Introduction:

In the past few years an increasing numbers of styles of software development models, referred to as agile methodologies have been gaining a lot of interest in the software development world. Promising an antidote to bureaucracy that old models were forcing, agile methodologies became very successful in gaining a huge number of followers and supporters all over the software landscape. Eventually the question changed from "Should we become agile?" to "Which agile methodology should we follow?" This article will try to answer this question by showing (in general) three of the main agile methodologies that have a long record of success.  This article  will also try to decide on the best way of implantation for these methodologies particularly in startup environments.

So let's start by going over the main concepts of the 3 chosen methodologies; Lean, Scrum, and Extreme Programming (XP).

Continuous improvement is at the heart of Agile. Retrospectives provide opportunities to the Teams to inspect their process, and continuously improve it. Many Teams fail to take advantage of this and thus fail to improve.

Common Retrospective mistakes are

Scrum is one of the biggest process invention but it does not guarantee success. Even creators of Scrum accept that more than half of the Scrum implementation does not go well. Why is that? Scrum is critical but what is more critical than Scrum? Moving from waterfall model to Scrum is a welcoming change that makes people think in the right direction, however, this does not guarantee success.

If a person with ongoing back pain visits the doctor then doctor certainly suggests to do exercises or yoga to make body agile enough to get rid of pains. If that person is wise then he starts doing exercises and pain disappears. Exercises don't cure pain overnight. It requires a regular routine. Isn't it common to see pain appear again when exercises are stopped?

ScrumMaster Role and Activities

Introduction

I have been contemplating the role and capacity of the ScrumMaster for some time now and wanted to pen something down, as I believe this understanding is needed now in the Agile community.

It seems that there are a lot of confusion and misconceptions on the activities and capacity of this specific and important Scrum role in the industry. This article will try to alleviate some of these concerns.

If your team is currently struggling in their Scrum practice, you may be ready to give up or try something else.  Kanban is becoming quite popular and I'm recently a Kanban convert so I can understand the allure especially having seen it work so fantastically for teams.  However, as a coach, it's my responsibility to find out the root cause of the team's problems with Scrum first.  Sometimes it's a simple change that can get them back on track and well worth the cost savings of another training expense.

To read more, go here.

Original post


Burn Down chart is a primary scrum metric used to track  implementation progress of agile project.

Ideal team Once you see such burn down chart congratulate to the team.

Historical perspective

In recent years, the Agile paradigm is increasingly being adopted by large corporations across the globe. Whatever the reasons for bringing these companies to use Agile, in general it is possible to venture the inference that the vast majority of these companies are seeking some gain in process efficiency, so that in the end, some tangible result will be possible in the financial sphere.

Rightly or wrongly, this amplification of the Agile experience, has been greatly facilitated by Scrum. And since Scrum, somehow, seems to be palatable to executives and managers, we can say that it is a great initial catalyst for the Agile philosophy in the corporate context.

When to Use Scrum for software projects?

Scrum is a lightweight agile process framework used primarily for managing software development.

Scrum is:

I was enjoying a soak in the bath with my partner one Friday evening and the conversation turned to the pros and cons of the Daily Standup/Scrum (I should point out that we both work in the software industry!).  The discussion was around good and bad practice and whether these short meetings always achieve what, in theory, they should ?

The Daily Standup is, in it's simplest form, a meeting where all Team Members state 3 things:

If you are reading this article, probably you know what is Scrum about and for what it is used. Since it invention in 1993 many things has happened, the world has endured several crisis, we were witnesses of sound bankruptcies, merger, acquisitions etc. The 21st century world is constantly moving forward. And, in order to catch the wave and be on the spot of any industry, we should evolve constantly, especially high-intellectual businesses such as Information technologies (IT) companies.