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  • Agile Software Development – One Size Doesn’t Fit All

    Ian Alderson 12:01 am on 2nd April, 2010 | 2 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , scrum,

    As I mentioned in part I of this series, Adoption of Agile at Caplin, when we first started following an agile methodology (in our case Scrum) in February 2005 we were desperate to implement it successfully and wanted to adhere to all of the best practices.

    We persevered with this approach for several months, repeatedly referring to the books on Scrum we had purchased and the numerous websites on the subject which were cropping up at the time, to find out ways of improving the process.

    With hindsight this looks a little conservative, however back then we were still getting to grips with agile and didn’t want to make any significant adjustments that hadn’t been tried and proven elsewhere.

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  • Agile Software Development - Adoption of Agile at Caplin

    Ian Alderson 3:55 pm on 26th March, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , scrum,

    Back in January 2005 I had been married for a month and was looking forward to taking a belated honeymoon in March. As you would expect, these were significant life events, however little did I realise that something of a similar magnitude was also looming on the horizon of my work life here at Caplin. After five and a half years following a waterfall methodology our then development manager (now CTO), Patrick Myles, introduced us to our first agile software development methodology, Scrum.

    Over the last five years we have learnt that an agile process is agile itself, and the process that we follow now is different in many ways from that which we initially adopted. This doesn’t mean that the process we first had was wrong, although there were certainly some issues. Over time things that were crucial parts of the process have become defunct and have been removed, whilst new ideas and refinements are added into the process to address fresh issues that have arisen.

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  • An Estimate is not a Guarantee

    Ian Alderson 12:57 pm on 26th February, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , scrum,

    The statement that an estimate is not a guarantee might sound obvious but it often feels anything but. Over the years I have frequently heard managers complain that something has taken longer than was anticipated and have been told to improve the estimates.

    Of course at times the estimates have been inaccurate, with features taking far more time to implement than was initially predicted. The question is how to learn from these experiences to help improve your estimates. This is especially pertinent for software engineers within financial services because this same conundrum is at the heart of pricing financial instruments.

    This article looks at how the Rational Expectations Theory can help you improve your estimates in software development. It starts by looking at estimating something much easier than a software enhancement, your journey time into work, and demonstrates when that estimate should be considered good or bad. It then looks how this can be applied to software development.

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  • Agile Framework Development

    Ian Alderson 12:58 pm on 2nd February, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , scrum, ,

    At times it seems that the philosophy of agile software development is at odds with that of framework development. Given the amount of print and web space dedicated to agile methodologies, it’s incredible how little is dedicated to this topic. It’s almost as if this conflict needs to be kept hidden away from view, not to be discussed in public.

    At Caplin we are living proof that framework development can be achieved following agile principles. We have been successfully building frameworks and APIs for the past 5 years using various agile methodologies from Scrum, to a mix of Scrum and XP, to Kanban.

    This article represents the approaches that we have undertaken to successfully build our frameworks.

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  • An agile team-board layout that works for us, for now.

    Emin Tatosian 4:45 pm on 13th January, 2010 | 4 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , board, scrum, standup, team

    As a team lead, the first time I was tasked with preparing a team-board, I set out to learn from how others had laid out theirs first. I started with a study of various layouts in our office and then searched the web for more ideas, which gave me enough information to tailor a new layout.

    The motivation for writing this blog post is to share with you my current favourite team-board arrangement, which has changed a number of times since its first incarnation.

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  • Let's all jump on the Kanban

    Sarah 3:36 pm on 20th November, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , scrum, ,

    We have been using agile methods – a typical mix of Scrum and XP – for some years now at Caplin. Though all of us have had some level of formal training and many years of experience in agile techniques, I have observed a couple of drawbacks with the Scrum process and the use of it within our organisation:

    1. It’s very difficult to use velocity for Scrum sign-up because team personnel change frequently
    2. Unexpected work can impact the project teams resulting in a demotivated team because they sometimes do not complete what they have signed-up for

    There must be a better way?

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