Newsroom

Aug. 16, 2011, 4 a.m.

Pair Programming Misused

Many Agile folks love pair programming, and a lot has been written on how great this technique is for Agile teams. However, if misused or allowed to get out of control, pair programming can do serious harm.

Aug. 23, 2011, 4 a.m.

Metrics: Never Mind the Thresholds

Let's face it: managers love statistics. Having a bunch of numbers to look at, to track or to manipulate gives you the feeling of being in control of things, or at least of having a grasp on reality.

July 6, 2011, 4 a.m.

Estimation Techniques

Over the years, I’ve been involved in a lot of discussions about how to estimate during sprint planning. If you’re new to Scrum – or even if you’re not – you might find value in these musings.

July 5, 2011, 4 a.m.

Labor Arbitrage Isn’t

"Labor arbitrage" is one of those phrases that is used so much we stop thinking about what it means. By definition, arbitrage is "riskless profit as zero cost"; however, in outsourced software development, it is anything but.

July 1, 2011, 4 a.m.

Different Units of Estimation

A while ago the structure of our project team changed, making it distributed: several very senior developers in another country joined us in order to assist in the implementation of certain features crucial to the project.

June 30, 2011, 4 a.m.

Handling Architecture in Scrum

To further explore the discussion about the role of architects on Agile projects that Sergey talked about earlier, I wanted to share a few ideas that I think are applicable to smaller and medium sized teams.