Coaching Agile Teams
Two words, Agile and coaching, seem to be the most-used buzzwords (after brain and neuro) of the last five years or so. The way things are progressing, I see them staying at the top of the list for decades.
Dealing with Negative Persuasion: Can the Product Owner Lead to Quality Destruction?
Quality: It's one of the common commercial arguments made when offering a software product. Those who have already mature products in the market justify their careers by emphasizing quality. Other companies, perhaps with more innovative products o...
Budgeting a Scrum Project in a Fluid Environment
Agile, and Scrum in particular, are buzzwords. Everyone wants to try out Scrum and reap its benefits. Clients (especially business clients) see a big advantage in not having to wait till all the requirements are carved in stone before starting a p...
Agile Testing: Key Points for Unlearning
When quality assurance teams and management who have adopted Agile practices first put the ideas to work, they face a significant impediment in unlearning the traditional mind-set and practices that experience in traditional practices has instilled in them.
Is Documentation Really Wasted Effort?
A widespread myth I've noticed in Agile software development is, "No documentation in Agile" or "Documentation is wasted effort." Particularly during a transition from Waterfall to Agile, we appreciate the benefits of adopting typical Scrum practices, such as short iterations, timeboxing, daily scrums, retrospective, and so on. We also try to get away from the tasks and activities that we found monotonous before Agile adoption — documentation, writing proper code comments, etc. But is it really correct to completely stop documentation and code comments?
Waterfall to Scrum: Transitions and Crossroads
I was at home a couple of Sundays ago, watching a Chelsea vs. Liverpool football match (soccer, for those Americans reading) — a match Liverpool ultimately won. It was during the post-match analysis that I was struck by some parallels between what Chelsea is going through and my own current client engagement to move from Waterfall to Scrum.
Scrum For All: Deja Vu? missing subtitle
I've always wondered -- not just as a developer but as a human being -- why I needed to follow the orthodox methods of typical hierarchical reporting. There was always some "middle man" confusing the conversation. You can define many roles in a typical hierarchical organization, and