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Agile Project Management Methodologies

There is some confusion around whatagileis versus what agile methodologies are, and often people lump them together.Agile is a mindset (not a methodology) that encompasses a set ofvalues and principlesthat were compiled by a group of software gurus in 2001. These values focus on customer collaboration, flexibility, a short iterative cycle, value delivery, people centricity, sustainability and simplicity, among other things.These values and principles are not to be confused with the...

August 25, 2020 agile methodology, Agile, being agile, agile project manager, ScrumMaster

Scrum Sprint for Quality: The Hare and the Agile Tortoise

The Hare and the Tortoise (or The Tortoise and the Hare, since that is what people told me it was called when I was young) is a fable attributed to Aesop, an ancient Greek storyteller. For those of you who are not familiar with it, a hare challenges a tortoise to a race. The hare, in his overconfidence, decides to take a nap when he gets close to the finish line. The tortoise plods along, eventually passing the hare, and wins the race. The moral of the story is:slow and steady wins the race.

June 23, 2020 agile methodology, agile technique, Agile, hardening sprints, scrum, shift left

Moving from doing agile to BEING agile

Are you an experienced tester who has recently joined an agile team? Maybe you have testing experience but until now it has only been on traditional waterfall projects. Are you going through the motions with this new way of doing things but don’t feel like you’re completely invested? Do you even feel like you’re adding value to your team? Often times, when a company begins their agile transformation they think they are BEING agile when in fact they are justdoing it. Being agile takes...

November 26, 2018 agile methodology, agile technique, Agile, being agile, agile team roles

Three Key Agile-Centric Metrics

In one of our previous blogs the term “just enough” was used to portray the idea that we (whether you’re in a testing, dev, or management roll) should help everyone on the team to resist gold plating and actively help and encourage each other to do just enough. And that by doing the “right just enough” we are BEING agile. But why? You may ask, is this term so important? Because it plays into the team’s overall velocity. My friend and colleague, Shaun Bradshaw, and I were recently...

March 15, 2018 agile methodology, agile technique, Agile, metrics

Pair-Coaching

Pair-Coaching in Agile Coaching Some Resistance to Pair-Coaching It’s Not Just the Teams Changing your Lens Adaptive Pair-Coaching Strategy One Voice Wrapping Up I’ve been doing more pairing lately. Much more. But, more specifically pair-coaching. I’ve been pairing in my conference workshops and talks, quite a bit, with Mary Thorn on theagilequality and testing side of things. I’m also pairing with Josh Anderson on our Meta-cast and I’ve done a few presentations with him. Very...

May 11, 2017 agile methodology, agile technique, Agile, pair-coaching

Bugs, Bugs, and More Bugs!

February 21, 2017 agile methodology, agile technique, Agile, defects

Refactoring and Technical Debt: It's Not a Choice, It's a Responsibility

A few years back I was coaching a large group of Scrum teams at an email marketing SaaS firm. The group had been practicing Scrum for over four years and had become a high-performance agile organization. Most of my efforts focused on fine-tuning from the perspective of an external set of eyes. Working with this organization and its development teams was a privilege. Refactoring vs. Technical Debt Broad vs. Narrow Consideration Stop Digging the Hole and Deeper Fill in the Hole Broadly...

October 5, 2016 agile methodology, agile technique, Agile

Hardening Sprints: The Good, Bad, and Downright Ugly

Moving On… Hardening Sprint Stabilization Sprint Release Readiness Sprint Spring Cleaning Sprint Why the Dreaded ‘Hardening Sprint’? Get Out of Jail Free Card Conceptual Support Hardening Contexts Distributed and At-Scale Agile Customer Receptivity Test Automation Coverage Skewed Sprint Consolidation Defect Rework Deployment Readiness and Training Regulation, Governance, and the Art of Trivialized Agile Testing Wrapping Up For Further Reading I remember the threatening email as if I...

September 12, 2016 agile methodology, agile technique, Agile, hardening sprints

How should UX work in Agile?

Matt Kortering of Universal Mind, wrote a blog post aboutHow UX Fits Within a SAFe Environment. Lately I’ve been thinking about and writing about the scaling models, so a part of this fits well with current themes. But I don’t want you to get stuck on the SAFe bits here. I truly want this to be a generic blog post about handling UX concerns and x-team integration within anyagilemethod or approach. Here’s what Matt had to say towards the end of his post:

July 14, 2016 agile methodology, Agile, agile UX

Category Archives: agile methodology