“Computers must support the way in which people naturally and comfortably work. This is needed both for personal job satisfaction and for corporate survival. I care about whether the team is thriving, and whether the software is being delivered. Keeping the people trained and the process light are key to both.”
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Dr. Cockburn (pronounced Co-burn, the Scottish way) is an internationally renowned project witchdoctor and IT strategist, best known for describing Software development as a Cooperative Game (discussion: Re: Cooperative game manifesto for software development), for helping craft the Agile Development Manifesto, for finally defining Use Cases (discussion: Re: Use cases) and for developing the initial response technique relaxation/massage form.
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Hi, Atalichome — I moved your question to Use case questions (discussion: Re: Use case questions) where I answered it.
All the best – Alistair
I am battling with one central problem in agile: how do you remain “agile” and open to change when you’re working against a fixed budget and defined scope, and a customer who is not a “software person”.
We use an adapted version of SCRUM for web development, which is part-software and part-design. Our customers have only a limited interest in being involved in the project. They want x by x date. But they also want to make changes along the way.
So do you baseline the project against the original scope document? And then measure each change impact on the budget?
It’s driving me kind of nuts — how can you merge an agile process with a non-agile budget?
-by Jarred Cinman on 11/25/2009 at 1:38 PM
I think
Earned-value and burn charts and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_triangle might help you.
Also: don’t be afraid to say “no” to the customer. Every time you say “yes” to the customer you lose a bit of control over the project. If you say “yes” too much the project will spin out of control.
-by Floyd on 11/26/2009 at 7:18 AM
I recently read about this new agile methodology (well, again calling Agile a methodology itself may be problematic … anyways) ... its called PLAY BALL!
I read it twice and kind of think it is nothing but a modified version of Scrum and a little hypothetical in terms of 9 innings and all. Wanted to know your view point on the same.
-by Dinesh Madne on 12/24/2009 at 8:26 AM
Have you considered how Eliyahu Goldratt’s Theory of Contraints might be applied to Lean Manufacturing to try and increase the overall throughput of a software development organization? Just curious.
David
-by David Douglas on 1/29/2010 at 2:55 PM
Yes, indeed —- see
"Spending" Efficiency to Go Faster, which does just that.
cheers – Alistair
-by Alistair on 1/30/2010 at 11:46 AM