BrainsLink

One of the biggest criticisms of agile development is the lack of big design up front (BDUF). This leads to inefficient implementations, poor performance, and ever-changing internal structures — or so the arguments go. Agilists opposed to BDUF argue that spending too much time designing early in the development cycle is largely a waste of […]

Let’s be honest — managing geographically distributed teams is tough. Here’s a simple breakdown of how teams might be distributed from least distributed to most: Shared space: This is the simplest. Everyone is in close proximity in a shared office area. Separated shared space: Everyone is in the same building but in different areas/floors. Different […]

The transition from chaotic software development to agile has got to be easier than the transition from waterfall to agile. If a team is not following any process — just winging it — adopting a structure, any structure, can only help. In my experience, people don’t like chaos — complete lack of any process — […]

There seems to be a small but loud group of agilists proclaiming that Scrum is dead or dying. I’d guess that many of them declared that waterfall is dead at an earlier time. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. I think many of the Scrum critics have an agenda. They either have […]

People often struggle with how to apply agile techniques, particularly iterations or sprints, to their situation. They are so entrenched in the ways of waterfall that they cannot envision another way. Let’s consider a simple example — building a house. The traditional approach looks something like this (simplified): Design the house. Dig a big hole. […]

Organizational structure can be a major roadblock to agile adoption. Consider that software development, quality assurance, business development, product marketing, etc. are separate organizations. Then it gets worse. Even within a functional group, organizational silos evolve. For example, within software development there may be a database group, a java apps group, a .Net apps group, […]

Development teams adopt Scrum as the agile methodology of choice more than any other approach. Why is that? Scrum looks easy. The basics are simple to grasp and the rules are few. With little or no formal training, any software development group can pick up Scrum and start coding. Then reality sets in. Realize that […]

If you begin your project with a sprint zero (or iteration zero), does that make you less agile and more like waterfall? A zeroth sprint is generally used to perform some upfront analysis or design work that serves as a foundation for the sprints to follow. It may involve a spike whereby there is a […]

Anytime a team embraces a new agile process a critical question comes up — must they rigidly adhere to the process guidelines or can they make adjustments to fit their needs? Even Scrum, with its simple rule set, falls into this unending debate. You won’t find a strong consensus answer. The compulsive agile practitioners will […]

Every software development methodology is flawed. Waterfall, Unified Process, Scrum, eXtreme Programming, Kanban, et al — they are all flawed. Each has a place but it’s tough to know which one fits a particular situation best. There are many aspects to consider — company culture, team size and experience, problem complexity and scope, solution type, […]

We generally think of agile development teams as being 5-7 people. That’s fine but it’s hard to build a major enterprise application in any reasonable time frame with such a small group. You can create multiple small teams and face the challenge of coordinating them. Now add the additional complication of not having all the […]