The headline of this post pains me but it’s true. Real agile approaches to software development will never replace the old and outmoded command-and-control approaches based on waterfall. Scrum, Kanban, XP, Lean, etc. will augment and improve waterfall approaches but never replace them. Here are two reasons for my pessimism. The Safe Choice Have you […]
As we say goodbye to 2012 and prepare to greet 2013, we need to think about what we want to accomplish in 2013. Specific goals and objectives will vary widely among companies, workgroups and individuals. I can’t help you with those. What I hope to help you with is how you achieve those goals and […]
It’s true. Plans change. They change often. In fact, elaborate, detailed plans will change almost continually. Is it worth the effort to plan? At times, agile software development is criticized because it’s perceived to lack planning. The perception is that developers simply jump in and start writing code. The process of writing code and delivering […]
It happens all the time. As companies grow, they take on bigger and bigger software projects. Why is that? Small companies work on small projects. Why? Simply because they can only handle small ones. They don’t have the staffing, equipment, office space or budget to handle big, long-term projects. Makes sense, right? Big companies have […]
You hear the words greatness, excellence and leadership quite often in the worlds of business operations and software development. Every person, team, organization and company should strive to be the best — but don’t go too far. What’s too far? Perfection. You don’t need to be perfect — not even close. The results you produce […]
Would you like your team to do a better job? Do you want to change your approach? Try talking to the team members who are discontented — the disgruntled ones. Why are they unhappy? What would they change? This can be a difficult conversation to have. Some people are just plain grumpy. They are the […]
Transitions from traditional software development approaches to agile ones fail occasionally. None of us who try to faithfully practice agile development like to admit it, but it’s true. I’d like to explore one of the key contributors to those failures — process misalignment. Here’s an example of how this happens. Let’s say the business stakeholders […]