Search Results

Search found 25999 results on 1040 pages for 'agile development'.

facebook twitter digg google delicious technorati stumbleupon myspace wordpress linkedin gmail igoogle windows live tumblr viadeo yahoo buzz yahoo mail yahoo bookmarks favorites email print

Page 6/1040 | < Previous Page | 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13  | Next Page >

  • Introduction to Agile Development

    - by Grant Fritchey
    Even though my current job is a little weird, I still consider myself to be a DBA. I didn’t start that way in IT. I came through support and into development. I loved development. There was a constant struggle to attempt to improve your code, your understanding, and, most importantly, the process of development itself. Development can be slow and tedious. Left alone, developers can simply disappear to build a project and not come back for two years, at which time they deliver it. But, maybe that software isn’t what you wanted, or it’s no longer needed, or who knows what. So developers are constantly attempting to improve their processes in order to deliver more relavent software quicker (something DBAs could learn about). I really admire it. One of the many processes that has come out of that constant striving is known as Agile. As the name implies, Agile development attempts to come up with a quick, fast turning, business aware, well, for want of a word, agile, process that is more responsive to the needs of the business. There are tons and tons of books and blogs and videos on the subject that can get you going. But, Agile isn’t easy (note, Easy is not part of the name). Agile processes can be hard. I’ve worked on multiple agile teams, some successful, some not. The two principal differences between the teams were their discipline and their knowledge of the process. Discipline, that comes from within. But knowledge, ah, well there I can help. Red Gate is bringing a series of free instructional events to the United States in a few weeks time focused primarily on SQL Server (click here right now to register while there’s still space). We’re also offering some .NET instruction too. That’s a full day, free, with top experts in the business. But, the next day, there’s a full day session introducing Agile. You can go to this and learn how to do Agile. Develop that knowledge that will enable you to successfully use the Agile process. Go to this web site to check it out. No, this event is not free, but not everything can be. And it’s not just for developers. DBAs, you need to learn this stuff too. Management could also benefit from understanding these processes (because you guys can help to enforce discipline). It’s really for everyone involved in the development process.

    Read the article

  • Scrum for a single programmer?

    - by Rob Perkins
    I'm billed as the "Windows Expert" in my very small company, which consists of myself, a mechanical engineer working in a sales and training role, and the company's president, working in a design, development, and support role. My role is equally as general, but primarily I design and implement whatever programming on our product needs to get done in order for our stuff to run on whichever versions of Windows are current. I just finished watching a high-level overview of the Scrum paradigm, given in a webcast. My question is: Is it worth my time to learn more about this approach to product development, given that my development work items are usually given at a very high level, such as "internationalize and localize the product". If it is, how would you suggest adapting Scrum for the use of just one programmer? What tools, cloud-based or otherwise, would be useful to that end? If it is not, what approach would you suggest for a single programmer to organize his efforts from day to day? (Perhaps the question reduces to that simple question.)

    Read the article

  • In Scrum, should tasks such as development environment set-up and capability development be managed as subtasks within actual user stories?

    - by Asim Ghaffar
    Sometimes in projects we need to spend time on tasks such as: exploring alternate frameworks and tools learning the framework and tools selected for the project setting up the servers and project infrastructure (version control, build environments, databases, etc) If we are using User Stories, where should all this work go? One option is to make them all part of first user story (e.g. make the homepage for application). Another option is to do a spike for these tasks. A third option is to make task part of an Issue/Impediment (e.g. development environment not selected yet) rather than a user Story.

    Read the article

  • Behavior-Driven Development / Use case diagram

    - by Mik378
    Regarding growing of Behavior-Driven Development imposing acceptance testing, are use cases diagram useful or do they lead to an "over-documentation"? Indeed, acceptance tests representing specifications by example, as use cases promote despite of a more generic manner (since cases, not scenarios), aren't they too similar to treat them both at the time of a newly created project? From this link, one opinion is: Another realization I had is that if you do UseCases and automated AcceptanceTests you are essentially doubling your work. There is duplication between the UseCases and the AcceptanceTests. I think there is a good case to be made that UserStories + AcceptanceTests are more efficient way to work when compared to UseCases + AcceptanceTests. What to think about?

