Author Archives: Robert Holler
Reflecting on 9/11
As I am sure almost all of us are aware of by now, the tenth anniversary of 9/11 is this Sunday. It is almost impossible to live in the United States (or hopefully anywhere) and not feel deeply for the … Continue reading
What’s in an Agile Dashboard?
Burndown charts offer tremendous insight into the likelihood of success of software releases and iterations. But are they enough by themselves? For some teams, the answer may be yes, for others, the answer is not quite. To start, many agile … Continue reading
Agile Burndown Charts
A burndown chart is an incredibly powerful, and maybe even more important, simple agile tool for measuring and managing project progress. Visually, a burndown chart is nothing more than a line chart representing remaining work over time. Burndown charts are … Continue reading
Can Gantt Charts be Agile?
Project managers love their Gantt Charts. For years, we were asked to deliver a Gantt Chart for agile development projects. Resisting each time in the name of everything agile, our internal name for a Gantt chart had previously been a … Continue reading
Benefits of Agile
When asked about the real benefits of agile development, I typically focus on 4 areas: Visibility – stakeholder collaboration and validation throughout the development life-cycle Value – continuous delivery of much more measurable business value Adaptability – the ability to … Continue reading
Five Myths of Agile Development: Myth #5 – Agile is Just Another Fad
Yesterday, we refuted Myth #4 – Agile Development Does Not Scale>. Concluding this series is Myth #5 – Agile Development is Just Another Fad. Fads typically involve a great deal of hype with little sustained substance. In a span of … Continue reading
Five Myths of Agile Development: Myth #4 – Agile Does Not Scale
After yesterday’s Myth #3 – Agile Development is Not Predictablelet’s talk about Myth #4 – Agile Does Not Scale. Generally speaking, software development itself has scaling issues. There is plenty of evidence that would suggest this is clearly not a … Continue reading
Five Myths of Agile Development: Myth #3 – Agile is Not Predictable
Yesterday’s post in this series discussed Myth #2 – Agile Teams Do Not Plan . Now let’s continue with Myth #3 – Agile Development is Not Predictable. As with planning, agile development methods promote a fundamentally different approach to metrics … Continue reading
Five Myths of Agile Development: Myth #2 – Agile Teams Do Not Plan
The first post in this series discussed Myth #1 – Agile is Undisciplined. Now let’s talk about another common Agile myth: Agile Teams Do Not Plan. This misconception generally relates to a lack of understanding of an agile, or incremental, … Continue reading
Five Myths of Agile Development: Myth #1 – Agile is Undisciplined
Agile development has made its way into the software mainstream in the past few years. As business cycles continue to accelerate and competitive pressures increase, many software development organizations have turned to agile development methods as a way to accelerate … Continue reading