Sure MS Project is a powerful tool. However it is not suitable for agile projects. It’s not even suitable for software development at all.

MS Project is based on the waterfall method. It teaches users how to make complex and complete plans upfront. It makes the plans almost invisible for the team. It’s hard to track real progress and there are no backlogs. Sure it could be done with some efforts, but it’s not designed for it.

There are people that agree with me:
Why GANTT charts where banned in the first Scrum (by Jeff Sutherland)
Why MS Project Sucks for Software Development
The definitive guide to why MS Project Sucks…

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This is one of the best descriptions of agile methods I’ve heard:

Agile methods are adaptive rather than predictive. Instead of planning for a long time span and fear change, Agile methods embrace change and adapt accordingly.

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Bring out your calendars and cross out 12-13 june!
Softhouse will be arranging Agile Øresund, which is an agile conference in Malmö. We have already booked a couple of agile celebrities:

• Mary & Tom Poppendieck – the authors of the award winning book “Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit”.
• Jeff Sutherland – co-creator of Scrum.

Stay tuned for more info…

Meanwhile read this:
Softhouse
Poppendiecks
Jeff Sutherland
“Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit”

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Unfortunately I missed the Agile Configuration Management meeting the other day. I got some material anyway that I read through. It was draft documents, so I was not allowed to spread them. However I made some reflections that I would like to share.

Since there is no explicit Configuration Management (CM) role in an agile project someone could easily make the mistake believing that CM is not taken seriously in agile methods. CM is all about managing changes in a controlled way, and agile methods embrace change.. right? So it should be quite natural to have CM in agile projects then? It is, but it’s not done in the same way as in more traditional projects.

CM in agile projects is about collective code ownership, continuous integration, frequent releases, refactoring and must be distributed among the developers. High demands are put on the team because of the short iterations, frequent releases and close collaboration with the customers. Appropriately applied it will improve the pace of change and is actually necessary for success.

CM is seldom mentioned when talking about agile methods. Instead we expect teams to rely a lot on tacit knowledge. What needs to be done however is to put CM on the agile agenda and make CM activities in agile methods more explicit.

More info:
Another whitepaper from LUCAS about SCM practices in XP teams
LUCAS homepage

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this is the best overview and explanation of Scrum that I have encountered so far, please have a look!

I have mentioned Scrum often in my posts. Scrum is an agile software development process.

The Scrum Development Process

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Retrospective (from Latin retrospectare, “look back”) generally means to take a look back at events that have already taken place. (Cut from wikipedia.)

Within software engineering it often means to have a review meeting with the whole project team at the end of a project or an iteration to discuss what was successful and what could be improved and also how to incorporate the experiences into future project and iterations. The retrospective can be done using different methods, and they could be formal or informal.

Questions to be answered during the retrospective should include:

• What did we do well?
• What did we learn?
• What should we do different the next time?
• What still puzzles us?

In this blog I do retrospectives of my own as a way to write about experiences from different projects that I have been in.

A retrospective gathering will be held in Germany this spring 3-7 April, 2006.

Read more:
“Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Reviews”, by Norm Kerth
Retrospective Gathering 2006
www.retrospectives.com (Norm Kerth’s website)
Presentation about retrospectives
Another presentation about retrospectives

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Normally we don’t associate configuration management with agile processes, but nevertheless it is needed even in an agile project. The keywords with agile configuration management are “frequent changes and integration” and the CM process needs to support it. It’s about having the correct amount of process. Not too little, then the codeline will degrade, and not too much, then the workflow is disrupted instead of supported.

However the difference to traditional projects is that in agile projects there is no dedicated CM role. Instead the CM activities are carried out by the team, where everybody needs to have a certain amount of CM knowledge.

Lucas will shortly arrange a meeting at LTH around the subject: “Software Configuration Management in Agile Development”.

Read more:
Lucas meeting
SNESCM coffe meetings
Forum post on topic

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