If you had to make a case to a business about adopting or moving to an agile development methodology (like SCRUM or XP etc) what case would you make (how do you sell the concept)? e.g. How would you describe the concepts and benefits to a non-technical person? If you have successfully done so, what was the winning argument/case/ratio...
How do you ensure that the project will be build with "good" design decisions enabling a flexible software architecture? How do you balance between completely leaving the architecture to the teams on one side, and let all architecture control to a few individuals on the other side? Do you have an "architecture group", "architecture lab...
The project is poorly defined: we are to write educational software for CS 111 Computer Programming I students focusing on functions. We have 6 student developers with various backgrounds working in Flex. The project has a duration of about 7 weeks. We have very limited face time (30 min per week) and very limited work time (<8 hours per...
Our company has to adhere to strict SOX/Cobit protocols. This means that there's a huge paper trail behind everything we do, and noone can start coding until the proper documentation has been signed off. That means you have to wait for the Change Spec, Software Spec, and Architecture Documents (at least) to be signed off before you can...
I'm not a great fan of duplicating effort. I do find, however, that there are benefits to tracking agile iteration progress on both a physical card wall and an online "calculator" (Excel, some scrum tools) or an online card wall (e.g. Mingle). I find that a physical card wall in the team space provides a visceral kind of connection to t...
Coding test-first, I find that perhaps 3/4 of my code is unit tests; if I were truly extreme, and didn't write a line of code except to fix a failing unit test, this ratio would be even higher. Maintaining all these unit tests adds a huge amount of inertia to code changes. Early on, I suck it up and fix them. As soon as there's pressu...
I work in the technical department of a design agency. We use XP to manage our department's software development. I have been asked to give a short presentation describing Scrum and whether it would be suitable, in a broader context, for managing client project work. Scrum would be applied to cross functional teams containing graphic de...
I just re-read The Pragmatic Programmer (my third time reading it...I get something new every time, too). It seems like the tips that they mention are related to many of the various Agile methodologies. Is Pragmatic Programming just another form of Agile Development? ...
A few years ago I have worked on a green field project where we did Extreme Programming. I also see a lot of people mention the Scrum methodology. Could someone tell me the main differences between Scrum and XP? ...
I've read a number of books and websites on the subject of TDD, and they all make a lot of sense, especially Kent Beck's book. However, when I try to do TDD myself, i find myself staring at the keyboard wondering how to begin. Is there a process you use? What is your thought process? How do you identify your first tests? The majorit...
'Metaphor' seems to be one of the least understood precepts of XP (Extreme Programming) although its supposed to be (one of?) the most important. Its diff to grasp and supposedly 'the bulb over your head when you get it'. Metaphor seems to be a front for 'programming is a mystic art'.. the others are easy to follow relatively. I've read ...
I have now worked on two different teams that use the Agile/Scrum approach in the last two years and both teams were eager to improve the way they approach software development. In the first team, we could easily convince our product owner to get time for internal things like improving the build system, setting up better integration test...
I'm in a 10 person team working on a large legacy code base with a less than ideal product owner. Our backlog is in pretty bad shape and large epics have frequently been breaking our sprints. The team also struggles with its definition of done - some members write unit test religiously, others don't, sometimes depending on time available...
My organization is doing a lot of new development using Scrum, while maintaining a lot of old code. While we try to keep each development team focused on the task at hand, it is difficult because many team members "own" a piece of historic code that needs to be maintained. Some organizations solve this problem with a separate maintenanc...
Does anybody use Scrum & Sprint for Infrastructure. I'm struggling with the concept of a Sprint that never finishes i.e. a Network enhancement project. Also any suggestions on how Item time can be built up to a Product Backlog, so that I can sanity check that resources are not overcommited on the sprint. ...
which are the best tutorials, books, software and practices to start and manage a new .net based Development Project in an Agile way with no experience with it. which methodology is easier to adopt XP|Scrum? ...
I'm wanting to hear from some people who have actually done extreme programming. Does it work? Well? Is it sustainable over the long term? Thanks! ...
It seems Scrum and Agile tests/assertions are becoming popular this year. For example, Nokia test for Scrum. I don't think it is a good idea to have such tests at all. What do you think? ...
A strong Agile concept is Joint Code Ownership - no single member of the team owns a piece of code, but rather the entire team. This means the code is up for editing, improvement, refactoring... How do you promote this concept? How do you deal with a team member that has trust issues regarding his code, and remains suspicious of other p...
I'm supposed to give a presentation on agile programming techniques for my Business and Professional Communications class. One thing I'm having a bit of a problem getting right is the best way to give a quick and dirty overview of how agile programming works before I get into the meat of it. So what are some good ways to do this? Are ...