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• Mike Cohn in town

  Mike Cohn , author of User Stories Applied and Agile Estimation and Planning , is speaking tomorrow night as a part of Agile Austin's Distinguished Speaker Series. The topic is "Succeeding with Agile: A Guide to Transitioning" , with the... Posted May 07 2008, 07:26 AM by bogardj with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: Agile

• Reacting to change

  When dealing with the possibility of change in requirements in the middle of development, I've generally seen three reactions: Explicitly reject the possibility Ignore it completely, hope it goes away Accept and embrace it Of these three, only two... Posted Apr 07 2008, 08:11 PM by bogardj with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: Agile

• Is your process dead?

  Two of the conventional criteria for exhibiting life are: Adaptation Response to stimuli Together these combine into the ability to respond to outside forces. So how do we know if your process is dead? If your team or organization: Does not elicit feedback... Posted Mar 20 2008, 07:31 PM by bogardj with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Agile

• Letting the customer drive the demo

  At the end of an iteration, we have a demo to the customer (and any interested stakeholders) of functionality delivered in that iteration. Something I hadn't tried until recently was letting a user or customer drive the demo. There were some minor... Posted Mar 02 2008, 10:01 AM by bogardj with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: Agile

• Stories, requirements, and language

  The negotiation between client and team on what gets delivered is the toughest aspect of software development that I've encountered. Something that's eased this aspect for me is adopting User Stories and abandoning "Function Requirements"... Posted Feb 06 2008, 09:24 AM by bogardj with | with 6 comment(s) Filed under: Agile

• Flexibility and control

  At our recent Headspring .NET Boot Camp , Jeffrey and I had an interesting conversation with a couple of attendees whose company was considering an all-out VSTS love fest. Already using TFS source control, the company was looking at using the Work Item... Posted Feb 04 2008, 09:02 PM by bogardj with | with 7 comment(s) Filed under: Agile

• Best tool for the job

  I'm not sure if this is a trap, but I find myself doing this more and more. Let's say you have a short (less than 2 weeks) project to work on, and maybe it's for a church website or something similar. Non-business critical, but the customer... Posted Jan 28 2008, 08:18 AM by bogardj with | with 19 comment(s) Filed under: Agile, Tools

• More on Scrummerfall

  A couple of comments have led me to think that I didn't explain what it is. Let's review waterfall phases: Requirements specifications Design Implementation Integration Testing Deployment Each of these has a gated exit, such that to exit one phase... Posted Jan 09 2008, 04:05 PM by bogardj with | with no comments Filed under: Agile

• For the record

  This is not Scrum: Planning Release planning Backlog creation Architecture and high-level design Development sprints Design Code Test Conclusion System integration System test Release This is Scrummerfall , where we still do a phase-based waterfall model... Posted Jan 08 2008, 04:38 PM by bogardj with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Agile

• Stop the madness

  I've been extending a legacy codebase lately to make it a bit more testable, and a few small, bad decisions have slowed my progress immensely. One decision isn't bad in and of itself, but a small bad decision multiplied a hundred times leads to... Posted Nov 20 2007, 05:01 PM by bogardj with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: Agile, Legacy Code, Testing

• Bizarro-tive development

  Anyone familiar with Superman also knows about Bizarro , a doppelganger of Superman. Bizarro looks like Superman, but is opposite in every way. Instead of saving people, he kills them. Instead of eloquent speech, he talks like Tarzan. He's not from... Posted Oct 31 2007, 01:57 PM by bogardj with | with 6 comment(s) Filed under: Agile

• Myth of the isolated production fix

  While in WCF training this week, I heard once again the argument why config files are great - your IT staff can change them without a recompilation. Sounds great right? But what exactly does this imply? Sure, there's no recompilation, but do the changes... Posted Oct 18 2007, 08:10 AM by bogardj with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Agile

• Dialing up quality

  This post was originally published here . Quality is not a light switch, it can't be flipped on overnight, or even in six months. Although the term "quality" differs from person to person, I rather like James Shore's description of Quality... Posted Oct 12 2007, 04:30 PM by bogardj with | with no comments Filed under: Agile, Misc

• Daily routine with continuous integration

  This post was originally published here . I chuckled quite a bit after reading the Top 5 Signs of Discontinuous Integration , though I think "dysfunctional integration" is a better word. So what's my routine? Start of the day Check if build... Posted Oct 03 2007, 01:47 PM by bogardj with | with no comments Filed under: Agile

• Values over vendors

  This post was originally published here . Many times when I start explaining Scrum or Agile for the first time, one of the first questions I get asked is "what tool do I use for <project function>"? I fully understand needing to standardize... Posted Sep 28 2007, 01:31 PM by bogardj with | with no comments Filed under: Agile, Misc