Steve Neiderhauser

Agile Foundation

Mike Cottmeyer writes about SAFe Agile scaling framework.

I agree with Mike, the SAFe debate is meaningless. What's key is the foundation of Agile.

Agile is predicated on the notion of small teams, colocation, onsite customers, lightweight documentation and frequent opportunities for feedback. These teams need to be sufficient for solving the problem they are formed to solve, they need to have clear backlog, and they need to be able to produce a working tested increment...

Lean Startup Summary

For anyone who wants to wrap their mind around the Lean Startup Methodology, read the summary written by Eric Ries.

What is Continuous Integration

Just last week I was telling my boss that Continuous Integration is the foundation for delivering software multiple times a day.

Now, Raj Indugula provides us with an exquisite explanation of Continuous Integration. Thanks Raj.

Minimum Viable Product Part II

Eric Ries shares another excerpt from his upcoming book, “The Leader’s Guide.”

Eric writes about the Minimum Viable Product, reinforcing the importance of creating a prototype, showing it to customers, and getting the customer's feedback. In Eric’s story, the team wants to perform customer development throughout the development process so they can create a great product.

The team asked one question that focused their experiments: “What was the maximum amount of learning we could get in the shortest amount of time?”

Agile Practices for Startups

Jeff Patton explains that common Agile practices are for software delivery and Startups should focus on discovery.

We now know our biggest risk isn't getting the software built, but validating that there are customers out there that want our product, and can use it. I'm going to call that stuff product discovery.

Minimum Viable Product

Eric Ries writes a primer for the Minimum Viable Product.

Eric provides a case study and shows what I've experienced working with MVPs. People are afraid to put out a product that may lack features. Guess what? Real artists ship and learn from customers.

Eric also provides six common strategies for MVP. Here's two I like:

Tackle fewer use cases

Take early prototypes to customers

How to Create the Perfect Pot

In 100 Words, Tanmy Vora tells us how to create the perfect pot -- or product.

Self-Organizing Companies

Tony Hsieh writes a long memo to Zappos employees encouraging them to embrace self-organization. And if someone prefers a different approach, they need to find another place to work.

Why so serious? The world is changing fast and everyone needs to be on board for culture change to work.

How to Get Things Done

Scrum Inc shares the webinar, Getting to Done.

Technical debt is one reason teams can't get work done. If your software is like spaghetti, you'll have leftover user stories in the next sprint.

How to be The Agile Leader

Michael Hamman and Michael Spayd describe how to be The Agile Leader.

The article shows how Agile leaders, shift from managing for results to designing environment that create results. Instead of managing tasks or teams, leaders create an environment for success.

The authors share five techniques for designing environments. Here's three of them.

Create Conditions that favor and elicit collaboration and ownership.

Design Structures that smooth the flow of information and remove impediments.

Introduce Practices that help people become skillful and effective at communication, adaptive planning, emergent software design...