Posts Tagged Agile software development
This is not a manifesto: Valuing Throughput over Utilisation
Posted by AntonyMarcano in Agile, Lean, Project Management, Software Development, Software Testing on February 11, 2012
In a previous article, This is not a manifesto, I expressed the values I hold as a software development team member. Today, I’m going to talk about the first of these values. Before I do, I’d like to say what I mean by “software development team”. I mean a cross-discipline team with the combined skills [...]
This is not a manifesto
Posted by AntonyMarcano in Agile, Lean, People on February 4, 2012
Recently, I had cause to ponder the values I hold as a member of a software development team. Values that, alongside other values I hold, drive my choices and behaviours. They sit behind the things I do and how I do them. They underly my thinking when considering how we can improve as a team [...]
Mission Critical Agility at NASA
Posted by AntonyMarcano in Uncategorized on November 10, 2011
Yesterday at Better Software and Agile Development Practices East in Orlando, I enjoyed a great keynote talk from Dr Jeff Norris, of Nasa, on Mission Critical Agility. Among the things talked about was the decision to use a lunar orbit rendezvous method, rather than the direct ascent method. One opportunity that was missed during the [...]
Sushi, Hibachi and Other Ways of Serving Software Delicacies
Posted by AntonyMarcano in Agile, Business, People, Project Management, Software Development, Software Testing on July 1, 2011
Let’s say you own a restaurant. Quite a large restaurant. You’ve hired a manager to run the place for you because you are about to take the fruits of your success and invest in opening three more around the country. You leave the manager with a budget to make any improvements he sees fit. After [...]
Old Favourite – More Sharks and Delaying Critical Mass
Posted by AntonyMarcano in Agile, Business, Business Analysis, Old Favourites, Project Management, Software Development, Software Testing on June 7, 2011
This article originally featured on my old blog on 19th January 2010. In a previous post I talked about Critical Mass of software. I showed how an ever-increasing cost of change resulted in it becoming more economical to completely rewrite the system than to enhance and maintain the original. I explained how this could be [...]
Old Favourite – Sharks, Debts, Critical Mass and other reasons to Sustain Quality
Posted by AntonyMarcano in Agile, BDD/ATDD, Business, Business Analysis, Old Favourites, Project Management, Software Development, Software Testing on June 7, 2011
This article originally featured on my old blog on 18th January 2010. A while back I tweeted about critical mass of software: Critical Mass of Code – past which the changeability of the code is infeasible, requiring that it be completely rewritten. An elaboration of this might be: Critical Mass of Software: the state of [...]
What do special forces teams have in common with agile teams?
Posted by AntonyMarcano in Agile, Business Analysis, People, Project Management, Software Development, Software Testing on May 30, 2011
In 2008, I wrote an article for Better Software Magazine… “Few would think that Special Forces tactics bear any relation to software project teams. But Antony Marcano draws a surprising parallel between the dynamics of modern Special Forces “room-clearing” methods and the dynamics of modern software development teams.” My thinking has moved on slightly since [...]
Software Teams can Jump
Posted by AntonyMarcano in Agile on May 18, 2011
For many years I’ve been coaching software teams in various things such as Example Driven Methods (xDD), including BDD and TDD; pair-programming; programming; testing; retrospectives; Scrum, kanban and various other ways of getting the most out of a development team. One thing that I notice is that while the teams are being coached, they do [...]
Old Favourite: Adaptive Budgets? “Pull” the other one!
Posted by AntonyMarcano in Business, Old Favourites, Project Management, Software Development on December 13, 2010
This was originally posted on my old blog on 10th April 2010 Recently, I wrote about my views on using and estimating with task-cards. I highlighted that tracking progress with burn-up/down charts showing effort completed/remaining is not a true measure of progress, especially if we subscribe to the idea that we measure progress with working-software. [...]
My Tack on Effective Change
Posted by AntonyMarcano in Agile, Business, People, Project Management on November 11, 2010
One of the key characteristics of how we coach our clients’ teams is that we help them start from where they are and introduce small, frequent changes that help them progressively achieve their goals. Each incremental change is driven by a problem the teams recognise they are facing. We then help to find a small change [...]
About
Antony Marcano is a consultant in software craftsmanship, effective software processes, software quality and software testing. He has over fifteen years experience with... (read more)
