In an earlier post, I discussed how attending to the cost of delay helps us focus on removing delays in workflow, feedback, communication, and error detection. This involves a focus on finishing (not starting a new story if you can help somebody else with an existing story), working on small stories, and using test-first methods.

Here are some of the things Agile has demonstrated to be of value. Having self-organizing small teams Building incrementally Taking an iterative approach However, an organization is not merely a collection of small teams, it must also do the following: Have a vision to guide what is built Have collaboration across teams All this means … Continue reading "The Future of Agile"

In previous posts, I discussed that the first leg of emergent design is TDD, which provides code quality and sustainability. The second leg is design patterns, which provides insights into handling variation. The third leg is ATDD, which provides us a way of discovering and clarifying the value we will get. The essence of agility … Continue reading "The Third Leg of Emergent Design: Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD)"

TDD is the first leg of emergent design or what could be called Agile Design. Design patterns are the second. They’re often described as “solutions to recurring problems in a context.” In this way they can be thought of as recipes that have been learned. But patterns open the door to much more; they are … Continue reading "Design Patterns: The Second Leg of Emergent Design"

I am heartened by the surge in TDD training. To me, TDD is the second most important thing for devs to learn. ATDD is the first. TDD is not just the automation of unit testing. It’s also intended to improve design and sustainability. TDD’s formulation of tests, prior to code, drives design. High quality code … Continue reading "Test-Driven Development (TDD): The First Leg of Emergent Design"

Among the things needed in the Agile space are better training methods and a better way to use frameworks. This pertains to all organizations coming to Agile:  They are rightfully concerned about what the kind of Agile training they’ll get. They want improvements, not frameworks. At best, frameworks are a means to an end. Recently, … Continue reading "An Open Letter to Participants When We Go In To Train"

In the same way that looking at the value stream helps you observe how value moves, looking at the value stream helps you discover challenges you are facing. Here are some of the most common challenges. It takes too long to get anything done Work is not properly prioritized Chunks of work are too big … Continue reading "Seeing Challenges in the Value Stream"

Scrum and Kanban are the two most popular Agile team-level methods available. While the difference between them is mostly thought to be sprint-based or flow-based, that is just one way in which they differ. Other significant differences include how to start, how to improve, and how people should be organized. They are based on different … Continue reading "Why Agile Coaches Need to Know Both Scrum and Kanban"

We hear so much about how adopting Agile is hard. It is worth looking at the exceptions in order to learn why it doesn’t have to be that way. Let’s consider the case of a dev group of 75-300 people. This is a good example of a common situation. The organization was looking at improvements, … Continue reading "The Common Aspects of Almost-Instant Agile Success"