Planning
Articles
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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Your Strategic Planning Should Be Agile, Too What has agile taught us about trying to plan everything up front? It usually doesn’t work. So why does your company still use a yearly strategic planning approach that takes six months to develop and requires significant time and effort to pivot to new opportunities and challenges? We need to rethink strategic planning to incorporate design thinking, collaboration, and agility. |
Interviews
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The Peaks and Valleys of an Agile Transition: An Interview with Neal Huffman
Video
Neal Huffman speaks about his upcoming presentation at Agile Development Conference & Better Software Conference East 2014, covers what peaks and valleys can be expected when making the agile transition, and tells you how to know when you and your company have finally become agile. |
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Agile Resiliency: An Interview with Jeff Dalton
Video
Jeff Dalton is an author, a consultant with more than twenty-five years of software process improvement experience, and president of Broadsword, a management-consulting firm. In this interview, Jeff talks about agile resiliency and large organizations making the agile transition. |
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How to Prepare for Sprints and Other Agile Techniques: An Interview with André Dhondt André Dhondt is an agile coach for Rally Software and has more than a decade's worth of experience working with teams and organizations. In this interview, André discusses how to be prepared for sprints, the idea of speed grooming, and how agile has impacted the role of the tester. |
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Responsibly "Right" Requirements: An Interview with Tim Lister
Video
Tim Lister explains how getting the right requirements the first time from your stakeholders may not be easy, but it can be done, and it's worth the effort. Learn how with clear expectations, communication, and integral development, products can be delivered on time and to everyone's satisfaction. |
Better Software Magazine Articles
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2017 Is a Pivotal Year for DevOps Customers expect real-time software updates. As DevOps becomes the engine for delivering business value, continuous innovation is needed. And this has to begin at the start of every project. |
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The Impossibility of Estimating Software Estimating software schedules must be an art, not a science. With so many techniques published on the subject, why is it so difficult? It has to do with the human element and past project knowledge. |
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Balancing Waterfall Predictability with Agile Flexibility In this FAQ column, Arlen Bankston highlights the difficulty many companies have making the full transition to agile, straddling between waterwall ways and the new horizons of agility. Arlen provides techniques that can enable companies to ease into the transition, allowing their organization to make the adjustments without the burden of large plans and commitments. |
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Become a Great ScrumMaster Performing all the functions required to facilitate project teams as ScrumMaster can be a task. Zuzi Sochova describes creative ways to become a master of Scrum by adopting a ScrumMaster state of mind. |
Conference Presentations
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Is Your Project Doomed from the Start?
Slideshow
When we think of planning, we often think about requirements planning. We get the initial features and functions down, and then see where agile takes us. Lisa Calkins claims that less than a third of software development projects are successful. Regarding this lack of success, process... |
Lisa Calkins
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Visual Management Gone Wild
Slideshow
A visual management system is a low-tech tool with a simple mission—to visually represent the work that the team is doing. When used regularly and correctly, it can be a project acceleration tool. However, teams often go wild with visuals, decorating every inch of free wall space with... |
Nichole Vanderlaan
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Product Management: The Innovation Glue for the Lean Enterprise
Slideshow
At a time when organizations of all sizes both want and need innovation, exciting approaches including lean startup and agile development have risen to the forefront. Although there is no shortage of resources and expertise on these approaches, less guidance is available on the daunting... |
Mimi Hoang and George Schlitz
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Inside the Mind of the 21st Century Customer
Slideshow
Testers frequently say that they are the voice of the customer or the customer advocate for their organization’s products. In some situations this can be a helpful mindset, but no matter how hard he tries, a software tester is not the customer. In fact, there is no one better suited to... |
Alan Page, Microsoft
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