Month: June 2012

An Agile Dilemma – Stop Talking. Start Delivering.

A challenge awaits any IT group switching from a waterfall process to agile software development. It is often overlooked. It has to do with the mindset of the company’s business community and how they perceive IT. The business stakeholders and end users have historically complained about issues like the following: It’s difficult to get IT […]

Retrospectives Work When They Are Impersonal and Impartial

Retrospectives are a terrific way to continuously improve any software development process. As long as the organization is committed to improving itself, rather than protecting the status quo, there is nothing better than regular retrospectives. So why are project retrospectives often ignored or under used? There are many articles across the Web describing how to […]

10 Tips for Enhancing Waterfall Software Development

So your company uses a waterfall approach to software development and you’re stuck with it. Your management doesn’t understand agile development and doesn’t want to. They like how work gets done even if projects often take longer than they’d like. Now what? Other than finding another job, your options are limited. Here are ten suggestions […]

There Are Only Five Software Risks Worth Considering

Agile software development teams face many types of risks but only a few really matter. There are countless risk possibilities to consider on any software development project. Everything from under-estimating the project scope to the local nuclear power plant suffering a meltdown. It can be mind-boggling. I think many teams don’t even bother to assess […]

The Future Is Here and Living in Your Smartphone

Apple sent out a few loud and clear messages at their Worldwide Developers Conference this week. They announced some great new products and the media is fixated on them. But the products are not the message. The capabilities of those products and the future direction they establish are what’s interesting. Here’s my interpretation of the […]

Failure to Collaborate Threatens All Large Software Projects

There’s a famous quotation from the classic movie Cool Hand Luke that applies to many business situations; “What we’ve got here, is failure to communicate.” In many post-mortem evaluations of failed projects, inadequate communication is cited as a primary reason for team turmoil. Companies have responded by making it easier to communicate. Many of us […]

Estimates Are Worthless But Estimating Is Priceless

Seems contradictory, right? We spend a lot of time preparing software development estimates. Yet, I claim that the end result has no value. None. I also claim that the effort required to prepare estimates is time well-spent. That doesn’t make any sense! Or does it? Everyone wants to know how long the project will take […]