Building software applications using agile techniques is no guarantee of success. Why? While waterfall teams spend too much time at the outset trying to nail down business requirements, agile teams may also invest too much time on story backlogs. Either way, the teams try to capture and document what the business thinks it wants, but […]
Big companies like highly-structured approaches to software development. Why? They’re trying to control and reduce risk. Despite the fact that their real-world experiences clearly demonstrate lack of success, they keep trying. Some of these companies are adopting approaches that apply more rigor and structure to agile development. The two most discussed (and controversial) approaches are […]
At times, seemingly inexplicable situations are simple to understand once you wrap your head around them. For example, I’m often astonished at how long simple software changes take from the time the change is proposed by the business to the time it’s deployed. Here’s a scenario I see a lot at company after company. Hard […]
Many managers tend to assemble software development teams with the goal of keeping the team together — release after release, project after project. The logic is that the team’s performance will improve as the team members get to know and understand each other. But is this the best approach to managing teams? It’s true that […]
Be honest. No software development process is flawless — not one. Every process, regardless of approach, has something wrong with it. The reason is simple. Different approaches, and various implementations of those approaches, always focus on a few areas deemed critical to success. Those critical areas vary by company and development group. The narrow focus […]
The Healthcare.gov fiasco has received more than its fair share of attention and criticism. By now, everyone knows that the rollout failed — catastrophically. It gives everyone involved in any aspect of software development a bad rap. For that reason, we should draw a few lessons from this debacle and try to avoid getting ourselves […]
In my last post, I discussed getting the waste out of your existing software development process. The idea is to get lean and use the leaner process as a stepping stone to becoming more agile. Let’s continue that discussion. So now that your project approach is leaner — streamlined — what next? Many companies are […]