Resources

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.

SEMAT (Software Engineering Methods and Theory) is an international initiative designed to identify a common ground, or universal standard, for software engineering. It is supported by some of the most distinguished contributors to the field. Creating a simple language to describe methods and practices, the SEMAT team expresses this common ground as a kernel–or framework–of elements essential to all software development. The Essence of Software Engineering introduces this kernel and shows how to apply it when developing software and communicating among teams and team members. It is a book for software professionals, not methodologists. Its usefulness to developers, who need to evaluate and choose the best practices for their particular projects, goes well beyond the description or application of any single methodology.

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.

Alpha State Cards are a simple, easy way to track status of a software project and help plan next steps.

New Alpha State Explorer app helps software teams focus on essentials, and keep projects on track, using simple check-lists based on emerging industry standard.

As with any new initiative people are struggling to see how it fits into the world and how it relates to all the other things going on. For example does it improve or replace their current ways of working. Is it something like lean that supports and furthers the aims of the Agile Movement, or is it something like waterfall planning that is in opposition to an agile approach? The good news is that both Agile and SEMAT promote non-prescriptive value-based philosophies that encourage software development teams to select and use whatever practices best fit their context and, most importantly, continuously inspect, adapt and improve their way of working. In this keynote we will look at how these two initiatives complement one another, providing the perfect foundation for teams that want to master the art of software development.

Learn how to use simple cards and checklists to achieve lean governance for agile software development projects and programs. First presented as a webinar by Ian Spence on 23rd April 2014.

It's been said that the only real sustainable competitive advantage is an organization's ability to learn faster than the competition. Learn how in this webinar presented on June 18th by Brian Kerr of Ivar Jacobson International.