The Latest
Book Review: Lean Architecture[article] Jim Coplien's recent book, Lean Architecture: for Agile Software Development, |
||
When Conflict Is Baked In: Bridging Structural Conflict[article] No two people or groups are the same, but their differences don't have to force them apart. In this column, Esther Derby uses the example of feuding operations and development groups to explain how focusing on the source of structural conflict can help build a bridge across the disagreements. |
||
Networking for Geeks[article] Professionals need networks to further their careers. But, for those of us who are geeks, it can be difficult to build connections face to face. Consultant and lifelong geek Fiona Charles shares networking tips that have worked for her. |
||
Wrangling a Release: The Role of Release Manager[article] Companies that develop multiple products often struggle with how to ensure they all work together as a solution and struggle with how to get the deliverables from various products together into a working release. Project managers and product managers have other priorities to handle. So who handles a release that wrangles together multiple project deliverables from multiple products that define a solution or complex release? The answer is the Release Manager. |
||
Don't Relegate Release Management to a Product's Release[article] Joe Farah writes that there are two key requirements: release management has to start prior to development and the tools and processes available for release management are equally applicable and important for everyone on the product team, not just for the release team. |
||
People Skills Play an Essential Role in Release Management[article] Release management is a complex function that involves many essential technical tasks that must be completed in a very specific way. At first glance, one might think that Release Management has little or nothing to do with personality and psychology. In the book Configuration Management Best Practices: Practical Methods that Work in the Real World, Bob Aiello and I focused three of our fourteen chapters on the people side of CM. The fact is that people skills play an essential role in release management. Read on if you want to improve your ability to get the job done and achieve success in release management! |
||
Release Engineering Refactored: Eliminate Variables with One True Machine[article] Sometimes, the best answer is to rephrase the question. This was the approach that one of our biggest customers took when undertaking a new effort to improve their Release Engineering process. They first asked themselves: How can we make the process of making products faster, more reliable, and more efficient? It’s worth pausing to understand what the process is today before thinking about improving it. Whether managed by a dedicated team or not, Release Engineering is the part of a software development organization that’s responsible for actually converting the millions of lines of carefully crafted source code into a useful software product or service for the end-user. More interestingly, it must also be able to show definitively what went into a release should (when) the need to modify it arises. |
||
On Being Absolutely Certain-and Wrong[article] Sometimes we're blind to what's right in front of us. We think we're paying full attention, but, as Naomi Karten knows from a recent travel experience, we're not. In this week's column, Naomi describes what happened and discusses some fascinating research that demonstrates how common this form of blindness is. |
||
The Agile Tipping Point[article] Nirav P Assar uses Malcom Gladwell's best selling book , The Tipping Point to discuss what's necessary to fully, and successfully implement agile, in order to take advantage of all that it can bring to a software development team. |
||
Are You Done Yet?[article] Johanna Rothman recently wrote, commenting on Joshua Kerievsky's proposed definition of done. Both posts are worth a read, if for no other reason than to better understand why we have such a difficult time defining what "done" is, and why defining "done" is one of the major challenges for teams trying to adopt agile practices. |
||
The Advantages of a Pipelined Approach for Build and Deployment Automation[article] Automation is required to build and deploy software applications consistently. Automation is necessary to build and deploy software applications rapidly. While build and deployment automation is essential for modern software development, not all approaches to automation produce the same results. |
Michael Sayko
July 20, 2010 |
|
Agile ALM—Opposites Attract[article] Agile and ALM are two terms that you don’t often see side by side. To most developers, agile means team interaction, customer collaboration, dynamism, and responsiveness to change. In contrast, ALM seems to imply the opposite of agile, with echoes of rigid procedures, inflexibility, and top-down process control. But are the agile and ALM approaches as contradictory as they first appear to be? |
Mike Shepard
July 20, 2010 |
|
Don't Vaccinate Your Organization Against Success[article] Change is an inevitable part of the ongoing evolution and refinement of our processes. Learning to implement change successfully is a vital skill for people who would be leaders in our industry. This week, Payson Hall reflects on challenges to implementing new tools and processes and offers caution to would-be change agents: Be part of the remedy, not part of the disease. |
||
Enterprise Change Management in Agile Software Development[article] Agile software development is designed to thrive within even the most dynamic business and technical environments. All agile methodologies include integrated practices and processes that manage evolving requirements to efficiently develop a continuous stream of new software capabilities. However, what Agile does not address are changes related to enterprise support that falls outside the scope of the project work. Enterprise Change Management (ECM) provides a framework that addresses many of these missing factors. |
||
From Tsunami Development to Continuous Lean and Agile Development[article] Moving to agile development (or doing anything new) is not easy. Beyond learning some of the technical stuff, the new terms like SCRUM, stories and so on, it is about changing mindsets. How do you change mindsets? How do you understand mindsets, and to do so quickly? |