    Read the article

  • Software development stack 2012

    A couple of months ago, I posted on Google+ about my evaluation period for a new software development stack in general. "Analysing existing 'jungle' of multiple applications and tools in various languages for clarification and future design decisions. Great fun and lots of headaches... #DevelopersLife" Surprisingly, there was response... ;-) - And this series of articles is initiated by this post. Thanks Olaf. The past few years... Well, after all my first choice of software development in the past was Microsoft Visual FoxPro 6.0 - 9.0 in combination with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 - 2008 and Crystal Reports 9.x - XI. Honestly, it is my main working environment due to exisiting maintenance and support plans with my customers, but also for new project requests. And... hands on, it is still my first choice for data manipulation and migration options. But the earth is spinning, and as a software craftsman one has to be flexible with the choice of tools. In parallel to my knowledge and expertise in the above mentioned tools, I already started very early to get my hands dirty with the Microsoft .NET Framework. If I remember correctly, I started back in 2002/2003 with the first version ever. But this was more out of curiousity. During the years this kind of development got more serious and demanding, and I focused myself on interop and integrational libraries and applications. Mainly, to expose exisitng features of the .NET Framework to Visual FoxPro - I even had a session about that at the German Developer's Conference in Frankfurt. Observation of recent developments With the recent hype on Javascript and HTML5, especially for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 development, I had several 'Deja vu' events... Back in early 2006 (roughly) I had a conversation on the future of Web and Desktop development with my former colleagues Golo Roden and Thomas Wilting about the underestimation of Javascript and its root as a prototype-based, dynamic, full-featured programming language. During this talk with them I took the Mozilla applications, namely Firefox and Thunderbird, as a reference which are mainly based on XML, CSS, Javascript and images - besides the core rendering engine. And that it is very simple to write your own extensions for the Gecko rendering engine. Looking at the Windows Vista Sidebar widgets, just underlines this kind of usage. So, yes the 'Modern UI' of Windows 8 based on HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript didn't come as any surprise to me. Just allow me to ask why did it take so long for Microsoft to come up with this step? A new set of tools Ok, coming from web development in HTML 4, CSS and Javascript prior to Visual FoxPro, I am partly going back to that combination of technologies. What is the other part of the software development stack here at IOS Indian Ocean Software Ltd? Frankly, it is easy and straight forward to describe: Microsoft Visual FoxPro 9.0 SP 2 - still going strong! Visual Studio 2012 (C# on latest .NET Framework) MonoDevelop Telerik DevCraft Suite WPF ASP.NET MVC Windows 8 Kendo UI OpenAccess ORM Reporting JustCode CODE Framework by EPS Software MonoTouch and Mono for Android Subversion and additional tools for the daily routine: Notepad++, JustCode, SQL Compare, DiffMerge, VMware, etc. Following the principles of Clean Code Developer and the Agile Manifesto Actually, nothing special about this combination but rather a solid fundament to work with and create line of business applications for customers.Honestly, I am really interested in your choice of 'weapons' for software development, and hopefully there might be some nice conversations in the comment section. Over the next coming days/weeks I'm going to describe a little bit more in detail about the reasons for my decision. Articles will be added bit by bit here as reference, too. Please bear with me... Regards, JoKi

