Whether the change involves an entire enterprise, reorganization, or the adoption of new software development methods, there is one constant in any change: People need and crave information, time, and support. When those factors are absent, transitions flounder, and hoped-for changes fail. Managers at all levels can contribute to successful transitions. In this article, I will draw on my experience observing, leading, and participating in organizational change to distill practical ways that managers can support intentional change.

Requirements management is an area where satisfactory results are not seen even after establishing well-defined processes and adopting good tools. This article looks at this problem from a totally different angle and finds facts that are normally not observed. It discusses the effect of human emotions in requirements management.

Agile methodologies introduce a newer role, typically called the "Agile Coach" that traditional methodologies will not focus on, or even mention. For those who have been working in an agile way for some time, it may seem like a natural complement, yet for those newer to this way of working it raises many questions like, "What's so important about an Agile Coach: What's wrong with a Line Manager, or a Team or Technical Lead: Why does Monster.com list 54 positions with this title:" Let's take a quick tour through the alphabet to really understand what an agile coach focuses on, what they do, how they act and, more importantly, why.

By being aware of issues documented in this article you can be prepared for them or, perhaps, not feel too bad that you are experiencing them yourself – they are common.

If you want a job in Agile software development, using a framework like Scrum, you need a plan of action that spans all three phases of your job search: preparation, interviewing, and assessment.

Do you have a self-organizing team? If so, half the battle is already won. But if not, beware: Creating a self-organizing team is far more challenging than we had ever imagined.

Practical guidelines for the first-time XP Project Manager. Addresses resistance to the Test-First and Pair Programming principles and gives advise on how to overcome this resistance.

Maturity models are great; they provide a mostly technical road map for what we need to do to improve processes. Lean Six Sigma is also great – it provides a methodology for how to improve processes. The problem is that process improvement causes cultural changes. This article provides guidelines for managing cultural changes in your organization.

Transitioning the Team Software Process (TSP) methodology into an organization is not an easy or simple task. It requires significant behavior change by not only the developers, but also the major stakeholders. In this article, we share three years of experience with the TSP transition team at Sandia National Laboratories with two intertwined perspectives: that of the TSP coach, and that of the development manager supervising the TSP projects.

One of the cornerstones of Scrum is the self-organising team: one able to make decisions in relation to the target to which it has committed. In my work implementing Scrum, I have largely addressed how to form groups of individualists into cohesive teams, where the members support each other and make use of each other's strengths.