Agile software development

Projects are a necessary evil :-) But necessary they are. Some people really feel the need to understand precisely what the project will cost and exactly long it will take. If this is the basis for investment, of course that's a completely understandable feeling. For years, traditional waterfall projects have been sold on the false pretense that projects are predictable. Plannable. Of course the reality is, projects are highly unpredictable, and - sadly - that's why so many projects fail to... Read Full Story

I bet you don't know what it takes to become a certified Scrum Master... For certification be truly meaningful, a certification must have some sort of experiential component to it (typically involving internship or apprenticeship) and the applications must be verified by other certified professionals. The Scrum Alliance continues to embarrass itself, and to a lesser extent the agile community as a whole, with its continued operation of the Certified Scrum Master (CSM) program. To "earn... Read Full Story

Rapid Project Inceptionview presentation (tags: agile thoughtworks)Ideally, agile principles should be applied long before a project reaches development. I've written recently about how PowerPoint can be used as an effective lightweight alternative to a traditional PID (Project Initiation Document). I've also posted a sample template for an Agile Project Initiation Presentation (PIP). In these slides, the first handful of slides can be done right up-front, just to provide some basic... Read Full Story

I found this article on Agile Journal really interesting: Why 'General Agile' Isn't Enough - Why Scrum Wins in the Enterprise. I have to say, I agree with Katie's points entirely... We have implemented Scrum in a large web development group that is now about 120 people. The simplicity of Scrum. The high visibility. The collaborative approach. The frequent delivery of product. All in all, Scrum really did transform the relationship between IT and the business units. And transformed... Read Full Story

Have you ever used a scrum burn-down chart?  Funky name, huh?  It’s actually a pretty handy line chart.  The image below is an example from Standard Time®.  There, it’s called a project history chart. On the X axis, you see time (weeks, months, quarters).  On the Y axis (vertical) you see the number of remaining hours for your project.  As work is applied to the project, it burns remaining hours down to zero.  Team members can see the downward trend and predict when the project will finish... Read Full Story