Category Archives: agile

Scrum, XP, Lean Software Development

XP Day Paris

Posted on May 16, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

I attended XP Day Paris earlier this month. A very good conference, sorely needed considering the lack of debate on such topics in France (there has been one XP Day Paris in 2006, but I hadn’t heard about it then). … Continue reading →

Posted in agile, conferences, valtech | 2 Comments

My small contribution to propagating Agile (and how it did not go so well)

Posted on April 13, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Some time ago, I was involved (along with much more respected people) in a thread on the XP mailing list where an editor for CIO.com asked about communication tools in the context of an Agile project. I thought my answer … Continue reading →

Posted in agile, offshore | 1 Comment

Agile seminar with Valtech on April, 26th

Posted on March 30, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

My employer is hosting a half-day seminar on Agile methodologies. Speakers include David Gageot and Greg Hutchings, so it’s bound to be an interesting morning. We will also hear people from Odyssey, reporting on their experience with an offshore environment. … Continue reading →

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Sadek is at QCon

Posted on March 16, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

My colleague Sadek Drobi is currently attending the QCon conference in London. Check out his blog, starting from March 14th.

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YAGNI — You’re Aren’t Gonna Need It

Posted on March 12, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

A couple of weeks ago, I started working on the objects that needed to be mapped onto the database. As I didn’t know what to do with each of them, I tried to keep things simple by mapping a foreign … Continue reading →

Posted in agile, java | 2 Comments

CITCON Dallas/Fort Worth April 27-28

Posted on March 1, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Paul Julius and Jeffrey Fredricks have announced CITCON D/FW 2007. It is the third in a series where CITCON London 2006 was number 2. Considering how enjoyable CITCON London was, it is totally worth going to CITCON D/FW if you’re … Continue reading →

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Test Driven Design and Data Access Layer

Posted on February 22, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

I am currently writing the Data Access Layer of a Java project using Hibernate and I want to apply TDD on my work. The part that is concerned with the database is the mapping of objects on the database schema, … Continue reading →

Posted in hibernate, java, tdd, test | 3 Comments

Successful internal OpenSpace meeting yesterday

Posted on February 14, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Yesterday, I hosted an OpenSpace conference in the Valtech office in Paris. The theme was ‘pet projects that we want to work on (though we already work fulltime)’. I was a bit apprehensive, as my previous experience had been in … Continue reading →

Posted in openspace, valtech | 2 Comments

Visit by Jean Tabaka

Posted on February 8, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

This week, Jean Tabaka from Rally Dev came to teach Scrum to my colleagues from Valtech. In the evening, she gave a talk on her book, Collaboration Explained. I have been very impressed by Jean’s easy-going personality. As most people … Continue reading →

Posted in agile, scrum, valtech | 2 Comments

Estimate your ‘Agile’ worth

Posted on January 31, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

The nice guys at VersionOne have put together a simple / simplistic rating system for Agile organizations. Let’s be clear: this is not, and cannot be, an effective way of measuring your agility. There is no such thing as a … Continue reading →

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Serena — what the…?!

Posted on January 31, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Yesterday, we’ve had a presentation made by Serena (ex-Merant, ex-Intersolv), editor of such gems as Dimensions, PVCS and TeamTrack. I have not had much exposure to Serena’s tools, but I’ve worked for a company that used PVCS. It was incredible … Continue reading →

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The Art of the Possible? Yes, but only for yesterday’s tasks

Posted on January 31, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

It is often say of Scrum that it is the Art of the Possible. In fact, Ken Schwaber even calls it a fundamental principle of Scrum. Today, Ron Jeffries reminds us on the ScrumDevelopment mailing list that it is too … Continue reading →

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Use Multiple Sprint Backlogs

Posted on January 26, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

How many Sprint Backlogs do you have? We have one for the entire project, and I must admit that there is no good reason for that. As it appears, the general recommendation is to have one per team. Benefits: each … Continue reading →

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Make decisions at the last responsible moment

Posted on January 22, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

In Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit for Software Development Managers, Mary & Tom Poppendieck mention “Make decisions at the last responsible moment” as one of the 7 rules. I’m happy to report applying it in my current project. Two … Continue reading →

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Can Agile methods work against you?

Posted on January 19, 2007 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Just yesterday I visited a client (who had actually read this blog!) who was interested in hiring me to write the data access layer of their application. When they asked me if I write detailed UML diagrams with a CASE … Continue reading →

Posted in agile, valtech | 1 Comment