Branching code is a bit of a pain. And agile teams need to do more of it typically. This is because we are balancing new features with production bug fixes, and working in short scrum sprints while also keeping an eye on longer term...
At AgilityFeat, we work by applying Agile methodologies in a distributed manner. Our clients are generally based in the US while our team members are located in Costa Rica, Nicaragua as well as the US (Charlottesville and Boston)....
When I do agile coaching for our clients, I hear a lot of Yesbuts. That's when I say something that agile teams are supposed to do (like short iterations or frequent releases), and the client says "Yes, but..." There are always lots of...
Last week I went to the Lean Start-up Meetup in Boston where Florian Motlik of Codeship lead a discussion with Amos Benninga from GrabCad, Dan Rowe from ETSY and Ken Eimer from InsightSquared on Continuous Deployment. The presentation was...
As our tagline for AgilityFeat says, we are entrepreneurs, it's in our dna. And for some of us, some of that DNA is shared. Andrea and Daniel Phillips are the sibling founders of the My Chores App. The are also AgilityFeat team members so...
You got to know when to hold em.. We’re believers in Lean Startup here at AgilityFeat. In addition to our boutique UX/ Design and Software Development Services, we’re working on a few business ideas to scratch our collective...
Yes, you need a responsive web design. Let me tell you why and what are considerations you have to keep in mind. A New Era Has Already Started In 2007 Steve Jobs talked about an upcoming “post-PC” era, an era of devices that “aren't as...
UX Magazine had an article last month by Michael Lai entitled "UX and Agile: Tying the knot", which used a great marriage analogy to discuss how UX and agile are and must be intertwined. At AgilityFeat we are very passionate about both UX...
When teams move to Scrum from a more chaotic development method, there is often a struggle with convincing the new Product Owner (or the business folks that they report to) that the team cannot be retargeted on a whim. A benefit of Scrum...
Back in November we sat down with Tony Cappeart, COO and Co-Founder at Contactually to talk about how they are applying Lean Startup methodologies to build their business. We talked about how Lean Startup had guided their product design,...
I'd like to share with you a common cadence that we are using on agile teams that I coach, and also on many of AgilityFeat's development teams with our clients. For an agile team to get into a solid rhythm of work, they need to have a set...
Last weekend, I traveled to San José, Costa Rica to meet with the Agility Feat team. As usual, the trip to Costa Rica was absolutely amazing even though there were no beaches nor rain forests on the itinerary. This time, we used the...
Recently I was in a meeting with one of our clients at AgilityFeat. The project lead at the client made a simple, but very powerful statement as we presented an assessment and proposal. “One of our challenges is that we need to learn to...
Not every project is going to run smoothly, even in the best of teams. We have a great team here at AgilityFeat, and we’re very selective when choosing our customers, so our projects tend to be very successful. But every team is going to...
Whether you are a bleeding edge startup or a large corporation running agile teams, here are four ways that you may be abusing agile concepts and letting perfection kill your chances of success. Product Owner Perfection In an agile team,...
Project on-boarding is key to success Step two is always a question mark. It’s one of my favorite meme’s on the internet. Some joker on a message board will say they have a great idea, and their business plan usually goes something like...
Who’s ever heard of a telecom lean startup? That’s sort of what Twilio is, and it’s a pretty cool company and interesting case study. When I attended the LeanStartup.co conference in San Francisco recently, one of the parts I was most...
AgilityFeat is hiring an agile engineering coach! Well, sort of. You see … here’s the deal. AgilityFeat does two things: (1) custom software development in Costa Rica, and (2) agile process and engineering coaching and training for...
Yesterday, I went to The Lean Startup Conference in San Francisco. It was a full day of incredible presentations, fireside chats (without the fires), sharing of lessons learned and of course networking. This was my first Lean Startup...
Ford Englander is AgilityFeat's new VP for Business Development, and a long time mentor and friend to me. I'm thrilled to have him join the US ranks of AgilityFeat because Ford brings in a wealth of experience that is going to help us...
I'm very pleased to say that I will be presenting an Ignite talk at the Lean Startup Conference in San Francisco in December. I will talk about some anti-patterns that I see in software development for startups. In short, my advice is...
CIO magazine posted an article this week entitled "7 Tips to Offshore Agile Development", and they got it mostly right, but I would like to add 4 more tips that I think are critical to effective agile outsourcing. Stephanie Overby wrote...
Time for a demo of wishlisting.org! In this post I will give you a demo of the current features, and then we will step through a couple of the automated tests that we have in place for the site. Using wishlisting.org to teach agile......
My wife and I love the TV show "The Big Bang Theory." And given the name of the show, this clip is particularly funny to me because software betas are discussed in the context of a relationship. Leonard and Penny are flirting with the...
AgilityFeat is based in two of my favorite places on Earth: Charlottesville, Virginia and Costa Rica. As I often tell people, I would rather travel a lot than move away from Charlottesville. I'm not the only person like that around...