It's a sad reality. Most IT departments are drowning in a sea of unresolved trouble tickets. Every staff member does her best to keep afloat by working off issue after issue from the never ending stream of trouble tickets. Motivation and quality plummet because, in such a work mode, people tend to work alone feel … Continue reading Dump your issue tracking system – get agile!
Tag: agile
Four Agile Posts Everyone Should Read
Today, I want to share some of my favorite blog posts about agile with you. Without further ado, here they are: How Do Story Points Relate to Hours? - One recurring question I get asked when talking about agile (and specifically when estimating in Story Points) is how those things relate. Mike Cohn does a … Continue reading Four Agile Posts Everyone Should Read
A Luxury Problem: How Emerging Iterations Eat Team Commitment For Breakfast
We've managed our complete development with Pivotal Tracker for over a month now, and never looked back. All in all, our administrative overhead simply vanished and the flow of implementing user stories smoothed out quite a bit. All's well that ends well, you might want to say. But the last couple of weeks raised some … Continue reading A Luxury Problem: How Emerging Iterations Eat Team Commitment For Breakfast
Thoughtworks Mingle vs. Pivotal Labs Tracker
As I've shown in my plea to Agile Tool Vendors: Please simplify my life, I currently see only Pivotal Tracker to be a tool which simplifies my life instead of managing complexity. Enterprise Class vs Opinionated Software Maybe the biggest differences between Mingle and Tracker are their core assumptions and target audience. While Mingle is … Continue reading Thoughtworks Mingle vs. Pivotal Labs Tracker
Agile Tool Vendors: Please don’t try to manage complexity – simplify my life!
We've been using Mingle for over one year now and it serves us quite well. During the course of the year, we used it to manage over 2000 stories, issues and chores, and we currently only have around 90 open ones left. The only major shortcoming in my eyes is the lack of a real … Continue reading Agile Tool Vendors: Please don’t try to manage complexity – simplify my life!
New Job at NetDoktor
On Monday, I started my new job as CTO of NetDoktor.de GmbH. Its the #1 health portal over here in Germany (ala WebMD or Revolution Health in the States). One of my main tasks will be to bring a more agile approach to their software development. As they currently outsource the website development, I once … Continue reading New Job at NetDoktor
The Curse Of Agile Project Management Tools
Index cards and a story wall are my preferred agile project management tools. They force you to keep things simple due to limited space on index cards and you get optimal visibility through the ubiquitous story wall. Software tools are usually inferior in terms of simplicity and visibility. Most agile project management tools provide you … Continue reading The Curse Of Agile Project Management Tools
I want to start agile, how can I do that?
Last week a new colleague of a former colleague of mine 😉 asked me: "How can I get agile started? I really like the ideas but don't know where to begin or how to convince others around me to try it out. What should I do?" Getting started with agile is not easy. First, you … Continue reading I want to start agile, how can I do that?
