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Agile Nuts and Bolts
Volume 2 Number 10 - November 2007
As they say, the devil is in the details. While it is easy to promote the benefits of Agile development, it is not until you get to work that you appreciate the subtleties of implementing certain Agile practices and the impact they can have on your environment. This month’s Agile Journal contributors share some “nuts and bolts” – discussions on specific practices or concepts that may benefit Agile teams.
Terminology itself it important. Daryl Kulak argues that we need to start by burying the term “software engineering.” Designing and developing software in a world of constant change is the antithesis of a structured engineering environment. Changing that mindset is a key success factor.
From the developers’ perspective, each Agile practice presents opportunities and some nuances. Ross Pettit dispels some popular myths surrounding unit testing, story-based requirements gathering, and pair programming. And Kirk Knoernschild discusses the subtle yet significant ways to leverage continuous integration and help mitigate project risk.
From an organizational perspective, teams have acknowledged that Agile development is not business as usual. Roles and responsibilities must change, particularly when interacting with non-IT project participants. Lance Young offers some best practices for eliciting and meeting customer commitments. Drilling down into one specific role, the business analyst, Chuck Suscheck and Michael York suggest the key tasks and responsibilities that are necessary for Agile project success.
We invite our readers to share their experiences with the Agile Journal community and give us feedback on the Agile Journal’s contents. Our site has also expanded to include a number of Agile blogs, forums, and valuable resources for Agile teams. If you’d like to contribute an article on an upcoming topic, go to the “Letters to the Editor” in the forum at AgileJournal.com and send us your ideas.
Liz Barnett
Editor in Chief
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Life Goes On Without Agile Market Data
Over the past few years, I've been asked repeatedly for market data on Agile development. How big is the Agile market? What is its potential size? What is the penetration of Agile processes? Unfortunately, my response has been and still remains the same: "No one really knows, and if you find someone purporting to have the data, don't trust it." With so many supporters in the IT, software vendor, and consulting communities, many of whom would benefit from this data, wh...
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Let's Bury the Term Software Engineering
Software
engineering is not an accurate way to describe what software designers and
developers do. We create software in an environment that is constantly changing
to fulfill the expectations of businesspeople who aren't exactly sure what they
want. Does that sound like engineering? As I'll discuss in this article, physical
engineers deal with the universal laws of physics, but software designers and developers
deal with unrelenting change. By using the word engineering to describe...
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Mythical Agile Shortcuts
Agile
practices such as unit testing, story-based requirements gathering, and pairing
are intuitively appealing ways to achieve higher quality and mitigate risk of
change. At first glance, they even seem
relatively easy to execute: how hard can it be for two people to collaborate,
write small business-oriented requirements, and code tests with each bit of
software? Executing Agile practices can
be quite difficult to perform. For one
thing, they make people uncomfortable...
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 | The Agile Success Factor: Continuous Integration
Agile has grown
and evolved from a very simple developer centric process defined by Extreme
Programming to a complex product brand that enterprises are using to bring more
resiliency to governance programs, enterprise architecture initiatives, and
application portfolio management efforts. But at its roots, there remains a key
fundamental aspect that defines the essence of agility on the software
development project. Continuous Integration is a strategy where software is
integrated and bui...
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 | Agile Techniques for Meeting Customer Commitments
Agile teams struggle with successfully applying Agile approaches to project planning and delivery. In particular, an area that needs to be explored is negotiating customer commitments within an Agile process. Common to Agile processes is delivering customer value in short cycles and small increments. Customer commitments are made for each increment and meeting these small commitments early in the project will build the trust that is crucial in order for Agile to be successful.&...
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 | Agile Development Teams Need Business Analysts
During the past few years there has been a trend developing in the software industry toward agile development processes. Unfortunately for the business analyst (BA), much of the literature regarding agile development focuses on the perspective of the developer, largely ignoring the role of the business analyst. BAs play a key role capturing requirements on large, software-intensive projects. Yet agile methodology emphasizes face-to-face communication over written documentation. Teams are c...
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 | FEATURED BOOK: Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management - by Johanna Rothman
Whether
your projects and teams are Agile, apathetic, or just plain asleep, Johanna Rothman's
Manage It! is your pragmatic,
no-nonsense guide to deftly dealing with management reality when your project's
stakeholders are clinging to project fantasy. This is yet another top notch
book from both Johanna Rothman and the Pragmatic Programmer's Bookshelf. Rothman's
previous books Behind Closed
Doors: Secrets of Great Management
(with Esther Derby), and Hiring the
Best Knowled...
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Latest Issues of Agile Journal
Coming Up - Editorial Calendar
- August 13 - Quality Agile Development
- September 10 - Agile News
- October 08 - Valuable Agile Practices
- November 12 - Introducing Agile to the Organization
- December 10 - The State of the Agile Community
See the full 2008 Editorial Calendar >
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