Archive

Posts Tagged ‘People’

Agile by the Numbers: What People Are Really Doing in Practice

September 11th, 2009

This talk summarizes the results of 4 years of industry surveys concerning the adoption and effectiveness of agile techniques. Very often the reality is significantly different than the rhetoric presented in mailing lists, in articles, and even in books. Many myths or ideas around Agile are explored, and some are proven false and some confirmed to be true based on survey results. [Watch the video][1].

[1]: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/ambler-agile-by-the-numbers

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The Big Agile Persona

September 5th, 2009

A little about our intended audience…When Dennis and I started thinking about our book, we told the publisher that we’d really like to write for CxO crowd. We want to be able to influence the people that can really effect change in a meaningful way….

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Who Delivers Your End of Iteration Demo?

September 4th, 2009

Just curious who actually delivers your demo at the end of the iteration.  Here’s the scenario, there is a “product owner team” (with of course the Chief Product Owner) that consists of 8 people and a team of 10 people (devs, testers, PO, PO proxy, SM).  The “product owner team” also communicates with the business [...]

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The Most Important Agile Practice Of All

September 1st, 2009

I believe respect is one of the corner stones of agile teams. In my mind agile software development was always first and foremost about people – the practices and processes we use now are secondary and less important. It is all about how you deal with people, how you treat them, how well you are able to collaborate etc. Even technology must take a back seat considering that any non-trivial piece of software these days will be built by a team of people (rather than just one individual) and even the coolest technology in the world will not be able to make up the deficit when the people in the team are unable to work together. [Learn more][1].

[1]: http://www.skorks.com/2009/08/the-most-important-agile-practice-of-all/

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Do You Use Your Turn Signals?

August 21st, 2009

One of my pet peeves and something that annoys the hell out of me is people that do not use their turn signals. As I’m sure you can imagine, this makes for a fun experience every time I drive, as a majority of people seem to have forgotten they came with the car. What makes this even more insidious, is that it isn’t hard to hit the little bar on the steering wheel when you’re turning, or even better, before you turn. Taking this to an extreme, you could say that these people lack common courtesy for those around them. I won’t go that far, yet. [Learn more][1].

[1]: http://www.agiledevelopmentwithrob.com/blog/agile-lessons/815/do-you-use-your-turn-signals/

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The Current Direction of Agile

August 19th, 2009

In the last couple of years, Agile adoption has increased quite a bit, letting a number of people experience and challenge different elements of the Agile processes. This increased exposure and usage has made some try out different solutions to different challenges than what was originally proposed by the people that came up with the Agile processes. [Learn more][1].

[1]: http://www.infoq.com/articles/current-direction-of-agile

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Is Quality an Absolute?

August 11th, 2009

Last week I did a post called “The Hard Reality”. I made the point that anything you build… any document you create… that doesn’t result in revenue for the business… is wasting time and money. Personally, unless you build software as a hobby……

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Take the 4th annual VersionOne ‘State of Agile Development’ Survey

August 9th, 2009

It’s that time again… time for VersionOne’s Annual ‘State of Agile Development Survey’. If you haven’t had a chance to fill it out yet… please go do it now! This is the 4th time we have done this… and the survey is really generating some great …

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Can Managers Lead Agile Teams?

July 26th, 2009

If we are going to start treating managers like grown-ups… and start asking them to behave like agile leaders… and giving them a real role on an agile team… let’s begin by exploring why we excluded them in the first place. Maybe if we can take a…

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Managers are Grown-ups Too

July 26th, 2009

One of the first things I do when I meet a new team is ask them to introduce themselves and tell me a little about what they do. We go around the room and people say things like “hi… I’m Bob and I am the Product Owner” and “hi… I’m Sue and I am th…

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