on-agile.blogspot.com
On Agile: Improving Your Estimates: Part II
http://on-agile.blogspot.com/2009/06/improving-your-estimates-part-ii.html
Wednesday, June 10, 2009. Improving Your Estimates: Part II. This is Part II of a 3 part series detailing common problems with software estimates and some simple ways to handle them. Part I can be found here. Unfortunately, most of us software developers are pretty bad at estimation. Is it because we're incompetent? Of course not. It's because coding is creative work, and creative work is unpredictable. Problem: Two Kinds of Estimates. How much of your time will it take? When will it be done? 8221;), and...
on-agile.blogspot.com
On Agile: October 2007
http://on-agile.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html
Monday, October 01, 2007. How To Tell If You're Doing Agile Right. Agile software development is about asking a question, taking a best guess at the answer, acting on that assumption, and then back to asking a question about what happened as a result. It's about gathering feedback and acting on it in a continuous cycle. That's it. Iterations. Are the core of any shift towards agility. They are axiomatic; everything else can be derived. If the only question you're asking is "are we doing Agile right?
on-agile.blogspot.com
On Agile: July 2007
http://on-agile.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html
Monday, July 16, 2007. An Agile Bookshelf: 10 Must-Read Books. I did my best to select books I believe have something to offer for both those already doing agile software development and those who are curious about agile but remain skeptical. I'd like to think that even if you think "Agile" is a useless buzzword, you'll find something useful in each of these books. Quite simply, they are books that have changed the way I think about software development and how I practice it. By Robert C. Martin. This bo...
on-agile.blogspot.com
On Agile: Let the Experts Make the Decisions
http://on-agile.blogspot.com/2006/11/let-experts-make-decisions.html
Wednesday, November 15, 2006. Let the Experts Make the Decisions. As a result, agile practitioners have a strong focus on putting business decisions in the hands of business people. The business expert (product owner in Scrum lingo, customer in XP lingo):. Provides feedback on working software on a regular, frequent basis. Defines acceptance criteria for features. Remains available to work with developers and answer questions to ensure the features under development are meeting business needs. Talking ab...
on-agile.blogspot.com
On Agile: January 2008
http://on-agile.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html
Sunday, January 06, 2008. Risk Management Lessons Learned From Texas Hold 'Em. A couple years ago, I was an avid Texas Hold 'Em. Here are a few of my favorite lessons from hold 'em as they apply to risk management in software development projects:. Understand expected value, and use it! Players who don't understand the concept of expected value. I know of one company that began calculating the expected value (or ROI) of projects and realized they had signed a deal with a development cost ten times higher...
on-agile.blogspot.com
On Agile: April 2007
http://on-agile.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html
Wednesday, April 04, 2007. Why You Won't Fix It Later. We've all been there. The deadline is looming, everything is behind schedule, and you're in a rush to finish the FooBar module. You're puzzling over one last glitch. You know how to fix it, but it looks like it will take a minor redesign of the module. probably 4-5 hours of work. You just don't have that kind of time. Maybe it means removing one bug and introducing another one. ( "Well, at least we can submit the page now. Hopefully none of t...It ma...
on-agile.blogspot.com
On Agile: March 2007
http://on-agile.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html
Monday, March 05, 2007. Traffic Jams and Software Development. I was sitting in construction-induced gridlock a few days ago when I had an epiphany. In retrospect, I can't believe I made the same mistake that everyone else makes. I can't believe I considered traffic jams a bad. Thing Traffic jams are awesome! Why build a 4-lane highway that generally only ends up half full of cars? They could have built a 2-lane highway instead and saved half the money! If only I was surrounded with such committed indivi...
on-agile.blogspot.com
On Agile: September 2008
http://on-agile.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html
Tuesday, September 30, 2008. This bit of news is a little late, but hopefully still useful to someone out there who's interested in introducing agile practices to their project. A few months ago, Addison-Wesley released a great resource for teams and coaches relatively new to agile methods: Agile Adoption Patterns. I've reviewed the book for InfoQ. So you can read more of my thoughts on it here. Subscribe to: Posts (Atom). Hi, I'm your host, Ryan Cooper. I'm the founder of Empirica Software Solutions.
on-agile.blogspot.com
On Agile: May 2008
http://on-agile.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html
Tuesday, May 20, 2008. I was going to write a whole post about lean documents, but while doing my research, I quickly came across this article. By Scott Ambler over at AgileModeling.com. It's a long read, so if you're short on time, read the Critical Points. And Why Do People Document? Short on time, here are some highlights:. The fundamental issue is communication. Document stable things, not speculative things. Well-written documentation supports organizational memory. Effectively, but is a poor way to...