    Read the article

  • Surface development: it&rsquo;s just like software development

    - by Dennis Vroegop
    Surface is magic. Everyone using it seems to think that way. And I have to be honest, after working for almost 2 years with the platform I still get that special feeling the moment I turn on the unit to do some more work. The whole user experience, the rich environment of the SDK, the touch, even the look and feel of the Surface environment is so much different from the stuff I’ve been working on all my career that I am still bewildered by it. But… and this is a big but.. in the end we’re still talking about a computer and that needs software to become useful. Deep down the magic of the Surface unit there is a PC somewhere, running Windows Vista and the .net framework 3.5. When you write that magic software that makes the platform come alive you’re still working with .net, WPF/XNA, C#, VB.Net and all those other tools and technologies you know so well. Sure, the whole user experience is different from what you’ve known. And the way of thinking about users, their interaction and the positioning of screen elements requires a whole new paradigm. And that takes time. It took me about half a year before I had the feeling I got it nailed down. But when that moment came (about 18 months ago…) I realized that everything I had learned so far on software development still is true when it comes to Surface. The last 6 months I have been working with some people with a different background to start a new company. The idea was that the new company would be focussing on Surface and Surface only. These people come from a marketing background and had some good ideas for some applications. And I have to admit: their ideas were good. Very good. Where it all fell down of course is that these ideas need to be implemented in a piece of software. And creating great software takes skilled developers and a lot of time and money. That’s where things went wrong: the marketing guys didn’t realize and didn’t want to realize that software development is a job that takes skill. You can’t just hire a bunch of developers and expect them to deliver the best sort of software, especially not when it comes to Surface. I tried to explain that yes, their User Interface in Photoshop looked great, but no: I couldn’t develop an application like that in a weeks time. Even worse: the while backend of the software (WCF for communications, SQL Server for the database, etc) would take a lot more time than the frontend. They didn’t understand. It took them a couple of days to drawn the UI in Photoshop so in Blend I should be able to build the software in about the same amount of time. Well, you and I know that it doesn’t work that way. Software is hard to write, and even harder to write well, and it takes skill and dedication. It’s not something you can do as fast as you can draw a mock up for a Surface application in Photohop. The same holds true for web applications of course. A lot of designers there fail to appreciate the hard work that goes into writing the plumbing for a good web app that can handle thousands of users. Although the UI is very important, it’s not all there is to it. And in Surface development this is the same. The UI should create the feeling of magic, but the software behind it is what makes it come alive. And that takes time. A lot of time. So brush of you skills and don’t throw them away if you start developing for Surface. Because projects (and colaborations) can fail there as hard as they can in any other area of software development. On a side note: we decided to stop the colaboration (something the other parties involved didn’t appreciate and were very angry about) and decided to hire a designer for the Surface projects. The focus is back where it belongs: on the software development we know so well and have been doing very well for 13 years. UI is just a part of the whole project and not the end product. So my company Detrio is still going strong when it comes to develivering Surface solutions but once again from a technological background, not a marketing background.

    Read the article

  • "Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#": Is this just a .NET-translation of the popular Uncle Bob book?

    - by Louis Rhys
    I found this book sold on Amazon Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#, written by Robert C Martin and Micah Martin. Is it merely a .NET port of the older, more popular Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices? Or is it just a new book trying to take advantage of the other book's popularity? If I am a .NET developer who hasn't read either book, which one would you recommend?

    Read the article

  • Why has extreme programming (XP) gone out of date in favor of Agile, Kanban etc?

    - by Nick Rosencrantz
    I like XP (extreme programming) especially the part where there are 2 programmers at the same screen since often a problem's solution gets closer if only you explain what you're doing and pair programming forces you to explain what your doing. Last 10 years or so, the XP style of working seems to have gone out of date in favor of the working methodologies Agile and/or Kanban. Why? Since XP to me seems a veru good way to work and is a lot about the programming where Agile and Kanban are more about processes.

    Read the article

  • Introduction to Lean Software Development and Kanban Systems

    - by Ben Griswold
    Last year I took myself through a crash course on Lean Software Development and Kanban Systems in preparation for an in-house presentation.  I learned a bunch.  In this series, I’ll be sharing what I learned with you.   If your career looks anything like mine, you have probably been affiliated with a company or two which pushed requirements gathering and documentation to the nth degree. To add insult to injury, they probably added planning process (documentation, requirements, policies, meetings, committees) to the extent that it possibly retarded any progress. In my opinion, the typical company resembles the quote from Tom DeMarco. It isn’t enough just to do things right – we also had to say in advance exactly what we intended to do and then do exactly that. In the 1980s, Toyota turned the tables and revolutionize the automobile industry with their approach of “Lean Manufacturing.” A massive paradigm shift hit factories throughout the US and Europe. Mass production and scientific management techniques from the early 1900’s were questioned as Japanese manufacturing companies demonstrated that ‘Just-in-Time’ was a better paradigm. The widely adopted Japanese manufacturing concepts came to be known as ‘lean production’. Lean Thinking capitalizes on the intelligence of frontline workers, believing that they are the ones who should determine and continually improve the way they do their jobs. Lean puts main focus on people and communication – if people who produce the software are respected and they communicate efficiently, it is more likely that they will deliver good product and the final customer will be satisfied. In time, the abstractions behind lean production spread to logistics, and from there to the military, to construction, and to the service industry. As it turns out, principles of lean thinking are universal and have been applied successfully across many disciplines. Lean has been adopted by companies including Dell, FedEx, Lens Crafters, LLBean, SW Airlines, Digital River and eBay. Lean thinking got its name from a 1990’s best seller called The Machine That Changed the World : The Story of Lean Production. This book chronicles the movement of automobile manufacturing from craft production to mass production to lean production. Tom and Mary Poppendieck, that is.  Here’s one of their books: Implementing Lean Software Thinking: From Concept to Cash Our in-house presentations are supposed to run no more than 45 minutes.  I really cranked and got through my 87 slides in just under an hour. Of course, I had to cheat a little – I only covered the 7 principles and a single practice. In the next part of the series, we’ll dive into Principle #1: Eliminate Waste. And I am going to be a little obnoxious about listing my Lean and Kanban references with every series post.  The references are great and they deserve this sort of attention. 

