Can Agile work for mainframe projects? A recent coaching client is a small company that wanted to transition their entire development department to Agile. It was an easy sell to the applications people, harder to the maintenance people (until I
Implementing the Definition of Done
In my early Agile days, we did not have a formal Definition of Done. We went by feel. If we were happy with the implementation from a design standpoint, if the story did what the Product Owner asked for, if
Harmony by Song 4
I spent this week at Agile 2009 in Chicago. On the third night, after dinner with friends, I wandered over to the Music stage. There was a fellow playing one of the community guitars. I picked up another and we tried a
Coalescence of Swirling Chaos
I detect a pattern of group behavior. No doubt it is already described elsewhere and has a fancy name. Self-organization, perhaps. The pattern first revealed itself to me at Agile2008 in a workshop on release planning. It came at that
Collaborative Endeavors
Collaboration is fundamental to successful agile projects. A team of people working together toward a shared goal will create a different product than a group of individuals working alone on parallel assignments to be integrated later. Collaboration supplies automatic load
Black Holes and the Buddy System
I recently fell into a black hole. I was creating a demonstration for Cruise Control. When I got to the part about running FitNesse tests via ant, I got all wrapped around the axle with java classpaths. I don’t know