This episode will examine the difference between Requirements and the Expectations that drive them, and suggest ways that we can better serve our organization by focusing on the latter.By Scott L. Bain

Information radiators are extremely useful to an agile organization. But often there are such radiators that have been missed. This episode will investigate this problem.By Scott L. Bain

How you measure the progress of an agile team will fundamentally effect how much value that team will produce, since that measurement will reflect that value. What should that measurement consist of? That's the topic for this week.By Scott L. Bain

This week I will relate the notion of "changing change" to the test-driven development process, in two different senses.By Scott L. Bain

Part three of this series on changing our relationship to change deals with the concept of encapsulating variation in business automation. This is expressed in non-technical language and should be useful to those that lead product development initiatives.By Scott L. Bain

This episode will explore another aspect of the agile design process, from a non-technical point of view.By Scott L. Bain

If we are to be successfully agile, we must embrace unpredictable change. But to do that, we have to fundamentally alter our relationship to change itself. This is part one of a series about how I recommend teams accomplish this.By Scott L. Bain

The fourth point of the Agile Manifesto, that we value responding to change over following a plan, has massive implications for the way agile teams are managed. This podcast will introduce the issues that result, and will lead to the next series.By Scott L. Bain

This week I will answer the questions raised over the last four Agile Tips, each a different aspect of the Agile Manifesto. I'll also set the stage for what to expect next from this series.By Scott L. Bain

This week I will tackle the four point of the Agile Manifesto, with an eye toward my conclusion podcast next week.By Scott L. Bain

This week I will cover part three of four in the Agile Manifesto, as preparation for my final entry in this series that will suggest how to address these implications in your organization.By Scott L. Bain

This week I will investigate part 2 of the Agile Manifesto, as part of my series of four podcasts on the subject.By Scott L. Bain

This week I'll examine the first point in the Agile Manifesto, as part of a series of four podcasts.By Scott L. Bain

In this episode we will examine the roots of the Agile Movement, and delineate the Agile Manifesto that came from those roots. This will begin a series of five podcasts that point out the implications of each item in this manifesto.By Scott L. Bain

No matter what kinds of products and services an organization offers, there are terms that are specific to them. These terms must be carefully defined and consistently updated as things change. This podcast is all about creating such a set of definitions.By Scott L. Bain

This episode will introduce a useful framework for organizing requirements as the are identified. Such organization can be very helpful in collaboration and validation throughout an agile process.By Scott L. Bain

Various technologies provide us with the concept of "inheritance". What should this used for, ideally, in an agile development environment? This episode addresses this question in a way that should be interesting to non-technical people as well as developers and testers.By Scott L. Bain

The way we create business automation in the modern environment has been influenced by the strength of various innovations that have preceded us. This week I'll introduce this idea, and then over the next few episodes will examine some of the implications and opportunities.By Scott L. Bain

Last week I pointed out that Test-Driven Development, even though it is named as it is, is not a testing activity but rather the creation of an executable specification. So how does this change how they are written? That's the subject of this episode.By Scott L. Bain

This week I wrap up my answer to the question of three weeks ago and is so going point out, perhaps, the most important aspect of TDD, and how to make sure it delivers all the value it is capable of.By Scott L. Bain

Part two of my answer to the question posted two weeks ago. There is one more to come, next week. It may be the most crucial of these answers.By Scott L. Bain

This is my first answer to the question posed last week. There will be two more in future weeks.By Scott L. Bain

Teaching Test-Driven Development, either in the unit testing form for developers or the acceptance testing that anyone can learn and do, this questions almost always arises at some point. It's actually an excellent question and can yield a lot of value in answering it. This episode will explain why.By Scott L. Bain

How does this principle apply to the notion of an agile process? I think it fundamentally changes the way we create automation, and the value that automation ultimately provides. This week I explain why.By Scott L. Bain

This is kind of a fun one. I start by pointing out that, regardless of appearances, computers are not really doing any of the things we think they are doing. Examining this fact, and it is a fact, leads to some interesting and I think useful insights. Next week, I'll drive this idea into practicality.…

Products that are difficult to use or illogical in their design can seriously impede their value. This episode will examine an example of such a problem, from the author's own personal experience with a new car.By Scott L. Bain

Last week I teased the notion that it's possible to bring your legacy code under better control by using a magic button. While such buttons obviously do not exist, this week I'll outline how to get the value of such a resource anyway, at a manageable cost.By Scott L. Bain

