Tools don't solve problems, thinking does
Agile – in all it’s variations – becomes an increasingly popular process for realizing software. The roles testers and testing plays in these projects is challenging and new. Testers are no longer considered code-killers, but can play – and are expected to play – a very pro-active role in agile projects. Although all agile process agree on the importance of […]
Customer presentation, Eindhoven. After Twan van den Broek (of Ciber) and I succesfully applied a great mix of agile software development processes and techniques, including Scrum, Smart, smart use cases, smart estimation in probably the first agile SAP SOA projects in the Netherlands, we’ve held several talks on the subject at conferences and seminars, including an agile conference, the SOA […]
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. Earlier this year I was invited by prof. Arno Oosterhaven to do a series of lectures on software development at the post-doctoral program IT Auditor at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. The audience of IT Auditors is very mixed, ranging from accountants to actual software developers, which makes it difficult to address all interests of the students. […]
IT Works, Hotel Pullman Brussels Airport, Diegem, Belgium (www.itworks.be) Although agile software development approaches, principles and techniques are slowly becoming more mainstream, it is still necessary to promote them for the larger part of the IT community and organizations. Together with my Belgian guest speaker Stefaan van Royen (now of BoonDoggle), who can talk very lively on implementing Scrum and […]
International SOA Symposium, World Trade Center, Rotterdam. (www.soasymposium.com) On October 22 and 23, 2009 the second international SOA Symposium will take place at the World Trade Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Just coming out of a highly successful agile SAP service oriented project (likely the first in it’s type in the Netherlands or even a wider area), Twan van den […]
Array Seminars, Hotel Amrath Lapershoek, Hilversum (www.arrayseminars.nl) Although agile software development approaches, principles and techniques are slowly becoming more mainstream, it is still necessary to promote them for the larger part of the IT community and organizations. Together with my Belgian guest speaker Stefaan van Royen (now of BoonDoggle), who can talk very lively on implementing Scrum and Smart, I’ve […]
Web team, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Utrecht. A growing number of organization slowly migrate towards more agile approaches of their software development. When starting with agile, Scrum is still the most popular process around, with user stories as the preferred requirements technique. Although Scrum and user stories apply well to many web projects, when it comes to handling large, service-oriented projects, in […]
Tomorrow, June 26, I will be doing a talk at the SDN Event at Hotel Houten in Houten (see www.sdn.nl). This talk will be dealing with the many anti-patterns that surround agile software development. Unfortunately, the session description for my talk is not entirely up-to-date. So I’ll repeat it here. Better safe then sorry. Hope to meet you all tomorrow […]
In any project, and especially in projects that run under a tight schedule – as most projects do these days, it is helpful to list all elements that can possibly be (re)used to crank up your project, such as guidelines, documentation templates, existing components, (web) services, frameworks. This can best be done early on in the project, traditional or agile. […]
The months May and June are notorious for the number of talks – as Rick van der Lans describes: May and June are speaker’s season. Just to remind me not to forget any of my upcoming talks, here’s a list: May 12. Project estimation with smart use cases. At Capgemini, Utrecht. Presentation at internal software estimation seminar for Community of […]
Smart use cases serve as a very good unit of work in agile projects. The agile process Smart relies on smart use cases, from start to end. Moreover, the progress in Smart projects is measured and managed using these use cases, and the associated straightforward estimation technique smart estimation. First cut smart use cases A first cut smart use case […]
Smart is an easy to implement agile process, that is essentially smart use cases driven. Although Smart mixes very well with other agile processes and techniques, such as Scrum, XP and FDD, the process that takes a project through a little more ceremony than you might expect from a number of other agile processes. For instance, Smart suggests a number […]
In the second half of last year, I did a guest lecture at the Hogeschool Arnhem Nijmegen (HAN) in Arnhem on an invitation by lecturer Rody Middelkoop. I’m sorry but I can’t remember the exact date – only that I had an upcoming flue. Although if was a Friday afternoon, the audience was good, about 60-70 lecturers and students. I […]
Early in March Twan van den Broek, SAP solution architect at TopForce, got in touch with me if I would be interested to coach an agile SAP project at a very large logistics organization. We have been using accelerators from our agile Accelerated Delivery Platform in SAP project before, including smart use cases, smart estimation and Tobago MDA, our model […]
After a dozen years of promoting and evangelizing agile software development in the current years of economic unpredictability a breakthrough in applying agile processes and techniques is emerging. But with the rising popularity of Scrum, MSF Agile, OpenUP, Smart, XP, Lean, FDD and the likes, it’s not only success stories any more. Similar to failing traditional waterfall projects there patterns […]
The process of creating a sound estimate for your project will take some time in any agile project. You will have to define what work to do in the project. In general this work can be split up into two parts: Project related work. There’s project related work, such as creating a project proposal or setting up your development environment. […]