Agile Product & Project Management: Executive Report Abstracts

2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001| 2000

2008 | Volume 9
Moving the Herd: Facilitating Multiparty Project Teams Toward Common Goals (Vol. 9, No. 3)

Getting a group of people to move together toward a common objective is never easy. As a project manager dealing with teams of people, each of whom represents different constituents, comes from a different point of view, and is trying to pursue a different set of interests, your task is formidable indeed. To be successful, you need to employ facilitation skills to move the group process forward as well as negotiation skills to make sure that your own interests and your project's interests are met along the way.

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Is Design Still Dead? (Vol. 9, No. 2)

Agile development has moved beyond its niche movement and an increasing number of organizations are adopting agile development for more projects. But regardless of its success, there are still many skeptics regarding its application to very large and/or complex systems. Many older developers and software managers are concerned about what some believe to be one of the major blind spots of agile development: the rejection of up-front design. This Executive Report by Ken Orr returns to a famous paper written by leading software guru Martin Fowler and revisits his major concerns about agile development and design, especially concerns about modeling -- the idea that the code is the design and that being close to the customer is enough to ensure success. The report concludes that design is alive and well, and that over the long run, the agile movement is going to need to consider amending its Agile Manifesto to incorporate the use of more automatic design/application-generation tools in order to meet the needs of the future.

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Transitioning to Agile Project Management: A Roadmap for the Perplexed (Vol. 9, No. 1)

As agile project delivery methods have entered the mainstream, the burning managerial question has shifted from whether to adopt them to how. Switching to agile often brings swift and dramatic change, but ensuring that this transition is positive in nature requires an informed, pragmatic approach. This Executive Report by Sanjiv Augustine and Arlen Bankston presents a roadmap that distills and elevates six core steps for migrating from plan-driven management (PDM) to agile project management (APM) and illustrates how they're manifested in successful projects today.

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2007 | Volume 8
Negotiating Resources, Deliverables, and Deadlines Within the Global Organization (Vol. 8, No. 12)

The business environment is increasingly dominated by multinational work teams in which project groups are often located in different countries and come from many cultures with distinct customs, languages, communication styles, social expectations, and work habits. To be effective, managers must negotiate for the resources they require, as well as the deliverables and deadlines on their projects, with an understanding of how cultural differences affect the way people negotiate. In this Executive Report by Moshe Cohen, we examine ways that managers can discard their existing assumptions and learn to identify new principles and practices that will lead to productive relationships and success on their projects.

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Emulating the "Bazaar": Open Source–Style Development Within the Firm (Vol. 8, No. 11)

Open source software products are generally developed by geographically distributed communities that share knowledge and collaborate using Internet technologies. This Executive Report by Joseph Feller poses the following question: can firms effectively implement the tools and techniques used by open source software projects to improve their internal software development processes? The report attempts to answer that question by discussing the open source development process, describing the experiences of companies that have tried to internalize open source tools and techniques, and offering recommendations for firms that would seek to do the same.

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From the Ashes: Resetting Expectations and Restoring Relationships After Project Disasters (Vol. 8, No. 10)

Your project is behind schedule and overbudget. The customer is irate, the president of the company has stepped in personally to micromanage the project, and the project team members have no morale left to speak of. You have a mess on your hands, and both the project and your career depend on your ability to turn the project around and pull success out of disaster. This is difficult and messy, but by communicating clearly, setting expectations realistically, and solving problems collaboratively, you can make the best of a bad situation and reap the benefits of success.

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Requirements for Managing Requirements (Vol. 8, No. 9)

This Executive Report by Suzanne Robertson discusses how managers can use consistent and understandable requirements knowledge as input to making decisions and steering a project down its most agile path.

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From Startup to Enterprise: Creating a Quality-Friendly Development Environment for All Methodologies (Vol. 8, No. 8)

Although the unavoidable tension between quality of production and speed to market is centuries old, we still treat the problem of quality in rapid software development as a new one. This Executive Report by Megan Folsom presents a scoring questionnaire to help you holistically identify specific areas where you can take action to make quality a state of mind that pervades the entire organization. The questionnaire helps you determine where your organization falls on a quality assurance supportiveness scale -- hostile, indifferent, friendly enough, or very friendly -- and offers advice for moving up to the next level.

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Project Management Cultures: The Hidden Challenge (Vol. 8, No. 7)

In this Executive Report by Rob Thomsett, we explore the impact of various project management models and the implications of organizational culture on project management. Without understanding these two issues, most organizations face the real threat of ineffectively adopting project management. Traditional project management had its origins in the engineering and construction industries in the late 1950s and had specific values and behaviors that are best summarized as expert-based and "closed." Agile project management was developed to reflect the complexities of business and IT projects; its values are stakeholder-driven and "open." The effective deployment of project management should be based on an examination of which culture, values, and behaviors are appropriate for each organization.

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A Business Value Focus for Portfolio Management (Vol. 8, No. 6)

Organizations need to find a way to get more done by doing less and delivering business value. One way they can accomplish this is by managing their project portfolio with an agile-inspired business value focus that utilizes strategic intent, an understanding of uncertainty and complexity, real options, and a constant review of the business value of all projects. This approach allows organizations to make sure they are only delivering features utilizing processes that create value for their organization.

