Federico Cargnelutti

Category: Agile Development

  • Four Great InfoQ Presentations

    Hope you like these recommendations and if you know of any other good tech-related video, then please let me know. 1. Developing Expertise: Herding Racehorses, Racing Sheep One of my favourites. In this presentation Dave Thomas (The Pragmatic Programmer) talks about expanding people’s expertise in their domains of interest by not treating them uniformly as…

  • Scrum Backlog Templates

    Here are two useful backlog templates provided by Agile Software Development. Both of them are in Excel format (XLS). Check them out: Simple Product Backlog Example Simple Sprint Backlog Example

  • Seven practices for healthier, faster software development

    The practices discussed in this article are based on Ezequiel Cuellar’s observations. These practices will help any software development team as they come up against common obstacles. They will also contribute to a solid foundation for healthier development and help speed up production. The seven practices are: Improve business processes before starting development. Create a…

  • Identifying Senior Software Engineers

    For HR and legal purposes, most development companies classify Software Engineers into ranks from 1 to 4 (or 5). The higher the rank, the higher the responsibilities, expectations, independence and pay grade. To cut it as an interviewer and manager, you’ll need to classify people accurately with a minimum amount of direct personal exposure: a…

  • Architecture-Oriented or Feature-Oriented?

    Traditionally, there are two fundamental approaches when it comes to organising your development teams: the Architecture-Oriented approach and the Feature-Oriented approach. The first privileges teams that focus on the different architectural layers or components, whereas the second prefers to organise teams around deliverable application features. How do you organise your development teams?

  • Foundations of Programming: Building Better Software

    Karl Seguin has released the official, and completely free, Foundations of Programming eBook. Although simplistic, every programming decision I make is largely based on maintainability. Maintainability is the cornerstone of enterprise development. Frequent readers are likely sick of hearing about it, but there’s a good reason we talk about maintainability so often – it’s the…

  • Unit Testing: Rules of Thumb

    When it comes to testing, Cedric Beust (co-author of “Next Generation Java Testing”) lives by the following rules of thumb: “Tests first” or “tests last” is unimportant as long as there are tests. Try to think about testing as early as possible in your development process. Don’t listen to people who tell you to write…

  • Scrum and XP work well together

    A programmer cannot be Agile if the person that manages him is not Agile as well, and vice versa. That’s why Scrum focuses on management and organization practices while XP focuses mostly on actual programming practices, and that’s why they work so well together. This excellent free book aims to give you a head start…

  • ScrumWorks: Agile Process Automation Tool

    What does Google, Sun Microsystems, HP, Amazon, Oracle and Motorola have in common? They all use ScrumWorks, an Agile process automation tool that enables teams to self-organize and maximize productivity. Sun Microsystems: “The best compliment I can give to ScrumWorks is that my staff doesn’t think about it. It is intuitive and respectful of the…

  • Agile Development Methodologies

    Agile development methodologies have been around for a while now, and the list of them is long. It includes: Extreme Programmin (XP): Developed by Kent Beck, Ward Cunningham, and Ron Jeffries, XP is probably the best-known lightweight methodology. With its roots in the Smalltalk community, it is a relatively complex system of practices, and Highsmith…