    Read the article

  • AutoVue for Agile 20.2.2 Now Available!!

    - by Warren Baird
    We are happy to announce that AutoVue for Agile 20.2.2 is now available via the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud.   AutoVue for Agile 20.2.2 is a minor release within the 20.2 product family that is specifically targeted for users of Agile PLM 9. AutoVue 20.2.2 brings a number of improvements, including support for SolidWorks 2013, AutoCAD and Inventor 2014, SolidEdge ST5, and Cadence Allegro 16.6.   It also includes support for Adobe Illustrator CS4 and up.   Another improvement involves bringing our support for Oracle Linux and Java Virtual Machine versions in-line with Agile's support. Please see our previous post (https://blogs.oracle.com/enterprisevisualization/entry/autovue_20_2_2_is) for more details on the specifics introduced in AutoVue 20.2.2. Agile PLM 9.3.3 has also been released, which as part of its many improvements introduces support for associating AutoVue annotations with change request objects in Agile, and a preliminary solution using Augmented Business Visualization to allow the creation of change objects from within AutoVue.   Please see the Agile Transfer of Information sessions in the KM note 1589164.1 for more details. We will provide additional posts over the next couple of weeks providing more details on these improvements.  Until then, if you have any questions, let us know in the comments! 

    Read the article

  • Component Development within SOA

    How do the concepts of component development work within SOA? Let’s first break this question down by defining what component development is. Component development is the process of implementing specific functionality in the form of small units of complied code that can be reused across multiple applications or product families. Typically, components are integrated with other components forming composite components. In general, most interaction between components is done through interfaces to promote loose coupling. The concept of loose coupling refers to the interconnections of components in a system so that their component dependences based on contracts defined by interfaces. A real life example of this can be experienced while using Legos to build a structure. If we consider each Lego block as a component, then when two more Legos are connected they form a composite component due to the fact that the structure is made up of multiple components.   It is important to note that composite components can be made from standard components and other composite components. Eventually as various components and composite components become interconnected a structure begins to form in the shape of an application or in the case of Legos in the form of Lego structure. Software components can loosely be defined as small units of related implemented functionality that can communicate with other components or may have dependencies on other components. Based on the definitions provide above, it is my personal opinion that SOA works well with the concepts of component development. The SOA architectural style focuses on creating loosely coupled services. Each service much like a component offers related functionality that can be accessed by various requesting clients.  In addition services can be derived just like components in that services can be built on other services to form composite services. In summary, the concepts of component development can work within SOA based on the example above.

    Read the article

  • career in Mobile sw/Application Development [closed]

