Agile Zone is brought to you in partnership with:
  • submit to reddit
Jurgen Appelo05/22/13
614 views
1 replies

What Makes a Great Conference?

I’ve been asking around on email and on the social networks what makes a conference memorable, special, or amazing. This topic has my special interest, not only because I attend between 20-25 conferences per year, but also because I’m trying to help make the DARE 2013 a great experience.

Johanna Rothman05/22/13
412 views
0 replies

Devs in the Ditch

I gave a talk at Devs in the ‘Ditch last week when I was in London. I posted the slides on slideshare: Overcoming Three Pitfalls of Transitioning to Agile.

Venkatesh Kris...05/22/13
497 views
0 replies

Key Ingredient for Success: Systems Thinking

Our behavior is always a reaction to the system around us. Let us take an example of an Agile team working on a project, and as we know its behavior would be determined by the stakeholders, leaders, enterprise culture around them.

Esther Derby 05/22/13
731 views
0 replies

11 Things to Remember About People in Middle Management Roles

It’s easy to be critical of managers. A few things to remember. Point 0 - Most people in management roles want to do a good job, but may not know what to do or how to do it...

Casey Watson05/21/13
3413 views
0 replies

The Toxic Defense of the Status Quo

If you take anything away from this cautionary tale it is to constantly be on the look out for those that adhere to the status quo. It takes a certain combination of this quality with an opportunistic personality to cause this sort of organization-wide damage but it does happen.

Johannes Brodwall05/21/13
753 views
0 replies

Only 4 Roles

When creating something of value, the first people we care about are those who will get value from the product we create. I call these Consumers. These are the users and those who are affected by the work of the users.

Matt Vickery05/21/13
3529 views
0 replies

Git - Simple File Management

Files can be added, committed and removed from git repositories using one or more of the following commands:

Johanna Rothman05/21/13
1454 views
0 replies

Context Matters: Premature Optimization or Habits From Long Ago?

I’m at the Much Ado About Agile conference this week, in beautiful Vancouver. During lunch one day, one of the conference participants started talking about premature optimization of code.

Joel Cochran05/20/13
2064 views
0 replies

The Stand Up Desk Rises to the Occasion

Joel Cochran experiments with a few standing desk strategies and settles on a desk that moves up and down. You should check out the pics. It's pretty cool.

Jurgen Appelo05/20/13
3455 views
0 replies

Let's Measure Something Meaningless

Measuring something meaningful is hard, so let’s measure something that is meaningless but easy. Like your hours at work!

Swizec Teller05/20/13
1480 views
0 replies

It Takes About Two Months to Write a Technical Book

If you really want to learn something, write a book about it. It doesn’t take long. After two months of plomping my arse down repeatedly I finally finished my d3.js book. Or rather, I finished the first drafts.

Rogier Noort05/20/13
1746 views
0 replies

We're All Born to Blog

After reading Tao of Twitter and Return on Influence written by Mark, and Stanford’s reputation, my expectations were high.

Mitch Pronschinske05/19/13
1114 views
0 replies

How to Argue About Code

None of us would be very good developers if we never had arguments about The Best Way to Do Things. But I've had enough silly arguments about tabs-versus-spaces to last me the rest of my life. When should we stop arguing and start writing code?

Kane Mar05/19/13
1855 views
0 replies

Absolute Estimating vs. Relative Estimating

I’ve started work on some new videos and this time it’s all about Agile Estimating, Planning and Contracts. This is the obvious next step having completed Scrum101, and I’m apply some of the lesson that I learned.

Mitch Pronschinske05/18/13
1144 views
0 replies

Transform Your Agile Process with Kanban Thinking

Large-scale software and systems development involves a complex mix of people, teams, technologies, skills, architectures, and organizational structures that must all interact for projects to reach their goals. However, many organizations struggle to scale up agile approaches for their various programs, products, and services.

Tom Howlett05/18/13
2117 views
0 replies

These Moments are Precious

The moments when excitement builds throughout the whole team at the delight of discovery and creativity are precious. These moments feel like play rather than work and they breed openness and courage. So what conditions must exist for these moments to happen? Here’s some ideas...

Zac Gery05/17/13
5781 views
0 replies

Leadership in Software Development

Developers are very logical and analytical. In the world of DiSC, which is a behavior assessment tool, most programmers fall into the D (Dominance) or C (Conscientiousness) categories.

Mitch Pronschinske05/17/13
3051 views
0 replies

Stupid Questions and n00bs: 10 Intriguing Things You Should Do

It really doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in this industry or which position you hold, understanding generation n00b and the value it brings should be mandatory for you.

Jim Bird05/17/13
1372 views
0 replies

Certified Agile: The PMI-ACP Exam

Experience and general reading aren’t enough to prepare for a PMI certification exam. PMI wants everyone who holds a certification to know the same things, and to share the same values and to think and act the same way.

Ian Mitchell05/17/13
1159 views
0 replies

Taking One for the Team...the Refactoring of Failure

Allowing for a bank holiday and foreseeable absences, the team's Sprint Planning budget came to around 42 story points. Unfortunately, the Scrum Master had committed to deliver 65 points. Ouch.

Michael Sahota05/16/13
1387 views
0 replies

How Change Initiatives Damage Organizations and Fail

A simple (and misunderstood) way people think of their change initiative like this: Their organization is just sitting there, ready to change in wonderful ways. We just have to tell people how great our new initiative is and they will be lining up to learn more and make things happen. Right?

Michael Dubakov05/16/13
2570 views
0 replies

Estimates in Software Development. New Frontiers.

I think we should embrace estimate distribution and invent new ways to model and use it. We shouldn’t fight it. This will be a war against our allies. This will be a war against creativity, perfectionism, learning and team spirit. I’d better surrender.

John Sonmez05/16/13
2793 views
3 replies

Bad Advice: “Stop Working So Hard”

Would we ever want to live in a world where working harder didn’t amount to anything more, but rather ended up returning you less?

Nadav Azaria05/16/13
883 views
0 replies

Gambling in Software

I want to tell you about a meeting we had a few days ago. It reminded me of “The Jack Story” (which was part of an old stage routine of Danny Thomas many years ago). Here’s how it goes...

Michael Sahota05/15/13
2940 views
0 replies

10 Things Executives Need to Know About Agile

Whether you're an executive, or a developer, the leaders of your organization need to look at agile from these ten angles.