Category Archives: Process

ALM Summit: Questioning the Big Bang Theory: The Case for Incremental Change

Posted on December 23, 2011 by laura.lamborn

If you missed Steven Borg’s presentation at the ALM Summit in November, you are in for a treat—channel 9 has provided a fantastic recording of the session: Questioning the Big Bang Theory: The Case for Incremental Change! Many agile methodologies … Continue reading →

Posted in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), Events, Process | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Retrospective: Northwest Cadence at ALM Summit 2011

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Cheryl Hammond

I’ve been attending the ALM Summit series since 2006 when it was still called p&p. On my blog this week, I’ve shared some nostalgia about my personal ALM Summit journey… I didn’t mention how I spent all those years pestering … Continue reading →

Posted in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), Event, Kanban, Process, Scrum, VS ALM | 1 Comment

Adding Two New, Useful SSRS Data Sources

Posted on October 28, 2011 by JamesTupper

 Adding Two New, Useful SSRS Data Sources- By James Tupper Introduction Watching the performance of your TFS 2010 server is important. And having reports that show historical trending is very useful. Luckily, Grant Holliday, Microsoft Program Manager for Visual Studio … Continue reading →

Posted in Kanban, Process, Team Foundation Server | Tagged | 1 Comment

Stack vs Queue: My Latest Personal Kanban Evolution

Posted on September 25, 2011 by Steven Borg

I’ve been using a personal kanban board to track my office work ever since reading Personal Kanban by Jim Benson (ourfounder) and Tonianne DeMaria Barry (Sprezzatura). My latest evolution has been to track how much of my work is planned … Continue reading →

Posted in Kanban, Productivity | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Do Teams of Cross Functional Individuals Hide Dysfunctions?

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Steven Borg

I’m struggling with a concept from Toyota Kata, by Mike Rother. The way I’m reading it, teams of cross-functional individuals hide dysfunctions and can slow process improvement efforts. Or, to be precise, allowing cross-functional team members to assist others hides … Continue reading →

Posted in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), Kanban, Lean, Scrum | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Question on Cross-functional Teams in Scrum

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Steven Borg

Bottom line question: Can a Scrum team be made up of two testers, two developers, one SQL DBA and a build engineer, each of whom ONLY do their own tasks and work as separate silos within the Team? I’m doing … Continue reading →

Posted in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), Scrum | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

The Scrum Master has no role in Scrum

Posted on September 15, 2011 by JamesTupper

I was asked to read the Scrum Guide, by my co-worker Martin Hinshelwood, and take the Open Scrum Guide to prepare myself for the Professional Scrum Master course that he is giving to me and a few other colleagues here … Continue reading →

Posted in Scrum, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 3 Comments

When iterative development causes problems

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Jeff Levinson

I should start off by saying that I’m a big fan of Scrum “but”. Scrum imposes strict limits on a number of areas and absolutely requires a number of things being done. And by not doing them you are setting … Continue reading →

Posted in Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), Kanban, Lean, Practices, Process, Scrum, Team Foundation Server | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Scrum vs Kanban: The Smackdown

Posted on May 11, 2011 by Steven Borg

Scrum, the grand-daddy of Agile practices vs Kanban the challenger.  Come see Martin Hinshelwood (ALM MVP and Scrum proponent) and Steven Borg (ALM MVP and Kanban fan) will go head to head, mano-a-mano, wit against wit, to persuade you which … Continue reading →

Posted in Kanban, Lean, Scrum | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Can internal competition be considered “Slack”?

Posted on April 23, 2011 by Steven Borg

Tom DeMarco, in his book “Slack” says “There is no such thing as ‘healthy competition’ in a knowledge organization; all internal competition is destructive.” Tom DeMarco is a smart man, and I love the book “Slack”, so I hesitate to … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

The Challenges of Release Management (Part 1 – The Basics)

Posted on August 2, 2010 by Amanda

Release management is generally not just a technical effort. It often includes a great deal of collaboration and orchestration. Continue reading →

Posted in Featured, Practices, Process | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Operations and Development – Working Together – Oh My!

Posted on November 2, 2009 by Amanda

Many in the development world have not yet heard of ITIL, but I believe it will come to matter soon enough. The ability to optimize organizational performance, not simply development performance, is a competitive edge and the path toward lowered … Continue reading →

Posted in Process | Tagged | Leave a comment

New Radio TFS Episode on Adopting Team System with Steven Borg

Posted on March 31, 2009 by Steven Borg

A few weeks ago during the MVP summit, I had the wonderful experience of hanging out with Martin Woodward of Teamprise and RadioTFS fame.  We chatted for an hour on strategies for adopting TFS successfully, recorded the conversation, and it … Continue reading →

Posted in Event, Process, Team Foundation Server, Visual Studio Team System | 1 Comment

Practical Process Improvement (Part 5)

Posted on December 26, 2008 by Jeff Levinson

The first four posts (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) dealt with working through a process for handling bugs and improving that process. But what about preventing bugs to begin with? In this part I’ll talk about some … Continue reading →

Posted in Practices, Process, Requirements | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Practical Process Improvement (Part 4)

Posted on November 14, 2008 by Jeff Levinson

In the previous two posts (Part 2 and Part 3) I covered an ideal bug process and the metrics you gather from the process. In this post I’ll start talking about how to use those metrics to really improve the … Continue reading →

Posted in Featured, Practices, Process | Tagged , , | 5 Comments