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In 2008, our organization successfully implemented an agile software development approach (Scrum) across the Application Development department after piloting Scrum in 2007 with a few projects. In just four months, our department consisting of over 200 contractors and 70 full time employees transitioned from a traditional waterfall-style approach (RUP) to Scrum. Less then 2 months later, we were running...
Literature has credited agile development practices with saving failing projects and helping with the success of many others. The projects of many agile success stories have similar characteristics - small teams, co-located, relatively free of reporting and governance constraints, etc. This paper presents experiences applying agile practices to large systems projects. The information was gathered...
In early 2008, Pyxis Technologies was contracted in the third of a series of projects distributed between Canada and France. This project dwarfed its predecessors in scope and complexity. In over more than a year, it involved more than 30 people in 3 cities. With contributors separated by distance and time zones, organizations and expertise, the challenges faced ranged from organizing and coordinating...
This paper describes a journey from 2004 to 2008 when SoftwarePeople in Denmark, together with a partner from Bangladesh, established a subsidiary company more than 7000 km away from Denmark. We hired 20 people in one week in Bangladesh and started to use CMMI processes to integrate development teams between the two locations with the goal of receiving a CMMI level 3 certification in 1.5 years. After...
Brian Victor and Noah Jacobson are developers at Abraxas Applications who led the initial adoption of agile practices at the company. They discovered that agile is a social process but that their background as developers prevented them from implementing it as effectively as they could. They relate several anecdotes that illustrate problems in developer led transitions and describe how their environment...
A major challenge for software organizations is creating software that can continue to adapt and change over time, a code base the team can live with. This paper reviews the lessons learned from CruiseControl, a popular tool for continuous integration. CruiseControl is an open source success story not only because it has had over 400,000 downloads but also because it includes contributions from over...
The Scrum software development framework was designed for the hyperproductive state where productivity increases by 5-10 times over waterfall teams and many colocated teams have achieved this effect. In 2006, Xebia (The Netherlands) started localized projects with half Dutch and half Indian team members. After establishing a localized velocity of five times their waterfall competitors on the same...
The national financial market turmoil that began in 2008 and continues to this day forced Iowa student loan and other student loan providers to make significant changes. This is a story about how Iowa student loan found innovative ways to continue to meet the need for private student loans and how the technical changes needed to accomplish this were implemented with relative ease. Three different...
When Marriott began to build its brand management intranet, the tech vendor ran into several problems that jeopardized the whole program. The introduction of Agile began a long recovery process: When should you be covert/overt with Agile practices? How do you convince stakeholders a daily concall is more efficient than a weekly concall? Why would you pay for the tech vendorpsilas Agile training? How...
In 2004, SEP tried adopting agile practices. However, agile failed to have the desired lasting impact across the entire organization. Things changed in 2007, when SEP implemented a kanban system for the first time. Kanban created an effective means for institutionalization of lean by providing a unique method of discovering and learning practices and principles. Upon examining multiple teams using...
This paper is an experience report describing Abbottpsilas adoption of agile software development practices in its molecular diagnostics division. We will compare two medical device projects; one before agile and one after. Both of these projects required submission to the FDA (the U.S. Food and Drug Administration). We will describe the adoption of agile practices from realization of the need to...
If agile is to be successfully introduced on a medium or large scale into any organization it is vital that there is a symbiotic relationship between line management and the agile teams that carry out the work. Line management form the organizational hierarchies and silos in any major corporation and their interaction with the cross functional Agile teams, either permanent or temporary, that are formed...
In 2007 I started work as a tester for a company called Socialtext. When I joined the company there was already a Selenium-based test framework in place, but there were only a couple of automated test cases created; we had about 400 test steps, or individual assertions about the behavior of the application. When I left Socialtext two years later, we had just surpassed 10,000 test steps in the main...
Stories of real teams enthusiastically implementing agile in non-standard situations shows openness and constant adaptation as the most important factors for success.
The initial definition of XP resulted in many people interpreting the on-site customer to be a single person. We have conducted extensive qualitative research studying XP teams, and one of our research questions was ldquowho is the customerrdquo? We found that, rather than a single person, a customer team always exists. In this paper we outline the different roles that were typically on the team,...
This report describes our experience in adapting the Scrum process to develop complex tools and user interfaces for use in computer-generated (CG) animated feature film production at the Walt Disney Animation Studios. We describe the movie making process and how the need for tools with good interaction led us to adopt a Scrum-based iterative design and development process.
By now, your company has made the transition to Scrum. "Sprints", "backlogs", and "retrospectives" are everyday words, but you have discovered the complications that arise within product management. product owners and managers who have been scattered across multiple teams are no longer in sync, and at the senior management level, there is not very much visibility into...
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