Agile

Agile is a vast umbrella that encompasses various frameworks including Scrum, Kanban, Lean, and Extreme Programming (XP), each with its own unique qualities and benefits. These approaches all align with the values and principles of Agile but provide specific processes and tactics to guide teams to the Agile mindset.

Are you good at technical interviewing? If not, you are not alone. Due to the long and incomplete feedback loop for interviewers, many people in the industry are following bad practices without realizing it. However, there is a way to break this cycle and improve your skills.

I recently wrote about 4 secrets to a successfully daily scrum, which covered the basics for ensuring a productive daily scrum meeting. However, what do you do if your team is distributed?

We’ve all heard the common myth, Agile means no documentation. While other agile fallacies exist, this is a big one, and it could not be farther from the truth. Good agile teams are disciplined about their documentation but are also deliberate about how much they do and when.

How to integrate rework into your everyday life while building software and why it’s key to success.

You’ve just finished a great story-writing workshop with your stakeholders. You’re excited about the new product and are anxious to get started. Until, that is, you get back to your office and look at the mountain of stories that you’ve somehow got to estimate and prioritize. All your excitement disappears as you face the hard truth: You have no idea where to start.

Thanks to everyone who attended my workshop at SQE Agile Development Practices 2009 in Orlando titled “Practicing ScrumBut: Ensuring Project Failure” and special thanks to Cory Foy for coming up from Tampa to do the workshop with me.

I am always amazed when I ask people what they think the job of a manager is. I get answers like “to tell people what to do” to “stay out of the way” to “do my performance review” to “lead”. The last one is always of interest to me. Do companies hire managers or do they hire leaders?

Colleague Jean Tabaka posted a question recently that asked “How we can motivate these people as much as possible before having them leave the newly anointed agile organization?” The context around this question is that there are people who are viewed as hero’s in organizations. These individuals “are very specialized individuals with knowledge outside just the software development realm (physics, mathematics, fluids mechanics…) These individuals are used to being highly prized for their very specific subject expertise. They have a sense of significance hooked onto their unique role.”

I wrote a paper for the 2007 PMI Global Congress in Atlanta on Agile Transition. Part of the paper covers the Agile Manifesto. As I began researching and writing about it, I found that I had gaps in the historical data on the web. I was fortunate enough to interview Jim Highsmith, Ward Cunningham and Ken Schwaber via telephone to get a better understanding of how the Agile Manifesto came about.

Mixing Scrum and Waterfall will provide you an interesting mix… This is one of my older MSDN posts from August, 2006. Enjoy. :)

Growing up, I had a dream of being a photographer. I didn’t know why I was drawn to it, but it was something I wanted to do. I bought my first camera when I was 10 years old – it was a Kodak Disc camera. My second camera was a Konica TC Autoreflex – it was my first real camera. I worked a summer for my dad at the wonderful rate of $2.50 per hour – I thought it was good for 11 years old. As I got older, I became more into photography.

As parents, we can all relate to the challenge of keeping kids motivated and on track. To make it easier, why not use agile techniques right in your own home? This tried-and-true blog post from 2006 shows you how - trust us, its timeless advice has been put into practice with a variety of families since then!