Jeffery Payne has led Coveros since its inception in 2008. Under his guidance, the company has become a recognized market leader in secure agile software development. Mr. Payne is a popular keynote and featured speaker at technology conferences and has testified before Congress on technology issues such as intellectual property rights and cyber-terrorism. Prior to Coveros, he was co-founder, CEO, and Chairman of the Board of Cigital, where he led the startup and growth of the company for 16 years. Mr. Payne is a former ACM National Lecturer and the co-founder of the Northern Virginia Chapter of the IEEE Computer Society. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Allegheny College and an M.S. in Computer Science from The College of William and Mary.
When I teach classes on root causes of agile project failure, I’m often asked which of the causes is most difficult to overcome. From an enterprise perspective, that is an easy answer: bad culture. Sociologist Ron Westrum defines culture as “the patterned way that an organization responds to its challenges, whether these are explicit (for […]
Many are beating the drum that DevOps is something new and different—just like agile was new and different before it. Make no mistake, DevOps fixes an age-old conflict between software development and operational teams, but it’s not new. In fact, the DevOps philosophy is ingrained within the Agile Manifesto, and one could argue that DevOps […]
It seems like every other day, someone in the software development community feels the necessity to declare that agile is dead and they have something new and better. Sometimes it’s one of the founders of agile who now think the Agile Manifesto is dated and needs to be overhauled. Other times it’s ageless software veterans […]
Many are beating the drum that DevOps is something new and different—just like agile was new and different before it. Make no mistake, DevOps fixes an age-old conflict between software development and operational teams, but it’s not new. In fact, the DevOps philosophy is ingrained within the Agile Manifesto, and one could argue that DevOps […]
When transitioning to agile, applying agile methods to a single project is a great way to get started. However, care must be taken to ensure the project you choose is appropriate. Here are five tips to help you pick the right project for your agile pilot. 1. Make sure the project is the right size […]
One of my favorite agile principles is “Working software is the primary measure of progress.” Unfortunately, many agile teams ignore this principle, instead focusing on collaboration, organizing self-directed teams, and performing agile ceremonies. While all the agile principles are important, without producing working software on a regular basis, the others won’t matter. Traditional software development […]
There’s a battle in the testing community between those who believe 100 percent test automation is in our future and those who think test automation isn’t even testing at all. As continuous deployment is becoming the goal of more and more organizations, manual testing is viewed as a blocker for those seeking to accelerate the […]
It’s difficult for an agile team comprised solely of specialists to be fully productive. If team members are unable to help others with their tasks, the team will not maximize its potential. The agile community calls team members who are capable of working in a variety of roles generalized specialists. A generalized specialist is not […]
There is an old saying in testing: Automating a bad test only gives you bad results faster. The same thing applies to DevOps. Lots of DevOps initiatives focus on speed and frequency of deployment without an emphasis on quality. Bad testing practices in DevOps only deploys buggy software faster. Here are some ideas about how […]
People often think agile entails too many meetings. I’ve even heard product owners say sprint kickoffs are a waste of time because they “take away from doing real work.” Teams should stop talking and start coding, right? This complaint has nothing to do with the number of meetings, but rather the way meetings are run. […]