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An Organizational Structure for Agile Projects (Vol. 8, No. 5)

Many IT organizations are stuck in the 1970s, with structures that are a reflection of several decades of attempts to tame the beast that is software development. The problem is that these attempts use assumptions that may once have had some validity but are now fundamentally flawed. The time has come to not only change the way in which software is developed, but to change the very definition and structure of the organizations that build software. This Executive Report by Dave Rooney explores these notions and examines modern, agile approaches to software development.

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The Need for and Fear of Agile Certification (Vol. 8, No. 4)

Leaders who can create and sustain agile work environments are increasingly in demand. While performance is the ultimate end measure, what type of competence do we expect from those in this position? Do we want a common set of expectations? If so, what are they and how will they be applied? In this Executive Report by David Spann, you will be introduced to the Agile Project Leadership Network's intent and the results of a Cutter survey on this issue as well as three alternative certification frameworks and one possible approach to an agile leader certification program.

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How to Establish a Project Support Office: A Practical Guide to Growth and Development (Vol. 8, No. 3)

This Executive Report by Dr. Robert K. Wysocki offers a how-to guide for establishing a project support office (PSO) in your organization. It walks you through the necessary steps, including recognizing that you need a PSO, defining your mission and objectives, setting up the organizational structure, and establishing the functions and services to be offered. The report also presents a brief discussion on maturing your PSO.

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Managing Projects Through Influence in a Distributed Work Environment (Vol. 8, No. 2)

Project managers in today's work environment must learn to work with distributed project teams whose members don't report to them directly. The role of a project leader is therefore transforming from an authoritative one into one that inspires and maintains the vision for the project, encourages the team, promotes teamwork and collaboration, and removes obstacles to progress. This Executive Report by Moshe Cohen examines the leadership, communication, and negotiation skills project managers must acquire to achieve successful projects.

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User Participation in Agile Projects (Vol. 8, No. 1)

It has been well established for more than two decades that user participation is critical to the success of IS projects. However, the optimal extent and nature of this participation varies depending on the project. This Executive Report by Khaled El Emam presents criteria to use in deciding how much participation is needed and offers practical guidance for making this work within an iterative development process.

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2006 | Volume 7
How Agile Are Organizations Today? (Vol. 7, No. 12)

The agile movement is now more than five years old, and many organizations have implemented agile methods, with many more planning agile transitions. So we thought it was time to ask the question "How agile are organizations today?" Thus, Cutter Consortium conducted a survey to dig deeper into the issues of agile implementation. This Executive Report by Jim Highsmith and Dr. Robert K. Wysocki provides the results of that survey, which includes the topics of customer involvement and collaboration, software development process, quality and testing, management of development, and feedback and learning.

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Driving Software Development with Executable Acceptance Tests (Vol. 7, No. 11)

This Executive Report by Frank Maurer and Grigori Melnik provides an overview of executable acceptance test-driven development, a software development methodology where automated tests are used to specify high-level functional requirements and drive the development effort. Tests define acceptance criteria and are developed at the beginning of an iteration before a feature is designed and implemented. An overview of modern frameworks and tools supporting executable acceptance testing is included, and the benefits and challenges for business stakeholders, as well as developers, are identified and investigated. Finally, the results of two studies that examined this approach are presented along with the lessons learned.

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The Lean-Agile PMO: Using Lean Thinking to Accelerate Agile Project Delivery (Vol. 7, No. 10)

Corporate project portfolios are routinely challenged in many organizations. Executives will often see projects that are late and overbudget, deliver poor value, and have less-than-satisfied business sponsors and end users. In this Executive Report by Sanjiv Augustine and Roland Cuellar, we offer suggestions on how to combine Agile project delivery at the project level with Lean thinking at the portfolio level in order to significantly increase project throughput, financial investment performance, and business sponsor satisfaction.

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Agile Manager Behaviors: What to Look For and Develop (Vol. 7, No. 9)

Imagine being asked to write a job announcement for one of the management/lead positions on your agile team. You understand that this person needs to have familiarity with the specific technology and with the preferred agile methodology, but you are struggling with defining the behavioral characteristics of this "right" person. What types of behaviors would make one person a success and another an out-and-out failure? This Executive Report by David Spann defines the eight preferred behaviors of an agile manager and helps you, your organization, and your team use those behaviors to search for and develop people for that role.

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Distressed Projects: Prevention and Intervention Strategies (Vol. 7, No. 8)

Whenever the performance of a project falls outside nominal values, it will be judged to be a project in distress and likely to fail. In this Executive Report by Dr. Robert K. Wysocki, we focus on prevention strategies -- including requirements gathering, work breakdown structure, risk management, scope change management, and performance monitoring -- before detailing a four-step process for intervention.

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Holacracy: A Complete System for Agile Organizational Governance and Steering (Vol. 7, No. 7)

Agile methods have had a huge impact on the software industry by evolving the way we think about software development, and the results are hard to ignore. Now business leaders are looking for ways to reap the benefits of agile principles in whole-organization governance and management. This is difficult without a tangible methodology to make agile principles concrete and accessible. This Executive Report by Brian Robertson examines the governance aspects of holacracy, which provides a complete and practical system for achieving agility in all aspects of organizational steering and management.

