Should you distrust agile?

Should you distrust people who play with rubber chickens at work?

Why do some people distrust agile software development? Should you distrust agile software development? How can you possible trust people who say that they will “take your money and deliver something” after a month or so? How can you possible trust people who have a rubber bird as part of…

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Agile projects requirements breakdown structure

fibonacci series in nature

In Agile projects, when a set of requirements are received from Clients, it may consist of (a mix of) A few needs, objectives, goals and some partial stories (even though it would have come in a structured document). Re-organizing (re-arranging) those into a requirements breakdown structure (RBS) helps ask right questions to…

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Change is the only constant in agile

Neon sign: change. Change is the only constant.

[bibshow] How much change can a project withstand before it is too much? A requirements change rate of above 20% is probably too much [bibcite key=”citeulike:13415962″]. Typical rules of thumb figures for software development requirements change rate is cited as 1-3% [bibcite key=”citeulike:321639″]. But the rate of change is accelerating.…

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Generalists versus Specialists in Agile

Peppers are a good example of generalists versus specialists.

Generalists versus specialists — it is an ongoing debate. Is it better with generalist or specialist team members in agile software development or elsewhere?

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Agile is NOT new and not enough

So people keep talking about the Agile – Waterfall dichotomy. About agile and un-agile practices. I decided to have an unscientific look at what Agile isn’t. If there is a true dichotomy between Agile and Waterfall, then things opposite of Agile should be either entirely out of scope for projects…

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Un-Agile Manifesto – when you hate agile

The so called Agile Manifesto has created so much excitement in the software development world and beyond. But for all those who got their life ruined by agile, for all those who oppose Agile methods in software development — it is time they got their own manifesto. Here it is…

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Agile Offshoring in Practice

How is Agile offshoring done in practice? Julian Bass studied seven different companies doing off-shoring London-Bengaluru. He had expected that the companies would have adapted a continuum of practices from Scrum and XP. Findings about Agile Offshoring To his surprise he found that this was not true. Instead, all of…

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Cross-Breeding Lean and Agile

Joe Dager from the Business 901 blog and podcast is someone who has covered the cross-breeding of lean and agile more than most people. So how does one apply Lean to agile software development? Wang, Conboy and Cawley examined thirty experience reports and came to the following conclusion: Lean concepts,…

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Agile is not About Laissez-Faire

Many people and companies think of Agile as some kind of Laissez-Faire approach to project management and software development. Agile is in fact a very rigid structure on how to do things so that there may be flexibility in what to do. Agile project management is based on advanced project…

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You don’t Need User Stories to be Agile

Someone probably told you that you must have user stories to be Agile, right? But really, you don’t need user stories to be agile! I would have you consider what kinds of stakeholders and requirements you have and are trying to meet. Continue reading