Three activities to help your Agile Development

This week I speak at the Kansas City DB2 Users Group about my 22 billion row data warehouse design and the Agile development teamwork.  Without the teamwork the project would not have been successfully implemented in only six months.
The following are three Agile project activities your team should do.  These items helped our team and they can help yours.
First, explain what an Agile project is to all the team members.  Everyone–the developers, DBAs, systems support and management-all need to understand the Agile process, its feedback and how to walk through a user story. A friend of mine mentioned his company used  the Agile methodology but failed to supply any guidelines or training.  Dilbert, my favorite cartoon, (http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2007-11-26/) captured this idea perfectly.  Don’t be that company. Train your people, work with people that have some agile experience and get them to help your team.
Next, talk a lot about the development.  Practice the Agile development process by meeting often and discussing the various issues, roadblocks and activities that are slowing development from working software.  Agile works because it concentrates on discussing the issues with people, collaborating, being responsive and writing working software.  Working software is the key and without success in this area Agile development within your company will have difficulty getting started.  Begin your first Agile effort of meeting, collaborating and testing with a simple software deliverable..  Learn how your company needs to collaborate, respond and get Agile development working.  Every company has a different agile road to success.  
Third, make sure the focus is on working software.  Agile development is just like any other project development process and there will be problems.  Problems are the items that Agile development practices uncover quickly.  By focusing on working software, Agile development cuts through to the core issues and gets the real processing discussed, designed and in working order.  Only through understanding, discussing and collaborating with everyone in the agile process do the true end user requirements and working software get developed.  
So use these three ideas and get your Agile development efforts started at your company.  These efforts are paying huge dividends for many companies and agile development practices can work for you.


The IDUG early bird discount is coming up fast.  Sign up for IDUG today!
I look forward to speaking at the IDUG DB2 Tech Conference 2012 North America conference.  The conference will be held in Denver, Colorado on May 14-18, 2012.  Sign up today at www.idug.org.
Also I am beginning to plan my Regional DB2 User Group support for the rest of 2012.  Please send an email to me at moc.ekluebevadnull@evad if you would like me to come and speak or offer a DB2 class at your local user group.


 

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