agileplaces.com

How to Facilitate Meetings

Donald Case — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 01:07:30 +0000

by Berit Lakey From Network Service Collective, Movement for a New Society, 4722 Baltimore Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19143; 215 724-1464. Meetings are occasions when people come together to get something done, whether it is sharing information or making decisions. They may be good, bad or indifferent. Some of the ingredients of good meetings are: Commonly understood goals; A clear [...]

Defined vs. Empirical Process Control

Donald Case — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 02:58:06 +0000

How many would admit to facilitating that "perfect" phased-gate resource-leveled MS Project plan only to face a massive re-plan caused some new cross-functional dependency? How long did it take to institute the change? The following every-day examples are more likely: Your plan is hereby obsolete - due to critical new feedback from the voice of the [...]

Is your team leadership organized for Enterprise 2.0?

Donald Case — Sun, 06 May 2007 05:09:39 +0000

I used to believe that major organizational changes could only be accomplished by one highly visible individual. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Scott Cook come to mind. It was easy to conclude that the type of leadership so critical to major change can come only from a single larger-than-life person. It's a false belief. Because major [...]

Lines of Sight

Donald Case — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 19:52:45 +0000

ARE YOU A DEVELOPMENT, PROJECT, OR TEST MANAGER? DO YOU BELIEVE YOUR PROJECT IS UNDER CONTROL? LET ME ASK YOU A FEW SIMPLE QUESTIONS. When will the system-platform-service be accepted? Really? How do you know? How many more test cycles should we plan for? No... I mean exactly? Are the client's needs satisfied? Prove it. System Stabilization Metrics Early in [...]

Agile Hallmarks

Donald Case — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 00:57:11 +0000

Summarized below are several of the key characteristics shared by every successful agile project. For some methodologies these correspond exactly with individual practices, whereas for other methodologies there is a looser correspondence. 1. Releases and Fixed-Length Iterations Agile methods have two main units of delivery: releases and iterations. A release consists of [...]

Executing global strategies with the Program Management Office

Donald Case — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 15:53:20 +0000

As technology breakthroughs help teams overcome geographic boundaries, more and more enterprises are going global. The benefits of globalization far outweigh its challenges. Enterprises pursuing the globalization path leverage global best practices and IT to their business advantage, reducing their operations costs while increasing their focus on strategic business needs. Global teams rely on fundamentally [...]

Outsourcing the Quality function

Donald Case — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 01:30:39 +0000

In many enterprises, software quality leaders are facing a serious quandary; addressing the complex and ever-changing needs of the business, while maintaining high quality service levels with fewer and fewer resources. Much like kayakers paddling upstream against a fast moving river, software quality leaders are searching for [...]

Trawling for project risks

Donald Case — Wed, 25 May 2005 19:08:03 +0000

Successful project teams aggressively and systematically seek out and mitigate project risks, from the project inception phase through every phase transition including deployment. Along the way, new risks are surfaced, prioritized, tracked, and resolved. Each risk is prioritized by its probability, and its overall potential impact on the project. Good risk management increases productivity, quality, [...]

Addressing the common project risks and remedies

Donald Case — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 00:15:01 +0000

While risk management is integral to other project management processes, project definition and planning must proceed before fundamental risks can be analyzed. Create or obtain the essential foundation documents for your project: 1) A sponsor-approved charter that outlines your project's schedule, scope and resource goals (these are [...]

These are interesting times for Enterprise Software

Donald Case — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 18:57:33 +0000

While discussions concerning open-source software development tend to focus on the innovative techniques used to produce complex systems by mobilizing highly distributed programming talent, progressive software enterprise leaders note the significance of open-source software as a platform for effective learning and collaboration through apprenticeship. Open-source programmers often start with code developed by others and then [...]