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An Adaptive Performance Management System (Vol. 7, No. 6)

If we are ultimately to gain the benefits of agile project management and development and to grow truly agile, innovative organizations, then we need to alter our approach to performance management systems. This Executive Report by Jim Highsmith derives guidelines for such a new system, drawing on the work of recent literature to build a system that helps focus any enterprise group (team, department, division, or company) on a set of desired strategic outcomes while encouraging those groups to perform at a high level.

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Collaboration and Collaborative Leadership: Innovation in the Agile Enterprise (Vol. 7, No. 5)

It’s no longer enough to respond to change; today organizations must lead change or be left behind. In the constantly shifting marketplace, great companies use innovation to embrace change and thrive in evolving environments. To do this, leaders must turn to collaboration and the collaborative leadership model and create agile enterprises.

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Managing a Multiple Team Project (Vol. 7, No. 4)

As projects begin to take on an enterprise-wide scope, disparate and independent teams are often brought together to work on a single project. The project is generally a mission-critical one on which the future of the business depends, so it must be successfully completed. This Executive Report examines the challenges of multiple team projects and suggests three different organizational structures for handling such situations.

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Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design (Vol. 7, No. 3)

A database refactoring is a simple change to your database schema that improves its design without breaking its behavioral or information semantics -- you neither add anything to your database, nor do you break anything; you merely improve it. Database refactoring provides a realistic strategy for organizations to dig out of the data quality mess they have built up in the past. It also supports the adoption of evolutionary development techniques within your data management group, enabling it to align its approach with the development teams it is tasked to support.

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Introducing Agile Techniques in a Small Team Environment: A Case Study (Vol. 7, No. 2)

This Executive Report by Frank Maurer and Chris Mann presents the results of a two-year case study on the introduction of Scrum, pair programming, and test-driven development (TDD) into a small team environment. Results show that Scrum decreased developer overtime, stabilized work hours, and increased customer satisfaction. Pair programming and TDD were partially adopted. Developers generally liked to work in pairs but did not consider it effective for research or repetitive development tasks; they found unit testing useful but did not become fully accustomed to writing the tests first.

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Standardizing the Standards: Picking Project Management Standards and Guidelines That Match Culture and Strategy (Vol. 7, No. 1)

With the proliferation of project management standards, speaking to the differences becomes a major challenge. This Executive Report by Carl Pritchard examines the differences, similarities, and cultural tendencies associated with five major project management standardization documents. In examining what each set of guidance brings to the table (tools, process orientation, flexibility, and rigor), organizational leaders can determine if they can find a good match for their internal culture and strategic project management approach.

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2005 | Volume 6
Coaching Community (Vol. 6, No. 12)

Many agile projects have a coach to guide the community as it bonds around a set of agile principles and practices that increase its ability to consistently deliver working software. This Executive Report discusses how coaches employ agile ways and means to grow and sustain healthy agile project communities that are able to produce better quality products in a more predictable and humane manner.

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Are Agile Methods and Enterprise Architecture Compatible? Yes, with Effort (Vol. 6, No. 11)

Agile methods (AM) and enterprise architecture (EA) are two of the most powerful trends in software development. Each has been proven to deliver results. But are they compatible? This Executive Report analyzes the incompatibilities between EA and AM and describes how adopting both is not only possible but necessary for a comprehensive software development capability for large organizations.

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Responsible Change (Vol. 6, No. 10)

Expensive flaws persist in our approach to change. This Executive Report by Christopher M. Avery examines descriptive and prescriptive models of change to identify 25 operating assumptions worth understanding and adopting. While prevailing approaches to change are no longer working, there is good news: the values and methods of agility and other new approaches give us a new metaphor -- emergence -- to apply if we want to change traditional IT shops into more agile ones.

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Agile Program Management: Moving from Principles to Practice (Vol. 6, No. 9)

Agile program management is the "glue" between IT strategy and the delivery of business value. Capabilities-based planning identifies needed features and functions, allowing the portfolio manager to incrementally measure value through the assessment of the increasing maturity of significant accomplishments and exit criteria that represent the business capabilities.

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Agile Planning for Reliable Project Decision Making (Vol. 6, No. 8)

This Executive Report by Mike Cohn is about agile planning, not agile plans. While a plan is a snapshot of how we believe a project might unfold over an uncertain future, planning is a process -- a continual reassessment of not only where we are but where we are heading. It is also an attempt to find an optimal solution to the ultimate product development question: what is the best combination of features, resources, and schedule? This report examines in practical terms how to engage in agile planning that results in reliable decision making.

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Managing Complexity and Uncertainty in Software Projects (Vol. 6, No. 7)

This Executive Report by Dr. Robert K. Wysocki argues that the major characteristics of a software development project -- complexity and uncertainty -- drive the choice of software development model and the accompanying project management approach that will be most effective. This report explores the impact of risk, team structure, client involvement, and communications in the complexity-uncertainty domain.

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Organizational Patterns: Building on the Agile Pattern Foundations (Vol. 6, No. 6)

What really works in software development management? Practices and deep organizational structures -- what the authors refer to as organizational patterns -- that result in customer satisfaction and lay the foundation for organizational adaptability and agility. The following Executive Report by James O. Coplien, Neil B. Harrison, and Gertrud Bjørnvig discusses the top 10 patterns that successful organizations and teams have used and provides a framework within which you can customize these practices for your own enterprise.

