Articles
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Use Lean Thinking to Accelerate DevOps Performance for Agile Teams Leaders in agile organizations should consider adding lean techniques to their DevOps practices. Lean thinking can accelerate DevOps delivery by providing a set of processes and principles to help create more beneficial products, save money, boost productivity, reduce waste, and map to value. |
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Save Your Sanity: Planning During a Health Care Crisis A health care crisis can hit without warning, leaving you both nursing the patient and mired in seemingly endless bureaucracy. In this article, Kathy Iberle shares with us her experience dealing with an elderly uncle who suffered a stroke and how agile methods, like using a visual planning board, can help one prepare and be ready when disaster strikes. |
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Kanban and Lean Startup: Making the Most of Both Alexei Zheglov reflects on his startup experience and David Anderson’s kanban method in light of Eric Ries’ lean startup movement. Making the most of both approaches requires understanding how they relate to each other. |
Alexei Zheglov
March 29, 2012 |
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Book Review: Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life As a consultant, I want the flexibility to adapt my work to take advantage of opportunities that might arise in a given week–to write an article or blog post, or to propose a project to a new client. And, while I try to plan a week’s worth work, I need the flexibility to adapt my work on the fly. I work in small chunks, finishing work. I like seeing completed work. I have a great sense of accomplishment when I see completed work. |
Better Software Magazine Articles
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Scrum: Back to Basics So you think you know Scrum? Using the whimsical notion of farm animals and light-hearted visuals, take a refreshing review of the entire Scrum lifecycle as an intuitive set of roles, responsibilities, and handoffs. Particular attention is placed on what the ScrumMaster and product owner are expected to do at each handoff. |
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From Curmudgeon to Kanban It didn't take long for Stacia Viscardi to realize that as effective as agile can be, a plan-driven mindset may not be the best approach for every project or every team. Breaking the rules and embracing whatever it takes to motivate the team to get a project to doneness—and delighting the customer along the way—is a much better approach, even if it means breaking away from fixed iterations. |
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Scrum or Kanban—Which Is Better? In this FAQ column, Arlen Bankston defines the roles of Scrum and kanban and describes how the two agile methodologies can be complementary, each ideal for different situations, or blended to achieve the desired outcome. |
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Process Frameworks, Not Fixed Processes The software development field has been consumed with process management ranging from inflexible, predictive waterfall all the way to self-governing, adaptable agile approaches. You probably already utilize a specific process methodology on your projects, but have you considered adopting an evolutionary learning cycle process framework instead? |
Interviews
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The Fundamentals of Agile: An Interview with Jeff Payne
Podcast
In this interview, Coveros CEO and agile instructor Jeff Payne discusses why you should make the move to agile, its many benefits, and how to transition. He also explains his SQE Training course, Fundamentals of Agile Certification. |
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The Kanban Racing Challenge: An Interview with Nate Oster In this interview, Nate Oster explains the Kanban Racing Challenge, the unique benefits of kanban, the concept behind using radio-controlled cars within user-developed obstacle courses, and what he hopes his audience at Agile Development Conference East will walk away with. |
Conference Presentations
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Measuring Flow: Metrics That Matter
Slideshow
Are you considering kanban but not sure how you’ll predict delivery without story points, velocity, and a burndown chart? Or are you part of a Scrum team but feeling like your team could benefit from improved flow within your sprints? In this session, join Julie Wyman and Hunter Tammaro as they explore key kanban metrics for measuring team flow and predictability. In the first half, they will introduce metrics including lead and cycle time, throughput, and the cumulative flow diagram. They’ll review what each represents, discuss easy ways to collect them, and show how they are similar and different from common waterfall and Scrum metrics. In the second half of the session, Julie and Hunter will provide a couple of different sample sets of these metrics for you to work in small groups, practicing how to read them in order to find opportunities for team improvement. |
Julie Wyman
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Scrum, Kanban, or Scrumban: Which Is Right for You?
Slideshow
Agile is on everyone’s minds today, as more and more organizations are eager to reap the benefits of rapid iterations using customer-centric approaches. Organizations tend to run to Scrum first because it is the most recognized agile framework. But is Scrum always the right answer for a... |
Heidi Araya
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Manage a Complex Test Effort with Lean and Kanban
Slideshow
“How absurd! She swallowed a bird. She swallowed the bird to catch the spider. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly. I don't know why she swallowed the fly. Perhaps she'll die.” The silly nursery rhyme teaches a serious lesson. Because software products are complex, we seek to manage... |
Mike Duskis, 10-4 Systems
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Extreme Agile: Managing Fully-Distributed Teams
Slideshow
It is challenging—if not impossible—to find local experts in low-level Linux or specific open-source software projects. However, this isn’t a challenge with a fully-distributed organization which has this talent worldwide. So the challenge becomes how to effectively manage, motivate, and... |
Alan Bennett, Linaro
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