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Facilitating the Spread of Knowledge and Innovation in Professional Software Development

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  • A Community of Thinkers

    Jean Tabaka, Liz Keogh and Eric Willeke got together to contribute something to the "Lean Software and Systems Consortium". Instead they realized the Software Development Community (Lean, Agile, Kanban and well beyond) needed a help remembering the importance and value of true community.

  • Do We Need an "Agile Team Lead" Role?

    Patrick Wilson-Welsh, Chris Beale, Gary Baker, John Huston, Daryl Kulak, and others are attempting to popularize the idea of a new role, the "Agile Team Lead", to supplant many of the existing leadership roles found in and around agile teams.

  • Is Leading Self-Organisation like Conducting an Orchestra?

    Traditional management models don't tell leaders how to support their Agile teams without undermining their emerging self-organisation. Allusions to musical performance and "conducting the orchestra" abound - but not all are in agreement. Is the "conductor" model a good practice or an anti-pattern? In his TED talk, conductor Itay Talman shows that it may depend on what we think a conductor does.

  • Ladies: Please, Would You Submit a Proposal?

    Although it's widely accepted that diversity leads to innovation and performance, visible leadership in the IT community often doesn't represent the diversity of the community itself. What can be done to increase diversity in the leadership of our high-tech communities? One suggestion is to actively help a more diverse group to get their talks accepted at conferences.

  • Retrospective of Retrospectives

    Once all your teams use Agile and are busy implementing local improvements, what happens to the larger organization formerly called "IT" or "Systems Development"? A coach with a large Agile program shared the strategy they designed to let the larger community spot trends and benefit from all this learning. Paulo Caroli calls it "Retrospective of Retrospectives".

  • Tasktop Supports Integration with ScrumWorks Pro and ThoughtWorks Adaptive ALM Tools

    Tasktop Technologies, the company behind Eclipse Mylyn Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) integration framework, now supports integration with Danube Technologies Scrumworks Pro and ThoughtWorks Studios Adaptive ALM software. Tasktop also released Tasktop Pro 1.5 version back in June.

  • DeMarco Reflects on 40 Years of Software Engineering Evolution

    40 years after the NATO Conference on Software Engineering, Tom DeMarco paused to reflect on the discipline's evolution, wondering whether the metrics orientation he championed has distracted from the real point of computing: "transformation, creating software that changes the world." Is his earlier advice valid, though? "No", he said, in Software Engineering: An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone?

  • Presentation: Three Years of Real-World Ruby

    Martin Fowler talks about ThoughtWorks's experience with using Ruby on client projects for the past three years, and the creation of a Ruby-based product 'Mingle'.

  • Presentation: Democratic Political Technology Revolution

    The state of the art in political technology evolved radically 2004-2008. In 2004, software development in Democratic political campaigns consisted of a few rag-tag hackers taking shots in the dark and building applications. In 2008, political start-ups built innovative social applications that raised nearly 1/2 billion dollars, and elected a President.

  • Interview with Robin Dymond at Agile 2008

    Robin Dymond gives an overview of Lean, how it can help take Agile to the 'next level' and why organizations that fail to change will not have successful Agile teams. Robin describes an organizational mismatch between traditional hierarchies and team structures. He believes that organizations will need to reorganize around teams to get the most out of Agile.

  • CruiseControl.NET 1.4.3 Released

    A new version of CruiseControl.NET, the popular .NET continuous integration server, is now available. This release includes a new ccnet.config validator and numerous enhancements to the dashboard and CCTray application.

  • Interview with Pollyanna Pixton at Agile 2008

    Pollyanna Pixton tells us that within a culture of trust leaders must stand back and if they don't then they are hampering and restricting the productivity and the creativity and the innovation of teams. She discusses how leaders can foster a culture of trust and what they must do to get the most out of Agile teams.

  • Presentation: Agile Methods and User Centered Design

    In this presentation filmed during ThoughtWorks’ Quarterly Technology Briefing, Dave Robertson and John Johnston explain what the Agile and User Centered Design’s (UCD) common denominators are, common values being the most important one in their opinion.

  • The Qualities of a Software Architect

    The software/enterprise architect job is an important one. The duties of an architect are numerous and require specific leadership, communication and technical skills to be fulfilled.

  • Panel: BayAPLN Agile Expert Panel

    During QCon San Francisco 2008, InfoQ and BayAPLN, a local group of Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN), organized a panel comprised of Agile experts which answered questions from the audience. The panelists were: David Chilcott, Moderator, Polyanna Pixton, David Hussman, Sue Mckinney, Pat Reed.

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