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Principle-Centered Agile Project Portfolio Management (Vol. 6, No. 5)

Agile project portfolio management (APPM) is a principle-based approach to the practice of investing scarce resources to achieve the highest return for an organization as a whole. This Executive Report by Donna Fitzgerald advocates a distributed flow of authority and decision-making ability that enables an iterative, flexible, and pragmatic approach to assembling an organization's portfolio of projects.

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The Politics of Design and Usability (Vol. 6, No. 4)

As software has become more complex and more woven into the fabric of business, the gap between expectations and reality seems only to grow. Proponents of user-centered design (UCD) have turned to various methods to make the case for improved usability. Their failure to persuade stems from a belief that the problem is one of logic. But in fact, the politics of design has prevented wider acceptance of usability. This Executive Report by Whitney Quesenbery examines some of the political barriers that prevent companies from incorporating UCD into their software development process, and it offers guidance on how to bridge the gap between conflicting priorities and various stakeholders to produce a user-focused product.

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The New World of Teams: Ad Hoc and Virtual (Vol. 6, No. 3)

Prior to the 1980s, the "traditional" team model prevailed. But with the emergence of numerous market forces and changes in business values, the traditional team has given way to the new world order of ad hoc teams, where individuals believe they work for "Me, Inc.," and virtual teams, where teams are generally geographically separated. Now the challenge is how to build teams on a shifting bedrock of low organizational loyalty, high staff turnover, skill specialization, and increased outsourcing. This Executive Report by Rob Thomsett discusses the new team model and the associated changes in project culture, commitment, and priorities; leadership roles; and work itself.

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Industrial XP: Making XP Work in Large Organizations (Vol. 6, No. 2)

Industrial XP (IXP) is a brand of Extreme Programming (XP) tailored for large organizations. IXP builds on the principles of XP to address the challenges that companies with greater than 500 employees often face when implementing XP. This Executive Report by Joshua Kerievsky explains the history of IXP; its values, practices, roles, and responsibilities; and offers advice on successfully transitioning to IXP.

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Agile for the Enterprise: From Agile Teams to Agile Organizations (Vol. 6, No. 1)

The concepts and practices of agile software development and project management are not limited to development teams; in fact, executives must understand how agile development affects their organizations, methodologies, and overall project governance. This Executive Report by Jim Highsmith presents a framework for addressing these enterprise issues.

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2004 | Volume 5
Extreme Programming Practices: What's on Top? (Vol. 5, No. 12)

Extreme Programming (XP) has had a significant impact on the culture and practices of the software industry; in fact, most reports of XP teams are success stories. This Executive Report by Laurie Williams guides you through those XP practices most worth considering for your own organization and presents four case studies detailing XP's use in the real world.

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Getting It Right, Getting It Done: Improving Team Productivity and Quality (Vol. 5, No. 11)

Outsourcing is a threat to the survival of the IT development team. As with all things, however, change is inevitable. Your project team must be prepared for a potential climate change that could shift the focus back inhouse. This Executive Report by Pamela Hager discusses what the project manager must do to position his or her team to capitalize on this shift if and when it happens.

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Usability and the Agile Project Management Process Framework (Vol. 5, No. 10)

Despite the best efforts of project developers, sometimes software isn't usable. This Executive Report by Jonathan D. Addelston and Theresa A. O'Connell specifies key software engineering roles and responsibilities in a project organization chart, integrating usability engineering as an extension of the agile project team. The authors contend that this integration leads to user success and satisfaction as well as fulfilled business goals that pose lower risk in being achieved.

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Making Decisions Using Software Product Metrics (Vol. 5, No. 9)

As longtime business management guru Peter Drucker says, you can't manage what you can't measure. In software development, the key question is not what the measurements yield, but what's being measured and how. This Executive Report by Khaled El Emam provides an overview of software product metrics, identifying the important ones and demonstrating how they can be used in managing software projects.

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Leading Extreme Projects to Success (Vol. 5, No. 8)

Extreme projects are a new breed of project characterized by high speed, high rates of change, high complexity, and high stress. Keeping a chaotic project like this in control and delivering value in the face of this volatility is the focus of this Executive Report by Doug DeCarlo.

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Pushing the Envelope: Managing Very Large Projects (Vol. 5, No. 7)

Very large software projects are being tackled in high-intensity environments, with heavy user involvement -- and with a higher chance of failure. Why? This Executive Report by Ken Orr answers this question and argues that despite widely held beliefs, agile techniques can be useful in taming these IT beasts.

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The Usability Challenge (Vol. 5, No. 6)

Usability is a cornerstone of high-quality software, with good user interfaces increasingly viewed as critical for an enterprise to have significant competitive advantage and to minimize development costs. In this Executive Report by Larry L. Constantine, learn how agile processes can be enhanced to generate more usable user interfaces. The report also discusses the critical issues that managers and developers should consider in integrating best usability practices.

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Adaptive Components: Software Engineering's Ace in the Hole (Vol. 5, No. 5)

You know the sobering numbers on software project performance: the many projects that have failed, taken too long, overshot their budgets, or all three. If you're looking to significantly improve your organization, this Executive Report by Paul G. Bassett offers new ways of thinking about software engineering and, more important, how to take advantage of them.