    - by pramod
    i m planning to do a course on Wireless & mobile computing.The syllabus are given below.Please check & let me know whether its worth to do.How is the job prospects after that.I m a fresher & from electronic Engg.The modules are- *Wireless and Mobile Computing (WiMC) – Modules* C, C++ Programming and Data Structures 100 Hours C Revision C, C++ programming tools on linux(Vi editor, gdb etc.) OOP concepts Programming constructs Functions Access Specifiers Classes and Objects Overloading Inheritance Polymorphism Templates Data Structures in C++ Arrays, stacks, Queues, Linked Lists( Singly, Doubly, Circular) Trees, Threaded trees, AVL Trees Graphs, Sorting (bubble, Quick, Heap , Merge) System Development Methodology 18 Hours Software life cycle and various life cycle models Project Management Software: A Process Various Phases in s/w Development Risk Analysis and Management Software Quality Assurance Introduction to Coding Standards Software Project Management Testing Strategies and Tactics Project Management and Introduction to Risk Management Java Programming 110 Hours Data Types, Operators and Language Constructs Classes and Objects, Inner Classes and Inheritance Inheritance Interface and Package Exceptions Threads Java.lang Java.util Java.awt Java.io Java.applet Java.swing XML, XSL, DTD Java n/w programming Introduction to servlet Mobile and Wireless Technologies 30 Hours Basics of Wireless Technologies Cellular Communication: Single cell systems, multi-cell systems, frequency reuse, analog cellular systems, digital cellular systems GSM standard: Mobile Station, BTS, BSC, MSC, SMS sever, call processing and protocols CDMA standard: spread spectrum technologies, 2.5G and 3G Systems: HSCSD, GPRS, W-CDMA/UMTS,3GPP and international roaming, Multimedia services CDMA based cellular mobile communication systems Wireless Personal Area Networks: Bluetooth, IEEE 802.11a/b/g standards Mobile Handset Device Interfacing: Data Cables, IrDA, Bluetooth, Touch- Screen Interfacing Wireless Security, Telemetry Java Wireless Programming and Applications Development(J2ME) 100 Hours J2ME Architecture The CLDC and the KVM Tools and Development Process Classification of CLDC Target Devices CLDC Collections API CLDC Streams Model MIDlets MIDlet Lifecycle MIDP Programming MIDP Event Architecture High-Level Event Handling Low-Level Event Handling The CLDC Streams Model The CLDC Networking Package The MIDP Implementation Introduction to WAP, WML Script and XHTML Introduction to Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) Symbian Programming 60 Hours Symbian OS basics Symbian OS services Symbian OS organization GUI approaches ROM building Debugging Hardware abstraction Base porting Symbian OS reference design porting File systems Overview of Symbian OS Development – DevKits, CustKits and SDKs CodeWarrior Tool Application & UI Development Client Server Framework ECOM STDLIB in Symbian iPhone Programming 80 Hours Introducing iPhone core specifications Understanding iPhone input and output Designing web pages for the iPhone Capturing iPhone events Introducing the webkit CSS transforms transitions and animations Using iUI for web apps Using Canvas for web apps Building web apps with Dashcode Writing Dashcode programs Debugging iPhone web pages SDK programming for web developers An introduction to object-oriented programming Introducing the iPhone OS Using Xcode and Interface builder Programming with the SDK Toolkit OS Concepts & Linux Programming 60 Hours Operating System Concepts What is an OS? Processes Scheduling & Synchronization Memory management Virtual Memory and Paging Linux Architecture Programming in Linux Linux Shell Programming Writing Device Drivers Configuring and Building GNU Cross-tool chain Configuring and Compiling Linux Virtual File System Porting Linux on Target Hardware WinCE.NET and Database Technology 80 Hours Execution Process in .NET Environment Language Interoperability Assemblies Need of C# Operators Namespaces & Assemblies Arrays Preprocessors Delegates and Events Boxing and Unboxing Regular Expression Collections Multithreading Programming Memory Management Exceptions Handling Win Forms Working with database ASP .NET Server Controls and client-side scripts ASP .NET Web Server Controls Validation Controls Principles of database management Need of RDBMS etc Client/Server Computing RDBMS Technologies Codd’s Rules Data Models Normalization Techniques ER Diagrams Data Flow Diagrams Database recovery & backup SQL Android Application 80 Hours Introduction of android Why develop for android Android SDK features Creating android activities Fundamental android UI design Intents, adapters, dialogs Android Technique for saving data Data base in Androids Maps, Geocoding, Location based services Toast, using alarms, Instant messaging Using blue tooth Using Telephony Introducing sensor manager Managing network and wi-fi connection Advanced androids development Linux kernel security Implement AIDL Interface. Project 120 Hours

