One of the key conversations organizations and teams forget about in their transition to agile and DevOps is updating their measurement and metrics plan. Many companies are still using measurements and metrics from the traditional waterfall software development lifecycle. While some of these remain useful, many may not provide value to the team or organization—and […]
When an organization grows quickly, it puts stress on people, processes, and customers. Burnout happens, things fall through the cracks, and defects creep in. Unfortunately, many organizations try to scale agile too quickly, and that often leads to failure. Here are three of the telltale signs you’re scaling too fast.
More and more organizations are adopting agile software development processes and practices. But in many cases, these organizations have declared they are agile without actually changing how they develop software. Declaring that an apple is an orange doesn’t make it so. These six key indicators can help you determine whether your agile project isn’t really […]
Agile coaches often stress the importance of not overplanning. They talk about the dangers of planning work that is later changed or never done at all. When agile first emerged, there was a belief that upfront planning was unnecessary. Teams were encouraged to jump right into sprints and plan as they go. While not many […]
Nine years ago, I started on a project that was going to prove that agile processes could work within the US Department of Defense (DoD). Our goal was to introduce agile development processes, like unit testing and continuous integration, into a tool that promoted agile practices for other DoD projects. We started by making incremental […]
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 […]
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 […]
DevOps and Agile transformations, or any cultural shift for that matter, almost certainly needs a champion to help evangelize for change and to clear the inevitable road blocks. You can’t do it that way because we’ve always done it another way? Call the Champion to get us permission to try something different this time. There’s […]
I recently gave two versions of a talk at Jenkins User Conference 2015 World Tour in Washington, D.C. Here are the slides for anyone who wants to review them: JUC Zero to Jenkins. That talk comes in two forms which you will notice from two cover pages. Zero to Federated at the Speed of Jenkins – […]
For better or worse, the life of a consultant is filled with challenge, politics and a lot of learning. Working with a client that has difficulties solving a problem or has key “processes problems” that will always hinder success is part of the challenge. In recent years, I’ve seen a new trend in companies and […]
