agile
Next “Meet the Experts” at codecentric
The next “Meet the Experts” is due to happen 09/04/09, see the codecentric blog for details! The first event, focused on performance, was a great experience, so maybe you’d like to join the next one and learn something about agile methods? I’m sure it will be fun.
JIRA and Greenhopper
Via the Atlassian Developer blog, I found a blog post by Kieran Shaw today. In his post, he describes the “Agile Velocity Tracking” plugin for JIRA. A nice plugin in my opinion.
I’m happy to see Kieran Shaw reanimating development on a JIRA plugin that had already appeared to be dead, which is a really nice contribution. His blog post is also a good tutorial on basic JIRA configuration (custom fields, custom issue types etc.) and on sprint planning using JIRA.
One sentence at the end of his post caught my attention though:
Some might ask why use this over the traditional card wall that is often used in agile projects. Card walls are the simple and low tech solution, but they are not available over the web, they are not searchable, filterable, commentable or reportable without manual work from someone.
This is partially correct. In fact at my employer, we started using agile methods by working on a traditional “Postit” card board. Some weeks later, we decided to extend JIRA using the Greenhopper plugin, which gives you a virtual card board where you can drag issues around, get nice charts, including a velocity report. This is where the card board becomes available over the web. If you like it a little more complex, feature-rich, and eye-candy-loaded, you might try this one as well :-)
Random links about agile development
First, there are two documents I had fun reading:
Agile Office Space (a blog entry) and Designing Collaborative Spaces for Productivity (an InfoQ article).
Then, there is The Agile with Scrum User’s Guide: A Compilation of Thoughts and Practices by Joel Adams of DEVON Consulting. I am currently reading his “compilation of over 100 postings to message boards and a few other texts”.
Have fun :)