World Of Agile

Tools are inherent to our jobs, inherent to how we solve the problems we face each day. Our comfort level with the set of tools that are available to us, and our ability to adapt to new tools as they evolve and shape our thoughts and ideas. The availability of collective knowledge within the palm of your hand combined with the collaboration across organization and company boundaries through open source software is dramatically disrupting the status quo of work. Companies mired in managing infrastructure configuration management by hand with unknown numbers of divergent systems, unable to quickly change and respond to market demands will struggle against their counterparts who have managed to contain their complexity on one axis through infrastructure automation. While it is possible to manage servers by hand, or even artisinally crafted shell scripts, a proper configuration management tool is invaluable especially as your environment and team changes. Even the best software developers ...

The term ITIL means "Information Technology Infrastructure Library". ITIL is the most popular and widely accepted approach to manage IT Service(ITSM). ITIL has been adopted by many organizations as the framework to manage their IT service. There are millions of practitioners worldwide with ITIL skills and capabilities. IT is important to keep in mind that ITIL is a set of best practices and not a standard, so organizations are free to adopt ITIL framework as is applicable or valuable to them. Advantages of adopting ITIL for your organization are immense. Therefore, all scale and size (Small , medium, Large) organizations all over the world use ITIL to help them improve the value of their services. The few important benefits of adopting ITIL are:  ITIL creates stronger alignment between IT and the business Improves service delivery and customer satisfaction Reduces costs with improved use of resources Provides Greater visibility of IT costs and assets A Brief History of ITIL: ...

Information radiators are meant to display information at a public place so that the information can be noticed by as many people as possible without making a conscious effort to do so. The idea of information radiator was invented by Alister Cockburn, who was a big believer in effective and timely communication. Information Radiators should display the current information about the project whatever is critical for the team to learn. It could include Schedule, tasks, issues, progress etc. The Most common forms of Information Radiators are ·         TaskBoards or Kanban Boards ·         Big Visible Charts such as BurnDown Charts ·         Street Lights and Lava Lamps Characteristics of Information Radiators which make the Information Radiators work ·         Simplicity : The information Radi...

The Primary Team roles in scrum are named as • Product Owner  • Scrum Master • Development Team Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Team are considered as people who are committed to the project while customers and executive management are considered as involved but not committed to the project. Scrum Teams are self-organizing and cross-functional. Self-organizing teams choose how best to accomplish their work, rather than being directed by others outside the team.  Cross-functional teams have all competencies needed to accomplish the work without depending on others not part of the team. The team model in Scrum is designed to optimize flexibility, creativity, and productivity. Scrum Teams deliver products iteratively and incrementally, maximizing opportunities for feedback. Incremental deliveries of “Done” product ensure a potentially useful version of working product is always available. All the roles are based on the concept of “S...

Done Criteria are a set of rules that are applicable to all User Stories. A clear definition of done is critical because it removes ambiguity from requirements and helps the team adhere to mandatory quality norms. This clear definition is used to create the Done Criteria when a Prioritized Product Backlog is prepared. Definition of done is crucial to a highly functioning Scrum team. The following are characteristics that you should look for in your team’s definition of done. Verifying that your team’s DoD meets these criteria will ensure that you are delivering features that are truly done, not only in terms of functionality but in terms of quality as well. DoD is a checklist of valuable activities required to produce software. Definition of done is a simple list of activities (writing code, coding comments, unit testing, integration testing, release notes, design documents, etc.) that add verifiable/demonstrable value to the product. Focusing on value-added step...

Today businesses are shifting to emerging economies (such as India) due to reduced business operations cost and an easily available workforce. The businesses certainly are more virtual and distributed, with "distributed" as its key element. Thus the need for better managing such teams, using the right tools and processes, is becoming increasingly critical for any enterprise company. Here are some reasons for the shift and need for having distributed Agile teams: ·           Globally distributed teams reduce costs. ·           They can reach the market more quickly with a "follow the sun" model. ·           Distributed teams expand access to new markets. ·           Acquisitions as a result of consolidation results in companies working together to integrate their businesses. ·   ...

Skills of a Product Owner Choosing the right product owner is crucial for any Scrum Project. Following are some of the characteristics expected from the Product Owner ·           Visionary : Product owner should be able to envision the final product. ·           Doer : Product owner should also be a doer – that means, he should work with the team to get the final product ready. ·           Product Owner should be a Leader and Team Player ·           Communicator : The product owner must be an effective communicator and negotiator. The Product Owner is the Voice of the customer and therefore he should communicate customer needs and requirements and bridge the gap between the customer and the team. This may mean saying NO sometimes to the customer. ·        ...