Agile Zone | Software Methodologies for Development Managers

Martin Harris06/07/10
5111 views
1 replies

Tumble dried BDD from Studio Pragmatists

On the 18th of May, 2010, the very new tumbler-glass project by Studio Pragmatists uploaded Tumbler 0.2.1 to Maven. Having recently written about JBehave I found myself really liking the concept of behavior driven development. So I decided to write a...

Mitch Pronschinske06/06/10
13628 views
6 replies

Survey Finds Developers Would Rather Do Taxes than Test Software

Although most developers in a recent study said they wouldn't prefer a trip to the dentist or a fender bender over testing software, a majority said they would rather do their taxes (which is becoming increasingly complicated in the US) instead of dealing...

Bino B. Manjasseril06/04/10
2387 views
1 replies

Agility in daily life

Several years ago, when I was first introduced to Agile software development methodology, I dismissed the idea saying that its just a temporal hype. Few years later, I re-considered it because I saw it staying in the trend. I failed to see its value until I...

David Bland06/04/10
1806 views
1 replies

We’re Self Organizing Into… Kanban?

What’s Kanban? It isn’t a question you’d expect to hear from a team adopting work in progress limits and just in time tasking while only committing to small user stories.

Mitch Pronschinske06/03/10
8388 views
0 replies

FlexMonkey 4 and FlexMonkium for Selenium

FlexMonkey is a free and open source Adobe AIR application used for testing Flex and AIR based applications.

Allan Kelly06/03/10
42983 views
3 replies

Things to do to improve code quality

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I was recently out in Oslo teaching a course on Lean software development. One of the points I make is: Quality is free (or at least cheaper) provided you invest in improving quality. This section of the course...

Fabrizio Giudici06/03/10
3628 views
3 replies

Agile is Good... But Pay Attention to End Customers

I can't call myself an "agilist", as I'm rather a hybrid kind of software architect. But I like many aspects of the agile methods and I constantly try to adopt more of them. For instance, I like making frequent releases when I actually have control...

Jared Richardson06/02/10
7517 views
1 replies

Tips and Suggestions for Your First Iteration

I've been helping a company establish a few Scrum-style Agile teams lately and there seem to be, as always, a few recurring themes. I wanted to share them while they were fresh on my mind.Don't over analyze everything. It doesn't matter if you don't know...

Eric Hagan06/02/10
1733 views
0 replies

Andy Powell: Why Software Projects Need a Product Manager

Andy Powell says that he's starting to see deeper patterns of software craftsmanship, including TDD, User Experience, and Product Management, emerge under the...

Alberto Gutierrez06/02/10
37004 views
29 replies

Waterfall vs. Agile: Can they be Friends?

There has been a lot of discussion lately regarding which approach to software development is better; some may say Waterfall, some may say Agile. The truth is that there isn’t an absolute answer. Agile and Waterfall have a different set of...

Kelly Waters06/02/10
1565 views
1 replies

Agile Scrum, Or Not-So-Agile Scrum?

Scrum is the form of agile software development that has helped me the most. It has helped me to transform the performance of the web development groups that I've led at both my current company and at my last one. But, sometimes, I do wonder if Scrum is...

Jurgen Appelo06/01/10
1805 views
1 replies

Be Selfish... Work Together

I am a selfish person. Though I gladly do things for other people, and give stuff away for free, I tend to do that when I believe I’m being good to myself. The pursuit of my happiness has led me to offer jobs to unfortunate unemployed souls who needed a...

Jared Richardson05/31/10
7745 views
0 replies

Customer Collaboration Over Contract Negotiation? Huh??

As we revisit the Agile Manifesto, we come to the often ignored line "customer collaboration over contract negotiation," and we all say "Well duh! Of course we'd rather talk than get the lawyers involved." Then we go on about our daily...

Mark Needham05/31/10
853 views
1 replies

Agile: Chasing a points total

I've previously written about the danger of using velocity as a goal but on almost every project I've worked on at some stage we do actually end up chasing a points total. Something I find quite interesting towards the end of an iteration is that if there...

Mitch Pronschinske05/28/10
12192 views
0 replies

Agile Transitions - A Forum for Bosses with Agile Questions

In an effort to promote the adoption of agile and the sharing of related insights, ThoughtWorks has launched Agile Transitions. This online community is intended for C-level (CTO, CEO, etc.) executives who want to discuss issues related to Agile IT. A...