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Value-Driven Project Management and Software Development (Vol. 5, No. 4)

In the new millennium, "faster, better, cheaper" is the mantra for systems development projects. This Executive Report by Ken Schwaber examines an elegantly simple approach toward "faster, better, cheaper" that has been widely used -- and with much success. The bottom line of this approach is to produce software that can bring the most value to an organization.

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The Software Productivity Imperative (Vol. 5, No. 3)

The last few years have certainly not been kind to those who develop software. Part of the reason is a decline in software productivity. Now, with an apparent economic turnaround, it's time to take productivity seriously. In this Executive Report by Mary Poppendieck, find out what prevents software development organizations from becoming more productive and learn about 10 "levers" to help boost productivity.

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Practicing Agile Requirements Management (Vol. 5, No. 2)

Several studies indicate that the major causes of project failure usually relate to requirements. In this Executive Report by Sam Bayer, learn how a handful of companies strive to ensure the accuracy of what their customers truly desire.

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Evaluating ROI from Software Quality (Vol. 5, No. 1)

There is increasing pressure to reduce costs and cut delivery times in software projects. This Executive Report by Khaled El Emam explains how improvements in software quality can achieve both goals.

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2003 | Volume 4
Planning for Risk in IT Projects (Vol. 4, No. 12)

IT projects can be risky propositions, but proper risk planning can serve as the foundation of a proactive project risk management practice and ensure consistency between project objectives and corporate objectives. This Executive Report by Kerry F. Gentry outlines a set of risk management principles and offers a set of practices to follow.

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Finding Success in Small Software Projects (Vol. 4, No. 11)

Small software projects are more prevalent and more successful than larger ones. Why do small software development projects succeed? This Executive Report by Khaled El Emam examines the factors lending to project success. But not all of these projects succeed; in fact, a healthy percentage of such projects are still not considered successful. This report differentiates those that "succeed" from those that do not. Differentiating factors lie in terms of the engineering and management practices of projects.

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Building the Emotionally Intelligent Agile Manager (Vol. 4, No. 10)

By and large, IT professionals certainly have the intellect required to do their jobs. What's missing sometimes, however, is the ability to interpret and act upon the information that you can get from the emotions of a colleague, especially someone with whom you work on a project. The purpose of this Executive Report by David Caruso is to illustrate how effective project management, and specifically agile project management, must include the intelligent use of emotions.

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Evolutionary Database Development: Skills for Agile DBAs (Vol. 4, No. 9)

Data professionals have all but been left out of the agile software development movement; this is a problem that must be fixed. This Executive Report by Scott W. Ambler examines the importance of data professionals who work in agile environments, given that "evolutionary development," an iterative and incremental approach to building software, is in your future -- like it or not. And most software processes, especially those that are agile, take an evolutionary approach to development.

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Lean Development and the Predictability Paradox (Vol. 4, No. 8)

In our zeal to improve the reliability of software development, we have institutionalized practices that decrease, rather than increase, the predictability of outcomes. In effect, this "predictability paradox" yields the opposite result of what we sought. So an approach is needed that encourages learning and does not commit until learning is as complete as possible. This Executive Report by Mary Poppendieck discusses the dilemma of the predictability paradox and explains how lean thinking, when applied in a software development environment, can help predict project outcomes.

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The Software Testing Landscape (Vol. 4, No. 7)

Software development methods have advanced greatly since the introduction of computers and software. But in many organizations, what hasn't changed is the practice of software testing. This Executive Report by Dave Higgins explores different testing methods and philosophies, examines how changes in software development methods have influenced testing methods, and discusses some of the challenges software testers face in today's development environments.

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Challenging the Fundamental Notions of Software Development (Vol. 4, No. 6)

Challenging conventional wisdom has yielded major breakthroughs, sometimes at the risk of heavy criticism. For example, such thinking, in large part, led to the agile software development movement. This Executive Report by Robert N. Charette explores some of the assumptions that influence how we design and build information systems. The report poses questions such as: Why do you do the things in the way that you do them? What led you to do things this way? The object here is to not be bound by assumptions that limit how software is developed.

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Does Software Reuse Matter? (Vol. 4, No. 5)

Over the past 30 years or so, software reuse has been important at different times for different reasons. From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, software reuse aimed to combat the software productivity crisis. By the 1990s, knowledge management became its goal. But what about today? In this Executive Report, Stowe Boyd -- with help from fellow Cutter Consortium Senior Consultants Tom DeMarco and Kent Beck -- looks to uncover the importance of software reuse today.

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In Search of the Agile Manager (Vol. 4, No. 4)

Over the past few years, specialization -- an almost monolithic principle of production and management -- has begun to be challenged as a result of today's rapid rate of technological and business change. That change has outstripped the ability of many technical and management staff to adapt, and thus it underscores the importance of agile workforces that are enabled and directed by agile management. This Executive Report by Kerry F. Gentry focuses on agile managers whose importance is only now being recognized and defined.

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Let Common Sense Be Your Guide to Agile Processes (Vol. 4, No. 3)

Agile software development processes have been described as being applicable only to applications where the development or end use has relatively low risk. In this Executive Report, author Ken Schwaber provides a summary of some of the practices that have been used with agile processes to achieve the same degree of scalability that more traditional methodologies have achieved. When asking if part or all of an agile process would work for you, Schwaber suggests it's best to lean on common sense for an answer.

