Angel Diaz, VP, IBM SWG Standards is the thought provider behind an article on the activities to ensure that the standards being developed for the Open Cloud are drivers by the User.   For an easy read, here is the link to the article -  http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/200-libby-clark/625143-ibms-angel-diaz-3-projects-creating-user-driven-standards-for-the-open-cloud.   OpenStack -  http://www.openstack.org/   Cloud Standards Customer Council -  http://www.cloud-council.org/   TOSCA - ... [More]

My journey: How I became a Certified ScrumMaster I hope this helps if you want to become a Certified ScrumMaster I am a Certified ScrumMaster . In fact, I am a Certified Scrum Professional . But things were not always thus ... http ://w ww.s crum alli ance .org /pro file s/14 6791 -kev in-m chug h Once upon a time, well, really a few years ago, ... I was working at a client trying to gather requirements with the intent of developing, testing, and deploying extensions / plugins to Rational Team Concert (RTC). [Note: normally, I skip naming... [More]

  Ascendant Technology recently worked with a valued customer, Market Force Information, to help them implement Disciplined Agile practices on a business-critical software project.  See the case study at: http://na.atech.com/case-studies/market-force   “The Customer Intelligence Platform is transformational for our business. We have a lot invested in making this software successful. Ascendant definitely played a role in helping us create a high performance development team and great software. The discipline and... [More]

Confused by the title?  Well let me ask you this, developers and testers, do you know the sound your project manager  makes when they walks down the hall, which automatically triggers the fight or flight response in your hypothalamus, and the normal reaction is flight (like under your desk)? Project managers, do you have trouble seeking out team members for status and it becomes almost like a hunting expedition to track down developers to get status, like they’re the prey and you’re the predator?  Why can’t we... [More]

Agile and Java have kind of grown up together, Java is definitely the bigger brother, but Agile has been their all along to be the supportive sibling.  It is becoming very apparent though, that Agile is making it's own mark, as younger siblings do.  Where Java is still the hottest development language going, Agile is now the hottest development methodology and becoming hotter as trends like mobile and cloud become more prominent in organization's strategies.  Agile is a little more versatile as well, you can use it not... [More]

I've been noticing some Agile Scrum anti-patterns and thought I would start collecting them and posting them. ScrumMaster led, task oriented daily scrums Scrum ceremonies meetings are at variable times or not scheduled very far in advance Story point assignment during Sprint planning TASK ORIENTED SCRUMS: When I watch daily scrums, I expect to see the ScrumMaster with a very light touch.  If we're not in the same room, I expect prompting for who is next.  But, I expect the team to provide the three ques tion s/an swer s .... [More]

GettingStarted with Agile in the Enterprise   If a team tries to adopt an Agile development approach unilaterally within the enterprise, you may make things somewhat better, but you will not realize the full benefits or potential and the team may end up very frustrated and dissatisfied with the outcome.  It is also likely that your agile adoption will not " stick" as people will return to their old behaviors over time.  Therefore,  moving to agile must be a combination of  a " top-down" and "... [More]

  I recently authored an article in EE Times that describes the benefits and challenges surrounding going agile in developing medical devices. The benefits are similar to the ones in other industries but even more acute because the expense to develop a product is so high so not meeting a customer's expectation is huge. The challenges are all around how to build using agile methods while meeting regulatory concerns. Here is a link to the article and please feel free to comment to this blog or send me a direct message.  ... [More]

  Please join us in a virtual round-table * discussion on Agile.  The focus of the discussion will be metrics in an agile environment: 1.  What are the most important metrics to help Agile Teams to improve? 2.  Are metrics against the agile value of simplicity --  "maximizing the amount of work not done"? 3   What kinds of metrics have you seen implemented that drive the wrong behavior? 4.  What is best way to determine what metrics should be tracked for Agile? 5.  What are the type of... [More]

Tags:  metrics teams virtual-roundtable agile behaviors

By Reedy Feggins, Agile Coach and WW IBM Solution Architect This multi-part blog provides the reader practices for creating, planning and managing user stories to help steer your project towards a successful outcome.  In this blog we explore what are user stories and how are they used. We look at examples of good user stories and bad user stories.  In future posts we will drill in deeper into topics such as: Grooming Product Backlogs Sprint Planning Ensuring User Stories are Testable Part 1: Writing User Stories Requirements serve... [More]

Most often, a specific project will adopt agile to improve their ability to deliver high-quality code in a more collaborative way and often must adopt a combination of different agile practices. For the team, collecting metrics is important to help them learn and adapt their practices. Typically agile teams need metrics to answer questions like Are we on track to deliver what we committed to for the iteration? How much value have we delivered to business? How much value can the team deliver with remaining time? We need to plan for the next... [More]

Orginally posted this blog on December 27, 2011 but given the interest my other Agile in Practice blogs thought I repost here. Retrospectives What are they and how do they help teams adopt Agile practices? Many small to medium size projects teams have successfully adopted agile practices such as Scrum but some agile teams do fail.  Often as not they fail because of factors outside their control but here are some common reasons why agile project teams fail that are within their control: Not implementing the whole process Scaling... [More]

Succeeding with your First Agile Pilo t Pr ojec t   Re post : orginally posted on February 19, 2012 by rfeggins Successful agile transformations often times require successful agile pilot projects. Often time a successful initial pilot is the most critical step early in a successful enterprise agile adoption . If the pilot project is a success then the organization has a tangible example to get behind but if the project fails (or just fails to meet expectations) then the entire agile initiative could be derailed by critics. Because no... [More]

As software engineers, we are used to counting starting with zero. If the first iteration starts at zero, but valuable work is only scheduled to start on the first Sprint, then we get an extra "free" iteration to work with -- "Iteration/Sprint 0". Any way you look at it, the first iteration is the first iteration, regardless of the number assigned to it and regardless of the word games used to fool outsiders to the team.    Iteration/Sprint 0 is all too often nothing but more than setting up collaboration tools... [More]