Models can help you explore existing code and discuss new designs; clarify users’ needs and define tests; and be used to generate some of the code. This article shows how working with models will help you in an agile project.

This article proposes a Rails refactoring catalog.

To successfully create the significant 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. The authors of A Practical Approach to Large-Scale Agile Development explain how to tune agile to your business objectives.

The face of meetings has changed fundamentally since agile coaches and ScrumMasters started including facilitation techniques into agile meeting structures. Many of us have experienced the productivity benefits of these collaborative practices first hand, so they’re hard to deny. Yet it’s difficult to put our finger on why they should make so much difference to our software development process. At the same time neuroscience research has become increasingly popular as we try to make sense of the mysterious process of creating ideas and knowledge. As more information becomes available, there seems to be enough overlap in the research to suggest that agile facilitation really does help us make better decisions faster.

This article describes RoboSpock, a test framework for Android that provides an easy way of writing Behavior Driven Development (BDD) specifications with Groovy language and supports the Google Guice library. It combines two main solutions in the area: Robolectric and Spock framework.

The DoD is facing challenges to rapidly deploy operational capabilities in complex environments where bridging legacy and new technologies are key to success. The challenges arise as a result of diminishing budgets and the need for new capabilities to operate in war environments, including the global war on terrorism. To balance this imperative need with rapid response, we found that our developed Agile life-cycle paradigm was a viable solution to meet challenges brought about by changes in the environment. This article demonstrates how a DoD program used an Agile approach, throughout every phase of the program’s life cycle, to rapidly field capabilities.

Many organizations have struggled over the past few decades with a blizzard of process improvement methodologies such as Total Quality Management (TQM), Kaizen, JIT Production, and Re-Engineering. These operations are understandably leery of adopting new methodologies given their past experience, especially with a focus on return on investments and leveraging existing practices. This article examines the relationship of Agile, CMMI®, Lean Production and the Six Sigma Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control (DMAIC) roadmap. The intent is to explain how these methodologies might be synergistically combined for a cohesive approach to enhance continuous process improvement.

Sometimes, when testing user stories in Scrum, there's a final Waterfall interaction to deal with. The scenario I present here is based on this situation: a Scrum process with an interaction of sequential phases at the end of the process to (re)test the whole developed functionality. These sequential phases are mandatory for our organization, which follows a Waterfall process for the releases of the product. So, for the moment at least, we have to deal with this and my experience is that we aren't alone.

An IT consulting company with two office locations and 100-plus people specialized in custom software development and testing services. The firm did in-house software development training for developers at both locations and had trainers, HR, accountants, legal, managers, and accountants on staff. The company wanted to perform an enterprise transformation from Waterfall software development to Agile, and get ISO certified.

When would it ever be a good idea to randomly and intentionally try to terminate parts of your software system — including the hardware it runs on? How about early and often? In this Agile DevOps installment, DevOps expert Paul Duvall describes approaches to creating a Chaos Monkey (as it's been dubbed by Netflix) to ensure that your production infrastructure can recover from inevitable system failures.