Session 1: Understand and reuse the technical solution assets (See the Agil e AL M Vi rtua l St udy  Grou p Se rie s for information on registration and details on the different sessions)   During the first session on this series, we want to describe what the  IBM Rational Solution for Agile ALM with Scrum is, and what are the technical assets it contains. We also want people to understand how to find, install, and use those assets quickly. So we will cover the following topics: Explore the IBM® Rational... [More]

Tags:  rational-team-concert enablement agile alm rtc scrum agile-alm-study-grp agile-alm

Session 2:  Backlog management and release planning Agil e AL M Vi rtua l St udy  Grou p Se rie s for information on registration and details on the different sessions During the second session on this series, we review the key element of a Rational Team Concert (RTC) project based on the Scrum-Agile ALM process template. IBM Rational Solution for Agile ALM with Scrum . Explore elements in an Agile ALM project Share a product vision Create and manage a product backlog Plan a release After this session,... [More]

Tags:  enablement agile-alm-study-grp agile-alm alm rtc scrum rational-team-concert agile

All activities of the Agile ALM Virtual Study Group are now completed. More information on each session (files, recording, workbooks) is available from:. Virtual Study Group Part 1:   htt p:// bit. ly/A alm_ S 1 Virtual Study Group Part 2:   htt p:// bit. ly/A alm_ S 2 Virtual Study Group Part  3:   htt p:// bit. ly/A alm_ S 3         The IBM  Rati onal  Sol utio n fo r Ag ile  ALM  with  Scr u m (aka  Agile ALM ) is a solution for customers looking to adopt Scrum... [More]

Tags:  rational-team-concert enablement agile-alm agile-alm-study-grp agile rtc scrum alm

Themes are percolating in my brain spurred by everything from my Twitter feed , to LinkedIn to hallway conversations with colleagues.  There’s a lot of angst about responding to market changes and customer expectations. The techniques we all talk about: Lean , Agile , Continuous Delivery , DevOps , Design Thinking have everyone wondering how to reconcile all of these themes into an action plan to address those expectations. I keep thinking it doesn’t have to be that complicated.  There’s no secret formula that if... [More]

Tags:  devops agile continuous-delivery lean ibmstory devops-culture

In traditional software development lifecycles you typically only perform "deployment" once at the end of the project, but with agile you may deploy multiple times in some or even all of your iterations. Deploying incrementally can be a challenge unless you follow some great agile deployment practices. In addition, deploying more frequently can add huge value to your overall solution. Just to get us on the same page, I define "deployment" as ensuring your solution reaches AND is used by the intended end users. Below are four... [More]

Tags:  deployment agile

Agile development is often deemed best for projects having variable scope with prioritized backlog, low number of critical dependencies on other applications, limited or no regulatory requirements, subject matter experts availability, technology, teams level of experience with Agile. When any of these boxes are not ticked, teams often find it challenging and difficult to use Agile development and move over to other traditional development methods like waterfall. My thoughts in this blog are based on experiences and best practices which have... [More]

Tags:  complex-projects agile agile-development planning agile-planning

Virtual Roundtable Discussion: "Realizing agility with discipline: Addressing the needs of agile adoption in a government environment" You are invited to participate in a virtual roundtable on Agility in Government. This is a follow on discussion to IBM's webcast on "Realizing agility with discipline: Addressing the needs of agile adoption in a government." Many agencies are adopting, or want to adopt Agile practices to drive faster delivery, higher quality, and improved collaboration. Government agencies spend billions... [More]

Tags:  agile hazel-woodcock virtual-roundtable government

OK, so you and the rest of your team members have decided you want to “try agile” on your next big project.  Maybe you’re getting pressured by management to do something (anything) different to get things out the door quicker or to improve your project success rate, and they think agile is just the thing you (and they) need. Maybe some of your team members have used it on prior projects, in prior lives. Or maybe you’ve been reading about all the benefits others have been reaping and have decided you’re ready... [More]

Tags:  agile team distributed sparacin global

  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:  virtual-roundtable behaviors agile metrics teams

Last year, Alan Brown, Scott Ambler and I collaborated on a technical paper that captures IBM Rational's experience in achieving agility in large scale enterprises. This paper was recently accepted for publication at the International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE). We will present and officially publish this paper in May 2013 in the proceedings. Below is an abstract for the paper. The full (draft) version can be accessed  here. We are still editing and finalizing for publication but it is close to camera ready. ... [More]

Tags:  economic software delivery process agile governance integration steering development leadership measured first improvement accelerating disciplined

