Agile Journal

Agile Journal is an online magazine and e-newsletter focused on providing readers with the need-to-know information and resources they need to develop software for an agile business. For over three years Agile Journal has delivered thought leadership and pragmatic advice from a wide range of industry experts, as well as direct feedback from hands-on developers and project managers.

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Valuable Agile Practices - Oct 2008
october-08-valuablesmallI am very excited about this month’s issue of the Agile Journal – there are several articles that have the potential to truly change the way you view and practice Agile development.  Our contributors have provided an excellent variety of articles that cover topics as varied as refactoring, lean theory, the basics of an iteration, and understanding team dynamics.
   
What distinguishes successful Agile teams from ones that are mediocre?  That is one of our biggest questions today.  In this issue we have two articles that address that question head-on:  David West starts us off with Silver Bullets, Theory, and Agility where he makes a bold claim – that agility can be a silver bullet.  This article ties together theories from giants in software development – namely Fred Brooks and Peter Naur – to make a case of why software development is hard and how agile development can solve this problem each and every time when used correctly.  And Joseph Pelrine, in the first part of a two-part book excerpt: Of Social Networks and Agile Teams, introduces us to social network analysis, to better understand how people function in groups.  According to Joseph, this theory will allow us to understand the human dynamics and social structures that underpin successful Agile teams and transformations.

Lyssa Adkins, in 7 Agile Coach Failure Modes, categorizes several common dysfunctions in an Agile coach that reduce their chances for helping a team be successful.  Many of her insights will be very useful to aspiring as well as seasoned Agile coaches and ScrumMasters.  Allan Kelly describes how the game has changed with Agile adoption as managers take the lead in Agile transformations instead of developers.  Allan helps the manager faced with a cynical team that expects Agile to be yet another fad in The New Challenge in Agile Adoption.

Sean Sheehan continues with part 2 of Writing Shippable Code where he questions and redefines the current definition of value in the Lean community and shows us how the current definition can be detrimental to software development by increasing the risks of software failure.

Steve Berczuk takes us back to basics by delving into the details of one of the most important Agile practices – iterations.  He describes several common road-blocks and how to avoid them that those new to Agile may encounter. 

Mario Moreira, in Infrastructure Refactoring, details what a team that is changing to Agile development with an existing infrastructure built to support traditional software development methods can do to incrementally reduce the friction with their old infrastructure.

Madu Ratnayake and Valarmathy Rangasamy, take a look at making Agile offshoring successful in Integrating Agile Practices With a Global Delivery Model.  They explain how their organization’s successes are based on tailoring the set of practices to the given context and performing a suitability assessment before embarking on an offshore project that uses Agile development techniques.

I hope you will find the articles in this issue as thought-provoking and useful as I do.

Amr Elssamadisy
Editor in Chief
Agile Journal
Featured articles
Silver Bullets, Theory, and Agility
Software isn't hard, thinking is hard!"The essence of a software entity is a construct of interlocking concepts ... I believe the hard part of building software to be the specification, design, and testing of this conceptual construct ..."Frederick P. Brooks Jr.Brooks suggests that the creation of a conceptual construct is the "irreducible essence" of software. Four properties contribute to the difficulty of creating such a construct: complexity, conformity, changeability, and invisibility.
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Of social networks and Agile teams - Part I
All organizations have a formal network of relationships between their employees, which defines their interaction. These formal networks really aren't networks, they're hierarchies of knowledge and power. Explicitly the hierarchy is one of power; implicitly this is manipulated by access to information. Information is passed on or not passed on selectively. Think about it: do you tell your boss everything? Do you really think he tells you everything? Legitimate power, based on rank, is expressed ...
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Seven Agile Coach Failure Modes
Agile Coaches have a big job.  "Support the team but not too much and not too little." "Be available but don't be overbearing." "Offer ideas but don't get too involved." "Coach, don't manage." All this advice can be confusing, even contradictory.  No wonder Agile Coaches fall into less-than-desirable behaviors as they try out new things to help teams.  The problem is that these behaviors can subtly undermine a team's ability to organize, improve and, eventually, reach high-performance....
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More articles...
The New Challenge in Agile Adoption
The good news is: Agile is going mainstream; it is not some fad nor is it just for unwashed coders.  Managers get it.  The not so good news is: this means the approach to introducing Agile needs to change. Agile Software Development started at the code face.  Kent Beck's original Extreme Programming had little - if anything - to say about the wider organization and the role of management.  Developers could - and did - just adopt practices like test driven development and stand-up meetings. ...
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Writing Shippable Code (Part Two) Writing Shippable Code (Part Two)
The first part of this article introduced the concept that developing a complex software system was like going on a journey. I contrasted how we plan our journeys through the use of route planning systems against that of an agile journey which is more like using a GPS in our car. I also introduced the idea that we only know when we have reached our journeys end (being completely done) when we have demonstrated that we have fully satisfied the expectations of the customer, our criteria for a succ...
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Iterations Iterations
Iteration is at the heart of agile development practices. In an agile project you do something, measure your progress, and then use the feedback from the measurement to figure out what to do next. This cycle allows you to follow the Agile Manifesto value Responding to change over following a plan by providing for points in time where you can measure your progress at the project level. Whether your approach to agile is project-focused like Scrum or development-focused, like extreme programming, i...
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Infrastructure Refactoring Infrastructure Refactoring
Early implementations of Agile focused on brand new or newer product-lines. More recently, Agile is gaining acceptance in the legacy product space where the project teams are moving away from their company's traditional (a.k.a., waterfall) methodology and moving toward an Agile approach. In these cases, the project team that begins to use Agile methods are typically inheriting an existing infrastructure that was constructed for a phased (a.k.a., waterfall) approach. ...
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Integrating Agile Practices With a Global Delivery Model Integrating Agile Practices With a Global Delivery Model
Agile development is getting increased attention from IT professionals all over the world. Agile practices help to overcome many of the challenges in traditional approaches with its emphasis on lightweight processes, flexibility to deal with changing business priorities, short delivery cycles, higher team collaboration, and a host of other benefits. Agile offers a fresh approach to businesses seeking greater agility in their software projects. ...
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