Edge of Chaos | Agile Development Blog

It seems people do like mind maps. Previous post about Scrum and Extreme programming mind maps was very popular. So I decided to continue the topic and gather more mind maps for agile practices.

Behavior Driven Development (BDD)

BDD is a step forward and an evolution of TDD. This BDD mind map nicely describe the whole thing.

BDD Mind Map

Continuous Integration

Continuous Integration is one of the most important software development practices. It give instant feedback and perfect traceability. Check Continuous Integration mind map for details.

Design

Simple design is one of the principle of agile software development. This mind map represents some design smells in quite interesting format. Agile modeling with Mind Map and UML post describes how can use mind maps to create better software design.

Automated Testing

Mind map that shows one approach for automated testing using Fitnesse and Selenium.

Planning

Simple mind map about planning activities in agile development.

Lean and Kanban software development adoption is growing. More and more companies setup Kanban Boards, limit WIP and eliminate Muda.

This collection of links will help you understand all that buzz around Lean/Kanban and decide whether it is worth trying. I’ve read all the articles and posts below, so this list is a truly selected thing ;).

Articles and Blog Posts

• Lean Software Development. Wikipedia summary about lean software development. It is a good start to digg into the topic (as usual).
• Kanban Development Oversimplified. Most likely the best article to start with Kanban. Very clear, very detailed. Good work!
• Kanban, Flow and Cadence. This blog post with many nice pictures describes three important properties of Lean: Kanban – Controlled Work, Flow – Effective Work, Cadence – Reliable Work.
• Scrum-ban. Interesting attempt to mix Scrum and Kanban, taking the best from both worlds. Kanban with iterations is possible.
• Beyond Scrum: Lean and Kanban for Game Developers. Article describes real Lean/Kanban implementation for game development industry. The section on how to improve The Flow (3 strategies: Time-boxing, Levelling workflow, Reduce waste) is especially good.
• Adventures In Lean. Series of posts about Lean approach with focus on real problems solving (handling bugs and emergency fixes in Kanban, setup pipeline, bottlenecks, etc.).
• Lean and Kanban. Several posts on the topics in this blog.

Presentations

• Kanban for Software Engineering . Detailed presentation about Lean and Kanban. Focuses on many problems and solutions in a software development process.
• Kanban: A Process Tool . Another good presentation that emphasizes the simplest rule in kanban: Limit the number of things in work to a fixed number. Maybe a good start indeed.
• Practical Experiences and Tools Applied to a Kanban Sustaining Engineering System . Fantastic presentation about Lean/Kanban implementation with real examples by Alisson Vale.
• Kanban vs. Scrum. Rich and lengthy presentation that compares Scrum and Kanban. A very good visualization (which is a key in Kanban :). Shows why Kanban fits better for multiple development teams working on the same project. I tend to share this opinion as well.
• A Kanban System for Sustaining Engineering on Software Systems . Very interesting presentation of Lean implementation at Corbis. As I know, it is one of the first successful attempts to run Kanban in a software shop. Must read.

Lean/Kanban Blogs

• Agile Management Blog. Lots of interesting posts from David J. Anderson (well known engine of Lean software development
• Richard Durnall Blog. Pull and Push systems, interviews, lean roots and principles. Nice reading with hand-drawn diagrams.
• Lean Software Engineering. Corey Ladas and Bernie Thompson are blogging about Lean, Scrumban and Kanban, Theory of Constraints, software development and other topics you did not even hear about.
• AvailAgility. Karl Scotland’s posts are very interesting (and helpful) to read. Isn’t Kanban just a Task-board? Check the blog to get an answer.
• The Agile Executive. Many insights into Kanban and summaries from the first lean conference.
• Software Just in Time. Lean concepts and real lean applications posts by Alisson Vale.

Lean/Kanban People in Twitter

• David J. Anderson. Lean/Kanban software development pioneer.
• Corey Ladas. Product development methodologist. Author of Scrum-ban book.
• Henrik Kniberg. Optimize, debug & refactor IT companies. Author of Scrum vs. Kanban presentation (which is very good!)
• Karl Scotland. Agile Coach. He runs AvailAgility blog with great insights into Lean and Kanban.
• Rob Lally. Renaissance Technologist.
• Alisson Vale. Alisson implemented outstanding Kanban process in his company.

Tools

There are just several Kanban tools on the market. To be honest, I don’t like TRICHORD UI. LeanKit: Kanban looks much better, but it can work for small teams only on my opinion. Anyway, it seems Kanban tools vendors’ race just began.

If you know other tools that support Kanban, drop a comment and I’ll happily include them into the list.

• TargetProcess. Customizable Kanban Board and other vanilla.
• Zen. Good tool for small teams.
• LeanKit: Kanban. In beta so far, but looks quite neat. Maybe useful for small teams.
• TRICHORD. Desktop project management application with Kanban boards.
• Radtrack. Registration does not work, but I found the screenshot via Google. Looks like LeanKit so far.

Did I miss something interesting? Drop a comment!

