InfoQ Homepage Agile2006 Content on InfoQ
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InfoQ Presentation: Selecting the Right Methodology and Steering it to Success
It's easy to agree with "anything more than 'barely sufficient' in is waste," but it's more complicated when we actually need to customize a process for a particular project. At Agile2006 Todd Little shared a model to help leaders choose the right flavour of Agile based on project and team attributes, and he emphasised the need to actively steer projects as development progresses.
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An Agile PM Walks a Mile in a Customer's Shoes
Last year Ternary COO Alexia Bowers walked a mile in a project customer's shoes, and told us how it felt in this Agile2006 Leadership Summit presentation. She stressed the need to meet deadlines through creative solutions, instead of simply cutting scope.
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InfoQ Interview: Per Kroll on EPF, an Open Source Process Initiative
The PM of the Eclipse Process Framework project explained in this presentation how IBM's Eclipse-based process tools allow teams to select the practices they want, to create a customised methodology that works for them. With a wiki and hooks to insert custom in-house documentation and practices, it provides a framework to configure the approach you want, or to grow into the approach you need.
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Lessons Learned: Transitioning to Agile at GMAC-RFC
This half hour presentation looks at a Fortune 500 company's effort to achieve faster time to market by transitioning from RUP to Agile. Hussman & Stenstad reveal the gradual process from readiness assessment and chartering through education and practice to the creation of an adaptive culture with a "living plan", sharing lessons learned along the way.
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InfoQ Presentation: DSDM and Lean Explained
This second Agile2006 Agile Styles video looks at DSDM and Lean. Jean Tabaka covered the history and principles of the venerable DSDM methodology, founded in 1994 and now accepted in the UK for use on government contracts. Mary Poppendieck gave real examples of how the 7 Lean principles provide competitive advantage, and discussed the relationship between quality, speedy delivery and low cost.
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Time for Change: Agile Teams in Traditional Organisations
Agile teams seem to be meeting more resistance, as they scale up and move from "early adopter" territory into the mainstream. Does this mean Agile can't work in more traditional organisations? Not necessarily, say coaches Michael Spayd and Joe Little, in a new InfoQ interview: what's needed now is an awareness of the need to facilitate organizational change.
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Presentation: Tim Lister on Agile Leadership
In this presentation, recorded at the the APLN summit last year, leadership guru Tim Lister explains the principles of Agile Project Leadership in the framework of the Agile Declaration of Interdependence.
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Interview: Linda Rising on Collaboration, Bonobos and the Brain
Seasoned practitioners packed a small room at Agile2006 to hear Linda Rising's "Are Agilists the Bonobos of the Software Community?" where she shared her thoughts on the evolutionary roots of teamwork. In this InfoQ interview, Linda talked with editor Deborah Hartmann about how writing her book "Fearless Change" led her to read on the science of the human brain and the social rituals of apes.
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InfoQ Presentation: Scott Ambler on Database Refactoring
A sound code base is not sufficient to deliver quality software that evolves as user needs change. Some teams, ready to evolve their code, find themselves hamstrung by a hard-to-change database design. Scott Ambler, in this Agile2006 video, talked about how DBAs can use Agile's iterative and incremental approach to help make teams responsive to changing customer needs.
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Presentation: Bob Martin's Principles of Agile Design
Bob Martin of Object Mentor presents the first of his five principles of agile design. Beginning with an explanation of the real purpose of object-oriented design - the management of dependencies - Bob walks through a code example to illustrate how dependencies can be managed with abstractions, and that good designs are those in which high-level abstractions do not depend on low-level details.
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InfoQ Interview: Alistair Cockburn
At Agile2006 InfoQ interviewed Alistair Cockburn, methodology creator, author and long-time leader in the Agile community. Topics discussed ranged from the history of the Agile movement to the future of methodologies, with a look at User Stories and Use Cases along the way. This interview uncovers how his research for IBM may have sparked the creation of the Agile Manifesto.
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InfoQ Interview: Ron Jeffries on Running, Tested Features
At Agile2006, Ron Jeffries told InfoQ that tracking "Running Tested Features" is the essential element of Agility, from which all other practices and activities necessarily follow. Ron who took to the whiteboard to explain how RTF benefits customers, by helping helps teams deliver consistently and reliably.
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Presentation: Ken Schwaber on Code Quality as a Corporate Asset
Scrum co-creator Ken Schwaber spoke at Agile2006 on code quality as a corporate asset. InfoQ presents video of his talk, The Canary in the Coalmine. Schwaber discussed how a degrading core codebase paralyses a team and negates any Agility gained through process improvement. He proposed strategies for management to identify, track and stop this downward spiral.
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Changing of the Guard at the APLN
The Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN) held their first Leadership Summit in parallel to this week's Agile2006 conference. The day ended with Jim Highsmith receiving the "Superhero of Agile Process" award, as a thank-you for two years of leadership in creating and developing the APLN. Agile2006 chairperson Todd Little steps up to the challenge. Update: view the list of 2007 board members.
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Jim Highsmith Proposes An Adaptive Performance Management System
Jim Highsmith, Director of Cutter Consortium's Agile Project Management Practice told the APLN Leadership Summit audience yesterday: "...to achieve truly agile, innovative organizations, a change in our approach to performance management systems is necessary... 'Conforming to plan' while delivering scant business value will seriously impede agility, whether in projects or the entire enterprise.