    Read the article

  • Can a Guy with Embedded System Background go into Game Development

    - by NANDAGOPAL
    Well, I finished my Masters in Embedded Systems, and I am working in GUI development, and working with graphic tools and images and GUI's keep me glued to my seat more than working on code for MUP/MUC . And I want to give game development a Fair chance, try out developing a game from scratch using basic libraries then tryout the same in a free/open source game engine and there is a good chance I may fall in love with it, but it is poissible for a person with an Electrical and Electronics Bachelors and Embedded Systems Masters ( just a years experience in the field) go into game development and be successful in the profession. And I asked the same question @ stackoverflow.com (wrong place to ask ) http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13794822/can-a-guy-with-embedded-system-background-go-into-game-development/13794943#13794943 And I received good but a very generic answer. I would be happy to know the actual pro's and con's of a master's in embedded systems migrating to Game Dev

    Read the article

  • Best Programming Language for Web Development

    - by Harish Kurup
    I am a Web Developer in PHP, and also know Javascript and some bit of CSS which is needed for web development. I use Symfony framework to build Websites and Web Application. As now i want to learn new Programming Language, which is best for Web Development(like Ruby, Python), as i have heard about Frameworks like Rails and Django. Which language will be best for Web Development apart from PHP or like PHP?

    Read the article

  • MBO in software development

    - by Euphoric
    I just found out our middle sized software development company is going to implement MBO. As a big fan of Agile, I see this as counter-intuitive, because I believe it is impossible to create a objective, that is measurable. Especialy where creativity, experience, knowledge and profesionalism are important traits and expanding those are objectives and goals of many. So my question is, what is your opinion on using MBO in software development? And if there are development companies using MBO, either successfuly or unsucessfuly.

    Read the article

  • Future of web development - Front-end > Back-end development?

    - by Jasson
    People used to say it's "better"/"Make more money" to do back-end programming (PHP, asp.net) instead of front-end(HTML, javascript) for web development. But I notice that HTML5, CSS3, WebGL, Javascript are gaining importance. We can even use HTML5, CSS3 and JAVASCRIPT for building mobile web applications(For both iphone/android) and even Windows 8 applications in the future! Does it mean new web developers should now focus on front-end development instead of server-side development?

    Read the article

  • Agile development; on-line free tools!

    - by BT.
    We have been looking to implement Agile methodology within our geographically distributed development team, so i need suggestions on any free on-line application that you have used and find useful. Right now we are using paper cards and wall to manage this :), but we want to shift to an on-line version preferably free. I have used TargetProcess at my previous job! My Core requirements are: Business Analyst can add user stories We can assign, prioritize different user stories to developers. QA team can add test cases around different user stories. Project Manager can track the time of all the resources and can pull reports for upper management

    Read the article

  • How can we make agile enjoyable for developers that like to personally, independently own large chunks from start to finish

    - by Kris
    We’re roughly midway through our transition from waterfall to agile using scrum; we’ve changed from large teams in technology/discipline silos to smaller cross-functional teams. As expected, the change to agile doesn’t suit everyone. There are a handful of developers that are having a difficult time adjusting to agile. I really want to keep them engaged and challenged, and ultimately enjoying coming to work each day. These are smart, happy, motivated people that I respect on both a personal and a professional level. The basic issue is this: Some developers are primarily motivated by the joy of taking a piece of difficult work, thinking through a design, thinking through potential issues, then solving the problem piece by piece, with only minimal interaction with others, over an extended period of time. They generally complete work to a high level of quality and in a timely way; their work is maintainable and fits with the overall architecture. Transitioning to a cross-functional team that values interaction and shared responsibility for work, and delivery of working functionality within shorter intervals, the teams evolve such that the entire team knocks that difficult problem over. Many people find this to be a positive change; someone that loves to take a problem and own it independently from start to finish loses the opportunity for work like that. This is not an issue with people being open to change. Certainly we’ve seen a few people that don’t like change, but in the cases I’m concerned about, the individuals are good performers, genuinely open to change, they make an effort, they see how the rest of the team is changing and they want to fit in. It’s not a case of someone being difficult or obstructionist, or wanting to hoard the juiciest work. They just don’t find joy in work like they used to. I’m sure we can’t be the only place that hasn’t bumped up on this. How have others approached this? If you’re a developer that is motivated by personally owning a big chunk of work from end to end, and you’ve adjusted to a different way of working, what did it for you?

