All articles in Agile Development

Agile Development, Blog

Agile Principles: Team Reflection Provides Growth

By
larry apke, agile doctor, team reflection

Retrospectives are my favorite of all the scrum activities because they represent the opportunity to reflect on how we are implementing and to adjust our behavior to be more effective.

I have said to my teams on many occasions that if I were forced to choose only one scrum ceremony that my choice, without hesitation or reservation, would be the retrospective. Without it, how could we ever expect to improve? What essential difference would an “Agile” project have over the many death march projects that teams have come to accept?

Agile Development, Blog

Agile Principles: Excellent Design Needs BDD & TDD

By
larry apke, agile doctor, bdd, tdd, excellent design, agile principles

This principle is much like the one previous about sustainable development. Agile doesn’t ask us to shortcut quality and increase technical debt in an effort to deliver software faster. It is precisely because we do not shortcut quality and incur technical debt that we are able to move faster.

I have worked with many teams to introduce Behavior Driven Development (BDD) because, among a great number of other advantages, BDD allows developers an easier way to access the practice of Test Driven Development (TDD). And, in my experience, TDD is the only way I have seen out of the practice of “Big Up Front Design”.

Agile Development, Blog

Agile Principles: How to Maintain a Sustainable Pace

By
larry apke, agile, scrum, indiegogo, agile development, agile doctor

Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

When I think on this principle I cannot help but think about the potential “dark side” of agile and how it can be misunderstood and implemented incorrectly.

Agile Development, Agile Management, General Agile, Scrum

The Most Important (and Least Understood) Software Development Fact

By
Facts and Fallacies of Software Development Book

If we want to create better software we would be well to head Glass’ fact. We need to stop treating software development like we are building a house or assembling a car. Software is much too complex to be built using the tired old mechanistic means. Remember that as complexity of the problem increases, the complexity of the solution increases at a much higher rate, along with the risks attendant on increased complexity.

Agile Development, Agile Management, Agile Team, General Agile

The High Cost of “Low Cost” Software Development

By
money

What is the high cost of “low cost” software development? This is the tendency for people involved with financial decisions regarding software development to put too great an emphasis on the cost of software developers.

Agile Development, Agile Quality, General Agile

We Must Inject (not just inspect) Quality

By

Not sure where I first heard the phrase “you can’t inspect quality into a product” but I have certainly used the phrase myself all too often in my consulting gigs. After a quick Google search, I found the originator of the quote was Harold Dodge and it was first used in a manufacturing context. While I generally eschew appropriating manufacturing analogies for comparison to software development, in this case, it is certainly apt.