Software Best Practices

Learn how to streamline production with fast, effective Waterfall, RUP and Agile processes and how to use mixed software development strategies to meet specific project needs: Waterfall, RUP and Agile: Which is Right for You?

The more I work with companies that are struggling with Scrum, the more I’m starting to believe that ‘hybrid’ Scrum adoptions, where people pick and choose which Scrum practices to follow and which to ignore, invariably lead to failure. Whoa! you say… Wait a minute! Agile is about doing what is right...

…and start solving them. Sounds great, but what does it mean? What’s the difference between managing a problem and solving it? I recently held a workshop on using Scrum to drive process improvement at CIISA 2009 , held in Guadalajara, Mexico, where I focused on using Scrum as a process improvement...

First, on a personal note, I had the misfortune to tear cartilage in my right knee a couple days ago and will require surgery to repair/remove it. I'm hobbling around on crutches for the time being. I hope I can still attend (and present at) Agile2009 . Anyway, my review of Mike Holcombe's book...

I'll be presenting at Agile2009 in Chicago on the Tools for Agility stage on Tuesday 25 August, 4:45pm-5:30pm. Here is my session description from http://agile2009.org/node/2762 WANTED: Seeking Single Agile Knowledge Development Tool-set Aren’t code, backlog-items, tests, designs & documents...

This question came-up in a discussion earlier this week: Do we know of published studies on this subject? A quick Google-search turned up the following for me ... George Dinwiddie 's page on Studies of Test-Driven Development has links to a dozen or so, with summaries A March 2009 InfoQ.com article...

I found a really good resource-list from George Dinwiddie on Introspection and Retrospectives that includes the following list of resources (mostly patterns & techniques) about conducting retrospectives. It contains many (but not all) of the links below: RestrospectiveTechniques compiled by George...

In my previous post, Refactoring for Agility , I posted an outline and some thoughts for Part I of an Overview on Refactoring. Now I'm ready to post on Part II which is about refactoring @ scale. By "at scale" I mean in the larger context of other agile practices, as well as for large projects...

Many teams moving to Scrum have questions about the Product Owner position. Is the Product Owner a member of the Scrum team? What role does the Product Owner play in the day-to-day life of a Scrum project? How do we map current functional roles to Scrum roles, specifically with regard to the Product...

Some of you might have guessed from my recent posts on Emergent Design , Technical Debt , JEDI Programming , and 5S Qualities of Well Designed, Well-Factored Code , that I've been looking into trying to teach the fundamentals of refactoring and how it scales to larger projects. I've gathered...