Latest News from Udayan Banerjee

Ant Colony Optimization

Tue, 14 May 2013 02:47:20 EDT

Reblogged from Algorithms in Real Life: Many interesting meta-heuristics have been bio-inspired. Some of them are: Ant colony Optimization Cuckoo Search Genetic Algorithm Ant Colony Optimization This technique has been adapted from the studies carried out on the behavior of ants. It was observed that foraging ants quickly traversed the shortest path from the anthill … Read more

Introduction to Algorithms, Heuristics and Meta-heuristics

Tue, 07 May 2013 02:30:00 EDT

At school I was always confused between Algorithms and Logarithms…Anagrams were meaningful later. Then I encountered heuristics and lately meta-heuristics. I tried to differentiate algorithms, heuristics and meta-heuristics. Additional words such as methods, steps and instructions also joined the fray. A simple definition of algorithm – Wikipedia defines it as – “it is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function”.

Four Prerequisites for Reducing Sprint Duration

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 01:06:00 EDT

There is a certain amount of overhead associated with each sprint. Every sprint requires some initial planning time plus validation, regression testing and integration time and effort at the end. This overhead is proportional to the total size of the software and the level of automation in place and does not depend on the number of stories delivered during the sprint. In short… Do not attempt short sprint cycle without a mature engineering practice. Otherwise, it would lead the team to burn midnight oil and lead to frustration. If the product owner is always available for the team…

Distributed Team in Different Timezone and Product Ownership

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 05:44:00 EDT

How do you work with a remote product owner who is in a different time zone with very little overlap of normal working hours? An agile puritan would have a simple answer – Don’t. There is an underlying assumption behind this statement. The assumption is that the product owner can provide an instant clarification and decision to any of the following types of questions: About the domain of the problem

Are Large Software Projects like Eating an Elephant?

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 14:30:00 EDT

How do you eat an elephant? Simple – cut it into small pieces at eat one piece at a time. BUT… …is it really that simple? When you have a large software project it is too simplistic to assume that all you need to do is to decompose the problem to individual manageable chunk which can be handled by one scrum team and then continuously keep integrating the code produced by the teams. Keep doing this and your software would be ready.

Evolutionary Architecture and Conway’s Law

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 05:17:00 EDT

Way back … in 1968, Melvin Edward Conway, an early computer scientist, computer programmer, and hacker postulated that… Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations. Or more concisely… Any piece of software reflects the organizational structure that produced it.

How do you think?

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 06:07:28 EST

How do you go about writing you program? Do you think in terms of: Programming construct Database design Abstract algorithm User interaction Looking back Way we think about writing a program has undergone several phases of evolution. The evolution has a close link with increasing complexity and technological progress. Flow chart era There was a … Read more

Is Agile Elitist?

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 02:26:00 EST

The best way to do software development is to get hold of master programmers. Get them to form a self organizing team and do the development in short increments. That is agile. What happens if you cannot find sufficient number of master programmers? Get as many master programmers as you can. For the rest of the team get programmers who aspire to become a master programmer and has a good chance of becoming one. Get them to form a self organizing team and do the development in short increments. At the end of the development cycle the aspiring master programmers would have taken steps towards becoming master programmers. Few of the may indeed have become master programmers.

Agile, Offshoring and Dreyfus Model of Learning

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 00:41:00 EST

Agile works! If you have any doubt about it just look at the adoption rate … look at the study results published … or just try it yourself. Offshoring also works! Again, if you have any doubt, just look at the growth of offshoring … look at the success of the success of the India based IT companies … try to find a reasonably large company which has no offshore presence.

Curious Story of Software Outsourcing

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 10:30:00 EST

Have you heard the story of the person who outsourced his work for US$ 50,000, which was just one fifth of what he was earning! His complete work was done by somebody in China (not India) while he spent his workdays surfing the web, watching cat videos on YouTube and browsing Reddit and eBay. He was also considered one of the best software developers in the company! Here is the blog post from Verizon Business Security which gives detail of what happened and how it was discovered.

How has the world changed since Agile Manifesto happened?

