White papers

This article explores the synergy of Scrum and Essence, a domain model of software engineering processes, intending to become a common ground for software development methods, bringing clarity into the composition of methods from individual practices.

Industrial-­scale agile requires much more than just being able to scale agile. It also means taking a disciplined approach to ensuring that our IT investments are resulting in sustainable benefits for both the producing organization and its customers. This involves adopting a different approach to many aspects of agility. We need to look beyond small-­scale agile, beyond independent competitive islands of agile excellence, beyond individual craftsmanship and heroic teams, and beyond the short-­term, instant gratification that seems to be the focus of many well-­intentioned but self-­centered agile teams. It is this adoption of a more holistic approach that we call moving from craft to engineering. This paper is published at acm.org.

This instructional guide provides a brief introduction to the Alphas and presents seven different games that can be played with the Alpha State Cards by software development teams.

Agile rightly puts great store on the critical importance of transparency in all things at all times. To build trust and enable predictability, we need it to be transparently clear to all stakeholders what we are doing, how we are doing it, why we are doing it that way, and how well it is going - i.e. what progress are we making towards achieving the required outcomes. The Agile Essentials puts a toolkit of productive process tools literally into the hands of software development professionals, where it can deliver value every day in prompting and guiding the team and supporting team communication and collaboration.

Use Case Definition:  Use Cases have been around for almost 30 years as a requirements approach and have been part of the inspiration for more recent techniques such as user stories. Now the inspiration has flown in the other direction. Use-Case 2.0 is the new generation of use-case driven development - light, agile and lean - inspired by user stories, Scrum and Kanban.

This Reference Guide provides a brief introduction to the Alphas and Alpha State Cards. It is designed to support the use the Alpha State Cards by software development teams and, in particular, the games that can be played with them.

Use-Case 2.0 re-focuses on the essentials and offers a slimmed down, leaner way of working, for software teams seeking the benefits of iterative, incremental development at an enterprise level.

Use-Case 2.0 re-focuses on the essentials and offers a slimmed down, leaner way of working, for software teams seeking the benefits of iterative, incremental development at an enterprise level

Roly Stimson, Principal Consultant with Ivar Jacobson International, has been blogging on the topic of a software practice Kernel. These posts are now put together into an 'ejournal'. Download and read at your leisure on your laptop or hand-held device.