Getting Agile

In the agile community there are some common practices that are either seen as valuable or to be avoided. Two of those practices are estimation using Planning Poker and Sprint Planning task breakdown. The focus for many teams in these practices is on the estimates themselves and how “accurate” they are. It has been my [...]

Tomorrow at 1:30pm I will be discussing my paper published by the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference 2009 in Portland, OR on “Managing Software Debt: Continued Delivery of High Value as Systems Age”. I have uploaded the slides for this presentation and I hope that some of the new content will help those looking for [...]

Earlier this year I did a presentation on Executable Specficiations for AgilePalooza conference. There is information about working with legacy code, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) systems, and Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD) using automated acceptance testing tools. Also, the presentation lists types of automated acceptance testing tools out there along with actual names of tools and what [...]

During an interview at the Better Software conference this week, I mentioned that I thought maintaining a single list of work prioritized by the business was important for our industry to improve. The following text is an excerpt, in first draft form, from chapter 2, “Architecture Integrity”, of my upcoming book “Architecture in an Agile [...]

AgilePalooza is a one day Agile conference on Friday May 29th at the San Francisco State University downtown campus. There will be two tracks: Learning Agility and Advancing Agility.
“Learning Agility” will be presentation style whereas “Advancing Agility” will use the open space format.
Speakers include David Hussman (DevJam), Chris Sterling (SolutionsIQ), Luke Hohmann (Enthiosys), Lee Henson [...]

I have uploaded the talk I did at SD West 2009 on Yahoo! Video and here it is:
Managing Software Debt – Chris Sterling @ SD West 2009 @ Yahoo! Video

The hopefully-not-anticlimatic second event of the still-pretty-new BeyondAgile is happening on Thursday:
“Agile Challenges Clinic/Swap Meet”
Thursday, 26 March 2009
6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Locations on the Eastside and Seattle!
Read on for agenda and location information, or visit our Google Group at
http://groups.google.com/group/beyondagile
The Blurb
At the first event, everyone (over forty people) created a backlog of ideas, suggestions, and work items. [...]

While working with Product Owners over the years I have learned some rules of thumb that make their Product Backlogs more manageable. Some of these items are what I have learned from others and some are just working with Product Owners though trial and error. Remember these are rules of thumb and help guide your [...]

I’d like to invite you to join me at …
SD West 2009 Conference & Expo
March 9–13
Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA
http://www.SDExpo.com/
I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be teaching the following session at SD West 2009:
“Managing Software Debt: Continuing to Deliver High Value as Systems Age” on Friday, March 13th from 3:30-5:00pm
SD West is where [...]

The thought of less documentation is appealing to many in the software industry. Reducing the specificity of our requirements can have tremendous value but some go too far. One of the big myths about Agile software development is that Agile means no more documentation. This was not the purpose of the Agile Manifesto value “Working [...]