Agile Software Development - Q & A

Agile Risk Management

rakesh533 — Mon, 24 May 2010 22:36:35 +0000

Hello every one,

i am doing my masters dissertation, topic is agile risk management. i just reading some resources on agile risk management. i am reading the risks involved in the agile projects development process.

I have some doubts in this topic can any one help me out from this

* How agile risk management is different from tradition managment
* what are the risks involved in the project before going to start project
* why agile doesn't support the high risk projects
* what is agile risk management

can any one send source material for this topic is greatly appreciated

Please give reply for this post.

Thanks,

Rakesh Kandukuri

Need help for my R&D

Kripanidhi — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:31:14 +0000

I have been a core XPiete for over a decade now and have been a purist at that. I have been trying my best to propogate the Values and Principles of Agile in India since 2001 to the best of my ability.

Over the last couple of years, I have been very frustrated in the way organizations are understanding and implementing the Values and Principles of Agile in their organizations upside down and discrediting Agile for it.

After a detailed introspection with many of my such customers, I found that we may have to first empethatically understand the constraints and limitations in large traditional organizations, within which they are trying to embrace Agile. Most of the times these organizations are unable to create and sustain an Agile Culture that is so desparately needed for Agile to survive.

Many Agile Evangelists have identified these problems and have called it "ScrumBut" (Ken Schwaber), "Flaccid Scrum" (Martin Fowler), "Waterscrum" and sometimes "ScrummerFall" (http://blogs.msdn.com/nickmalik/archive/2007/06/04/waterscrum-vs-scrumme... ). People in these organizations heart of heart feel hypocritical and ashamed too, seeing Agile Practices being implemented upside down in their organizations. But none of the Agile Evangelists have come forward to solve this problem in a more practical and feasible manner for these organizations and have left them alone writhing in pain.

I am trying to research and explore if we could find a better way to address these pain areas in such large software product development organizations, who in their true earnest, wish to improve but do not find Agile working for them, within their own cultural limitations and constraints. What they need to do to improve, may not be core Agile, but something similar that works for them, in their contexts.

I am aspiring to build a new set of Practices or a "Practice Framework" for such large traditional software product organizations which they can reference and use easily and conveniently accross their entities, within their own traditional organizational environment and hierachial culture and still realize value in terms of being able to improve their business efficiency and effectiveness.

I have set up a blog site at http://scrumforwaterfall.blogspot.com to speculate, collaborate and learn more in this direction. I seek help from all of you to discuss how to make this possible. I am currently evolving a Product Vision and a speculating over a hypothetical set of Stakeholder Wish-lists that may be expected out of this in its context. Please view my blogs and contribute your wisdom to help me take this further to its logical end.

Thanks

Kripanidhi
http://www.scrumtales.blogspot.com
http://www.scrumforwaterfall.blogspot.com

Scrum between UK and Australia - is it possible?

Highlander — Sat, 16 May 2009 22:19:50 +0000

We have recently starting working in a Scrum way, with pretty amazing results.

However, I have the immediate task of persuading a large customer based in Syndney to move to this approach and away from our hitherto blighted waterfall approach that has made the relationship somewhat acrimonious. For example, we are currently landed with a 150 page spec doc from our customer. The document has multiple inputs from throughout their organisation. We are meant to be getting them estimates in a week.

Anyhow, back to the problem.

Our HQ is in the UK. We have a small office in Melbourne (2 people currently, one technical, one a newly minted PM) and our customer is in Sydney (a large multinational). I am trying to understand the best way to compose and organise a Scrum team given these constraints. The members would likely be both people in Melbourne and 4 devs in UK + tester + BA + Scrum master .

But how to get daily scrum meetings in place? How to get Product Owner onsite? Worth creating a proxy product owner in UK? This seems to limit usefulness from our recent experiences insofar as that having product owner onsite for 1 in 3 weeks of each sprint brought huge gains in efficiencies.

Has anyone any experince with trying to get Scrum to work given these kinds of variables? I will be espousing the virtues and benefits of Scrum to my customer tomorrow but have yet to have a clear idea in my head on how we can re-create the same success as we have recently in other projects. Any advice of or thoughts much appreciated.

XP Day Switzerland, French Speaking Edition, March 30, 2009, Geneva, Switzerland

martinig — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:11:29 +0000

This conference proposes an international vision of Agile approaches. During one day, twelve presentations will cover topics that interest both managers and developers. The variety of the content will allow beginners and experts to get the most out of the conference.

http://www.xpday.ch/

SOW

bayliss_trevor — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 04:23:27 +0000

Has anyone had any experience of Scope of Work with scrum? What good templates are there for web projects? Cheers for any advice

How is effort calculated?(advanced excel template)

bayliss_trevor — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 04:45:42 +0000

Hi all,
A quick question please:
What are the numbers in effort representing? Hours?

I'm using the advanced ph_product_sprint_backlog_0.03.xls
How is the effort shown with regards to the number of developers?

Thank you for any pointers a the amount of effort is a bit confusing, Cheers

Agile Engineering Practices Training - October 21-23 - Fairfax, VA

mblack — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:49:39 +0000

CC PACE TRAINING: LEAN & AGILE TRAINING: AGILE ENGINEERING PRACTICES

DESCRIPTION
The three-day Introduction to Test Driven Development (TDD) and Refactoring in Java training program mixes interactive lectures with intense, hands-on lab activities. The course prepares Java development teams seeking to begin an Agile software development project. We accelerate your transition to Agile by sharing our real-world experiences and teaching you the fundamentals.

COURSE TOPICS
Developer Testing, Writing and running unit tests , Test-driven development (TDD), Pair-programming with TDD , Simple and advanced mocking , Testing legacy code, Database testing , Functional Testing, Web Testing, Code Metrics and Refactoring, Refactoring principles, Code smells, Refactoring patterns, Using Metrics

WHO SHOULD ATTEND
Developers working on Agile projects who wish to leverage Test-Driven Development concepts to focus their development efforts and sustain code quality and throughput.

PREREQUISITES
Knowledge of and some experience with Agile is recommended.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Explain and implement a Test-Driven Development framework
Apply appropriateAgile engineering practices to support Test-Driven Development
Write appropriately constructed unit tests

huge story

wellidy — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:45:54 +0000

Hi,

iÂ´m begginer in agile way. In the first job following this way, one of the first doubt happend when one feature for the next version of my product is a huge story and is the must important.

The doubt is: is it really a story?

Reading in this site about epics and themes, i was confused. Cause epics are low priority and this is not my case.

Here, with the team, we consider this is a feature and we split it in 7 storys.

What you think or advise me?

tks in advance.

Announcing XP Days Benelux 2008, 20-21 November 2008 in Eindhoven, The Netherlands

martinig — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:42:23 +0000

The fifth edition of the XP Days Benelux conference will be held in Eindhoven. Two days packed full of agile experience, practical knowledge and sharing. Whatever your level of experience, role or industry, this is the place to be if you want to know what "agile" really is.

http://www.xpday.net

I need some help

jabbar22 — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 04:11:29 +0000

I hv This Q If anyone can help me, I'll be greatful.
Q: While XP fulfils all the 12 principals of Agile, why there are many other models (like DSDM and SCRUM) under Agile are being introduced?