Pomodoro

October 14, 2009

Agile management practices are great about time-boxing. Daily standups are capped at 15 minutes. Sprints never exceed a repeatable 30-day cadence. But what’s out there to help developers time-box in the short term? One technique that has gained popularity among agile practitioners (and been featured in sessions at the past two Agile conferences) is known as “pomodoro.” Pioneered by Francesco Cirillo when he was a student, the pomodoro technique was his answer to the problem of staying on task. He used a kitchen timer to divide his time into periods of work and rest. It has evolved somewhat since its inception, but remained mostly the same. Most folks who utilize this technique will work for 25 minutes and then break for five. They often employ three or four consecutive pomodoros before taking a more significant break. You can read more about it here: http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/09/Pomodoro

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ScrumWorks Pro 4 and Epics

September 4, 2009

If you work at a large organization where products are developed as constituent parts of over-arching programs, then you know how tricky it can be to track these “shared components.” Well, there’s good news: Danube just published ScrumWorks Pro 4 and its biggest new functionality addresses that very issue. More specifically, the latest release of ScrumWorks includes a feature called “epics” that allows organizations to manage the release of complex projects that include multiple components. This means that the days of brainstorming creative workarounds to achieve similar results are over. Now, users can apply “themes” (a tagging feature for quick searching and filtering) to identify all the PBIs within a given Epic. This gives developers a more intuitive approach to organizing work, while also providing Product Owners and stakeholders with a view of progress that cuts across multiple products. I think you’ll be surprised by how powerful this new feature is. You can watch a screencast here or read more about this release here.

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Scrum Comes to South America in October

August 25, 2009

It seems that excitement over agile processes and engineering techniques has finally migrated southward. Well, not “finally.” Last fall, Buenos Aires played host to Ágiles 2008, the inaugural South American conference on all things agile. But last month, the official website for Ágiles 2009 went live. This year, the conference moves to Florianopolis, Brazil for four days of “agilidad” in October.

With retrospectives guru Diana Larsen and Agile Manifesto signatory Brian Marick slated to deliver the keynote presentations, it looks like a great program, whether for South American software developers or North American coders looking for an excuse to mix business with pleasure.

Check out the full program here.

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