Month: November 2011

Invest in the People, Not in the Process

This is the eighth in a series of posts on dealing with the impediments raised in “Agile Antipatterns Are Easy to Spot, Hard to Change”. The eighth antipattern discussed in the post is… 8. Unwillingness to invest in training and coaching Agile looks easy. All you really need are daily meetings, a status board, and […]

What Problem Are You Trying to Solve?

This is the fifth in a series of posts on dealing with the impediments raised in “Agile Antipatterns Are Easy to Spot, Hard to Change”. The fifth antipattern discussed in the post is… 5. Expecting the software to be built better, faster AND cheaper Software projects have a reputation for delivering systems that are late, […]

Don’t Put the Organization Ahead of the Project Team

In my recent post called “Agile Antipatterns Are Easy to Spot, Hard to Change”, I listed ten impediments that prevent agile development from working well in a corporate setting. In a series of posts, I’ll offer suggestions for dealing with these impediments starting with the first antipattern. Protecting the organizational structure over the team structure […]

Software Metrics Stir Controversy and Confusion

Software project metrics are often controversial. The management team needs to measure the performance of the development team. The metric of choice is often a binary one — did they hit the target date or not. Good managers know that merely hitting dates is almost meaningless. What about quality, reliability, security, and the wow! factor? […]

10 Fundamentals of Software Project Management

When sports teams hit slumps, what do they typically do? They focus on the fundamentals. The sport could be baseball, basketball, ice hockey, American football or (what we call) soccer. It doesn’t matter. When the team isn’t winning and needs to improve, the focus is on the fundamentals. What does it mean to focus on […]