kswaters's blog

Agile Project Management Questions Answered

November 16, 2009 by Kelly Waters

I was asked recently to answer 5 questions about agile project management for a feature on PM Boulevard. I thought you might appreciate seeing them here too...

1. How has the Agile practice evolved over the last two years?

I don’t personally think that agile practices have particularly changed in the last two years, however there is clearly a stronger emphasis on some elements more than others now.

Scrum certainly seems to have crossed into the mainstream since I started my blog. Even though it was less than 3 years ago, Scrum still felt quite new and innovative in the UK at that time. I work in the web development sector and now every company I meet seems to be doing Scrum.

Another change is the interest in agile from the project management community. This seems significant as people start to think more about how best to apply agile on larger projects. Looking at Google Trends, which shows search volumes over time, the graph below shows that search demand for ‘agile project management’ started relatively late in terms of agile adoption, and interest is still growing strongly now.

The Problem With Planning

September 16, 2009 by Kelly Waters

Hi, this is Kelly, from Agile Software Development Made Easy!

I think I've been pretty successful in my career. But if I was better at planning, I wouldn't have achieved half the things I've achieved in my career! In fact, I wouldn't even have started some of them...

In reality, there are some things you can plan, and some things you can't. The trouble is, in most organisations we've come to expect a plan. And to meet it whatever happens. And that's just not realistic.

The Secret To Delivering On Time

August 19, 2009 by Kelly Waters

Hi, I'm Kelly Waters, author of the popular blog, All About Agile. I've agreed with Artem to guest over here at ASD and be a regular contributor - this is my first post...

I've been doing agile development for quite a few years now, and seen many benefits. But one of the most remarkable things of all, is how so many teams can quickly get good at predicting what they can deliver, and deliver on time, even if they were hopeless at estimating before!

10 Key Principles of Agile Software Development

April 18, 2008 by Kelly Waters

10 Key Principles of Agile Software Development, and how Agile Development fundamentally differs from a more traditional Waterfall approach to software development, are as follows:

1. Active user involvement is imperative
2. The team must be empowered to make decisions
3. Requirements evolve but the timescale is fixed
4. Capture requirements at a high level; lightweight & visual
5. Develop small, incremental releases and iterate
6. Focus on frequent delivery of products
7. Complete each feature before moving on to the next
8. Apply the 80/20 rule

10 Key Principles of Agile Development

March 12, 2007 by Kelly Waters

Check out my blog for 10 key principles of agile development.

http://kw-agiledevelopment.blogspot.com/2007/02/10-things-you-need-to-kn...