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Agile Project Management: Principles and Tools (Vol. 4, No. 2)

Traditional project management and agile project management don't have to be like oil and water. While project managers should understand the basic practices that fall under traditional project management, they should also know when and where to apply agile practices. In this Executive Report, Cutter Business Technology Council Fellow Jim Highsmith outlines three situations in which managers should strongly lean toward agile over traditional, describes an overall project management framework for thinking about the phases of an agile project, indentifies a series of tools that have proven effective for each of these phases, and defines nine principles that apply to all agile projects.

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Everything Old Is New Again (Vol. 4, No. 1)

Ed Yourdon reflects on the timeless truths of "old" ideas -- and acknowledges young hotshots' resistance to (not to say, utter contempt for) the same. But he perseveres, discovering hidden treasures in dusty places, unearthing some decade-old yet sage advice from Tim Lister, Jim Highsmith, Rob Thomsett, and Robert N. Charette that underscores the fact that mastering the fundamentals of project management is as critical in the current IT and business climate as it always was -- and always will be. Although some of the technology and/or projects held up as examples may seem a bit dated, the underlying issues continue to be stumbling blocks for many organizations. So go ahead and "insert Web services, XP, CRM, or global development here" and rediscover the ideas that Lister, Highsmith, Thomsett, and Charette have been evolving, as well as the nuggets of information and advice they've been espousing for the past 10 years.

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2002 | Volume 3
Agile Requirements (Vol. 3, No. 12)

"The process of 'doing systems requirements,' like good architecture, is part engineering and part art," writes author Ken Orr. This Executive Report examines the issue of software requirements against the backdrop of agile methods. Orr addresses the strengths and weaknesses of agile practices when dealing with software requirements. He questions six assumptions upon which agile methodologies rest and presents four concepts important to understanding how agile requirements can be done effectively without getting trapped in rigid processes that require cumbersome documentation; he outlines his own "NextPractice/Agile Requirements," which elegantly combines the art and science of developing systems requirements for successful projects.

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Reusing Requirements: Taking Advantage of What You Know (Vol. 3, No. 11)

"Reusing requirements can provide a great deal of untapped business value," asserts author and Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Suzanne Robertson. She states, "The aim of requirements reuse is to save time and effort and build better relationships by avoiding the duplication of work." This Executive Report provides an overview of both formal and informal approaches to requirements gathering, analysis, and reuse. It details how to identify, quantify, and qualify both functional and nonfunctional requirements, as well as requirements patterns. Robertson outlines a strategy to develop a reuse lifecycle to find the most valuable requirements patterns -- these patterns can be accessed and used over and over again to operate as an organizational asset realizing business value.

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Designing and Building Software Projects: Lessons from the Building Trades (Vol. 3, No. 10)

How can companies hold a substantial advantage in software quality, cost, and time to market over other companies? According to Tom Bragg, author and Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant, it starts by acknowledging that "all software projects are different" and providing "the opportunity to tailor the methodology to the needs [and circumstances] of the project." In this Executive Report, Bragg explores various approaches to designing and building successful software projects and draws from the fields of architecture, construction, and his own industry experience. Techniques that provide leverage on any project, such as design by stereotype and adaptive reuse, are also discussed.

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Getting Started with Software Productivity Benchmarking (Vol. 3, No. 9)

In a highly competitive business environment, it is crucial to know what other companies are doing. "[Benchmarking] can help you see where you stand in comparison to competitors, make your pricing more attractive during bids, evaluate contractors, and monitor the benefits of process improvements and technology changes in projects," states author and Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Khaled El Emam. This report defines benchmarking, explains how companies can do it successfully to gain business benefits, and includes case studies to illustrate how benchmarking works.

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Software Development and the Issue of Quality (Vol. 3, No. 8)

"Better, cheaper, and more rapidly delivered software requires applying quality principles and modeling in a holistic approach," state authors Michael Guttman and Thomas Marzolf. Explore this new quality management perspective as Guttman and Marzolf review two popular software development processes, the Rational Unified Process and Extreme Programming. They write: "Since both claim to produce "quality" results, we'll see how they stack up to our vision of quality management."

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CMM Versus Agile Development: Religious Wars and Software Development (Vol. 3, No. 7)

Here, Ken Orr examines the debate between Agile methods and CMM methods. He compares the similarities and differences between the two methodologies, and explores the circumstances when one approach might be preferable over the other. In addition to tracking the evolution of best practices for software development, Orr proposes "Next Practice" as the future method of software development. He presents the Next Practice Quadrants as it "provides an analysis framework...used to think about alternative and better ways of developing software."

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Pragmatic Programming (Vol. 3, No. 6)

Authors Andrew Hunt and David Thomas assert, "We believe that process improvement must start with the basics, the skills and practices of developers and development teams." This report presents an overview of the core practices of pragmatic programming. Authors focus on the day-to-day and hour-to-hour work of the team, both as a group and as a set of individuals. Find out how to generate business value through these pragmatic practices.

