Agile Project Management

Cutting-edge Agile methodologies, software development techniques and project management practices.

Committing to Commitment in Agile Teams

Jens Coldewey | Mar 8, 2011 3 Responses

Mar 082011

“You did not finish the stories you committed to!” a product owner at a client of mine recently raged against the team. “What the hell are you doing all day long? This commitment was pointless!” And he was right. The team commitment Scrum includes as part of the planning ritual is a dangerous practice that needs care — and committing on a certain number of stories or story points really is pointless. “Commitment” is one of these management buzzwords you have to use carefully. You should be very clear about what you commit on, what the appropriate tools to keep that commitment are, which tools are illegal, and what happens if you don’t keep the …

Upcoming IT Journal issue: The viral growth of Kanban in the Enterprise

Masa K. Maeda | Feb 28, 2011 1 Response

Feb 282011

Kanban has become the hot topic of discussion amongst the IT community since 2010, due to its accelerated rate of adoption and remarkable impact on organizations — from the few-employee company to the tens-of-thousands-employee company — where it has been adopted despite its young age. This fast pace is both good and bad, Kanban is benefiting organizations when adopted properly, but there is a risk of doing it wrong by rushing an adoption without fully understanding it. For example, people frequently ask if Kanban is a methodology for software development, or for software maintenance, or for project management, or a systematic approach to cultural change in the organization, or something else. Another frequent question is …

Build vs. Buy: A Debate that Keeps Coming Back

Claude Baudoin | Feb 8, 2011 3 Responses

Feb 082011

The question of whether an organization should build software or buy it dates to when the first significant COTS packages (typically for accounting, computer-aided design, or manufacturing resource planning) appeared on the market between 1970 and 1990. Search for “build vs. buy software” on Google, and you get 52 million results. Most of the results on the first pages are dated around 2001-2002, so one would think that the question has been settled, mostly along the following lines: If you need a capability that is fairly generic, and will not in itself give you a competitive advantage (the way you apply it may be superior to how others do it, but the software itself will not …

World of Streams: How Social Networking in Conjunction with Kanban Transform Offshore Outsourcing

Israel Gat | Feb 6, 2011 13 Responses

Feb 062011

The fast rise of software talent marketplaces like oDesk and uTest represents a profound transformation. Software is no more a world of places – Silicon Valley, Seattle, Bangalore, Krakow or Tel Aviv. Rather, software is fast becoming a world of work streams. These streams are tied together through social networking and collaborative techniques in which virtual team spaces replace the site, the conference room, the metaphorical shelf on which the software artifacts are stored… and the water cooler. Three trends drive this transformation in software from a world of places to a world of streams: Shortage of talent. Have you recently tried to hire highly skilled programmers in areas such as mobile applications or cloud …

Engineering Practices, Strategic Consulting and Anything in Between

Israel Gat | Jan 11, 2011 1 Response

Jan 112011

The following consultants have joined the Agile Practice over the past few weeks: Jurgen Appelo Brent Barton Patrick Debois Hillel Glazer Sebastian Hassinger Chris Sterling In addition, I am speaking this week with two other consultants who expressed interest in joining the practice. If they come aboard they will be adding very particular skills in specialties that are not fully represented yet in the practice. Between the old hands, the six that have just joined and those that will soon be joining, the practice is nicely positioned to offer the whole spectrum of services relevant to producing software, delivering it and delivering value through it. Think of the practice as a one-stop-shopping for engineering practices, …

A Rich Marketplace

Israel Gat | Jan 4, 2011 No Responses

Jan 042011

Over the coming few weeks we will be revising the Cutter Agile practice page in a significant manner. Various offerings will be refreshed and new ones added. These forthcoming revisions and additions apply to both consulting and training. The objective of so doing is quite straightforward: make the Agile practice a rich marketplace for Cutter clients. The idea is to pose a problem of choosing, not of choice, for clients and prospects. We will be posing this “problem” in order to give the client the final decision as to which offerings are best suited to satisfy his/her specific needs. For example, a client might prefer one software method over another. While both will probably be offered …

Your Agile Engagement is a Strategic Opportunity

Israel Gat | Jan 2, 2011 No Responses

Jan 022011

Your Agile Engagement is a Strategic Opportunity

I recently gotten into a bit of hot water with one of my clients – a leading online service in a certain category – when I commented that the kind of things they do in software development and IT is really no different from what various clients of mine do in other industries. In so saying, I seem to have unintentionally pushed the “but it is really different here” button. I should have known better… Feeling a little uncomfortable with the body language in the room, I pulled out the holidays discount coupons a client of mine in the apparel business was kind enough to give me the day before. “But what is the difference?” …

Surfing Technical Debt

Israel Gat | Dec 27, 2010 No Responses

Dec 272010

The Second Workshop on Managing Technical Debt will be held on May 23, 2011 in Honolulu, Hawaii. It is part of and co-located with the 33rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE2011). Between the workshop and the conference you can rest assured any aspect of software engineering known to mankind will be amply covered. The workshop is quite unique in its strong emphasis on rigorizing the foundations of technical debt and unifying the ways in which the generic concept is being applied. The reason for so doing is quite straightforward. The term ‘technical debt’ has, no doubt, proven intuitively compelling. The various intuitive interpretations, however, differ in various subtle nuances. The Overview of the workshop points out: …

More Agile Orgs will Attain Higher Levels of Organizational Maturity

Hillel Glazer | Dec 22, 2010 No Responses

Dec 222010

2010 saw the rapid growth of quantitatively-driven performance improvement among organizations serious about getting lean and seeing results. Much of this can be attributed to newer techniques in agile practices such as Kanban for software, and related awareness resulting from these practices. Organizations getting serious about real, measurable improvement take being a learning organization to heart. They have started to explore blended approaches where they may bring together more than one “named” approach, firmly internalize the salient themes from them and synthesize a custom method that meets their specific business needs. Some of these organizations have also started to investigate and pursue use of CMMI as a framework for organizing and benchmarking their performance accomplishments. In …

2011: The Year the C Level Gets the Business Value of Agile

Israel Gat | Dec 17, 2010 4 Responses

Dec 172010

2011: The Year the C Level Gets the Business Value of Agile

There are two strands of interest to the CIO, the CTO, the CEO and the rest of the executive team: strategy and delivery. The fundamental premise of Agility to the C-level is quite straightforward: “Merge” the two, so that: Delivery can start before strategy is complete Delivery informs strategy through tight feedback loops The net effect is faster/earlier delivery of products and service that are well suited to satisfy the needs of target markets. The paramount need to deliver faster/earlier is, for all practical purposes, dictated by today’s markets becoming hyper-segmented. For example, my (or your) Twitter network today is an evolving market segment. My Twitter network in March 2011 could easily be a different …

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