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 00:54:11 EST

Agile Manifesto was (formulated? signed? declared?) in 2001 February. The manifesto was born out the software development challenges faced in the 90′s. More than a decade has passed and we live in a different world. 6 ways the world has changed 1) Pace of change has become faster and faster Technology is changing faster. User … Read more

Does Having More Data Allow You to Make Better Decisions?

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 13:15:00 EST

Not necessarily! “…data on its own is just numbers, and numbers can’t run a company…” “…the quest to assemble relatively unimportant information can actually distract us from the few relevant facts…” “…small data sets won’t always give you the full picture, but the most impactful conclusions often actually require the least data…” “…the world contains an infinite amount of data and almost all of it is irrelevant to whatever you’re trying to measure…” “…the objective of analysis is to boil down an impossibly complex world into a digestible set of approximations…” “…always choosing the most granular option … (makes) it easier to miss the forest for the trees…” “…clarity in how you present your analysis is often much more important that the precision of your model or completeness of your data set…”

Is Facebook Clueless About How to Justify Its IPO Price?

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 13:00:00 EST

Why did Instagram modify its Terms of Use policy? The new policy says: …to help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you…” There is no surprise that there was a furor on the web – everybody protested. Such reaction is expected. What is surprising is the response from Instagram: “…the language we proposed also raised question about whether your photos can be part of an advertisement. We do not have plans for anything like this and because of that we’re going to remove the language that raised the question…” BUT “…some of the data you produce — like the actions you take (eg, following the account) and your profile photo — might show up if you are following this business…”

Twelve New Programming Languages: Is Cloud Responsible?

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 10:45:00 EDT

Do we need programming languages? You may think that the answer is no. But, if you go by the recent trend you may need to change your mind. Why is Google working two (GO, DART) new programming languages? Why has IBM (X10), Cray (Chapel) and Red Hat (Ceylon) working on creating a new programming language … Read more

Gartner Releases Two Top 10 Predictions for 2013

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 01:41:00 EST

Gartner has released two sets of predictions for 2013 – back to back: Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2013: Technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2013 Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users for 2013 and Beyond: Economic risks, opportunities and innovations that will impel CIOs to move to the next generation of business-driven solutions In short the first set of predictions are about technology and the second set of predictions are about business implication of technology. As you can expect, there are overlapping area. What are they really saying?

So Gartner Was Right!

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 07:09:00 EST

In October, 2012 Gartner predicted that: “…by Year-End 2014, three of the top five mobile handset vendors will be Chinese…” I did not really believe it! But, it turns out that if you go by the study released by Canalys, it has already happened. However, an IDC study released recently shows a slightly different picture. Who is right? Well … next few quarters should make it clear!

Who Coined the Term Big Data?

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 11:00:00 EST

I like putting faces to names. Steve Lohr did the research and wrote an article about the origin of the term Big Data in The New York Times. I could not resist the temptation to put faces to the names. Right or wrong, all the facts are from his article. His first step in the research was to contact Fred R. Shapiro Fred R. Shapiro is a world-recognized authority on quotations and on reference in general. He edited the award-winning Oxford Dictionary of American Legal Quotations. But Mr. Shapiro couldn’t find anything … crisp and definitive. The term Big Data is so generic that the hunt for its origin was not just an effort to find an early reference to those two words being used together. Instead, the goal was the early use of the term that suggests its present connotation — that is, not just a lot of data, but different types of data handled in new ways. Tracing the origins of Big Data points to the evolution in the field of etymology, according to Mr. Shapiro. The Yale researcher began his word-hunting nearly 35 years ago, as a student at the Harvard Law School, poring through the library stacks.

Is Cloud Computing Losing Its Value Proposition?

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 09:15:00 EST

We all know that hardware prices always comes down – but have you noticed any such trend in cloud computing? So, what happens when hardware prices keep coming down and cloud services pricing remains steady? The cloud value proposition of lowering IT costs slowly disappears … right? There is no doubt that the range of services available has significantly increased but on the price front there has been very little movement. Yes, if you want to try cloud for free then you have more alternative today – for example Amazon has introduced a micro instance. Google App Engine prices have remained more or less the same since the launch. Same is true for Microsoft Azure. Amazon is not much better. Since the launch of the AWS there has hardly been any price reduction. Between mid and end 2009 Amazon announced around 15% price reduction on a range of its services is probably the only instance.

