Posted by Niklas Odding around lunchtime: January 26th, 2011
This blog is the second of a series of blogs in which I will examine the role of architects in Scrum. Last week I started with the forgotten questions of Scrum. In this blog I will look in more detail to the Agile Manifesto and the agile values.
Architects and the agile values
Most of the literature concerning the role of architects in an agile context focuses on the Agile flow itself and how architects can avoid disturbing that flow. Mike Cohn, in his book “succeeding with agile” makes the distinction between coding & non-coding architects. In where he states that the coding architects will have less trouble finding their new role in de Agile development process.
An architect within a team has to be able to code himself. He is a team member, who has more experience in structuring the application being build compared to other team members. By using that experience he can add value to the team. Scrum has no particular role for non-coding architects. The question rises if this is totally true. (more…)
Posted by Geert Bossuyt at around evening time: January 17th, 2011
Just like the Agile Manifesto was a shock 10 years ago, the MoreAgile Manifesto creates some shock effects now.
Responsibility is scary, Business value is undefined, partnership feels impossible and change is kind of accepted but not loved.
- Over the next coming years expert professionals will become very rare, so employers will have to make the difference by creating the best possible workplace. Part of this will be that responsibility embraces empowerment and that the freedom that comes with this will be the only thing wanted by this professionals.
- Business Value is already important today, however difficult to measure. The Lean and SixSigma movements are creating a setting where not measuring value is not done. This expertise will be the a good basis to use as a logical measurement tool for success in software delivery.
- Endusers are rapidly maturing into strong groups with an opinion that matters. Social media will help them to raise their voice. Service companies and software suppliers will have no other option but to deliver services in partnership to catch up with the high demands from the market.
- The speed of change will go up for another couple of decades. Sprints of 2 weeks are far to long, waiting to see something in production that is already finished will no longer be accepted. Just responding to change will simply not be enough. We have to love change.
It took us 10 years to create a world where the ideas of the Agile Manifesto are accepted and commonly used. Likewise, MoreAgile is not something we will easily achieve. The ideas are bolt and a lot of things need to change before we can really work MoreAgile.
Posted by Erwin van der Koogh in the wee hours: January 11th, 2011
This year I spend New Year’s Eve at the beach near the small village of Marsa Alam in Egypt. The point of the holiday was to go scuba diving for a week on some of the best reefs in the world in the Red Sea.
What I learned during this week is just how powerful stories are. And that they do not need to be big or elaborate. Let me explain.
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Posted by Jarl Meijer in the early evening: January 6th, 2011
2010 has ended and a new year has begun. 2010 offered us a lot of learning opportunities. It was a good year for the Agile community in the Netherlands and in the world. We saw more and more big corporations embrace Agile methodologies and put serious effort into making it work for them, mostly as a project methodology. ‘Agile adoption’ was THE 2010 word, maybe on par with ‘Wikileak’. So what do we think will be hot in 2011?
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Posted by Wilfred Springer in the late afternoon: January 6th, 2011
I was listening to the JavaPosse a minute ago. Dick Wall is saying that he figures there is never going to be anything as big as Java ever again.
A couple of weeks ago, I overheard a discussion between a couple of people involved in the music business. They concluded that the days of the megastars are officially over; they didn’t think there would ever be another artist rising to the same levels of stardom as Madonna, Elvis, Michael Jackson or the Beatles.
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Posted by Geert Bossuyt around lunchtime: December 23rd, 2010
We encounter possibilities to focus more on effectiveness by working Agile and learning from that. Based upon our experience we value :
Teamwork & responsibility over Individuals and Interaction
Deliver Value over Working software
Partnership elaboration over Customer collaboration
Embrace change over Respond to Change
While we value the Agile Manifesto, we state that MoreAgile is more Agile.
Posted by Jarl Meijer just before lunchtime: December 13th, 2010
The transition to the Agile way of working is more than a process change. It requires a different way of interaction and behavior and a different mindset. In a large (a little less than 200 people) Agile Implementation endeavor we organized an Agile Mindset session to explain Agile principles and to push the Agile teams away from the comfort of their traditional patterns.
Getting on the Agile track successfully… (more…)
Posted by Gero Vermaas in the early afternoon: December 1st, 2010
At the start of your career your backpack with is filled with lots of theory and as your career progresses more and more experience get’s thrown in, perfect. At some point you won’t be learning new things if you keep doing the same role. That’s why people take up different roles and grow in a team. However, the goal of the team’s you’re in often remains similar: develop system X that realizes user stories Y and Z. Many people do lots of roles, but all on the ‘producing’ side of the IT. I personally experienced the value of jumping to (one of) the other side(s) for a period of time. After returning to my original role I became much more effective.
Posted by Geert Bossuyt in the late afternoon: November 28th, 2010
Scrum and Agile are not synonyms. Scrum describes a process ( a set of activities) but its only Agile when you do this activities in an Agile mindset.
You can easily be Agile without using Scrum, and it’s definitely possible to do Scrum in a way that is not Agile.
Having a good metaphor can help speed up the understanding.
If Scrum is like riding a bike, then Agile would be the sense of balance.
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Posted by Vincent Partington mid-afternoon: October 12th, 2010
Since make was introduced in 1977 to automatically build software, more areas of the software construction and release process have been automated. In fact, anybody building serious software without automating their builds, their tests and without using continuous integration is not considered to be a professional. A hot topic within the application lifecycle management (ALM) space is deployment automation. This is driven by middleware environments getting bigger and more complex, by the increasing number of application releases demanded by modern businesses, and by the fact that application deployment needs to happen reliably to not disrupt online services and businesses. Add to that the fact that cloud infrastructure is becoming more mainstream by the day, you can bet there is a lot happening in this space.
At XebiaLabs we have developed Deployit and that has given us a lot of insight into the deployment automation domain. This is the first blog in a series that will explore that domain by comparing deployment automation with a number of related topics.
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