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How to Maximize Business Value Using Agile Processes (Vol. 3, No. 5)

In this Executive Report, author, Ken Schwaber, provides detailed information and tips on how to empirically manage a project, using agile methods, like Scrum, to deliver project value. He presents the benefits of agile methods, and reveals how to maximize a project's return on investment (ROI) with Scrum practices. According to Schwaber, scrum project management also enables an organization to achieve greater productivity, more functionality faster, and helps companies reach their goals. This report is full of essential project management advice, and presents a case study where a real team experiences success on Scrum project.

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Software Defect Management Best Practices (Vol. 3, No. 4)

Software development is a complex activity, and it's almost inevitable that defects will be introduced. This Executive Report describes a set of best practices for managing defect introduction and detection through measurement and tracking. According to author, Khaled El Emam, the aim of defect management is to optimize defect detection practices in addition to providing the right motivations for managers to make such optimizations work. He writes, "The economic benefits of using defect data wisely and of implementing practices to manage software defects can be considerable. The precursor, of course, is to have good software inspections and testing practices in place."

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A Personal Improvement Program: The Project Leader Development Process (Vol. 3, No. 3)

This Executive Report presents a project management approach and methodology that describes the processes and tools necessary to build and improve an organization's PM capability. Author, Andrea Gelli, draws from first hand experiences with one of the leading worldwide IT service providers of the airline industry as he describes the project leader development process (PLDP) program. He writes, "The most important elements of the PLDP are the career model, the processes, the roles, the mentoring and training program, and the assessments. The PLDP is based on a multistage career model. This process-oriented approach guarantees reproducibility and measurability."

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The Business of Extreme Programming (Vol. 3, No. 2)

Ron Jeffies, in his executive report on, "The Business of Extreme Programming," provides a better understanding of what XP is (and is not), and presents the benefits it can bring to managers and executives who are responsible for developing software. Jeffries says, "I believe that XP has a lot to offer many companies, in terms of faster and more predictable delivery of better software." In this report, he details how to get the benefits, and how XP delivers them.

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What is Happening to the Global Software Village? (Vol. 3, No. 1)

Writer E.M. Bennatan poses the questions: "Will changes in global relationships and travel behavior affect the way software is being developed?" "Is a distributed software organization still a wise choice for today's corporations?" In his report, he addresses these questions, and examines the case for distributed software development. In looking at this debate, Bennatan draws on case studies from Motorola, Alcatel, the US National Science Foundation, and Lucent. Bennatan relays the advantages, and disadvantages, the problems and the solutions of distributed software development, and describes the tools and technologies that have been developed to support it. He states, "Bridging the distance is the essence of any effort aimed at making a distributed project work well. This requires communications infrastructure, tools, method, and techniques and above all an understanding of the human aspect of distributed teams."

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2001 | Volume 2
The Project Office (Vol. 2, No. 12)

What is a project office? asks author Steve Hawrysh. "A project office takes the skills and abilities of good project management and applies it to the entire company. Instead of having a myopic view of the project you are working on, the project office helps put a project in perspective of the whole company: how it relates to other projects, what the benefit is, and who is responsible for realizing the benefit." This report shows you how to build a project office from the ground up, and help make your company stronger and better positioned to compete in today's changing business environment.

CRM Project Management (Vol. 2, No. 11)

"Successful CRM business process implementation," write Pam Strand and Stan Sudduth, "will focus on knowing what you want to accomplish, creating an outside-in perspective, identifying and managing internal changes, building a CRM business case, and developing a comprehensive action plan." Strand and Sudduth explore these areas and warn managers about the 12 pitfalls that threaten successful CRM systems implementation -- including having an unclear CRM systems vision, overlooking systems needs, missing opportunities, and underestimating the data problem.

Requirements: What Project Managers Need to Know (Vol. 2, No. 10)

Defining project requirements, say authors James Robertson and Suzanne Robertson, helps ensure that the tasks that you design are relevant to the real problem that you are trying to solve. The Robertsons explain the Volere Requirements Specification Template, which they developed, and argue that in order to take advantage of current technology while avoiding getting lost in the complexity, it is essential to spend more time developing the so-called "soft" skills.

Software Inspection Best Practices (Vol. 2, No. 9)

An inspection is a structured peer-review activity in which engineers examine each other's work looking for defects. Most commonly, it is the code that is inspected. But inspections are applicable to any document, model, or plan that the project produces. This report by Khaled El Emam discusses the tuning and optimization of inspections, presenting a light inspection process and describing the important parameters that influence inspection outcomes.

Will the Real Agile Processes Please Stand Up? (Vol. 2, No. 8)

In this report, Ken Schwaber describes some of the major agile processes, including Extreme Programming (XP), Scrum, Dynamic Systems Development Methodology, and Feature Driven Development. "Agility," he says, "is a paradigm shift that feels radically different from the heavyweight processes that we've employed over the past 20 years." He enumerates the characteristics shared by all agile processes to demonstrate what makes a process agile and help you evaluate the agility of any process and know how to introduce agility into your organization.

Design for E-Projects: A Manifesto for Design Reuse (Vol. 2, No. 7)

Author Tom Bragg believes that projects that involve complex graphical software and Internet-working technologies require a different approach to design if the software is to be delivered quickly and with few defects. Writes Bragg, "Through a technique called adaptive reuse, we can develop general solutions to recurring requirements, which we then can adapt to the specifics of the system at hand. A general solution of this type is developed by writing the very best possible example program to solve the problem for a particular platform (programming language and operating system) and then abstracting that approach to work for different particular examples of the problem. In other words, if we write the very best patient information maintenance program possible, we can then abstract it to be used as the basis for developing employee maintenance or any of the other information maintenance programs we may need in the future."