    Read the article

  • How can we make agile enjoyable for developers that like to personally, independently own large chunks from start to finish

    - by Kris
    We’re roughly midway through our transition from waterfall to agile using scrum; we’ve changed from large teams in technology/discipline silos to smaller cross-functional teams. As expected, the change to agile doesn’t suit everyone. There are a handful of developers that are having a difficult time adjusting to agile. I really want to keep them engaged and challenged, and ultimately enjoying coming to work each day. These are smart, happy, motivated people that I respect on both a personal and a professional level. The basic issue is this: Some developers are primarily motivated by the joy of taking a piece of difficult work, thinking through a design, thinking through potential issues, then solving the problem piece by piece, with only minimal interaction with others, over an extended period of time. They generally complete work to a high level of quality and in a timely way; their work is maintainable and fits with the overall architecture. Transitioning to a cross-functional team that values interaction and shared responsibility for work, and delivery of working functionality within shorter intervals, the teams evolve such that the entire team knocks that difficult problem over. Many people find this to be a positive change; someone that loves to take a problem and own it independently from start to finish loses the opportunity for work like that. This is not an issue with people being open to change. Certainly we’ve seen a few people that don’t like change, but in the cases I’m concerned about, the individuals are good performers, genuinely open to change, they make an effort, they see how the rest of the team is changing and they want to fit in. It’s not a case of someone being difficult or obstructionist, or wanting to hoard the juiciest work. They just don’t find joy in work like they used to. I’m sure we can’t be the only place that hasn’t bumped up on this. How have others approached this? If you’re a developer that is motivated by personally owning a big chunk of work from end to end, and you’ve adjusted to a different way of working, what did it for you?

    Read the article

  • In agile environment, how is bug tracking and iteration tracking consolidated.

    - by DXM
    This topic stemmed from my other question about management-imposed waterfall-like schedule. From the responses in the other thread, I gathered this much about what is generally advised: Each story should be completed with no bugs. Story is not closed until all bugs have been addressed. No news there and I think we can all agree with this. If at a later date QA (or worse yet a customer) finds a bug, the report goes into a bug tracking database and also becomes a story which should be prioritized just like all other work. Does this sum up general handling of bugs in agile environment? If yes, the part I'm curious about is how do teams handle tracking in two different systems? (unless most teams don't have different systems). I've read a lot of advice (including Joel's blog) on software development in general and specifically on importance of a good bug tracking tool. At the same time when you read books on agile methodology, none of them seem to cover this topic because in "pure" agile, you finish iteration with no bugs. Feels like there's a hole there somewhere. So how do real teams operate? To track iterations you'd use (whiteboard, Rally...), to track bugs you'd use something from another set of products (if you are lucky enough, you might even get stuck with HP Quality Center). Should there be 2 separate systems? If they are separate, do teams spend time creating import/sync functionality between them? What have you done in your company? Is bug tracking software even used? Or do you just go straight to creating a story?

