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It was at the Spring Scrum Gathering 2008 Chicago that Tobias Mayer did an Open Space session on simulations to help get Agile ideas across to people, in a way that brings them to life.  One that was new for me at the time was the ball game, originally blogged about by Boris Gloger. I have been using this simulation regularly on my Agile ...

  I read my colleague Simon Munro’s recent post about deferring costs to the future and how he thinks this should apply to the software development process. As a developer who is an advocate of all the things that Simon claims are simply improving future maintainability at a higher cost, I felt compelled to give a different opinion. On my ...

Our leaders are doing it – spending large sums of money now bailing out banks with the assumption that one day, when the recession is over, that there will be someone to pick up the tab. And as individuals we are doing the same thing – if my boiler were to need replacing tomorrow I may forgo the top-of-the-range model with a four year guarantee in ...

I was recently catching up with an old friend from school; he was interested in Scrum, as he had started to get requests for proposals that specifically asked for Agile.  We were on a Stag do at the point of the initial conversation, so I probably didn’t articulate what Scrum was that well, and even if I did my friend was in no position to ...

For the Scrum for Team System project I have been focusing on the reports; I came across an issue which was due to the way the Reporting Services 2008 "automatic upgrade" feature upgraded our reports. The Scrum for Team System template contains over 20 reports all written for Reporting Services 2005. This was done because Team ...

I cannot stress how crucial it is for a Tester to have an understanding of the architectures and underlying cohesiveness of the system and this can  be understood from Project Documentation. Test Strategy and Scripts have a very strong dependency on Project Documentation, so when this is poorly executed you could have poor testing. ...

With the official launch of Microsoft Surface in Europe just a week or so away, I thought it was time I updated the world on what we’re doing with it. As a Microsoft Surface partner, based in London, working across the entire Europe and EMEA region, but part of a global organisation, we’ve been working with Microsoft Surface for over six months ...

Last Friday Malcolm Beaton started a thread on our internal User Experience and Agile Community mailing lists - on how User-Centered Design and Agile can work together and any friction that may occur. Simon Bennett, one of our Agile Coaches, made a point that resonated - any problem may be "related to *how* we’re doing UX and/or Agile, ...

Winning new business based on a proven track record of delivering quality projects is admirable and something to be proud of. Being entrusted to deliver a project for a client is a big commitment for them to make and this is of course why contracts and legal's play an important part, but from an emotional point of view the client doesn't want to ...

In my role as an Agile Coach, the majority of the time I am on the delivery, not the customer side of a relationship. However, prior to getting so heavily involved in the world of Agile, I experienced the reverse where I was the customer and experienced what I believed to be a highly effective agile sales process.   As the customer in this ...