Waterfall, RUP, and Agile: Which is Right for You?
Serhiy Kharytonov published a fine summary of software methodologies for non-technical leaders at Executive Brief. He makes several excellent observations, but he also perpetuates a destructive myth. I’ve worked with all three of Waterfall, RUP, and Agile, and here’s my take.
Excellent observations
Then, stay agile in the approach to the process itself, constantly looking back, re-evaluating and revising the development process until it fits your current circumstances most successfully.
If you learn nothing else from Serhiy and I, learn this. Change from a culture of blame-fixing to a culture of continuous improvement, with no political unmentionables, and you will get a lot more value for your software-development money, and everything else besides.
Then, if you want to learn one more lesson the easy way rather than from a painful and expensive experience, Read more of this article »
How to Sabotage Agile, Part III
This is the third of three parts on how to sabotage Agile adoption in your company, especially for Business Analysts.
If you want Agile to succeed, don’t do this stuff.
If you want Agile to fail because you’re benefitting from the status quo, good luck with that, too. Just make sure you have each item covered, especially the last one.
- Find like-minded saboteurs at other companies, so you can say, “They tried Agile at BigCo, and it was a disaster!”
- When assigned to an Agile project as Business Analyst (BA) or Product Owner, insist that all communication from business people to developers go through you, “To keep a handle on scope and keep things consistent.”
- As BA, insist that developers ask you all business questions first, because, “You know the business better than they do, and they’re all really busy anyway.”
- As BA, if instructed to coach people on User Stories or Test Cases, call in sick. Or just do it badly (but don’t be too obvious about it). On break, tell the most frustrated-looking person, “The only reason we’re doing this Agile stuff is that the CEO read about it in an in-flight magazine.”
- Hope that your firm’s competitors have people like you in them. When the ship you’re on sinks, proving that the leak wasn’t in your end won’t keep you from getting wet.
In case you missed them, here’s
How to Sabotage Agile, Part I and How to Sabotage Agile, Part II.
The BA Role in an Agile Environment–Blog Backlog
I gave a talk by this title at the September meeting of the Madison IIBA. I promised to put some of the materials up as blog posts. Like most estimates, “when” was overly optimistic.
Here it is mid-November, and I’m just getting to it. As I did at the talk, I want to write about what you want to hear about. So here’s the list of topics—the product backlog—as I’m currently planning to write about them.
If you’re a Madison IIBA person and you’d like to see the order changed, register and comment (or email me) and I’ll change the sequence. (I won’t sell your name).
- I like my Waterfall and BRUF. How do I sabotage Agile in my shop?
- What skills does a BA need in an Agile environment?
- Tell me more about Facilitated Requirements Workshops.
- Tell me more about User Stories.
- How do Agile shops manage a project portfolio?
- How do Agile teams do QA?
- Tell me more about Test Cases and TDD/BDD.
- How do Agile shops handle documentation?
- What are the principles behind all Agile methods?
- Why should we use an Agile method?
- Why do Agile methods work?
- Which Agile method should we use?
- How can we tailor Agile to our environment?
- What happens to the specialists (DBAs, UI/UE specialists, architects, etc.)
Flu Vaccine: Shortage or Overestimate?
Once again, reality fails to conform to plan, even in the case of something seemingly similar to something done every year—the manufacture and distribution of influenza vaccine.
In “Swine Flu Vaccine Shortage: Why?” on NPR.org, we learn that late-in-the-process verification of actual yields, and a bottleneck at the packaging stage, have led to a late-in-the-lifecycle discovery that we don’t have nearly as much vaccine as we expected to have by now.
It will be interesting to watch the story unfold. Here are my predictions of what we will learn: Read more of this article »
WI AT&T President speaks on telecom trends at WIN Milwaukee
Today’s speaker at WIN Milwaukee was Scott T. VanderSanden, president of AT&T Wisconsin, on the topic of “Telecom Innovation and Economic Growth.” He pointed out some things that I kind-of knew but hadn’t really thought about, and also told me some surprising things that I had never heard. Read more of this article »
