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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
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Articles
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 As Agile becomes better known, many troubled teams are deciding to adopt Agile practices to help fix their problems. Most clients seeking our help in Agile adoption want to start by pursuing process and tools. The more dysfunctional their teams, the less tolerance they have for focusing on individuals and their interactions. We have found that the most effective teams- those that show a tremendous improvement in productivity and value to their organizations - have individual team members who take ownership, act responsibly, and are disciplined in recognizing and responding to change at a personal level. These individuals adopt Agile practices because they have made a conscious decision to do so. They do what it takes to make things work. In this article we suggest that a team that has individual members that freely commit to the way they work and then take personal responsibility are able to adopt Agile practices that significantly improve their productivity and increase the value they give the organization.
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From the Editor
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This summer, VersionOne and the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN) co-sponsored the 2nd Annual 'State of Agile Development' Survey. Almost 1,700 respondents from 71 countries shared their companies' experiences using of Agile methods and the challenges that they face with future adoption. Teams have begun to quantify the value that their projects have achieved and are steadily expanding the types of Agile practices and tools that they use. IT metrics are well-understood. Business metrics must also play a role, but few were included in the scope of this survey.
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From the Editor
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 Instead of asking "why," companies are asking "why not?" use Agile approaches outside of the software development organization. In this time of hyper-changing businesses and global competition, pragmatism is essential. Many Agile practices lend themselves to solving challenging problems, regardless of the context. This is not to say that Agile processes are the next silver bullet; we know that this will never be true. But it is encouraging to see how and where Agile practices are being adopted in organizations that have nothing to do with software development.
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 These days, most people associate the word "agile" with "software development." However, people are applying the basic ideas of agile methods outside this type of work. Here are three stories of agile methods used in situations that are not in the context of software development. They illustrate how agile methods can be stretched to serve well in other contexts. From these and other examples, we have come to understand that agile methods consist of seven core practices, regardless of the problem domain: self-organizing team, deliver frequently, plan to learn, communicate powerfully, quality is not negotiable, measure value, and clear the path.
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The Agile Manager
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 When successfully adopted, Agile practices create hyper-efficient application development teams capable of regular, and even aggressive, delivery of business value. While an exciting prospect for developers, there will not be much business impact if the rest of the IT organization, and indeed the business itself, can't make use of this new-found efficiency. Staffing and resource decisions need to be made efficiently, requirements captured quickly, testing and production environments instantiated, subject-matter experts made available, and business processes changed or application development agility will be wasted. The drive toward greater responsiveness involves all aspects of IT as well as business partners and corporate practices.
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A number of years ago we predicted that by 2007 or 2008 agile adoption would be on the rise and that the agile community would be in need for a structured approach to help it with its agile adoption efforts. As a result, we invested time, effort, and money to develop an efficient and effective approach to guide and assist those who want to adopt agile practices. Last month we started to see our prediction become a reality when the tentative program for the Agile 2007 conference was posted online. The program contained more than ten sessions focusing solely on the issue of agile adoption, either implicitly or explicitly. This indicates, at least to us, that more and more organizations want to know how to adopt agile practices. Well, if your organization is starting the journey of adopting agile practices, we are certain that the Agile Adoption Framework will help you. The Agile Adoption Framework is a model that provides organizations aspiring to adopt agile practices with structured guidance and assistance. The framework addresses some of the common challenges of agile adoption using a unique and efficient approach.
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A phrase heard often in Agile discussions is "let the product lead." Applied correctly, these four words powerfully focus an Agile team's energy directly on work that provides the highest business value. Traditional engineering practices that focus on process often divert a technology team's energy away from quick delivery of business value, and toward design of infrastructure and architecture. Deep focus on technology decisions breaks the line-of-sight with business goals, creates opportunities for over-engineering, and requires complex tracing activities which ultimately slow the process. By focusing on implementing working software quickly, Agile methodologies provide feedback loops to constrain the end result so that no effort is wasted on unneeded features or over-engineered architectures and frameworks. By quickly delivering working software, the Agile approach makes line-of-sight with overall business goals achievable and visible. This article will spotlight best practices which result in an Agile team keeping its "eye on the prize" where the prize is a pleased customer, receiving high-quality capabilities delivered quickly in prioritized small increments.
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Articles
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A phrase heard often in Agile discussions is "let the product lead." Applied correctly, these four words powerfully focus an Agile team's energy directly on work that provides the highest business value. Traditional engineering practices that focus on process often divert a technology team's energy away from quick delivery of business value, and toward design of infrastructure and architecture. Deep focus on technology decisions breaks the line-of-sight with business goals, creates opportunities for over-engineering, and requires complex tracing activities which ultimately slow the process. By focusing on implementing working software quickly, Agile methodologies provide feedback loops to constrain the end result so that no effort is wasted on unneeded features or over-engineered architectures and frameworks. By quickly delivering working software, the Agile approach makes line-of-sight with overall business goals achievable and visible. This article will spotlight best practices which result in an Agile team keeping its "eye on the prize" where the prize is a pleased customer, receiving high-quality capabilities delivered quickly in prioritized small increments.
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Featured Books
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 by Peter Middleton and James Sutton
Lean Software Strategies seems to be one of the first books specifically about applying Lean principles and techniques to software development that is not written by the Poppendiecks. When the book first came out, I admit I was put off by several unfavorable reviews at Amazon.com. When I later learned it won the 2007 Shingo prize for excellence in manufacturing research, and saw Lisa Crispin's review at StickyMinds, I decided to give it a second look. I'm glad I did!
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Changing Times
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 An old "I Love Lucy" episode shows Lucy and Ethel working at a candy factory. Their job is to take pieces of candy off a conveyer belt and put them in packages. At first everything goes well. Lucy and Ethel have this candy packaging thing down pat. Alas, things start to change. The conveyer belt sends out candy faster and faster. At first Lucy and Ethel try to cope. They try to work faster. Then their work gets sloppy. Finally, rather than packaging the candy at all, they resort to throwing it away, or even eating it. A quick leap of the imagination would show retailers struggling to get the additional candy packages on the shelf, customers refusing to eat more candy just because there happens to be more available, and the factory management struggling to get their supply chain responsive to the faster manufacturing process.
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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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