Software Best Practices

If you build EXACTLY what “they” tell you, you do it in the timeframe they ask for, and at the cost they wanted to pay, is that a successful project? The project is On time On budget Delivers the requested functionality No defects The team is ready for the next project Is it successful? “Yes,” you say...

Many teams moving to Scrum have questions about the Product Owner position. Is the Product Owner a member of the Scrum team? What role does the Product Owner play in the day-to-day life of a Scrum project? How do we map current functional roles to Scrum roles, specifically with regard to the Product...

Is your product successful because you were lucky, or because you were methodical and intentional? Do you want to build a plan where you are dependent on good fortune, or do you want to make your own “luck?” Both approaches work, but only one makes sense as an intention. Slide 3 of your presentation...

Software development projects are plagued with risk and impending failure. According to The Standish Group’s 2006 CHAOS Report, only about one-third (35 percent) of the researched software development projects undertaken in the previous two years were considered “successful”—that...

I receive several requests a year to sit on various advisory boards, and I always say no--I just don't have the time. Last year I received a request I couldn't refuse from Charles Seybold, Bruce Henry, and Jason Carlson at LiquidPlanner . I had known Charles and Bruce when they were at Expedia...

Agile literature focuses on the benefits Agile provides to developers and development teams, with a secondary focus on the benefits Agile provides customers. Much of the Agile literature also asserts that Agile practices are more responsive to business needs. Many businesses are embracing Agile and seeing...

One spinoff from the 10x difference in programmer productivity was the Chief Programmer Team structure. The idea of the chief-programmer team was originally developed at IBM during the late 1960s (Baker 1972, Baker and Mills 1973). It was popularized by Fred Brooks in the Mythical Man-Month (Brooks 1975...

Our IT group supports a large research and development organization. We have 100+ active projects now, many of which are package implementations (given the amount of configuration & interfaces, these are non-trivial development projects). We also have many pure software development projects where...

As i stated in another forum , if you have money to spend and are doing agile development, Rally has set the bar that everyone else should be measured against.

Hey thollis, Hands down, the best product out there for this is Rally . Spend 2 hours with their free (10 user) community edition and you will know what Agile Project Managment should be like. The only issue is the price. The are asking $39 / user / month for their middle range SaaS offering, and $65...