Agile Development Methods
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What's in the Spring 2018 Issue of Better Software Magazine The Spring 2018 issue of Better Software magazine is now available, and it's got a great mix of foundational basics and cutting-edge techniques. This roundup describes the featured articles about DevOps, service virtualization, Scrum, test automation strategies, and testing for the internet of things. |
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3 Must-Read Books for a Good Agile Foundation If you are searching for agile knowledge, there are many books outside the current literature that may enlighten you. Some discuss the underpinnings of concepts we consider agile, while others are contemporary business books that present compelling ways to use agile effectively. Here are three Jeff Payne recommends. |
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Do Most Agile Teams Lack Creativity and Innovation? You can’t solve the problem unless you know what that problem is, and you can’t rekindle your creativity if you just don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing. Pinpoint your team’s purpose, let everyone on your team contribute, and rekindle the innovative nature at the core of agile. |
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The 5 Levels of Listening: Which Does Your Team Practice? The ways we listen—and not listen—are detailed in the Five Levels of Listening model, which goes from most distracted to most focused. Ideally, we’d all practice the fifth level: empathic listening, where we try to understand what matters to the person who is speaking, delaying our problem-solving and responsiveness. |
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The Dangers of Underplanning in Your Agile Projects Agile coaches often stress the importance of not overplanning because work is later changed or never done at all. But consequently, many teams then fall victim to underplanning and aren't equipped for a successful project. Here are some planning activities that are critical to do before your sprints start. |
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Self-Organization: What Your Scrum Team Can Learn from Kindergarteners Some kindergartens are experimenting with new approaches to teaching, including letting students form groups to accomplish tasks that interest them, which also allows them to support and engage with each other. This is self-organization, the heart of Scrum. If five-year-olds can do it, your agile team likely can, too! |
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Scrum Isn’t the Only Path to Agility Scrum can really help a team to become more agile. But that doesn’t mean it is the only way for a team to become agile. Agile is all about self-organizing teams collaborating to find what works for them, so if a nontraditional approach helps your team get started, then you’re just forging a new path to agility. |
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For Distributed Team Success, Think Differently about When For distributed teams, activities usually get scheduled based on constraints such as availability and time zone, but people don’t often take into account when the most effective time to meet would be. Neglecting people’s work tendencies and schedule preferences could make it harder for the team to be successful. |
