Project Management for Software Development

Creating the Environment for Agility

Agile methods and practices are mostly focused on one or more development teams working on a software project. Consequently, there is apparently no room left for “managers” in the agile world. However, agile teams do not exist in a vacuum – they function in an environment and whether they will...

Agile Beyond the Hype

Many companies adopt Agile because it is the natural thing to do. But do they know what they are getting into? In this talk we will use some anecdotes and lessons learned from Agile adoption to build a model that will hopefully help our companies adopt Agile in a way...

Tuning Agile to Business Objectives

To successfully create breakthroughs in your development effectiveness that are possible with agile, it has to be aligned with why you want to do it in the first place and what you need to achieve from it. This excerpt of the book Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development explain that...

Collaboration in Project Management

Collaboration is an essential ingredient in healthy Agile project communities, yet in my experience truly effective collaboration is perhaps the hardest thing to do well. We have become so adept at using e-mail, instant messaging, voice mail, and telephones to communicate that we have lost our preference for face-to-face communications.

Agility in Practice

BigVisible co-founder Giora Morein discusses agile coaching, organizational agility and innovation and how to convince executives that change is not only possible, but necessary.

Measure and Manage Flow in Practice

Measure and Manage Flow is the third of the core principles of Kanban. It means that the members of the organisation are supposed to measure their progress and use the gathered information to improve their way of working. The most famous measurement tool for Kanban is the Cumulative Flow Diagram,...

Transitioning to Relative Estimation

Agile approaches use relative estimations to size requirements during the planning phase. Instead of the traditional man/days measure, you use story points that follow a Fibonacci sequence: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, … Playing “planning poker” allows the team to attribute story points to each user stories...

How to Sell Scrum to Your Boss

As Agile adoption is spreading and more software development teams want to adopt an Agile project management approach like Scrum. In this article, Robert Karlsson ask the question the question “Why should your boss let you implement Scrum in your organization?”. Your boss might be satisfied with the current situation...