Early on, when I first started coaching teams on their transition to Agile, it was quite common for teams to come to me and tell me that they hadn't completed any User Stories by the end of an iteration. Initially, teams wanted to use this as a reason to increase the length of their iterations (I recommend two-week iterations – and teams always seem to want longer iterations). What they were failing to realize is that there were fundamental reasons why they weren't completing stories, and iteration length by and large had nothing... [More]

Tags:  stories team agile whole-teams user-story practices iteration

Be a lean startup in an Enterprise. Sounds like an oxymoron, right? Yet Enterprises must innovate to stay alive in today’s transparent, interconnected and fast-changing world. In The Lean Startup , Eric Ries defends the position that “ Intrapreneurs [people who are innovating within an established company] have much more in common with the rest of the community of entrepreneurs than most people believe”, that “Entrepreneurship . . . requires a new kind of management specifically geared to its context of extreme... [More]

Tags:  lean innovation scaled-innovation hybrid-cloud agile devops

That which does not kill us makes us stronger - F. Nietzsche As those of you who follow my blog know, last year I attended the Agile Team Coaching Class with Lyssa Adkins and Michael Hamman. The wealth of knowledge I gained in this class literally changed the course of my life. You may think that I am being a bit melodramatic,” but the truth of the matter is that this class, more than all the others I have taken, so intensified my desire not just to do Agile but to be Agile that I decided to devote myself totally to being and doing just... [More]

Tags:  agile agile-transformation co-active-coach agile-coach

Common issues and resolutions for Continuous Delivery on Cloud   Author: Rong Zhao ( zhaorong@cn.ibm.com ): Release & Project Manager of Smarter Cities Cloud Team, managing SaaS releases and projects, with rich experience for Continuous Delivery, DevOps, Project & Release Management. Li Quan Cui ( cuiliq@cn.ibm.com ): T echnical lead of IBM Smarter Cities Cloud operations team, expert on operation framework and automation for IBM Smarter Cities SaaS products.     Content: With the rapid development of information and... [More]

Tags:  devops agile continuous delivery

Evaluating Different Scaled Agile Approaches In evaluating a process we often look at the following Understand the Process: o      What are the Principles, Activities, Roles, Practices, and Deliverables? o      Determining how well each approach span the three levels of development? o      Does the process meet the organizations needs, the needs of the team, and the individuals involved While each approach has slightly different principles, most adhere to the core... [More]

Tags:  traditional change project approach ibmstory scrum development relationships rup culture up agile-adoption agile waterfall tips customer rational management devops communication hybrid

A few weeks ago during an agile adoption seminar with a program manager considering using agile, I was asked to evaluate approaches to scaling agile practices to support adoption by a large program for their enterprise.  This program had already adopted some basic agile practices (such as daily meetings, stories and Scrum) but felt they weren’t getting the benefits that other, smaller teams, got from “going agile”. At first I thought this would be an easy exercise, given over the years I have had to assist several large... [More]

Tags:  scrum scaling dad agile safe less

As few weeks ago I ran across a  good article on adopting “Continuous Delivery practices”. In the white paper, “ Adopting IBM’s approach to continuous software delivery ,” the author, Paul Bahr discussed IBM’s adoption framework for iteratively introducing new capabilities and planning improvements.  Here is the link to the survey:  IBM DevOps Practices Self Assessment survey . In that article it described the first step as conducting a Devops assessment workshop... [More]

Tags:  agile continuous-delivery devops agile-dad continuous​-delivery continuous-integration agile-safe

A new Infinite Undo blog article provides some great examples from Google, Amazon and Facebook that demonstrate that “ Continuous Delivery is mainstream .”  Core practices and techniques that support DevOps and continuous delivery have been around for years. Not only is continuous delivery possible, but surveys are demonstrating that there is significant value in embracing continuous delivery. The 2013 DevOps Survey showed that high-performing organizations are delivering 30x more frequent releases than their peers and with much greater... [More]

Tags:  #agile lean agile continuous-delivery transformation devops

Continuous Integration (CI) Practice and Challenges, Part 1 Today, CI is given more attention than ever,because it is becoming more and more complex to use. Large projects involvehundreds of developers working together on a huge volume of components. As aproject scales up in size and complexity, it becomes harder and longer tointegrates all pieces together. The effort required for integrating asystem increases exponentially over time and without a Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD), CI adoption might fail.Taking a CI approach to software... [More]

Tags:  continuous-integration ci practices process agile dad challenges