Do Software Patents Stifle Innovation?

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 10:30:00 EDT

Of late patents around mobile technologies have been in the news. Four high profile news items are (1) Oracle suing Google for Java patent violation, (2) Apple and Samsung fighting each other in different parts of the world, Microsoft, Apple, Rim and others jointly buying Nortel patent library for $4.5 billion and (4) Google buys Motorola Mobile and gets 17,000 patents. This is only the tip of the iceberg. This diagram from Reuters shows the complex battlefield of mobile patent and significant portion of these patents are for software.

What Is the Definition of Big Data?

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 01:30:00 EST

Is Big Data a buzzword with no clear definition? Wikipedia defines Big Data as… …a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications… Here is a collection of 13 (unlucky?) other definitions of “Big Data” – from analyst firms, from government organizations, from technology publication and from technology vendors.

Does the Agile Manifesto Read Like a Declaration of Independence?

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 11:46:00 EST

The Agile Manifesto happens to be a unique piece of document. I cannot find any equivalent document in whole of software engineering history. Why only software engineering, I cannot think of any equivalent in any field of engineering. Think of how it was developed. In February, 2001, seventeen like-minded people got together and came up with the manifesto. They got together because all of them had a common goal … to break out of the rigidity imposed by the prevalent heavy-weight processes. Many of the members of that group had already proposed there own solutions, their own different light-weight process. These processes had little in common.

Why the Mobile Website vs. Mobile App Debate Is OVER?

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 13:45:00 EST

If you are still asking the question should I build a mobile website or create an installable application for mobile… …then you are asking the wrong question! The Mobile Web vs. Mobile App debate is finally over. It is no longer a question of either…or. Making your website mobile friendly is no longer an option – it is mandatory requirement. More and more people are accessing the web from mobile phones and tablets. Share of Internet traffic from such devices has already reached double digit percentage and inching up…up…up. In next couple of years it is likely to overtake internet traffic from desktops and laptops. In fact, as per Mary Meeker (she is known as “queen of net”) then it has already happened in India!

Is Offshore-Agile a Bad Idea?

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 16:00:00 EST

Yes … if you have a co-located cross-functional team … and … there is no pressure or compulsion to shift part of the work offshore. Yes … if you do not feel any necessity or face any difficulty in scaling the team. In all other cases offshore-agile may not be such a bad idea. If you must offshore … for whatever reason Is Offshore-Agile still a bad idea?

(Offshored-Distributed-Outsourced) Agile

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 10:00:00 EST

If you take the literary meaning of the words off-shore and distributed then it would appear that off-shore is indeed a special case of distributed. But, if go by the de facto understanding then off-shoring is definitely not a special case of distributed software development. Off-shoring implies setting up a (software development) facility in a different country (India?) to take advantage of the cost arbitrage (practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets). Distributed development implies spreading a complex piece of (software development) work across multiple location to take advantage of available expertise.

With the Patent Battle, Has Apple Marked Samsung as Its Equal?

Tue, 08 May 2012 12:00:00 EDT

Has Apple, by filing so many patent / IPR violation suits against Samsung in so many countries, marked Samsung as its equal? For those of you who read Harry Potter, here is the parallel. Remember the prophecy? … “…The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not…and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives…the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…” …and what Dumbledore tells Harry that “Voldemort singled you out as the person who would be most dangerous to him — and in doing so, he made you the person who would be most dangerous to him!”

Should Robots Resemble Us Humans?

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 04:00:00 EDT

I don’t know about how you feel about the current state of robotics but I was hugely surprised when I started exploring the state of art. AI is a field which has never lived up to its promise – real or perceived. For example if you look at Arthur Clarke’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” (novel & movie) written in 1968 you will realize that it is way … way off the mark. But, just maybe, things might change in next 10 years – and you may actually own your personal robot!

