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Culture & Methods

An Organization Development(OD) Approach to Agile Adoption

Is there an approach that can make Agile adoption successful at a systemic level, and not remain just an engineering practice? Organization Development (OD) is an interdisciplinary field of research, theory and practices. It has the right methods for organizations to become organic entities, to implement learning systems, empower teams to become self-organized and reduce resistance to change.

Vijaya Devi
on Jun 10, 2016
Culture & Methods

Pair Programming Is No Panacea

Is pair programming all that it's cracked up to be? Contrary to popular belief, pairing can lead to a decrease in creativity, groupthink, inappropriate feedback, and can be demoralizing. Wes Higbee explores why it definitely shouldn't be mandated, and why you should consider other options where it could be beneficial.

Wes Higbee
on Jun 09, 2016
Cloud

Everything Is “Lock-In”: Focus on Switching Costs

Coding in Java, buying SAP, deploying OpenStack, and using Amazon Web Services: each one introduces a type of lock-in. However, it makes no difference how hard you try- some form of lock-in is unavoidable. What matters most is understanding the layers of lock-in, and how to assess and reduce your switching costs.

Richard Seroter
on Jun 08, 2016
Culture & Methods

User Stories Are Placeholders for Requirements

It can be difficult to change from a Waterfall approach where ‘business analysts write big requirements up front’ to the Agile practice in which requirements are prepared ‘just in time’, and are the responsibility of the entire team. The secret to success in Agile is ruthless management of scope.

Russ Lewis
on Jun 06, 2016
Culture & Methods

Using SEMAT and Essence at Fujitsu UK

Fujitsu UK is using a large number of processes and methods which have developed over the period of many years. Looking for a way of combining agile and traditional methods, they became aware of SEMAT and the Essence Kernel. This article explores how they applied SEMAT and Essence to systems engineering, and used it to look at the whole programme of work across all disciplines.

Ste Nadin
on Jun 04, 2016
Culture & Methods

Inner Source—Adopting Open Source Development Practices in Organizations

Although inner source offers numerous benefits, many practitioners are unclear about what it is and how to adopt it. When adopting inner source, organizations should consider nine factors pertaining to product, process, and organization.

Klaas-Jan Stol Brian Fitzgerald
on Jun 02, 2016
Culture & Methods

Exercises for Building Better Teams

Have you ever seen a team perform so great that you wanted to join it? If you examine the values of such a team, you may discover a perfect balance of orientation on people and results. If you are trying to discover how far away your own team is from this state, read this article and try the exercises to find your own state of perfection.

Justyna Wykowska
on May 30, 2016
Java

Living in the Matrix with Bytecode Manipulation

In this article we take a deep dive into two popular bytecode manipulation frameworks: Javassist & ASM. Bytecode manipulation is used in Java libraries like Spring and Hibernate, most JVM languages and even your IDE. For this reason, and because it’s really quite fun, it is a valuable skillset to learn for performing tasks that are otherwise impossible. And once you learn it, the sky's the limit!

Victor Grazi
on May 26, 2016
Development

InfoQ at 10

We know that software is changing the world, and we’ve come to see our impact as accelerating the software side of that change. With that passion, we started InfoQ 10 years ago, in the context of some unusual beliefs and concerns.

Floyd Marinescu
on May 25, 2016
Mobile

A Reference Architecture for the Internet of Things (Part 2)

This is the second article of a two article series in which we try to work from the abstract level of IoT reference architectures towards the concrete architecture and implementation for selected use cases. This second article will show how to apply this architecture to real world use cases - one being in the field of smart homes, one in the field of insurance.

Tuan-Si Tran Hannelore Marginean Daniel Karzel
on May 25, 2016
Culture & Methods

Building a Team with Complementary Testing Skills

Imagine meeting with a group to implement a high-level test strategy, then coming back in six months and finding there has been little progress because the director-level executives have been trying to staff projects. I wish I could tell you this was uncommon. Today we'll talk about how the delivery team can acquire all the skills it needs to release software when the number of testers are low.

Sanjay Zalavadia
on May 23, 2016
DevOps

DevOps Lessons Learned at Microsoft Engineering

Thiago Almeida from Microsoft shares how adopting DevOps practices resulted in better engineering and happier teams, and the lessons learned in that journey.

Thiago Almeida
on May 22, 2016