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Engineering Practices

Peer Code Review – Benefits and Statistics

Benefits and statistics of embedding peer code review into your software development process.

As a Lean-Agile coach, I regularly talk with software development groups about the benefits of adding code review to their development process. Some easily embrace it and some require a little bit of persuasion, but usually, I find enough internal allies to initiate the change. Lately, I encountered a whole group that completely rejected this essential practice as a luxury they can not afford. Explaining that they will see immediate ROI within a sprint or two was not enough to convince them. So, I sat to compose the following list and sent it to the group. Luckily I had a sympathetic ear with the general manager of the business unit who embraced it and made it easier for the team to experiment with the practice. All’s well that ends well… here is the list, shared with you too.

TDD

How to dump the for loop and stay alive

The classic for loop is a widely used feature of javascript programs. It can be used for running any piece of code multiple times, and it used to be what was used for implementing operations on arrays.

Agile Mindset

Setting Goals For Improvement – Leading vs. Lagging

Let’s say we want to improve quality. We decide to use the Scrum framework. The scrum framework talks about sprints, sprint goals, daily scrum, and many other things, yet it doesn’t directly discuss quality. There is a leap of faith here: we believe that if we will use the scrum framework, quality will improve.

Case Studies

Moving into the fast lane with SAFe® – RAPID RTC Case Study

At AgileSparks, we’re known for speaking out against what we call Agile Theatre where a company goes through the motions of adopting Agile but stops short when it comes to changing the way the business operates. Real agility affects every aspect of an organization and therefore, requires a massive cultural and operational shift.

SAFe is a path to agility, but the organization does the heavy lifting

Agile Tools

4 Common Jira Challenges and How to Overcome Them

Introduction

As a system admin or a project manager you often find yourself torn between management requirements and users who find the tools not as comfortable as they would like them to be. Jira is without a doubt a tool that can raise mixed emotions among users. Lucky for you, most of the users’ challenges can be easily handled.

Scaled Agile Framework

SAFe in the Trenches – A new ebook by AgileSparks

In the last couple of years, I’ve been writing about SAFe on the AgileSparks Blog, providing guidance articles for the SAI, and creating some complementary approaches and services in the SAFe context. All are based on experiences in the trenches helping AgileSparks clients achieve agility at scale. I recently completed a curated collection of some of my favorites and started to provide copies of this book to participants of my Implementing SAFe and RTE classes.

Agile Leadership

The Scrum Master as an Agile Leader

The Scrum Master’s role has become one of the most important and challenging roles in modern organizations since they act as the main interface between top management and the teams that actually produce and deliver the company’s value to the customer.

Engineering Practices

Legacy Code: Extract-FirstUT-Cover-Refactor-TDD

Recently, I had the opportunity to work on legacy code with several teams from various organizations. I would like to share my experience.

We usually start by choosing a piece of code that is “painful”: changing frequently and “scary” to touch because of its complexity. We explain that our purpose is to make the code simpler, readable, and easy to change. Establishing the motivation for what we do is important!

Scaling Agile

Please don’t come to our Implementing SAFe SPC workshops

Seriously, please don’t come.

Don’t come if you’re looking at it as a formality since you already know everything about agile and just need the SPC (SAFe Program Consultant) Certificate.

Don’t come if you’re looking for the cheapest way to get your SPC so that you can add it to your resume.

Don’t come if you don’t know anything about agile and believe the SPC is your silver bullet to becoming an agile coach at the enterprise level.

Don’t come if you’re looking for the certificate rubber stamp.

Agile Marketing

User Stories don’t belong in the Marketing Backlog

Marketing Backlogs in the Trenches

Last week I facilitated a 2-day Agile Marketing workshop for one of my clients. As usual, the discussion about the Marketing Backlog and how to move from a big-bang marketing campaign to a more iterative approach via smaller slices of stories was one of the highlights.

As usual, I introduce the concept of User Stories which are the most popular way to represent Product Backlog Items (PBIs) in the Agile world and are also very popular in the Agile Marketing space. We looked at some awful examples of stories, such as “As a marketer, I want to install Drift on my site” or “As a user, I want to see a webinar” and then moved to stories that provide more insights about a real user (e.g. “As a VP Marketing focused on Demand Generation”) and their intent (e.g. “so that I could get more demand generated from people who hate forms and lead magnet registration-walls”)

We then broke out into multiple teams each taking an actual campaign/project they’re planning for 2019 and creating the Marketing Backlog for it.

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