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From the Editor 
Liz Barnett is the Editor in Chief of the Agile Journal and Principal Analyst at EZ Insight Inc. Previously Liz spent 10 years as a Vice President and Research Analyst at Forrester Research, joining Forrester as a result of its acquisition of Giga Information Group. Liz held management positions at Accenture, PepsiCo, and Atelier Research. She also was the Research Director for the advanced software development and advanced network computing research services at New Science Associates, prior to its acquisition by Gartner Group. Liz earned her B.S. in operations research and industrial engineering at Cornell University.
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Written by Liz Barnett
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Tuesday, 08 April 2008 |
 Agile
teams must be the champions of their own success. Self-promotion is not only
important to building credibility and management support, but it is also a key
component of compliance with corporate governance initiatives. By providing
transparency into projects' status, issues, and risks, Agile teams will deliver
value to IT and business partners and a vehicle for improving non-Agile teams'
management.
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Written by Liz Barnett
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Monday, 10 March 2008 |
Agile teams require processes and tools throughout the lifecycle. This does not mean, however, that they must create these environments from scratch. Nor does it mean that the organization’s legacy processes and tools are irrelevant. Rather, as means to achieve short iterations, Agile teams should – selectively – leverage the organization’s software development investments as a means to jumpstart their projects.
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Written by Liz Barnett
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Monday, 11 February 2008 |
Small steps can lead to big progress, particularly in the case of Agile adoption. Few organizations have the luxury of adopting a new development process in its entirety; legacy processes are too well-entrenched and the cost and risks of change frequently outweigh the short-term benefits. Instead, most organizations considering Agile practices adopt them incrementally, steadily building on their successes and ridding themselves of traditional approaches. Over the course of several projects (measured in months, not years), these teams gain Agile development and management skills and scale their efforts. This article addresses the ways in which companies can adopt Agile practices incrementally, rather than feeling compelled to adopt an Agile process in its entirety.
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Written by Liz Barnett
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Monday, 07 January 2008 |
Without highly-skilled team members, Agile teams will not succeed. This does not mean that organizations must to overhaul or outsource their existing staff. Rather, they must leverage the business and subject matter expertise within existing staff and teams, and provide the necessary technical and process training so that their staff can excel with Agile practices.
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Written by Liz Barnett
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Sunday, 09 December 2007 |
It is great
to end 2007 by looking back at what the Agile community has achieved. Organizations
have made tremendous strides, particularly in the areas of large, distributed Agile
projects and increased customer satisfaction. Competing Agile conferences, new
commercial and open source Agile tools, and a growing number of global Agile
consultancies all attest to the validity and benefits of Agile approaches. But enterprise-wide
Agile initiatives are still few and far between. Some of the issues on the
table for Agile teams are the same issues that have existed for software
developers for the past decade! Agility in software development emphasizes
small, frequent steps and continuous improvement; we can approach Agile
adoption in the same way. Agile approaches stress individuals and interactions,
so my suggestion for the coming year is to hone in on four core goals -- skill
development, incremental practice adoption, leverage of existing assets, and
the ever-present demand for better project visibility -- and see how far
they'll take us towards enterprise Agile adoption.
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Written by Liz Barnett
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Sunday, 11 November 2007 |
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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, why would these answers be so difficult to derive? The answer is actually quite simple. Agile practitioners are themselves quite Agile. The definitions of what they do, when and where they do it, and how well they do, are continually in flux. Sizing a market that can't be bounded is an exercise in futility. Of course, there are those who rely on market data in order to launch or grow their businesses. But for the majority of Agile developers and managers, the data will not be relevant and should certainly not be a barrier to progress. Rather, Agile teams should absorb the wealth of Agile experiences that are being shared in the industry (i.e., qualitative factors) and not waste their time looking for hard data.
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Written by Liz Barnett
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Monday, 08 October 2007 |
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More than any other types of software development teams, success on Agile teams requires collaboration among a broad community. Note that there are really two essential points here: that the Agile community is diverse and that its collaboration is effective. Just as we cite the "better, faster, cheaper" mantra to drive development priorities, so have we talked for years about the benefits of collaboration. Of course, team members must work together to achieve common goals. The greater the collaboration, the more likely that requirements will be met and issues will be resolved in a timely manner. So what is the "so what" with Agile collaboration? With a diverse, distributed community and corporate governance mandates, an Agile team must consider collaboration a key - if not the key - requirement. In this article, we'll explore the 2007 perspective and why an Agile team must think about collaboration differently.
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Latest Issues of Agile Journal
Coming Up - Editorial Calendar
- April 08 - Tackling Tough Topics: Architecture,
Retrospectives, and Testing
- May 08 - Challenges with Distributed Agile
- June 08 - Tools for Successful Agile Projects
- July 08 - Best of the Agile Journal
See the full 2008 Editorial Calendar >
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