A new chapter which explores how visual management can be used to improve quality of software products has been added to my second book What Drives Quality. The book What Drives Quality is available for a reduced price on Leanpub as long as it's under development.
All of the books that I have published on Leanpub are now available in a bundle: Books by Ben Linders. You get a 30% discount when you buy my books.
I will give two workshops in Kladno (near Prague) on Getting More out of Agile and Lean. In these workshops you'll learn practices to develop the right products for your business and customers, reduce your delivery time, increase the quality of your software, and create happy high performing teams.
My article on delivering quality software with Agile is featured in the first English edition of Bits&Chips, a news magazine for professionals who develop smart products and systems.
The practices in the workshop Getting More out of Agile and Lean will help you to develop the right products for your business and customers, reduce your delivery time, increase the quality of your software, and create happy high performing teams.
Conference season isn't over yet. There are several great agile and software development conferences that I will be attending and covering for InfoQ in the upcoming months before the holidays start.
NO and YES are two simple words, yet practice shows that professionals often have difficulties in using them. Actually it's very easy, certainly when you want to work in an agile way. Dare to say NO when you are unsure if you can do what's requested. When you say YES it means that you will deliver the product, on time with the right quality.
A new chapter which explores how agile software development can be deployed to deliver high quality software has been added to my second book What Drives Quality.
Regularly I get questions if you can measure defects and if you should measure them. The short answer is: You can measure them, and it can have value to do so, but only if you take action. Quality matters, and defects can provide you with valuable information about the quality of your product, but measuring alone doesn't improve quality. You need to dive deeper to have a good understanding and then act upon that.
Effective agile teams are able to decide how to do their work, and to continuously learn and improve their way of working. Team working enables them to deliver high quality software that satisfies the needs of their customers.
In 1980 Philip Crosby wrote the book Quality is Free. In the book he explained how investing time and energy in building the right products with good quality will save money and time. Many agile teams know how important software quality is, but they need to convince their managers and other stakeholders to get there. It will help them to self-organize and do their work in a good way. Let's explore how you can sell that "quality is free" and build a business case for quality.
Een sterk punt van een agile aanpak is dat dat er in korte cycli, z.g. iteraties of sprints (Scrum) gewerkt wordt, en er steeds feedback momenten zijn. Het cyclisch werken met feedback zorgt ervoor dat het proces bewaakt kan worden, en informatie uit de feedback helpt om continue de agile werkwijze te verbeteren. Dit artikel beschrijft welke feedback er in agile is en hoe je die feedback effectief kunt benutten.