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The Agile Journal publishes original content, articles and regular columns
from industry thought leaders, analysts and software providers on a
wide variety of topics related to agile development best practices and business adoption of agile ideas. Below you will find links directly to our columns
and articles or you may use the search box to scan for a particular
topic or writer.
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The Agile Manager
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 In many
IT organizations, Quality Assurance (QA) staff are not dedicated to projects,
but are "shared resources" supporting many projects
simultaneously. Vast armies of QA staff execute
defined scripts to test and certify an application once development is
complete. Because they lack application
familiarity and test only at the end of the development lifecycle, QA staff
require significant execution support, and the feedback they provide is late in
coming and often inaccurate. By
comparison, on Agile projects, QA staff are dedicated team members.
Testers are co-located with business and development staff. Because they collaborate with the development
team on formulating acceptance criteria, and engage in testing continuously
through development, QA feedback is timely and relevant. In the Agile approach, QA is less of an
encumbrance and more a partner in delivery, increasing the efficiency of the
software development process and the effectiveness of solutions produced.
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From the Editor
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 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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From the Editor
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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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Articles
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 In the agile space the notion of the "well formed team" (WFT) has been discussed.[i][ii] The purpose of a WFT is to have a team thrive in a direction ideally set by business vision. Unfortunately, many teams are forced into survival by organizations that push work through the team matrix, forcing teams to establish themselves as dependencies. The purpose of this article is to firmly establish the notion of WFTs so that guidance patterns for their creation can help organizations to "thrive" instead of "survive." We establish this by shifting focus away from the notion of principles, values, and other heavy language commonly found in the talked about agile arena. Instead we focus on the power of a well connected group of humans working together to address complex product development or organizational needs. A mature WFT is treated as an indivisible unit, a self-organizing, learning engine of effectiveness, not merely a collection of individuals. Such teams rarely emerge by chance; a WFT is often intentionally formed with an understanding of the inherent value of such a team in mind. Agile provides pathways that can increase the chances of such a team forming. There are many pathways to a WFT. Our desire is to elevate the notion of a WFT as being the purpose of these agile pathways and the result of these pathways when applied with care. [iii] Real value from a WFT can be rapidly achieved with proper focus.
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Articles
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 Hello, my name is Maurice Sare. (my friends call me Mo). I am a first level tech lead/engineering manager at Gameonics, Inc, a multinational developer of distributed gaming for PCs and now, it seems, "smart phones." I've only been here a few weeks. Before that, I worked for a company that developed operating systems for smart phones, so I know something about the domain, but I've never worked at the applications layer, before. I run the graphics team here - a long way from that kernel stuff I had been working on. Gameonics has decided to adopt "agile methods across the enterprise" (whatever that is), which is predicted to affect all 1,000 developers over time (including testers, project managers, docs engineering support, etc.) over time. Because of the impact it has had on me, I have decided to share my experiences of a two-day "release planning event" that I just attended. Frankly, it has changed my view of Gameonics and its future, not to mention my understanding of agility.
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Articles
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 Electric Cloud, a leading provider of software production management tools, has always employed an iterative, agile approach to its software development. But like many fast-paced technology companies, a script-driven, manual approach and once-daily integration builds could not scale effectively to support its growth. Through a mix of tools and best practices, Electric Cloud was able to deploy an end-to-end build and change management system with fully automated continuous integration (CI). This new software production system has reduced the time Electric Cloud engineers spend on software production by more than 30 percent and has saved the company an estimated $700,000 per year.
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Articles
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 This article is a collection of conversations that demonstrates some of the tangible and intangible benefits of successful Agile implementation. The idea grew from a corporate engagement to pilot Agile methods in a heavy process-focused organization. We added conversations from other Agile teams which demonstrate characteristics of successful implementation. Some of the conversations were written down during Sprint retrospectives, but others were documented as part of a concerted effort to simply observe some of the behaviors and dialogues of collocated individuals in a real Agile environment.
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The Agile Developer
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 Over the past two years, I've written numerous articles as part of The Agile Developer column. Most of these articles have been focused, specialized pieces explaining an agile practice or team dynamic that helps increase agility. Throughout, I've always shared a small piece of my agile development experience, occasionally cross-referencing the material. Until now, however, I haven't shared insight to how everything fits together.
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From the Editor
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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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Featured Books
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 Lean
Project Management: Eight Principles for Success, is actually a second edition of
the eBook Eight Secrets to Supercharge
your Project with CCPM. It is available both in hardcopy and eBook formats.
Lawrence Leach (www.advanced-projects.com)
is perhaps best known as author of one of the most comprehensive texts on the
subject of Critical Chain
Project Management (CCPM). In this book, subtitled "Combining CCPM and Lean tools to accelerate project results," the
author essentially integrates Lean Thinking into CCPM, along with elements from
the Theory of
Constraints (TOC) and PMBoK/PMI.
Leach calls the result Lean Project
Management or LPM.
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