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There are some tell-tale signs that an organization is not ready to be agile. There may be lots of discussion about Scrum, Kanban, XP, Lean or some other agile development variation but the organizational commitment is lacking. Adopting an agile approach to software development is not easy or quick. Doing so while protecting and preserving […]

Requirements — we spend more time on requirements than any other single area of application development. (Note: Some poorly-managed projects spend the most time in software quality assurance. I hope yours don’t.) Why do we spend so much time on requirements? Simply because if we don’t get the requirements right, the project is doomed. The […]

Let’s say that your enterprise decides to give agile software development a try. They select Scrum as the preferred agile approach (though it could also be Kanban, Lean or XP). They decide to try a pilot project rather than changing the entire company at once. A pilot project is selected; not just any project but […]

Yesterday’s post (Scrum Does Not Take Control Away From Developers) made me consider another reason why some software developers simply don’t like Scrum. I think it comes down to too much reporting. Doing Scrum properly requires daily stand-ups to share information. The team congregates for 15 minutes and quickly synchronizes — at least that’s what […]

There’s a scenario I’ve seen play out many times over the years. It happened again just this week. There are many variations, I’m sure. It goes something like this. A company follows a waterfall approach for software projects. Development teams create requirements documents, functional specifications, technical and design docs — you know the drill. Then […]

Your agile project is losing momentum. Things aren’t going as well as they should, though it’s not clear why. Here are five early warning signs that an agile project isn’t so agile and may be headed for trouble. 1. Meetings keep getting longer and there are too many of them. If your daily standups are […]

Many software projects commit suicide. How? Here are a few gruesome ways. Not enough calendar time is allocated. High-quality software takes time. Throwing lots of people at the problem may get the project done faster but there will be many rough edges in the final software. Will customers accept that? The team is understaffed. This […]

Scrum teams can fail for many reasons just like any other team, agile or not. Describing how to succeed is tough because success is often situational. Describing how to avoid failure is simpler. Let’s explore some of most preventable ways to fail. 1. Wrong people on the team especially SM or PO Every project team […]

Doomed projects give everyone involved a bad reputation. All this talk of the end of the world on May 21st, made me think of “death march” software projects. I’ve been involved in a few and they are not fun. Can an agile team using Scrum, XP, Kanban, Lean or any other agile approach, completely avoid […]

Agile software development is a team effort. That’s an important point so I’ll repeat it. Agile software development is a team effort. Whether you’re using Scrum, XP, Kanban or another agile approach, there must be a strong sense of teamwork and a willingness to deliver as a team. Too often, companies new to agile development, […]

Here’s how it happens. Colossal Widget Company decides to adopt agile development practices and Scrum in particular. They have been using waterfall for a long time with great success (or so they like to claim). [Face it, no CIO is going to approach his boss, say that too many projects are failing, and change is […]

Project Management Solutions conducted a survey of senior executives and project managers to determine “Strategies for Project Recovery” (pdf download). What I found most interesting is the section titled “Causes of Troubled Projects”. They came up with these top five causes of troubled projects… “Requirements: Unclear, lack of agreement, lack of priority, contradictory, ambiguous, imprecise. […]

There’s a common misconception floating around in enterprise companies. They believe that software release/upgrade cycles have to be long. At one time, Microsoft was criticized for releasing major Windows updates too fast. (I know, hard to believe, isn’t it?) Why do they feel that way? It’s expensive and time consuming to roll out new software […]

In any major endeavor, pitfalls, misunderstandings, conflicts and other traps abound. Agile software development is no exception. Here are the top 10 agile traps: Over planning at project inception then not updating the plan Protecting functional departments Poorly managing the backlogs Focusing on tools Focusing on process Believing that the customer cares about the implementation […]

Innovation is not a technical problem. Anyone can innovate. It’s a cultural problem. Big organizations block innovation by pulling every idea into the corporate mainstream. It works something like this… Employee: “I have great idea. There is an untapped market for X and we are in a unique position to capture it.” Manager: “Yes, you’re […]

A software project will occasionally get off to a bad start. Maybe it was ill conceived. Maybe the concept was good but the approach is wrong. Maybe the concept and the approach are correct but the team consists of the wrong people. Or, forget all that — maybe the project got off to a good […]