture Chris Colosimo
Agile + DevOps East Rome Wasn't Built in a Day...and Neither is Your DevSecOps[presentation]
Slideshow

DevSecOps is about more than just the tools—it is an organizational, operational, and strategic transformation. So, as a “thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance” across the three main pillars of an organization, how can we expect a DevSecOps transformation to take place overnight?

Brittany Greenfield
Foundation of a building Infrastructure as Code: The Foundation of Effective DevOps[article]

The absence of versioned infrastructure as code (IaC) and automated provisioning undermines one of the most important benefits of DevOps: the ability to version, manage, and control the servers and networking required to run software applications in development, testing, and production. Automating infrastructure setup and continuous monitoring helps keep system environments stable and less susceptible to outages.

Anirudh Sethi's picture Anirudh Sethi
Distributed teams pointing out their locations on a map Leveraging Agile in a Nearshore Software Development Environment[article]

Nearshore software development—or working with teams in similar time zones—have different challenges from teams that are collocated. They might find it easier to work in a traditional, hierarchical structure, but agile practices are actually still an ideal way to work through these challenges. Here's how an agile mindset can help nearshore development teams improve communication, organization, and processes.

Marcelo Lopez's picture Marcelo Lopez

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