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Agile, Innovation, and the Project Manager
- Many believe that project management is a hindrance to innovation,
but the mistaken belief is found in the actual practice rather than the potential value. This paper
will look at the role of project management methodology, particularly "agile project
management" as applied in the context of software teams in fostering and enhancing innovation
projects and their results. Based on eight years of leading an agile team that focuses on
innovation projects, the author will relate the principles and practices of a high-functioning agile
team to time-honored elements of A Guide to the Project Management Book of Knowledge
(PMBOK). (pdf)
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Why Agile Focuses on the WBS and Frequent Communications
- The practices used by Agile software development teams focus their daily efforts some of the key project
management practices, in particular communications and work-breakdown-structures. By weaving these two key
practices into everyday work patterns, Agile teams keep all of the team members engaged in key project
management practices and thereby improve their project outcomes. (pdf)
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War Rooms and Open Spaces: Thinking Outside the Cubicle
- In some respects as a workforce we are really more personally disconnected than at any point in history. Even
workers whose offices are in the same location are so busy being busy and virtually collaborating that they often
donŐt spend enough focused time with one another working on key issues. Rather than sequestering individual talent
behind the closed doors of individual offices or across cube farms, the time has come to bring them together in an
open workspace. Moving your team into an open workspace will make you a better project manager and will
improve the performance of your Project Management Office (PMO). (pdf)
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Eggs, Beef, & Agile: What Does "Grade" Have to do with Project Quality?
- In software development, business stakeholders should define quality
differently for different grades of software, such as prototypes, production releases, and proofs of concept. This
whitepaper explores how one agile team dramatically improved its quality practices with a set of simple tools
and a focus on the important concept of "grade." (pdf)
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When Does Finding Fewer Bugs Equal Successful QA?
- By embracing the practices defined in this paper, Menlo Innovations has been able to build an effective Quality Advocacy program that results in fewer defects in the end product. This occurs not because there is insufficient time or effort for testing, but rather because we have made quality the responsibility of every person on the team. (pdf)
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Agile Teams Require Agile QA
- It is challenging to successfully integrate standard quality assurance (QA) practices within an agile process such as extreme programming (XP). Not only is expanding an agile process to include other disciplines difficult, but XP teams typically reject traditional QA practices. Integrating QA into an XP team does not have to be painful. Integration is achieved by tackling small goals using the XP principles of communication, simplicity, feedback, and courage in order to build an agile QA process. This paper describes our experiences towards successful integration. (pdf)
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Rotating Leadership Successfully
- This paper describes a two and a half year, 48,000+ hour software development endeavor at Menlo Innovations that
was led by a series of eight different project managers. As each project manager joined the team, they brought their
own strengths, capabilities and working style, but effectively engaged their team and their sponsor by working
within a simple, consistent process. (pdf)
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Overcoming Brooks' Law
- Brooks' Law states: "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." This argument
is often used by software developers to justify heroic programming efforts rather than increasing
the size of the team. See how we have overcome the constraint of Brooks' Law at Menlo and
accomplish more by adding new people to our teams.
(pdf)
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Plans
are Useless, but Planning is Indispensable
- Project planning at Menlo is a series of ongoing activities,
rather than a single event at the beginning of the project. See how
we have adopted Extreme Programming practices to project management.
(pdf)
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Estimation Is Not An Event, It’s A
Process!
- The fundamental strategies on which most estimation techniques are
built. (pdf) |
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Secrets of Software
Success: The Nature of the Team
- How to assemble a true delivery team (pdf) |
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Extreme
Programming Practices used to Facilitate Effective Project
Management
- How practices from Extreme Programming overlap nicely with the
best practices of project management (pdf)
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Collaborative
Web Development
- Understand how web projects differ from other IT initiatives. |
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Paired Programming in the
Software Factory
- Questions and Answers. |
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Project X - A software
development case study. |
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Extreme Programming Used to
Establish the Culture of a High Performance Team - A management case study.
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Extreme Interviewing - How
can you ensure potential candidates will operate effectively in an
open and collaborative work environment and embrace
paired-programming? |
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The Rational Unified Process® - A well documented, complete, yet complex
methodology. |
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