• Goals for using Kanban David Anderson put a nice list of Kanban usage goals. “Goal 1. Improved performance through process improvements introduced with minimal resistance”
• How we do MVC and Our “Opinions” on the ASP.NET MVC . Very good posts about ASP.NET MVC challenges, tricks and solutions. Must read if you are starting serious project based on ASP.NET MVC.
• Tim Sporcic blog. I like this blog a lot. Tim has a talent to express his thoughts and most posts are very interesting and helpful. If you are using ExtJs, ajax and mvc pattern — just add the feed to your feed reader.
• jQuery vs. MooTools. Extensive comparison of two popular JavaScript frameworks. If you evaluating choices, don’t miss this reading.

• In Defense of Eye Candy. Nice article. It discusses why aesthetics is important in a design: “when we talk about how emotions influence interactions, it’s closer to the truth to say things that are enjoyable will be easy to use and efficient.” And another fantastic quote “how we ‘think’ cannot be separated from how we ‘feel’“.
• Discovery-driven Growth: The Only Plan Is to Learn as You Go. Quite lengthy, but interesting interview about business development in a current economy. Discovery-driven growth is a way to go.
• Kanban and Time-boxes. Does Kanban compatible with iterations and time-boxes?
• Wanted/Needed: UX Design for Collaboration 2.0. Designing collaboration software has some specifics. Can we create a framework that help with it?

• Why Small Companies Will Win in This Economy. “Small is the new big. Sustainable is the new growth. Trust is the new competitive advantage.”
• So, Now You’re an Agilist… What’s Next? Interesting presentation from Jurgen Appelo with attempt to bring complexity science into agile software development. And interesting debates thread between Jurgen, me and Glen Alleman.
• Feature Crews: kanban systems for software engineering in the large. We are using branch-by-story at TargetProcess and something similar to feature crew. I think the idea is very good.
• Getting Things Done Mind Map Diagram. GTD is quite interesting technique, I am trying it right now (and liking it so far). This mind map is really good quick intro to GTD.
• Things — task management software. Great GTD software for Mac users. Very clear concept with perfect implementation.

• Why Can’t Error Messages Be Fun? Indeed, Chrome does it right.
• Scheduling in Scrumban. “We eliminate iteration planning and instead implement a system of continuous rolling-wave planning.” I think rolling-wave planning provides great benefits to Product Owner. Backlog becomes more flexible and adaptable.
• Successfully Adopting Pair Programming. Nice article, describing real pitfalls of pair programming adoption. Beware “Spellchecking Pair”
• Sell Your By-products. What by-product you have to sell?

• I Love Pair-Programming. Fantastic real-life experience of pair programming. It is hard to advertise it more.
• 21 ways to hate pair programming. Nice list of mistakes people often make when doing pair programming.
• Fantastic sign up form. Creative way to provide sign up form. Not sure about usability (on my opinion not much difference from usual form), but it is eye-catching and “tangible”.
• Continuous Deployment is about deploying code changes to production as rapidly as possible. “Every commit should be instantly deployed to production”. Is it possible? IMVU proved it is. Nice goal we should strive for. Extreme case of Continuous Integration is Continuous Deployment.

• Martin Fowler emphasizes that technical practices are very important in Scrum process and team can’t succeed without them. The same thing is true for Lean.
• If you don’t know how pull systems work, here is a good article that describes that in details. Moreover, it shows how to create various pull systems from a single workflow by applying various limits.
• “Do You Austrians Have a Better Idea?” Creative recommendations for President Obama. Recommendation #5 - “Eliminate the DEA and the SEC. Since the SEC failed to catch Madoff, despite nine years of warnings, I think its $950 million annual budget is obviously a waste of money.”

• Distinguishing decorative from meaningful elements in UI design. Ryan from 37signals shows how small decorative elements may influence usability.
• 10 Useful Techniques To Improve Your User Interface Designs. I am not a big fan of articles like “99 advices to web design”, however this article is really useful. I especially like number 3 “Using contrast to manage focus”, number 8 “Custom input focus” and 9 “Hover controls”. We are going to use hover controls in v.3.0 design.
• Konigi.com is a great resource for UI developers. Many very useful links and examples.
• 2008 - The Year In Pictures. Nice photos. Nice atmosphere. Taste the last year as a good wine…

• Is there an alternative to Scrum of Scrums? Will Read proposes Mesh network as a Scrum of Scrums replacement. Looks interesting as an information exchange flows in an organization.
• After The Crisis: A Parody of 15 Corporate Logos. Apple logo is very funny
• Jeff Atwood thinks that web application should not follow desktop application design. “A web app that apes the conventions of a desktop application is attempting to cross the uncanny valley of user interface design. This is a bad idea for all the same reasons; the tiny flaws and imperfections of the simulation will be grossly magnified for users.”
• Herb Sutter found two fallacies in Jeff’s post and think that this is a natural evolution. “Today, everyone writing rich Web 2.0 applications is doing their own thing, borrowing as best they can from Macs and Windows and others — but the results are all over the map, and will continue to be until there actually is such a thing as a UI standard for rich-GUI web applications.”

I tend to agree with Herb. I don’t feel bad when using web based app that looks familiar. And I definitely agree that in the future we will have several common frameworks for rich UI applications development with quite similar paradigms and interface concepts.