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| SPONSORED BY: Rally |
Do You Recognize These 12 Warning Signs Your Agile Adoption is Failing?
Agile methodologies take the heat when they appear to have failed to deliver expected benefits to an organization. In her travels as an Agile Fellow with Rally Software, Jean Tabaka continues to reconfirm that Agile practices don't fail--rather the variations on Agile fail. In this webinar, discover the painfully familiar signs and learn how to: recognize your Agile adoption may be failing; address common problems; quickly get back on track; and regain your enthusiasm for Agile.
Download The 12 Warning Signs Today!
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| MEDIA SPOTLIGHT |
Better Software Conference Video
Mike Cohn's "Agile and the Seven Deadly Sins of Project Management"
Mike Cohn's "Agile and the Seven Deadly Sins of Project Management" Agile approaches to software development promise many advantages: shorter schedules, more productive teams, products that better meet customer expectations, higher quality, and more. In this talk, Mike explains how agile teams achieve these goals by avoiding the seven deadly sins of project management, such as gluttony, sloth, lust, opaqueness, and more. |
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| AGILISM: DEFINING THE MOVEMENT |
Mediation
I make a distinction between mediation, which I view as a tool the agile project manager uses with the team, and negotiation, a tool used with external influencers. As an agile team is designed to be self-organizing and make decisions about how to deliver the product, the agile project manager has the responsibility of helping team members learn how to work together to become a high-performing team capable of achieving consensus. Mediating problem resolution discussions allows the project manager to assist the team in this process without taking ownership of the solution.
From Michele Sliger's "New Focus for Project Managers" |
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| CONTENT POINTER |
Rocks into Gold: Part 3
by Clarke Ching
This short book by Clarke Ching is a "biztech" parable for software developers who want to survive—and then thrive—through the credit crunch. The book is being republished on StickyMinds.com in a four-part series. In part three, when things seem at their very worst, Bob has a "lightbulb moment" that just might save the day. Follow the story as our characters fight to keep their jobs by implementing creative business ideas and management skills taken from agile development. |
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| BOOK REVIEW |
Bridging the Communication Gap
by Gojko Adzic
Reviewed by Mark Cole
Gojko Adzic goes a long way to explain how product owners, business analysts, software developers, and, especially, tester roles fit in agile development. Adzic then points out that the fundamental problem in software projects is based on communication, or lack thereof. Adzic says, "communication is, in fact, what makes or breaks software products." He sees the technical part of building software being taken care of by agile development and managerial processes. However, "the most important issue now is making sure that we know what we need to build" and "this problem is harder than it sounds." |
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| POWERPASS POINTER |
Magazine Archive:
Navigating Conflict
by Lyssa Adkins
On good agile teams, conflict is frequent and viewed as normal. On great agile teams, conflict is constant and welcome as a catapult to high performance. What can we do to help teams chart their course through conflict so that it turns into a constructive force for greatness? |
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| SOFTWARE QUALITY ENGINEERING OFFERS |
STAREAST 2010—Software Testing Analysis & Review Conference
April 25-30, 2010 | Rosen Shingle Creek| Orlando, FL
Agile Testing at STAREAST! Interested in learning more about the role of testing in agile development? Attend STAREAST 2010 and choose from a variety of tutorials and concurrent sessions that explore the skills and methods that will make your agile testing efforts successful.
Special Offer!
*Register by February 5, 2010, and receive a $50 Amazon.com gift card PLUS up to $400 off!*
Click here for more information. |
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FEATURED WEB SEMINAR
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Transform QA and Enable Business Agility
Sponsored by Cognizant
The latest Web seminar brought to you by StickyMinds.com and Better Software magazine. In this presentation, Priya Kalyanasundaram from Cognizant explains how successful QA organizations are leveraging best-in-class practices and techniques to enable business agility. Priya also offers easy and adoptable ways to make your QA organization more effective, efficient, and agile. Join us Thursday, January 28 at 2 p.m. EST.
