Of all the limits on our cognition, confirmation bias is perhaps the ugliest. Confirmation bias is hard to get to grip with as it leads us to consider even contradictory evidence as confirmatory. Does confirmation bias affect even software professionals? Of course it does, we are all in the grip…
I’m a strong believer in learning by doing. I also believe that learning will be better when supported by an agile community of practice (CoP). Communities of practice allow self-selected members to develop their “capabilities, build and exchange knowledge”. In my professional life, I am involved in several communities including…
I often hear the same complaint about Agile Retrospectives: They are not held at the right level in the organization! Or, at least, that is the conclusion that people draw from one fact: Many issues brought up in the Retrospective need resolution at a much higher level in the organization.…
TDD improves quality! That might sound obvious, but evidently it isn’t. Test driven development (TDD) is often cited as a key agile practice (1,2). But still, the evidence has been equivocal until now.
Last year Regression Test Selection celebrated its twentieth year as a field of research. It was in 1993 that G Rothermel and MJ Harrold published their seminal paper on regression test selection. With Continuous Integration being the top agile practice, RTS remains important. How did scholars celebrate “regression test selection…
Generalists versus specialists — it is an ongoing debate. Is it better with generalist or specialist team members in agile software development or elsewhere?
Do you need improved agile estimates? If your agile process is heavily reliant on effort estimates, then chances are that you need to have the best possible estimates. Are your estimates already as good as they can be or do you need improved agile estimates?
Laurie Williams has presented a “top thirty” list of key agile practices. The list defines what you need to do to be seen as being agile. Continuous integration, short iterations and done criteria are at the top of the list.
So people keep talking about the Agile – Waterfall dichotomy. About agile and un-agile practices. I decided to have an unscientific look at what Agile isn’t. If there is a true dichotomy between Agile and Waterfall, then things opposite of Agile should be either entirely out of scope for projects…
How is Agile offshoring done in practice? Julian Bass studied seven different companies doing off-shoring London-Bengaluru. He had expected that the companies would have adapted a continuum of practices from Scrum and XP. Findings about Agile Offshoring To his surprise he found that this was not true. Instead, all of…
