Grass Roots agile

Agile processes promise to speed software delivery and increase software quality while embracing change throughout the development lifecycle. Yet transitioning from traditional software methods to a new way of working can be difficult, painful, and risky. While the team is consumed with understanding and improving their new approach, they also face the pressure of looming project deadlines. Overwhelmed teams feel forced to compromise, believing they can deliver the solution more quickly by reverting to traditional methods. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

In lieu of adopting an Agile software development process, such as Scrum, XP, or Crystal, this session presents practices that developers can inject into their existing software development efforts to increase agility. The practices discussed take a very narrow view. All activities performed and artifacts created must emphasize the creation, growth, and verification of the source code, from initial project inception through final solution delivery. If teams are able to develop a codebase that is malleable, fully tested, and frequently deployed, they possess the inherent ability to measure, adapt, and deliver. To realize the greatest benefit from these practices, we will also discuss how these practices must adapt based on the constraints, attitude, and culture of your social and technology environment.

About Kirk Knoernschild

Kirk is an industry analyst at Burton Group. For 15 years, he has worked in the trenches on real software projects. He takes a keen interest in design, architecture, application development platforms, agile development, and the IT industry in general, especially as it relates to software development.

In 2002, Kirk wrote the book Java Design: Objects, UML, and Process, published by Addison-Wesley. He has also written numerous whitepapers and articles, including The Agile Developer column for The Agile Journal. Kirk is the founder of Extensible Java, a growing resource of component design pattern heuristics for Java that can easily be applied to most other platforms, including .Net. Kirk has trained thousands of software professionals, teaching courses on UML, Java J2EE technology, object-oriented development, component based development, software architecture, and software process. He enjoys hacking in a variety of languages, including Java, .Net, Ruby, and PHP.

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