Write Once Run Anywhere or Cross Platform Mobile Development Tools

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 10:00:00 EDT

To build and maintain applications required to reach out to you customer through Mobile & Smart phone is expensive. Why? Because of platform proliferation. Because of quick technology obsolescence. (See this) Management perception compounds the problem. Anybody, not intimately familiar with this technical challenge, perceives that the effort of developing a mobile application should be proportional to the size of the screen. In other words, since mobile screen is much smaller than a PC or a Laptop screen, the effort required for developing application should also be proportionately less. Hence the budget for developing and maintain mobile channel becomes small!

Four Tests to Determine If You Are Following Agile Development

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 14:00:00 EST

Am I the only person who thinks that we need a clear, well understood and unambiguous determine if the development process that you are following can be classified as Agile development process? Do you necessarily have to have a small, co-located, cross-functional team to be able to claim that your process is indeed agile? If you go by what agile thought leaders are saying then “small”, “co-located” and “cross-functional” is no longer considered a necessary condition for classifying a process as agile.

Google Is Winning the Ecosystem War

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 11:00:00 EST

Which ecosystem am I talking about? IBM had ruled and still rules the mainframe ecosystem . But the game changed! Microsoft lorded over the desktop ecosystem. It still does but we all know that the game is changing again. You would be pardoned if you think that the new game in town is the smartphone and tablet ecosystem. Most people think that way. For sometime it did look like that. But the real new ecosystem is not about the hardware and really about the hosted services … and clearly, Google is winning. Remember, what happened when Apple replaced Google map with its own? Does it matter to Google if iPhone sells more that Galaxy as long as Google services runs on iPhone? How much more usable would Windows phone have been if all Google services ran smoothly on it? Have you met a person who knowingly chooses Bing over Google search?

Cross-Platform Hybrid Mobile Application Development

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 05:00:00 EDT

Hybrid tools try to resolve the debate of … “Should you write a mobile web application which will render on multiple platforms without significant change but won’t be able to take advantage on native features?” Or “Should you create platform specific native application to fully utilize the power of the device but increase your effort?” The basic premise of hybrid approach is that you can have your cake and eat it to. In this approach you use the browser control and create a shell application which is then used to render HTML pages. Since most of the popular phone browsers are Webkit based (Microsoft is an exception), they are expected to have similar behavior making you task simpler. To access the native features of the handset, you need to create APIs in the shell application which can be invoked through JavaScript coding. The tools and frameworks are expected to provide the shell applications and the APIs for different platforms.

Will Cloud Computing Ever Have Transformational Impact?

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 11:00:00 EST

Gartner has been predicting for last five years that cloud computing will have a transformational impact in next 2 to 5 year! So, it is a good time to step back and ask ourselves… I think the answer cannot be given in simple black-and-white term like “Yes” or “No”. Like the answer to most questions on technology choice it is “Depends”. And every depends would lead to a long discussion into various aspects of the problem. But in case of the transformational impact of cloud computing the answer is quiet simple.

Big Data Trend for 2013

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 01:15:00 EST

Pick any technology forecast for 2013 and chances are very high that Big Data will find a place in that. And there will be a discussion on the big opportunity provided by Big Data. But, let me give you 2 reasons why you will not come across too many Big Data success stories … Key proposition of Big Data technologies is the ability to analyze large data and provide you with insight which can then be translated to (1) more sales, (2) lesser cost or (3) better service. The assumption is that such insight would not be available to you using traditional techniques. Without getting into the technique or the feasibility of how such insight might be obtained, let us just assume that you have got such an insight. What is the chance that you would share it with the world?

Touch Screens Will Take Over the World

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 01:24:00 EST

How often have you touched a non-touch screen and momentarily wondered why it is not responding? … I have done it quite a few times. Have you heard the story of the kid who touched the TV screen and expected it to respond? … At least 3 people have told me a story like that. Touch screens … Read more

Status of Mobile Device Management (MDM)

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 09:45:00 EST

Is the hype about MDM over? According to a recent study by the 451 Group research firm: Fewer than 15 percent of enterprises have deployed an MDM tool beyond Microsoft Exchange’s native capabilities. Most organizations feel that encryption and password requirements, coupled with the remote lock and wipe capabilities, provided by Exchange is sufficient So, do you really need to look into all the MDM products and try to justify the ROI?

