InfoQ Homepage Delivering Value Content on InfoQ

Articles

RSS Feed

Newer Older

Probabilistic Project Planning Using Little’s Law

When working on projects, it is most of the time necessary to forecast the project delivery time up front. Little’s Law can help any team that uses user stories for planning and tracking project execution no matter what development process it uses. We use a project buffer to manage the inherent uncertainty associated with planning and executing a fixed-bid project and protect its delivery date.

Dimitar Bakardzhiev
on Jun 21, 2015
Using Experiments and Data to Innovate and Build Products Customers Actually Use

An interview with Jan Bosch, professor of software engineering and director of the Software Center at Chalmers University of Technology, about the benefits that companies can get from increasing delivery speed, the next steps that organisations can take after adopting Agile and DevOps, using experiments to innovate, practices for experimentation and how organisations can become more innovative.

Ben Linders
on May 28, 2015
Evo: The Agile Value Delivery Process, Where ‘Done’ Means Real Value Delivered; Not Code

Current agile practices are far too narrowly focused on delivering code to users and customers. There is no systems-wide view of other stakeholders, of databases, and anything else except the code. This article describes what ‘Evo’ is at core, and how it is different from other Agile practices, and why ‘done’ should mean ‘value delivered to stakeholders’.

Tom Gilb Kai Gilb
on Jan 26, 2015
#NoEstimates Project Planning Using Monte Carlo Simulation

Customers come to us with a new product idea and they always ask the questions - how long will it take and how much will it cost us to deliver? Reality is uncertain, yet we as software developers are expected to deliver new products with certainty. This article shows how to do planning using reference class forecasting with the #NoEstimates paradigm which promises more accuracy in forecasts.

Dimitar Bakardzhiev
on Dec 01, 2014
Tradeoffs: Giving up Certainty

While organizations operate under an illusion of certainty, tradeoffs are inevitable. Giving up certainty does not mean giving up predictability. This article examines four flow choices for software delivery and presents three choices for IT Delivery: Throughput, Flexibility and all out speed.

Paul Dolman-Darrall
on Dec 20, 2012
Interview and Book Review: Specification by Example

Gojko Adzic has written the book Specification by Example, explaining the set of techniques for describing the functional and behavioural aspects of a computer system in a way that they are useful to the development team (expressed ideally as executable tests), understandable by non-technical stakeholders and maintainable to remain relevant despite changing customer demands.

Shane Hastie
on Oct 24, 2011
Agile Strategy Manifesto

A successful business strategy starts with unique value creation. But for an organization to realize the full benefit of it’s business strategies it must develop and maintain them using an Agile approach. An Agile mindset and careful application of feedback provided by an iterative implementation will help retain value and turn good business strategies into great business strategies.

Yogesh Kumar
on Aug 04, 2011
Agile Finance: Story Point Cost

This article ties a rather abstract and developer centered concept (story points) to the real world of business (spreadsheets and ledgers). Making this connection is essential for management.

Christopher Goldsbury
on Aug 18, 2010
Who Moved my Product Value?

At the outset, it seems like agile is all about short-term focus and a product life cycle is typically the polar opposite – it runs the total gamut in the spectrum that is the life of the product, starting from incubation to end-of-life. So, how does one attribute the relationship between the two? This is where product value comes in.

Mukund Srinivasan
on Jul 05, 2010
Agile Team Meets a Fixed Price Contract

Fixed price contracts are evil - this is what can often be heard from agilists. On the other hand those contracts are reality which many agile teams have to face. But what if we try to tame it instead of fighting against it? How can a company execute this kind of contract using agile practices to achieve better results with lower risk? This article will try to answer those questions.

Marcin Niebudek
on Jun 30, 2010
Deployment is the Goal

When we write software, we're very good at getting requirements and turning them into code. To turn that beautiful code into working software we need to deploy and test it. Often, we fail to emphasize the latter as well as the former. Do you have a backlog of "code complete" software waiting to be deployed, tested, signed-off and made live?

Julian Simpson
on Aug 13, 2009
Book Review: Agile Adoption Patterns, A Roadmap to Organizational Success

Ryan Cooper reviewed Amr Elssamadisy's new book and found it a useful framework for designing customized adoption strategies. Rather than a single recipe of Agile practices for everyone, the reader is offered patterns and tools to help determine which practices will most effectively help them reach their own organization's specific goals.

Ryan Cooper
on Jul 21, 2008