Even today, in the 21st century, it's rare for CEOs to steer their companies into agile waters. Change is hard, scary and leads into the unknown and changing an entire organization compounds all these fears. But, there are subtle, yet significant, ways in which you can organize your own work to be much more agile. … Continue reading Stealthily Introducing Agile from the Bottom Up
Tag: agile
Stop Being So Busy Putting Out Fires That There’s No Time For Fire Prevention!
You're caught in a vicious cycle: The constant need to do fire fighting doesn't give you any time to avoid fires in the first place. This is a pretty typical scenario not only in operations, but in development as well. Even though you seem to be stuck in a downward spiral and your team is … Continue reading Stop Being So Busy Putting Out Fires That There’s No Time For Fire Prevention!
Bugfixes without Tests are Anti-fixes
We all make mistakes. But how we go about redressing those mistakes tells a lot about our personality, both our strengths as well as our shortcomings. Bugs are a natural part of software development. Testing not so much. I attribute this to, among other things, general developer laziness and the constant pressure of 'Getting Things … Continue reading Bugfixes without Tests are Anti-fixes
The 5 Goals Of Agile And DevOps
If you're stuck with someone in an elevator and have only a few seconds to explain why introducing agile Methodolgies and DevOps is a good idea, these five goals might help you: Agile Elevator Pitch 1. less code 2. less dependencies 3. less bugs and problems 4. less wait times 5. more value If you … Continue reading The 5 Goals Of Agile And DevOps
Scrum alone won’t cut it
Scrum is a great framework for organizing projects. It defines exact roles and procedures to structure your work environment. You gain a lot of visibility and you empower your teams. All that is great. But in software development or operations it's not sufficient. You need an underlying set of values and practices which drive quality … Continue reading Scrum alone won’t cut it
Empower Your Team – You Won’t Regret It
It's hard to find the right structure for any organization. A lot of existing management wisdom comes from a time when you had to organize a physical work force. However, with today's "knowledge workers" those structures don't work as nicely anymore. Everyone needs to prioritize Every developer or devops has to prioritize the current work … Continue reading Empower Your Team – You Won’t Regret It
How To Estimate User Stories When Using PivotalTracker
For a team new to agile software development, estimating user stories is not easy. The team is used to estimate tasks in hours and days, and know they're never right anyways. So why bother? In agile, estimating user stories relative to each other using story points can give you a fact based idea about what … Continue reading How To Estimate User Stories When Using PivotalTracker
Scrum What? New Community Edited Q&A Site About Agile, Lean, Kanban and Scurm
A lot of people I meet are interested in agile software development. Either they've heard about it or they participate in projects which use Scrum, Kanban, or Extreme Programming. They wonder whether it makes sense to do pair programming, which Kanban tools to use, how to get started with test driven development or how to … Continue reading Scrum What? New Community Edited Q&A Site About Agile, Lean, Kanban and Scurm
Launch Dates – The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
Setting a launch date for your new web site is common practice. Even though nobody knows what exactly the site might look like and even less how much effort it will be to launch it, the release date is fixed. This can have positive and negative effects. The Good The positive side of having a … Continue reading Launch Dates – The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly
Self-brewed complexity is evil – fight it!
It's amazing to see again and again how teams complicate their lives without any necessity. They dream up features "urgently" required by their imaginary customers and then start a death march to launch them at an arbitrary, self-invented date. Why is it so hard to simplify things and get going? Let's have a look at … Continue reading Self-brewed complexity is evil – fight it!
