Agile Introduction Success Criteria through the LeSS lens

An agile organization is able to deliver or change direction at any time without additional cost. 

More companies want to become truly agile and book an expensive journey to the holy land of agility. Often the travelers never reach their true destination.

The LeSS people have a clear set of conditions to increase the odds. 

All my experiences confirm these conditions are essential for success.

Pragmatic Craftsmanship - Professional Software Developer

The last months I was often confronted with  software products having insufficient quality.

Insufficient means late delivery, and few new features. The effort to correct errors in the field eats 30% to 50% away from the whole development budget. How can such a dreadful situation occur?

One root cause is the low quality of the source code and ignorance of basic coding design approaches. We are not talking about complex design activities or complex patterns; we are discussing basic approaches how to write correct and maintainable code.

Java 10 aka 18.3 Changes

For Java to remain competitive it must not just continue to move forward — it must move forward faster. - Mark Reinhold

What has changed?

Oracle has decided to release a new JDK two times a year. The next release Java 10 aka 18.3 will be available on of March 2018.  JDK 11 aka 18.9 will be released in September 2018. Java 11 will also be a long term support release.

Agile in eGovernment Projects

How can agile approaches be applied to deliver solutions in a government environment?

Here an example of a GIS open data portal successfully developed using agile approaches such as Kanban, lean product and technical excellence.

How should You handle Technical Debt?

What is Technical Debt?

Technical debt is the difference between what was promised and what was actually delivered.

This includes any technical shortcuts made to meet delivery deadlines or to avoid training your development team.

Debt implies you pay interest on this debt until you reimburse it. If not interests shall continuously be added to the debt.

In other words either you pay back your debts and associated interests or you go bankrupt in the long term - because the value of your software diminishes over the years and at some point its value is lower than your debt -

Scrum Guide 2017: What changed?

The Scrum guide was revised in 2016 and got clarification concerning the core values. I was thrilled. Talking about values and mental models you must have to successfully introduce and be agile is awesome.

A new revision was published end of year 2017, just a year after the values addition.

What has changed? What have the community learnt and committed to the new version of the guide.

Six Levers for better Agile Product Development

How can you create better products and services?

How can you delight your customers, your collaborators, and your stakeholders?

We identified six levers to multiply the effectivity of your agile development teams and empower them to create great services and products.

Please add these tools to your toolbox and create great products.