What is the best way to deal with the fact that most organizations have a high degree of vulnerability to the quality (or lack thereof) of the legacy systems they depend upon? This week I'll discuss a thought experiment that helps us to understand this conundrum, and next week I'll show you what to do about it.…

In order to embrace change, as agile says we must, we must make sure that changes to the system going forward do not create excessive waste and/or delays. Part of how we can do this is to follow good principles, such as the Open-Closed Principle. This episode will explain this principle, and what it means.…

Last week I discussed the notion of refactoring, and why business people often fail to see the value in it. This week I explore what that value is, and how best to express it honestly.By Scott L. Bain

Should a Project Manager allow a development team to spend time and resources on Refactoring? What is refactoring, and why do they want to do it? It seems to have no business value whatsoever. This episode, and the next, will explore this question and offer a way to resolve it.By Scott L. Bain

If you are familiar with the concept of a "Design Pattern" you may well feel that they reflect an older view of development. Indeed, the patterns were first identified before the popularity of agile approaches. That said, they are entirely agile, and this episode is about why that is.By Scott L. Bain

Collaborating effectively includes, among many necessary skills, the ability to be persuasive. This episode will outline an approach to persuasiveness that I have found to be highly effective in my experience as a consultant and mentor.By Scott L. Bain

Over the last two weeks I discussed the power of list-making in an agile project. This week, I dig into the details of one very important list, which is a list of the stakeholders to a given product, project, or feature.By Scott L. Bain

Last week I introduced the notion of a team to-do list, and how important this artifact is during the development of a feature. That list should be curated once the work is done. How that curation is accomplished the the subject of this episode.By Scott L. Bain

One of the most powerful tools available to the team when conducting Acceptance Test-Driven Development, or any kind of requirements analysis, is also one of the simplest ones. This episode is all about that tool.By Scott L. Bain

In agile processes, we need discrete definitions of every important aspect of our work, so that we can work efficiently and effectively together, and to know when organizational goals have been achieved. Part of this is knowing when the work is "done", and that's what this episode is all about.By Scott L. Bain

Part 3 of my analogy on product quality.By Scott L. Bain

Part 2 of my analogy on product quality.By Scott L. Bain

Part of the Agile approach, as well as the tenets of Lean, say to "build quality in." This seems wise, but what specifically is meant by "quality"? Also, how can we know if we have imbued our product with enough of the required qualities to make it releasable? The next three episodes will examine the notion of quality using a hopefully familiar ana…

TDD can help you to improve your product design for many reasons. One of them is that it is difficult, if not impossible to write a good test for a bad design. But what is a good test? How would we know if it's good in the right sense? That's what this episode will explain.By Scott L. Bain

This episode relates a story that an ex-student and current colleague of mine related to me over lunch. I felt it was an extremely revealing and useful example of how requirements are misunderstood, the disasters than can result, and what to do about this.By Scott L. Bain

Scenarios, like requirements, can often be too large to work with effectively. In this episode we'll examine why this is a problem, and some example of how we can deal with it.By Scott L. Bain

The world has changed, and so has the technology we use to automate it. But a lot of the traditions that guide our efforts to control automation projects are based on the realities that existed in the past. Agile is a response to this, and this episode is all about why, and how this is so.By Scott L. Bain

When collaborating with others, sometimes you will encounter reticence to ask or answer important questions. There are a number of reasons for this, but in this episode I will outline an approach I take to counter this, one which has served me well in multiple occasions.By Scott L. Bain

When creating something new of value, one must always consider the context within which it will operate. Part of this is determining what, if anything, in the existing business processes will be effected by the new work. Failing to take this into account can have serious consequences, as this episode will demonstrate.…

Analysis is a fundamental part of system's development. It is also one of the most difficult things to do right, and since everything that follows is based on it we need multiple skills to do it correctly. Commonality-Variability Analysis, as suggested in the work of James O. Coplien, is a remarkably powerful approach to conducting requirements ana…

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is not really a testing activity per-se, but an analysis process that drives product design. That said, although it does not eliminate the need for after-development testing (QA/QC), it does contribute to that process. This episode will show why this is.By Scott L. Bain

One of the benefits of Test-Driven Development is the way is enhances our ability to collaborate effectively. This is especially true if you include Acceptance Testing as part of the way of working. This episode is all about this.By Scott L. Bain

TDD is a process that produces multiple values for the organization. One of them is a fundamental improvement in the quality of the products they produce. This is not just because of the testing per se, but also because of the effect of writing them up front. This episode explains why.By Scott L. Bain