    Read the article

  • Using Definition of Done to Drive Agile Maturity

    - by Dylan Smith
    I’ve been an Agile Coach at a lot of different clients over the years, and I want to share an approach I use to help them adopt and mature over time. It’s important to realize that “Agile” is not a black/white yes/no thing. Teams can be varying degrees of agile. I think of this as their agile maturity level. When I coach teams I want them to start out being a little agile, and get more agile as they mature. The approach I teach them is to use the definition of done as a technique to continuously improve their agile maturity over time. We’re probably all familiar with the concept of “Done Done” that represents what *actually* being done a feature means. Not just when a developer says he’s done right after he writes that last line of code that makes the feature kind-of work. Done Done means the coding is done, it’s been tested, installers and deployment packages have been created, user manuals have been updated, architecture docs have been updated, etc. To enable teams to internalize the concept of “Done Done”, they usually get together and come up with their Definition of Done (DoD) that defines all the activities that need to be completed before a feature is considered Done Done. The Done Done technique typically is applied only to features (aka User Stories). What I do is extend this to apply to several concepts such as User Stories, Sprints, Releases (and sometimes Check-Ins). During project kick-off I’ll usually sit down with the team and go through an exercise of creating DoD’s for each of these concepts (Stories/Sprints/Releases). We’ll usually start by just brainstorming a bunch of activities that could end up in these various DoD’s. Here’s some examples: Code Reviews StyleCop FxCop User Manuals Updated Architecture Docs Updated Tested by QA Tested by UAT Installers Created Support Knowledge Base Updated Deployment Instructions (for Ops) written Automated Unit Tests Run Automated Integration Tests Run Then we start by arranging these activities into the place they occur today (e.g. Do you do UAT testing only once per release? every sprint? every feature?). If the team was previously Waterfall most of these activities probably end up in the Release DoD. An extremely mature agile team would probably have most of these activities in the DoD for the User Stories (because an extremely mature agile team will probably do continuous deployment and release every story). So what we need to do as a team, is work to move these activities from their current home (Release DoD) down into the Sprint DoD and eventually into the User Story DoD (and maybe into the lower-level Check-In DoD if we decide to use that). We don’t have to move them all down to User Story immediately, but as a team we figure out what we think we’re capable of moving down to the Sprint cycle, and Story cycle immediately, and that becomes our starting DoD’s. Over time the team makes an effort to continue moving activities down from Release->Sprint->Story as they become more agile and more mature. I try to encourage them to envision a world in which they deploy to production as each User Story is completed. They would need to be updating User Manuals, creating installers, doing UAT testing (typical Release cycle activities) on every single User Story. They may never actually reach that point, but they should envision that, and strive to keep driving the activities down closer to the User Story cycle s they mature. This is a great technique to give a team an easy-to-follow roadmap to mature their agile practices over time. Sure there’s other aspects to maturity outside of this, but it’s a great technique, that’s easy to visualize, to drive agility into the team. Just keep moving those activities (aka “gates”) down the board from Release->Sprint->Story. I’ll try to give an example of what a recent client of mine had for their DoD’s (this is from memory, so probably not 100% accurate): Release Create/Update deployment Instructions For Ops Instructional Videos Updated Run manual regression test suite UAT Testing In this case that meant deploying to an environment shared across the enterprise that mirrored production and asking other business groups to test their own apps to ensure we didn’t break anything outside our system Sprint Deploy to UAT Environment But not necessarily actually request UAT testing occur User Guides updated Sprint Features Video Created In this case we decided to create a video each sprint showing off the progress (video version of Sprint Demo) User Story Manual Test scripts developed and run Tested by BA Deployed in shared QA environment Using automated deployment process Peer Code Review Code Check-In Compiled (warning-free) Passes StyleCop Passes FxCop Create installer packages Run Automated Tests Run Automated Integration Tests PS – One of my clients had a great question when we went through this activity. They said that if a Sprint is by definition done when the end-date rolls around (time-boxed), isn’t a DoD on a sprint meaningless – it’s done on the end-date regardless of whether those other activities are complete or not? My answer is that while that statement is true – the sprint is done regardless when the end date rolls around – if the DoD activities haven’t been completed I would consider the Sprint a failure (similar to not completing what was committed/planned – failure may be too strong a word but you get the idea). In the Retrospective that will become an agenda item to discuss and understand why we weren’t able to complete the activities we agreed would need to be completed each Sprint.

    Read the article

  • Please, tell us how you made Agile work for you?

    - by Paul
    I've been seeing many questions related to Agile. There seems to be confusion between the people who are doing Agile successfully, and those of us who don't understand it. So I'm wondering if some of the successful teams would be willing to give the result of us some examples of how you succeeded. Some of the things I know I wonder What steps did you use? (ie. Talk to users, mock up, tests, code, testing, (whatever)) Tools that helped you? Did you generate any artifacts, other than a working implementation? How did you prevent spaghetti architecture / code? How do you pass along to new team members, or is the team stable for the project How did you determine exit criteria, or was it open ended. (Scope of project?) Did you do this as contracting? How did you develop a contract up-front? Did the business do any up front work? Or did they come to the table with "We want to implement a "bleh bleh blah"? What types of tests did you use? Unit, Integration, UAT? Or did the process make some/all of those unnecessary? Bonus: Do you have an situations / links to "How To" Agile articles, books, etc? Wiki, describes what but not how (to the uninitiated) At least to me, not a duplicate

    Read the article

facebook twitter digg google delicious technorati stumbleupon myspace wordpress linkedin gmail igoogle windows live tumblr viadeo yahoo buzz yahoo mail yahoo bookmarks favorites email print

< Previous Page | 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13  | Next Page >