Archives for Iterative Design

The Stability Index: Focusing on Release Stabilization

While recently working with Juni Mukherjee on a team that is focused on finding ways to extending and increasing the value of a large legacy platform she brought up what I thought was a brilliant idea. We had been working on creating metrics that have tension with each other to drive continuous integration effectiveness from the [...]

Recognizing Software Debt Talk at Beyond Agile Meeting

A couple days ago I spoke at the Beyond Agile group meeting on the topic of “Recognizing Software Debt”. Early in the presentation we ran an exercise to get a feel for the effects of software debt that was original created by my friend, Masa Maeda. Here is a link to the exercise: http://www.agilistapm.com/understand-technical-debt-by-playing-a-game/ The [...]

Delving into Technical Debt – Cutter Article

The following is an except from the article authored by Israel Gat and myself named “Delving into Technical Debt”: Many of the findings and the recommendations we make in Cutter technical debt engagements are broadly applicable in concept, if not in detail. There is commonality in the nature of the hot spots we typically find, [...]

Treating Software as an Asset

William Caputo wrote a passionate blog entry on why “Software is not an asset” here: http://www.williamcaputo.com/archives/000310.html Although I entirely agree with ideas discussed about refactoring and removal of code, I do not think that the blog entry substantiates his claim that software is not an asset. An asset is: Anything tangible or intangible that is [...]

Managing Software Debt in Practice Presentation

Today at the Scrum Gathering in Seattle, I held a session on “Managing Software Debt in Practice” where we got into: Using Sonar for trending metrics and spelunking into code quickly Executable Design using Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) Acceptance Test-Driven Development Teams developing towards 1 Product Backlog item at a time rather than design/code/test throughout a [...]

InformIT Interview with Chris Sterling

Matt Heusser, on behalf of InformIT, conducted an interview with me regarding the book Managing Software Debt: Building for Inevitable Change. We discuss what software debt is, some ways that it can be managed, maintaining a single list of work, how software debt is measured, and we even got into training and our product AgileEVM.com. [...]

Our Book is Available: Managing Software Debt – Building for Inevitable Change

See larger image Managing Software Debt: Building for Inevitable Change (Agile Software Development Series) (Hardcover) By (author) Chris Sterling List Price: $49.99 USD New From: $24.54 In Stock Used from: $19.61 In Stock I am quite happy about the book that took much of my time over the past couple years has finally come out. Thank [...]

Movements of a Hypnotic Nature at AgilePalooza in Redmond, WA

Discussed the basis for high performing teams and the principles of Scrum as a framework , empirical process control mechanism, and the values. We then ran “Movements of a Hynpotic Nature” that helps us understand emergent design, iterations (if you only touch it once, you are not iterating), teamwork and operating from high-level requirements. This [...]