The Agile Manifesto and Lean both give us principles. If we translate those principles to concrete practices and techniques for software architecture, we find the following pieces of advice:

We were coaching in Europe and met with a manager who had been assigned the agile transformation responsibility; he wanted to show us his plan and ask for feedback. He presented a Gantt chart of his planned transformation: many stages of precise duration all in sequence, milestones, specific managers assigned to tasks along the way, cost estimates, and more. According to the plan, in twenty-seven months the group would have transformed to "agile". The detail was impressive - it was also the wrong approach.

The word agile has clearly crossed the chasm. And, with all the emphasis on certification, that word is only going to become more resume-valuable with time. And that’s a damn shame.Because true agility, the kind where you do some work, and get some feedback, first from your team and then from your customer—that’s so valuable that it’s hard to believe organizations are not embracing it. But the problem is they don’t really know what agile is. All they know is the word.

Source: Johanna Rothman,“Agile-the-Word” has Crossed the Chasm

 http://www.jrothman.com/blog/mpd/2011/04/agile-the-word-has-crossed-the-chasm.html

I have just finished reading the book “Coaching Agile Teams” by Lyssa Adkins. This book is full of excellent content but I just want to share some of her honest thoughts on coach failures with you.

However, the benefit of allowing a team to self-organize isn't that  the team finds some optimal organization for their work that a manager may have missed. Rather, it is that by allowing the team to self-organize, they are encouraged to fully own the problem.

Source: Succeeding with Agile, Mike Cohn, Addison-Wesley

"Perhaps you’ve read a book, on Extreme Programming and have decided that is the right approach for your company. Or maybe you attended a Certified ScrumMaster training course and think Scrum sounds good. Or maybe you read a book on a different agile process, and it sounds perfect for your organization. In all likelihood, you’re wrong."

Reference: “Succeeding With Agile”, Mike Cohn, Addison-Wesley, 463 pages, IBSN 978-0-321-57936-3

I have just finished reading the great book “Leading Lean Software Development” by Mary and Tom Poppendieck and I wanted to share with you two quotes excerpted from it.

I am currently reading the excellent "Debug It!" book written by Paul Butcher and I wanted to share with you some of the little gems that I have found in it.

I am currently reading the book “Agile Project Management” from Jim Highsmith. I will publish a review later on this blog, but in the meantime I would like to share some of the interesting quotes that I have found in the book. I am sure they will make sense to software project managers… and developers ;o)

“Agile is all about teams working together to produce great software. As an Agile coach, you can help your team go from first steps to running with Agile to unleashing their full Agile potential.”