Planning and Executing Second-Generation E-Projects (Vol. 2, No. 6)

The goal of this report is to identify these strategies in the context of the second-generation e-projects being undertaken in many organizations. Writes author John Brackett, "Management expectations for e-projects are rising along with the financial investments. According to Cutter Consortium data, by the end of 2001, many companies will be spending more than half of their annual budget on executing e-projects. Development cycles aren't lengthening proportional to investment and project size. Thus, our biggest challenge in second-generation e-projects is going to be establishing reasonable expectations early in the project -- expectations that we can meet."

Effective Decisionmaking on Software Projects (Vol. 2, No. 5)

Sometimes it seems as though software engineering is simply a string of pressured activities connected by decisionmaking and estimating. Each of us plans our activities by estimating resources and risk. We try to learn from past behavior by assessing our projects -- deciding whether our processes were effective, our resources appropriate, and our products satisfactory. What we often do not do is assess our decisionmaking and try to improve it. Even though the success of many of our efforts depends on these decisions, we do not view the decisions in and out of context, learning lessons and carrying them to other endeavors. This report looks at the decisionmaking process itself, to understand and improve the way we consider options, make inferences, and select from a set of alternatives.

Customer Focused Development: The Art and Science of Conversing with Customers (Vol. 2, No. 4)

The report surveys the types of conversations you can have with your customers, from the early strategic planning phases of your project through its development, pilot launch, and full-scale rollout. Writes author Sam Bayer, "Customer conversations can come at any point in your project's lifecycle, be between any number of people in either organization (yours or the customer's), and be governed by a variety of protocols. What's important to understand is that these conversations are not random events -- they can be engineered into the project's lifecycle."

Applying the CMM to E-Projects (Vol. 2, No. 3)

This executive report discusses the impact e-business has had on software development, what it means to be an e-project, and how project managers adapt e-project software development to the changing environment. Writes author Donna Johnson, "The Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model for Software is a time-tested tool that can provide the structure necessary to control e-project development environments. The CMM's value has always been the fact that it lays out a progression of steps to take toward improvement. Its added benefit is that it is prescriptive rather than proscriptive; the model can be adapted to a wide variety of development environments, including the e-project environment. Its particular appeal in the e-project environment is its heavy emphasis on project management -- the biggest challenge on e-projects. It is a proven model, there is return on investment data available on its efficacy, it is widely understood, and there are tools that support its application. All these facts leave the CMM poised to help the project manager meet the challenges of e-project software development."

Extreme Project Management (Vol. 2, No. 2)

Author Rob Thomsett outlines the three major forces driving the need for a new paradigm of project management (a power shift, the free agent army, and the global e-conomy). He then discusses the key concepts involved with Extreme Project Management (XPM), including whole-of-life project management, open project management, real-time planning and scenarios, and context versus content. The report also contains an explanation of five XPM tools designed to ensure full participation by stakeholders and help project managers build a business case.

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Building an Effective E-Project Team (Vol. 2, No. 1)

This report outlines techniques for building project teams that are prepared to handle the pressures of e-project management, including use of new technology, untested business models, the need for speed, and product quality that supports the business objectives. Writes author Chris Pickering, "There is no formula for combining the factors that affect the team into a guaranteed breeding ground of success. Different organizations, different teams (even within the same organization), and different projects require different principles and different practices. To build effective teams, we must first understand the principles, then apply them to the situation at hand. Building an effective e-project team is part science and part art. The best project leaders have an intuitive sense of what their teams need and how to get it for them. They do not apply canned solutions or deterministic models to their teams. They work with their people, they understand what their people need, and they adapt to changing conditions to enable their people to succeed."

2000 | Volume 1
Learning and E-Projects (Vol. 1, No. 2)

IT has to step up to the pace of the market. The business does not have tolerance for 100-people project teams delivering systems every five years. This type of change requires that IT professionals be able to learn. They need to be able to learn to transition to new business priorities, new functional boundaries, and new development and project management strategies -- not to mention new technology. To do this, individuals must get in touch with their learning strengths and weaknesses. In this Executive Report, you will read about creating a learning profile for each individual, which includes their preferences for receiving new information and processing it. Once individuals know how they learn best, they can demand learning in a form that meets those needs. In addition, it becomes obvious that not everyone learns the same way, and understanding this key concept helps people view other individuals differently and make adjustments."

E-Project Management: Harnessing Innovation and Speed (Vol. 1, No. 1)

Writes author Jim Highsmith, "The business world remains in turmoil as business models evolve to answer questions about life in the Internet economy. For example, established banks rushed to meet the competitive thrust of Web-only banks; many, if not most, of these banks are now decommissioning their Web-only businesses. It seems that depositing money is better handled by brick businesses than click businesses. The path through this e-business quagmire is project management, or more precisely in this new era, e-project management. Project management turns business initiatives into results. Without effective project management, all the e-commerce, e-business, e-CRM, e-anything initiatives remain just that, initiatives -- not reality."

Agile Product & Project Management: Executive Report Abstracts