Archive of Process Improvement Articles

CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) is a description of the level of enlightenment of a process. It is essentially a measure of the quality and capability of a process. There are five categories, into one of which every process will fall. IBM took a similar approach to defining the requirements management process. In this series of posts, we will marry the two frameworks.

Code Debt is the debt we incur when we write sloppy code. We might do this to rush something out the door, with the plan to refactor later. Agile methodologies focus on delivering functionality quickly. They also invoke a mantra of refactoring - “make it better next release.” This can create pressure to “get it done” that overwhelms the objective of “get it done right.” Taking on code debt like this is about as smart as using one credit card to pay off another one.

Johanna Rothman recently wrote an article with a poignant introduction: “A project team focuses on an interim milestone, works like the devil to meet that milestone. They meet the milestone, look up, and realize they’re not at the end of the project–they still have to finish the darn thing. They’re living the Crossing the Desert syndrome.” Fixing it isn’t enough - how do we prevent it from happening?

Rishikesh Tembe shared twenty rules for software product delivery last month. His rules are from the perspective of a former software developer. Some we like. Some, not so much.

“I believe the hard part of building software to be the specification, design, and testing of this conceptual construct,[...] If this is true, building software will always be hard. There is inherently no silver bullet.” - Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. 1987

Enough of the debates about requirements and what we call them. Why don’t we just hire great developers and empower them to work directly with the customers?

Burndown is a technique used in Scrum projects for tracking the progress within or across sprints. It is an exciting way to track how a team is progressing against a deadline - and we can apply it to any form of project-status. In this article, we will apply it to documenting business processes.
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James Kovacs shares a great insight on software testing and the software testing process. His epiphany about test driven development makes it obvious to all of us why this technique is so powerful.

Agile processes stress communication and colocation. Splitting a team into on and offshore resources inhibits the first and prevents the second. Teams struggle to resolve this apparent conflict of interest. Applying best practices (for any team) to address these challenges makes it possible. Martin Fowler provides us with great guidance based on years of experience with his company.

Another challenge to a premise of agile comes in a well assembled argument from Tony at Seilevel, in his article, Agile…again.