What Makes Steve Jobs Special?

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 03:42:00 EST

If James Watt had also invented the Deisel Engine … If Rudolf Diesel had also invented Electric Engine … If Guglielmo Marconi had also invented Telephony … If Alexander Graham Bell had also invented Mobile Phones … If Thomas Alva Edison had also invented the Fluorescent Lamp … If Edgar F. Codd had also invented the rules of post RDBMS technologies … Then they would be like Steve Jobs – the inventor of the next generation technology which supersedes his own invention. It was the MAC which had started the WlMP (Windows Icon Mouse Pointer) era. It was the iPhone and then the iPad which started the post WIMP era. Well … you may say that Steve Jobs did not invent the products alone. But then same thing can be said about all the name mentioned above.

Blogging Tips – Three Things that Have Worked for Me

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 01:30:00 EST

Synergize … Differentiate … Aggregate That is what has worked for me in my four and a half years of blogging endeavor. These are in addition to several mandatory practices that you should follow to give you a chance to have a large readership. So, I have included links to posts which very clearly explains what you need to do. Before I explain what I really mean let me add a word of caution. I write about technology … technology trend as I see it from an Indian perspective. I write to convey my thoughts to a wider audience. I never had any intention to monetize my writing. It feels great when I come to know that you have read and have liked my post.

TOGAF Foundation Level Certification – Another Practice Test

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 11:00:00 EDT

As I had mentioned earlier, there is a paucity of free sample questions for the TOGAF 9 foundation or the part 1 test. I had created one set earlier and there are two other set available for free. Here is another set of 40 questions. Entire business group or corporation comprising of all local and international main and sub offices, divisions, subsidiaries, and departments

TOGAF – Preparation Aid for Part 2

Mon, 16 May 2011 06:05:00 EDT

The questions for the Part 2 Examination consist of eight complex scenario questions. You need to read a scenario describing a situation where TOGAF is being applied. The question will then ask how TOGAF would be used to address a particular point. Four possible answers are provided. There is one correct answer, two partially correct answers and one incorrect answer for the situation. The correct answer scores five points, the second best answer three points, and the third best answer one point. The incorrect answer scores zero points. The pass mark is 60%.

Amazon AWS – 21st Price Reduction

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 00:35:00 EST

The price reduction is limited to US East (N. Virginia) and US West (Oregon). Here is a comparison of prevailing prices at Jan-2010, Mar-2012 and Nov-2012. Here is a more detailed analysis on past price reduction. A Snapshot of the On-Demand pricing as it exists now (November 2012) I will be able to use this in future for comparison!

Gartner Hype Cycle 2012 – Emerging Technologies

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 00:06:00 EDT

Here is a summary of the Gartner Hype Cycle for “Emerging Technologies” for 2012 – what is stated explicitly, what can be inferred. This Hype Cycle is suppose provide insight into emerging technologies that have broad, cross-industry relevance, and are transformational and high impact in potential. Most crowded hype cycle on emerging technologies in last 10 years 48 technologies are listed in this year’s hype cycle which is the highest in last ten years. Last year they had 42 – year 2008 was the lowest (27) – year 2005 was the previous highest (44).

Agile, Emergence and Deliberate Design

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 05:08:00 EDT

Emergence is good, but… …it takes time, and …under some circumstances it may not happen! If you have been there … done that … then you don’t have to wait for your application architecture to emerge over several iterations. You can use your past experience to nail it down at the beginning. However, if all the team members are new to the problem or the technology – experimentation, trail and error would be need to arrive at the design and architecture.

Web Programming - Is TypeScript Microsoft’s Answer to Google’s Dart?

