Greetings,

A friend recently asked me what I saw going on in the agile world in 2008, and what we might see more of in 2009.  I looked back through some of the things I wrote about this year and came up with this.

Organizations are not asking if they should use agile, they are asking how they can adopt agile practices.  Accordingly, many of the agile thought leaders have moved from talking about why an organization should do agile to how to do it well.  Here is an example drawn from Brain Marick's keynote at a recent conference.  A related topic that I've heard often discussed this year is The Power of Done.

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In the first program of its kind, students in Bowling Green State University’s Agile Software Factory program learn about agile development by building real software for local community service organizations. Over the course of a 16 week semester, students go from initial client meeting to delivery of a working system. The program is supported through a partnership with the Agile Alliance.

I was lucky enough to get to talk with Dr. Joseph Chao, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and director of the Agile Software Factory at Bowling Green State University, as well as Phil Brock, managing director of the Agile Alliance, about the program. The result of that conversation is this article for InfoQ.

Cheers,

Chris

A client recently asked me what blogs I read regularly. I pulled the list from my blog reader and here you go!

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A recent discussion on the ScrumDevelopment list shed light on the ways in which agile development practices directly benefit the individuals involved. The consensus was that an environment ideal for individual growth can be created by the implementation of agile practices such as inspect-and-adapt, pair programming, test driven development, and constant collaboration and communication. I found the discussion interesting, and so I wrote about it for InfoQ.

Cheers,

Chris

In his keynote at the Agile Development Practices conference, Brian Marick described values missing from the Agile Manifesto. His view is that the Manifesto was essentially a marketing document, aimed at getting business to give agile a chance. Now that this goal has largely been achieved, an extended set of guiding values are needed to help teams deliver on the promises of the manifesto. I found his thoughts interesting and compelling, so I wrote about them for InfoQ. You can read the full article here.
Cheers,
Chris

My friend James Shore has declared agile to be in decline. He cites the many teams doing ‘sprints’ and stand-up meetings, without adopting any of the technical practices necessary to produce high-quality software over the long-haul. In his estimation, this has led to thousands of Scrum teams doing agile so poorly that they will almost certainly fail, and possibly take the agile movement with them.

I found the article interesting, and so I wrote this article about it on InfoQ.

Cheers,

Chris

It seems so simple, but having a well, and widely, understood definition of “done” is one of the most powerful contributors towards the success of an agile project. Lately there has been a lot of discussion about this idea, and it prompted me to write this story for InfoQ.

What is your team’s definition of “done”? Leave a comment and share it!

Cheers,

Chris