Register Now! |
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| THE AGILE EXPERIENCE |
Adapting Over Conforming
By Jim Highsmith
There are three key values that guide agile leaders: delivering value over meeting constraints, leading the team over managing tasks, and adapting to change over conforming to plans. Each of these guides leaders' actions in different ways, but possibly the most difficult for leaders to embrace is adapting. It sounds easy on the surface, but leaders and managers are steeped in a long tradition of conforming to plans. The following is an excerpt from chapter 4 of Agile Project Management that focuses on adapting to change.
***
A traditional project manager focuses on following the plan with minimal changes, whereas an agile leader focuses on adapting successfully to inevitable changes.
Traditional managers view the plan as the goal, whereas agile leaders view customer value as the goal. If you doubt the former, just look at the definition of "success" from the Standish Group, which has published success (and failure) rates of software projects over a long period of time. Success, per the Standish Group is "the project is completed on time and on budget, with all the features and functions originally specified" Standish Group Chaos Reports This is not a value-based definition but a constraint-based one. Using this definition, then, managers focus on following the plan with minimal changes.
When customer value and quality are the goals, then a plan becomes a means to achieve those goals, not the goal itself. The constraints embedded in those plans are still important. They still guide the project. We still want to understand variations from the plans, but—and this is a big but—plans are not sacrosanct. They are meant to be flexible; they are meant to be guides, not straitjackets.
Both traditional and agile leaders plan, and both spend a fair amount of time planning. But they view plans in radically different ways. They both believe in plans as baselines, but traditional managers are constantly trying to "correct" actual results to that baseline. In the PMBOK (The Project Management Institute's Project Management Body of Knowledge), for example, the relevant activity is described as “corrective action” to guide the team back to the plan. In agile project management, we use "adaptive action" to describe which course of action to take (and one of those actions may be to correct to the plan).
The ability to respond to change drives competitive advantage. Think of the possibilities (not the problems) of being able to release a new version of a product weekly. Think of the competitive advantage of being able to package features so customers feel they have software specifically customized for them (and the cost to maintain the software remains low).
Teams must adapt, but they can't lose track of the ultimate goals of the project. Teams should constantly evaluate progress, whether adapting or anticipating, by asking these four questions:
- Is value, in the form of a releasable product, being delivered?
- Is the quality goal of building a reliable, adaptable product being met?
- Is the project progressing satisfactorily within acceptable constraints?
- Is the team adapting effectively to changes imposed by management, customers, or technology?
The dictionary defines "change" as "To cause to be different, to give a completely different form or appearance to." It defines "adapt" as "To make suitable to or fit for a specific use or situation." Changing and adapting are not the same, and the difference between them is important. There is no goal inherent in change—as the quip says, "stuff happens." Adaptation, on the other hand, is directed towards a goal (suitability). Change is mindless; adaptation is mindful. Adaptation can be considered a mindful response to change.
But change is hard. Although agile values tell us that responding to change is more important than following a plan and that embracing rather than resisting change leads to better products, working in a high-change environment can be nerve-wracking for team members. Exploration is difficult; it raises anxiety, trepidation, and sometimes even a little fear. Agile project leaders need to encourage and inspire team members to work through the difficulties of a high-change environment.
***
This article is an excerpt from the new 2nd ed. of Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products, authored by Jim Highsmith, published by Addison-Wesley Professional, July 2009, ISBN 0321658396, Copyright 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. For more info and a complete table of contents, please visit the publisher's site.
Visit the Iterations Archive to find out what you may have missed in past issues.
to find out what you may have missed in past issues.to find out what you may have missed in past issues.to find out what you may have missed in past issues.Visit the to find out what you may have missed in past issues. |
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| ADVERTISEMENT |
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Iterations is an extension of StickyMinds.com and Better Software magazine—and a reminder that your "online resource for building better software" is just a click away at www.StickyMinds.com |
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