Jira and GreenHopper for agile project management

December 17, 2009

I previously blogged about using Jira with some open source tools for managing agile projects, and concluded that it was not a great solution – without GreenHopper. I’ve been using the latest version of Jira with the GreenHopper agile plugin extensively now, and I like it. It is lacking some features, which I’ll describe later, [...]

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Definition of Ready (DoR)

December 16, 2009

All good agile teams have a Definition of Done (DoD) – the common set of criteria that every feature must meet before it’s considered complete. I wrote about the DoD previously in this post. But what about a Definition of Ready? How do you know when your backlog items are ready for the team to [...]

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SourceMonitor for .NET code quality metrics

November 18, 2009

A tip of the hat to Paul Rayner for recommending SourceMonitor for .NET code quality metrics. I gave this freeware tool a spin today on a C# project I’m working on for a large client, and was very happy. It’s easy to use and within a few minutes I had it installed and ran the [...]

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Agile vs. Waterfall: The NetFlix analogy

October 11, 2009

The following is a fable to compare traditional waterfall projects to agile/lean projects… Announcing my new movie rental service, NetPix! Here’s how it works. You get 60 movies each year, delivered on DVD in the mail. When you first sign up, choose 60 movies you want. When you finish choosing your movies, we’ll confirm that [...]

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More tips for better retrospectives

September 29, 2009

At last night’s Agile Denver meeting, I facilitated an open space discussion and one of the topics was conducting more effective retrospective meetings. The group had some great insights and advice that I’d like to share here. Thanks to everyone who participated! Rotate responsibility for facilitating the retrospective. Get fresh perspectives and creative ideas. Don’t [...]

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Open source agile project management tools

September 22, 2009

I authored a comparison of five open source agile project management tools: Agilefant, IceScrum, Agilo, eXPlainPMT, and XPlanner. The article is posted on Open Logic’s Wazi site. I welcome your feedback!

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Seven tips for distributed agile teams

August 19, 2009

Agile methods were originally intended for small co-located teams. Can they work for geographically distributed teams? In fact, due to the challenges of working with distributed teams, I believe the fast feedback and validation afforded by agile methods provide a distinct advantage for distributed teams because problems are found sooner. I have experienced great success [...]

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Eight tips for better retrospectives

August 17, 2009

I am often surprised at how many self-described agile teams don’t hold retrospective meetings every iteration. For those team that do hold retrospectives, I often find they have a lot of room for making them more effective. An attitude of continuous improvement is fundamental to successful teams, and the retrospective is the primary mechanism for [...]

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Metrics for agile projects

July 28, 2009

Yesterday’s Agile Denver meeting was a panel discussion on metrics for Agile Projects. In the end most of the discussion was about software metrics in general, and the discussion produced some good insights that apply to all software projects, not just agile projects. Some highights: Kevin Sheen from Perficient said you need to know what’s [...]

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Survey on distributed agile teams

July 8, 2009

The User Experience League has created a survey for geographically distributed agile teams. If you have experience in this area, please respond to the survey here.

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