Agile Development Methods
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Why Setting Priorities Is a Core Agile Practice Every aspect of agile includes prioritization. The most important user stories are implemented first. Testing is prioritized to make sure features valued by customers are tested the most. Even everyday tasks are prioritized during daily standups. Here are three reasons setting priorities is essential to success in agile. |
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Prioritizing Invisible Work There are work items that will give the team an operational boost and perhaps avoid a crisis, but that never quite make it to the top of the priority list—like build and deployment improvements, or paying down technical debt. For enabling work that is valuable but too invisible to be a priority, consider breaking it down. |
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Team Agility in a Post-Pandemic World COVID-19 has necessitated entirely remote environments, and people the world over have had to inspect their foundations of working, adapt to a new way of remote execution, and integrate their personal and professional lives more than before. Organizational leaders need to embrace a new outlook in four critical areas. |
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3 Reasons Saturday Night Live Is the Perfect Example of Agility Saturday Night Live has delivered iconic, award-winning content and thrilled its audience for more than four decades. The practices used to deliver this sketch comedy television show every week actually have quite a bit in common with the practices of agile businesses. It's all about continuously, reliably delivering value. |
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What’s the Problem with User Stories? Agile projects focus on very lightweight, simple requirements embodied in user stories. However, there are some problems with relying solely on user stories. They often don't contain enough accuracy for development, testing, or industry regulations. There's a better way to write detailed requirements that are still agile. |
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How to Make a Fixed-Scope Contract More Agile Establishing a contract that genuinely supports agile methods can be a significant challenge. By its very nature, a contract that specifies detailed, upfront deliverables contravenes the principles of flexibility and adaptation that are at the heart of agile. But it is possible—both parties just need to focus on results. |
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The Real Value of Cross-Functional Agile Teams Agile teams know that cross-functional collaboration is central to the methodology, but there are often barriers to fully embracing this idea. If teams are used to handoffs, it may seem like it makes sense to maintain the status quo. Try collaborating on something small to realize the true value of cross-functional teams. |
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Leave No Tester Behind Creating comprehensive automated tests within a sprint can be a challenge. If the testers don't finish the automation and the rest of the team moves on, testers get left behind and can't catch up. You need some techniques to keep everyone together and ensure that all essential work is accomplished—including test automation. |
