Agile

CI Factory

Steve Bargelt — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 21:21:00 GMT

Wow. Having created a few CI systems in the past all I can say is that this looks awesome. I'll have to read up on it over the weekend to see if I can use it at home.

CI Factory is a canned Continuous Integration(CI) server and installation script. Adherence to a standard development workspace allows for this product to build most any project out of the box. It uses a plugin architecture. For more information on what it is and how it works see the introduction. If you are ready to get start using it download it and read the install document. You should be able to get a build server up and running in no time.

[via: jay.flowers - CI Factory]

It's Not Just Standing Up

Steve Bargelt — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:45:00 GMT

The daily stand-up meeting is simple to describe: the whole team meets every day for a quick status update. This short definition does not really tell you the subtle details that distinguish a good stand-up from a bad one.
People who have experienced good stand-ups will generally know what can be done when things aren't working well. This capability is obviously less likely for people with limited experience to reflect on. I've written this paper as an attempt to partly compensate for inexperience by describing the benefits and consequences of common practices for daily stand-ups. These patterns of stand-ups are intended to help direct the experimentation and adjustment of new practitioners as well as provide points of reflection to experienced practitioners.

Source: It's Not Just Standing Up

Evaluating Agile / Scrum Project Applications

Steve Bargelt — Fri, 19 May 2006 00:20:00 GMT

Yes I’ve been evaluating agile project tracking apps / solutions. Kind of painful to tell the truth. One major problem I have is that my team is not truly XP or Scrum – we are pretty agile but we do (for various regulatory purposes) insert non-agile principles into our processes. I often joke that we are more nimble than agile. I think our team does a serious kick-ass job with what we have to work it is sometimes hard to squeeze our process into a tool meant for XP or Scrum. The other problem is complexity of setup – quite a few packages are hosted (yuk) or require complex DB setups. All want to do is measure velocity and burn-down.

I’ve downloaded, played with or otherwise looked at:
http://danube.com/scrumworks
http://www.extremeplanner.com/
http://www.targetprocess.com/overview.asp
http://www.versionone.net/products.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=81daab54-6701-4fbc-b3d0-7f261383f371&DisplayLang=en
The MSFT solution is interesting… but requires Project so immediately I hate it. I did play with it during 6.0 and it seemed to work – but Project + Scrum – no thanks.

What really blows me away is the lack of “simple” tools. The agile manifesto even states “Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.” Which is often translated to “do the simplest thing that could possibly work” – which IMHO is (at least until we get Team Foundation Server!) is a simple spreadsheet in Excel (with a burn-down chart). With that in mind it seems that a google search for agile spreadsheet would yield a ton of results… but no all of the results are about developing spreadsheets using an agile methodology (huh? Ewww.)

I have found one tool that I am planning on using for pour next release (http://www.scrumalliance.org/index.php/scrum_alliance/for_everyone/resources/tools/scrum_tools/scrum_tracking_spreadsheet_from_clay_ver_valen) that isn’t much different than the sheet I had created – except Clay is better with Excel than I am so I like his better!

ScrumWorks also seems promising but the learning curve is more than I want to deal with. I may use it in parallel with Clay’s spreadsheet(s) on our next release in hopes of “getting it” for our next release. By the way – hey Danube – if you are listening – I downloaded your tool months ago but was turned off by the fact that Scrumworks would not install into my Program Files directory structure since it contains a space. Listen guys – “Program Files” has contained a space since 1995. That’s 11 years. It scared me the first time I went to install your app so I cancelled out of setup and deleted the download. It was only on the insistence of a long-time friend that I finally decided that I’d let it slide.

A Metric Leading to Agility

Steve Bargelt — Fri, 19 May 2006 00:03:00 GMT

[from this post: A Metric Leading to Agility]

Nearly every metric can be perverted, since up- and down-ticks in the metric can come from good or bad causes. Teams driven by metrics often game the metrics rather than deliver useful software. Ask the team to deliver and measure Running Tested Features, week in and week out, over the course of the entire project. Keeping this single metric looking good demands that a team become both agile and productive.

Selenium: Web-based Acceptance Testing Done Right?

Steve Bargelt — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 11:41:00 GMT

Dave Churchville writes:

[from this post: Agile Project Planning: Web-based Acceptance Testing Done Right]

The Selenium project (sponsored by ThoughtWorks) has been quietly making an in-browser automated testing facility. It just went from interesting to compelling with the introduction of Selenium IDE, a free Firefox extension that lets you record, script, save and execute in-browser acceptance tests.

This is exciting… I’ll have to check it out soon!

(Tags: agile, testing, Selenium)

Project 2003 Tool: Scrum Solution Starter

Steve Bargelt — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 11:41:00 GMT

Project? Yuk! I have not had a chance to look at this yet – so this is not a validation of the content. I mostly just wanted to blog the link for future reference.

[from this page: Download details: Project 2003 Tool: Scrum Solution Starter]

Project 2003 Tool: Scrum Solution Starter
Brief Description
The download includes the project template and source code for the COM add-in for Microsoft® Office Project Professional 2003 or Project Standard 2003 that enables the Scrum methodology of Agile project management and graphical analysis in Microsoft Office Excel®.

Waterfall 2006 - International Conference on Sequential Development

Steve Bargelt — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 00:31:00 GMT

This site is AWESOME!

[from this post: Waterfall 2006 - International Conference on Sequential Development]

After years of being disparaged by some in the software development community, the waterfall process is back with a vengeance. You've always known a good waterfall-based process is the right way to develop software projects. Come to the Waterfall 2006 conference and see how a sequential development process can benefit your next project. Learn how slow, deliberate handoffs (with signatures!) between groups can slow the rate of change on any project so that development teams have more time to spend on anticipating user needs through big, upfront design.

On Be(come)ing Agile: 5 stumbling blocks for new corporate agile projects

Steve Bargelt — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 03:55:00 GMT

Nice article on things that can trip up your agile efforts.

[via: On Be(come)ing Agile: 5 stumbling blocks for new corporate agile projects]

5 stumbling blocks for new corporate agile projects
A colleague and I were talking today about an organization that's getting started with Agile. This organization is struggling because they're missing many of the basic building blocks that Agile techniques leverage. Since Agile is a great way to reduce waste, improve quality, and increase throughput, many large IT shops are trying to adopt the techniques. But there are several "stumbling blocks" that can make it really hard to get off on the right foot with agile development.

Microsoft does not understand TDD. Surprised?

Steve Bargelt — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 14:31:00 GMT

Awesome article on Roy Osherove’s blog on the failure of Microsoft to understand Test Driven Development.

Microsoft needs to remove this article from MSDN. Period. It is a huge step in the wrong direction. It makes me think that the only reason Microsoft included their Quality Tools in VSTS was to try to squash open-source and otherwise free tools like NUnit and TestDriven.net. This has solidified my decision to never use VSTS and has served as a stern reminder to always sip the Kool-Aid before gulping it down.

[via: ISerializable – Roy Osherove's Blog]

Microsoft fails miserably to explain or promote Test Driven Development in Team System

Microsoft publishes it's own version of Guidelines for Test-Driven Development article, and seems to miss the point completely. If you want to learn what TDD really is, do not read that article, as it will confuse and lead you in the wrong direction. Just Google for it and you'll find lots of very good simple explanations, and guidelines for writing unit tests correctly to make them last.

Dilbert gets it...

Steve Bargelt — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 11:59:00 GMT

Technorati Tags: Dilbert, agile, software development