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 05:22:00 EDT

One more programming language! On 1st October, 2012 Microsoft released TypeScript. Like Google’s Dart it is pitched against JavaScript. Unlike Dart it does not reject JavaScript syntax. Six Facts About TypeScript It compiles into JavaScript Its syntax is a super-set of JavaScript It is JavaScript + Object Orientation It is multi- platform – work with node.js and Visual Studio 2012 It is opensource with Apache 2.0 license It is created by Anders Hejlsberg

TOGAF Foundation Level Certification – Practice Test

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 10:00:00 EDT

If you plan to appear for a TOGAF foundation level certification or part 1 exam, one of the difficulties you will face is a lack of free sample questions. Some questions are provided as a part of the study guide, but if you want to more practice then you will have tough time locating anything freely available on the net. This lack of practice multiple choice questions prompted me to create my own set. I have gone by the advice of Chris Eaton to create this paper before I take the test to avoid any issue that these questions copy the official exam questions.

Five Technology Trends That Require Scrutiny

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 07:00:00 EDT

No individual can really track and understand the impact of change in all the emerging technologies like Cloud Computing, Mobile Computing, Social Media, Agile Methodology and Big Data … You can realistically aim to have an in depth understanding of only a small subset. By in depth understanding I mean you know significantly more about the subset than a person who has spent about an hour Googling the topic. Though multi-platform application development has been a challenge from more than 10 years, we still do not have any elegant solution. Still, it is important to understand the state of art and keep track of how the scenario is changing.

Is Gamification Only a Buzzword?

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 03:12:00 EDT

Is the term “Gamification” a buzzword or is it a real trend which will change the way things are sold … services are delivered? Is it a fad or is it fundamentally life altering trend? Is it something new or is it an old wine in a new bottle? If you are not familiar with the term then here is a quick explanation. Gamification is the use of game design elements, game thinking and game mechanics to enhance non-game contexts.

Agile, Emergence and Management

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 09:00:00 EDT

Does analysis lead to synthesis? How do you solve a complex problem? Break the complex problem into sub-task till each task is clearly understood and doable. Assign responsibility and monitor each task till they are complete. Once all tasks are completed the problem is solved! Well this is standard management practice and work well in many situation. Problem starts when the inter-dependencies among sub-tasks are too many, when the sub-tasks are not clearly understood and when the uncertainties are high. Not to worry … management techniques can still be applied to manage the uncertainty and unknown … or … does it?

Cross-Platform Mobile Visual Development – a Tool Comparison

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 09:30:00 EDT

Mobile development tools are changing rapidly. I had started work on comparing cross-platform mobile tools about a month back. I had initially started with a list of 26 tools. A few got added on the way. However, what is most interesting is that in this short period of time one of the tools (Open Plug) was discontinued. It was a Flash-based tool. Since Adobe decided to discontinue Flash for mobile in favor of HTML5 – they really had no choice. Another tool (Pyxis Mobile) has been renamed as (Verivo Software).

Is Big Data a Solution in Search of a Problem?

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:00:00 EST

If you look at the predictions made for 2012, you will find a new entry which was not there last year. Be it Gartner, Forrester or McKenzie – “Big Data” finds a place in the prediction. So, what is big data? Is it the next path breaking technology which will change everything or is it just a hype which will die down after sometime?

Do We Need to Define What Agile Is?

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 05:00:00 EDT

Assume that you are trying agile for the first time. If the project succeeds then everybody is happy. But… What happens if the project fails? Did the project fail because your agile implementation was wrong? …or… Did it fail it because agile was not the right methodology for your project?

Agile and Unstable Team

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 01:55:00 EDT

Have you ever encountered a situation where 2 of the 5 members of an agile team decides to move on within a short span of time. What about 3 out of 5? What did you do when that happened? Yes, I know you are saying that the situation should either have been anticipated or prevented. You might say that it is an case of bad management. You may say that it is a symptom of dysfunctional organization. But… What do you do when that happens? What proactive steps would you want to take to prevent such situation? Would you build your system to withstand such disruption, or Would you work to towards prevention of such situation? Anticipate … or … Prevent? What is your style?