What can the story of FreshBooks teach us about lean startups and agile development? Last week I received an email that got me thinking about that. I use Freshbooks at AgilityFeat for invoicing our customers, and it's great. It's an...
Get your green now before it's too late! Green Cucumber tests, that is. This is the last day of the Agile Dev Lab at the Agile 2012 conference, where we are working on the website wishlisting.org for charities to use for very specific...
Looking for a Partner not a Client As developers we are constantly striving to create a valuable product for our customer, but if that development process is going to be successful then both the customer and our team have to be involved...
I hinted at it previously, but now the fancy landing page is ready and I am proud to invite you to join us in Costa Rica in early 2013 for an awesome 3 day hands on workshop for entrepreneurs! The workshop is called Dare To Be Lean, and...
The Potential Pitfalls of Outsourced Development If you are looking for a nearshore agile team for a project there are some common problems to look out for, or you risk losing time and money. The short and sweet summary of these problems...
Words to know and live by for a lean Startup Here at Agility Feat we use Lean methods to keep our business responsive and effective. But what does it mean to be Lean? Listed below are some of the core concepts of being Lean that we...
Retrospectives are important at higher levels than just your individual projects. At AgilityFeat we also hold retrospectives within our company and across our projects regularly. This is so we can look for patterns across our most...
How to have a well run remote standup session with your team. Standups are a key part of the agile and scrum process. Each standup is a time for our team to sync up with each other and the customer. It is also an opportunity to let our...
Congratulations to Dave Haeffner for having his Agile 2012 submission "Selenium Users Anonymous" accepted! Dave will be leading a "counseling" session for Selenium users at Agile 2012 in Dallas. The conference is from August 13 - 17...
Today we held the first of many future "AgilityCasts", where we record a short presentation by one of our team members on a topic related to agile software development, nearshore agile development in Costa Rica, or anything that suits our...
Last week we just finished up the kick off for a new project in the AgilityFeat Costa Rica offices. This is a fast growing area of business at AgilityFeat and one I am very pleased about, so I would like to take a little time to describe...
I've always had a love/hate relationship with estimation. I find the topic fascinating. Estimation is like a car wreck, it's hard not to slow down some and take a look, even if you know it's wrong and you are afraid of what you might...
Dave Haeffner and I are proud to announce a new workshop on Acceptance Test Driven Development using Cucumber and Ruby that we are offering in 2012. The workshop will initially be taught as private courses to companies, so if you are...
I'm excited to be part of a great upcoming agile event in the Charlottesville area! VGT (Video Gaming Technologies) in Ruckersville is hosting an evening of agile in a few weeks in coordination with AgileCville and Impact Makers. There...
It’s been over a year now since I started AgilityFeat, and what a great year it’s been. Being December, this is also a good time to get reflective as the year draws to a close. With that in mind, I’ve come up with a list of twelve...
Would competition in a game help create engagement and conversation, or stifle the conversation in favor of “one-ups man ship”? That was one of the questions that came up when I led a session of Agile Failure Pattern Poker last month at...
If you’re looking for a fun way to kick off discussions of difficult topics, then failure bows may work for you. In September I was at the Agile Coach Camp US (#ACCUS) in Columbus Ohio. Friday was “Games Day”, devoted to fun ways to...
I tend to write blog posts that are too long. Which is why sometimes I don’t blog as often as I should. But I really want to share everything with you that I learned at Agile Coach Camp US (#ACCUS) in Columbus Ohio last week. So instead...
Developing software for the cloud can make test-driven development more complicated, but not impossible. In this article that I wrote for TechWell.com and StickyMinds.com, I offer advice for continuing good development practices in the...
This article was published in Sogeti's QANews on September 30, 2011. See their article here Acceptance tests are a great way to improve collaboration between testers, developers, and customers. When all three parties agree ahead of time...
What is the ideal contract model to use with sub-contractors, and is it any different than you would use with a lead contractor? I'm curious myself, and so I'll just post a couple of quick thoughts and I encourage you to share your...
Are you looking for an inexpensive way to learn agile methods? Improve your agile engineering practices? Or learn about how agile methods are being employed in government? AgileDC is the place for you! I'm very pleased to be speaking...
Why are some developers so afraid of commitment? I'm not talking about relationships, but something equally as important. Committing your code to a repository before it goes stale or you lose the changes. I've witnessed a couple of...
This dilbert strip says it all...
How do Lean principles complement and reinforce the roles in a Scrum project? That was one question on my mind as I drove up to the Agile Leadership Network DC meeting, held in Tysons Corner. People sometimes discuss Scrum, XP, Kanban,...