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Iteration is valuable to more than just application development; design also greatly benefits. But the benefits don’t stop there — infrastructure can gain as well. A big portion of the value in an iterative approach comes from the empirical evidence gained through the experience of using the software. By exposing your product to the light…
If your team is not focused on delivering intermediate project milestones, they are missing what’s really of value. It’s easy to miss the forest for the trees if you’re only focusing on task-level points estimates and velocity tracking. I’ve become frustrated with how burn charts focus on showing progress through an entire backlog and don’t…
Your team won’t have a traditional task backlog if you stage it out through scheduled iterations. Staging your team’s task backlog into scheduled iterations is an important part of managing your project to intermediate milestones. Atomic’s teams commonly decompose a project into a backlog of tasks that can accomplished in a day or less. Backlogs…
In a place that makes software all day, the term “iteration” isn’t uncommon. When that place has been an Agile shop since the term appeared and an XP shop before that, the term “iteration” can be easily taken for granted. To us makers, iteration is a very tangible, every-day term that defines our work for…
It takes skill and dedication to have a strong command over the craft of software development. It’s a blend of science and art that requires careful attention to detail in every aspect. You must have a solid understanding of the machine, languages, and tools you are using. And the experience to understand how the design…
When did you last prune your backlog? When you started the project, the team sat together for a planning poker session to provide the initial definition of the project. Now it’s six months later – or six weeks or even days later. You’ve been paying attention to the stories in your current iteration. Have you…
Dedicated, poly-skilled project teams are more effective at delivering innovation projects than well-honed, departmentally-distributed, operationally-focused teams. The choice of using an internal vs. external team is often considered when planning how to take on a significant innovation project. Internal expertise and capacity are two common factors used to assess the viability of the internal team….
The worst possible budget for a project is zero. If you have no funds or no time, you have no power to build anything worthwhile. That’s not a surprise to anyone – no one likes working under absurd constraints. The second worst possible budget is unlimited.
Carl is the president and co-founder of Atomic Object