Agile is everywhere. But how do you start? What are the critical success factors? What obstacles might you encounter? This paper will encounter the key practices of Agile - some of them standard, others are from a culmination of our experience, and show you how to use them, what problems you might face and finally what you will get from them. This whitepaper uses technical examples.
Agile is everywhere. But how do you start? What are the critical success factors? What obstacles might you encounter? This paper will encounter the key practices of Agile - some of them standard, others are from a culmination of our experience, and show you how to use them, what problems you might face and finally what you will get from them. This whitepaper does not use technical examples.
You will recognize in my experiences something of a project you've been on recently, of a former or current team or company – you will remember suffering and never quite understanding why or what went wrong, and listen as if to a campfire story. At any rate this, rather than offering a sermon or a theory, is my modest ambition here, says Laurent Bossavit.
Life in the Wild West was simple. Some people needed killing. And, with so many trigger-happy people around, that's just what happened. Today's software industry can sometimes look a lot like the Wild West, complete with "cowboy coders" - but with a crucial difference: we hardly ever spot the projects that need killing; we hardly ever pull the trigger. What's wrong with us?, asks Laurent Bossavit.
If you manage software efforts, you are today facing a broader range of choices than ever before. Should you move work offshore, keep it all on one site or distribute it across several offices? Current technology makes any of these possible - but it doesn't provide the wisdom to choose effectively, says Laurent Bossavit.
My background is as a developer. I see things from an engineering point of view. These days I am a consultant specializing in processes for software quality; I come into contact with managers whose concerns have to do with financing, staffing, reporting, etc. Sometimes this leads to clashes of perspectives. Most often it’s an opportunity for learning, says Laurent Bossavit
This article espouses a number of design principles, some derived from XP, that have influenced the design of many websites. These are based on nothing more than my own subjective prejudices and opinions of how websites should be. There are plenty of more professional guides on the web which give good advice on design. However, my advice is somewhat tailored to small technical sites, says Malcolm Sparks.
In order to keep the cost of change low, Extreme Programmers must write high quality code. They rely on tools and techniques such as refactoring, design patterns, simple design, and unit testing. When faced with a language and environment that does not promote these things, Extreme Programmers needs to invent a few new tricks - and they need to write them down somewhere, say Steve Quinlan and Sean Hanly.
As the success of the movement snowballs more and more development companies are choosing the Agile route and there are many methodologies to choose from which will be the next major disruptive technology in software development. Companies that already recognise effectiveness as much more important than efficiency have a head start, notes David Putman.
Agile Software Development is fast becoming a fashion. A lot of companies we meet claim to be doing it, but are they just being fashionable or are they real practitioners, wonders David Putman?
A legacy is something that is left or given by someone who is now at a distance, making communication with the donor difficult. It is also an 'aide-memoir', something to remember them by. How will you be remembered when you pass on your legacy code, asks David Putman?
