InfoQ Homepage Management Content on InfoQ
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Industry Survey Reveals The Bitter Truth About IT ROI
A Ziff-Davis CIO Insight survey on Business Value reveals little improvement in how, or how well, IT is measuring value, even though most firms now try to use metrics such as IRR, NPV, return on assets, or activity-based costing. There's no consensus or consistency on which measures to use, or when to use them. And half of respondents doubt that the measures are even accurate.
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Measuring Performance in the Adaptive Enterprise
Traditional thinking has turned budgets into fixed performance contracts that force managers at all levels to commit to specified financial outcomes, despite the fact that many of the underlying variables are beyond their control. As Agility increases the futility of this exercise becomes apparent. Thought-leader Jim Highsmith proposes a helpful alternative more harmonious with Agile values.
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Throwing the Keyboard is Not the Answer
Conflict is inevitable at work. Sooner or later, you will disagree about what to test, when to test, or how long to test software. How you approach the conflict affects the outcome and, more lastingly, how you feel about the exchange. On StickMinds last week, Esther Derby looked at some of the ways we approach conflict and how they affect solutions - and relationships.
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Does Agile Dispense with Project Managers?
Agile does away with many of the tasks by which Project Managers formerly measured their own performance. The Product Owner and Dev Team take on these activities, leaving PMs confused and wondering: "Am I redundant?" Agile coach Michele Sliger offers some reassurance, mapping PMI PMBOK practice areas to new Agile practices in her whitepaper "A Project Manager's Survival Guide to Going Agile".
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Mary and Tom Poppendieck Discuss Their Next Book
Bob Payne interviewed Mary and Tom Poppendieck at Agile2006 about their next Lean book, which focuses even more on software than the last. Mary summarizes it as "So you think Agile is a good idea: now what?" saying it will help people get started with Lean, going beyond the recipes of the first book to provide practical information and case studies to help teams do their own process experiments.
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Leveraging the Wisdom of Project Newcomers
Experienced newcomers can't be onboarded like programmers just out of school. The experienced professional will have specific but difficult-to-anticipate gaps that will impede their performance. In addition, this provides a great opportunity to get a fresh but experienced feedback on your processes. Gannthead.com offers some pointers wrapped in three fictional Dr. Phil episodes... (really?)
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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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New Release of V1: Agile Enterprise Development Suite
This new release from VersionOne allows all project stakeholders -- project managers, executives, developers, product managers, customers, and testers -- to collaborate and coordinate plans and progress much more effectively. With extended support for the Agile life cycle, this tool offers better visibility into the entire software development process.
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ScrumWorks Release 1.7.0 adds Tagging
Danube Technologies' latest ScrumWorks release 1.7.0 includes an important feature for enterprise users who need to trace back to multiple backlogs or integrate with other project tools - tagging and filtering with user-managed "themes".
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TOC More Powerful than Six-Sigma, Lean
A manufacturing study has shown that TOC is twenty times as effective as Six Sigma, and nearly ten times more effective than lean at causing cost savings. This is the only scientific double-blind study of its kind performed "in the wild", i.e. in actual business plants. These ideas are frequently discussed in Agile circles and integrated into Agile methodologies.
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Examining the Declaration of Interdependence
The Declaration of Interdependence emerged in 2004, when a group of experts met to discuss ways to extend the Agile Manifesto to non-software products and management. In this month's edition of Better Software Magazine, Alistair Cockburn details the DOI's six principles and how they can benefit any enterprise.
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Heartbeat for Rails Apps
Heartbeat, the Railsday 2006 app from Highgroove Studios in Atlanta, lets you monitor the uptime of URLs and run your application's rake tasks from a single web page.
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19 Pitfalls of Technical Leadership
Hacknot's list of Great Mistakes in Technical Leadership, while not particularly intended for an Agile audience, contains some sage advice - good leadership is not restricted to Agile teams. As always, Agile teams still need to balance advice from traditional sources against Agile values and principles.
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Series: Churchill, the Agile PM
Mark Kozak-Holland is the author of the book "Churchill's Adaptive Enterprise: Lessons for Business Today". In his Gannthead.com series, he studies Churchill's history and habits, and draws parallels between events in World War II and today's business challenges. In episode 2, Mr. Churchill inherits his "project" from hell...
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Vacations: Creative Work Requires Rest
Summer has traditionally been a time for vacations and get-aways, a time to clear the mind and "recreate" oneself. Yet, according to a recent study, one third of people expect to take work with them on their holidays this year. Is this healthy? Can it be changed?