Scrum Software Development

If you scan through the Program Schedule of Agile 2011, you will be excused if you get the impression that when it comes to agile software development there is nothing called outsourcing or offshoring. There are around 200 sessions and none of them are about the challenges faced while using agile with outsourcing. Only 3 sessions (Ali Zewail from Egypt, Thushara Wijewardena from Sri Lanka & Chris O’Connor) had a passing mention to the word offshoring. I have no explanations to offer for this anomaly – but let us explore the possibilities. Is Agile and offshoring diametrically opposite? There was a time in the past when it was assumed that agile and offshoring is like oil and water. “…given Agile methodologies’ intense developer/customer interaction and light documentation requirements, the two approaches seem diametrically opposed…” – Offshore Outsourcing and Agile... (more)

Sprinting into Cloud Computing

Cloud Migration Projects Execution: Now that the Cloud concept is settling down in the minds of the CXOs, apart from ready-made things like mail service, CRM Service and other IaaS services, it is also time to think about the Cloud migration project execution. Cloud migration projects will be on the rise in the near future with the following characteristics: An on-premise project that is identified to be moved to a public or private cloud and identified to provide value due to transformation The application is built on a Cloud-friendly platform (Java EE or .NET) and migration to ... (more)

Agile Practices Now Have Research Support

Adam Smith was wrong. Well … he was not wrong in his conclusion but he was partially wrong in his basic assumption that human always pursue their self-interest. Through the work of many scientists, we have begun to see evidence across several disciplines that people are in fact more cooperative and selfless—or behave far less selfishly—than we have assumed. In fact, recent research shows that in any society majority of us behave cooperatively rather than selfishly (though some people do behave selfishly). The essence of agile is iterative development and a self-organizing team ... (more)

The 4 Core Principles of Agile Programming

One of the things I really enjoy at the moment is the recognition and adoption of agile programming as a fully fledged powerful way to deliver quality software projects. As its figurehead is a group of very talented individuals who have created the agile manifesto http://agilemanifesto.org/. At its core are four simple principles that, when followed and applied to software projects, generally will ensure a great flexibility and hence higher agility. Leaving aside how great agile projects are, what worries me at the moment is that more and more people seem to be buying into this ... (more)

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server

With the release of Visual Studio 2005 in November Microsoft Visual Studio entered the enterprise development tools space with a coherent set of products targeted at the distinct roles in the software development lifecycle. On March 17 2006, Microsoft released Team Foundation Server, which finally enables users of the various editions of Visual Studio 2005 to achieve the Team System. Visual Studio 2005 Team System enables the primary stakeholders in a software development project, the architects, developers, testers, and project managers, to collaborate through a common environm... (more)