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Buy flexeril without prescription, One of the most difficult aspects of doing Agile, is to find reasonable, do-able, agreeable ways to measure productivity. Many organizations don't measure productivity or only use very indirect indicators.

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Christian Gruber — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 14:54:24 +0000

Buy amaryl without prescription, The question of "expected velocity" and long-term planning has come up at more than one client. A recent client conversation got me thinking, however, questioning how to interpret velocity when estimating and plotting a roadmap based on a current backlog of features, cheap amaryl. Assume, for a moment, Order amaryl online, a backlog of story-pointed features, and 10 good iterations (consistent team, no odd occurrences that would affect velocity). Mathematically average velocity (well, amaryl approved, a mean really) is a 50/50 proposition for any subsequent iteration. Some organizations don't find this level of confidence acceptable. What velocity should be reported as expected for iteration/sprint planning and roadmap forecasting, and how should it be used?

Context

Interpreting velocity, before anything else, requires some context, buy amaryl without prescription. Order amaryl from canada, An agile organization that sees estimates as hypothetical might find this article is of less use. In fact, a good question is whether estimation is even a value-added activity. For this post assume an organization that sees strong value in estimation and planning.

Culture

The biggest piece of context is to know the organizational culture, buy amaryl internet. This is important in two respects, and both of these cultural factors are important because they impact how Velocity is understood within the organization.

What is Failure?

First is the meaning of failure in the organization. Buy amaryl without prescription, Is failure to deliver what was committed to by the planned date considered a failure of the team, or is it simply a fact to be understood and accounted for in future planning. Find cheap amaryl online, Even in Agile organizations, the former is often true and a hard habit to break. If not delivering to expectations is considered failure and has negative consequences, then that means that estimation is being treated not as estimation, find discount amaryl online, but as prediction and contract. Velocity is therefore a commitment, Buy cheap amaryl internet, and should therefore be used conservatively.

Consistency or Speed?

The second item to know is whether consistency and predictability of delivery is of a higher strategic value than the actual rate of delivery. This is often un-stated. Usually people want fast and consistent delivery, buy amaryl without prescription. The truth is that you can get consistent, or fast software development, amaryl pharmacy online, or a balance between the two. Lack of trust is usually a strong motivation to encourage consistency over speed, Drug amaryl online purchase, or a history of quality problems, etc. In this case, as well, low cost amaryl, Velocity is more of a boundary than an indicator.

Emotional Loading in Estimation (or why not Low-ball?)

If estimation is seen as binding, contractual, Amaryl, or limiting, then additional emotions get overloaded. Trust, promise, amaryl in uk, and betrayal are words used in such organizational cultures. Buy amaryl without prescription, Distrust is usually a strong factor, especially between silos (business vs. technology, Sale amaryl, company vs. project management vs. customer, etc.), order cheap amaryl online. So when people are asked to give estimates, even using agile-friendly mechanisms such as story points, Cheap amaryl tablets, there is usually a process of cementing that estimate into a part of an accountability model, so estimates start to get conservative. People are then accused of low-balling, others are accused of irrational expectations.., buy amaryl without prescription. we've all seen this. The language clearly becomes one of contention and blame, buy discount amaryl online. Even the term low-balling is often an outright pejorative term for estimating too conservatively.

This doesn't happen only in agile environments, Cheap amaryl in usa, and project managers in traditional PMBOK frameworks have long factored risk into "contingency budgets". Buy amaryl without prescription, Interestingly, however, if a Project Manager were to factor risk into the task estimates, they'd be "low-balling capacity," yet if they were to factor it out and layer it on top of the project work, it's "contingency budgeting" (At least in a few experiences I've had). Either way, someone's adding a factor for uncertainty, based on the need to predict conservatively or liberally or somewhere in between.

That's the point of the article: how can Agile projects use velocity to estimate as conservatively (or liberally) as is appropriate?

An average is a 50% chance to succeed (or fail)

Velocity is not a constant, amaryl online review. It's a set of instantaneous values on a curve, with instances being iterations. Amaryl online stores, That means that it varies, and is therefore only meaningful statistically. So how do you reasonably use velocity statistically, and improve confidence, approved amaryl pharmacy. One way is to stop delivering against "average" velocity, buy amaryl without prescription.

A lot of coaches use average velocity over the previous N iterations. This is not helpful for all sorts of reasons, Amaryl information, if estimation is a commitment. By definition, average (well, actually a mean, amaryl professional, but they're close) is a 50/50 proposition. If you report the average team velocity (assuming it's accurate), Amaryl pills, then about half the time the team will be under and about half the time the team will be over, statistically. Buy amaryl without prescription, So basically an average is a crap shoot, when taken in any given instance. It's can only be good in the long run. For this to work, the long-haul has to include permission to fail and a lot of trust, amaryl india. Teams need to be able to go miss dates but will sometimes exceed dates and it should all wash out in the end. In organizations such as I'm describing, Cheap amaryl from canada, that trust isn't there, so. Additionally, if the language of commitment is around meeting instantaneous iteration commitments (as opposed to delivering high-quality customer value as quickly as is sustain-ably possible) then you aren't playing the long-game, canadian pharmacy amaryl, you're playing a very short-game.

Simulate Velocity, not work

In a PMI training course I took when I was at Sun Microsystems, Fda approved amaryl, we were nicely informed that two point estimates of tasks are a perfect way to fail half the time, per the above logic. One point estimates are just idiotic, buy amaryl without prescription. Three point estimates were better. We simulated with a monte-carlo algorithm and found a curve and a distribution, amaryl cheap price, and then determined a confidence level yadda yadda. Well, Find amaryl online, we're trying to avoid wasting a lot of time estimating up-front, but one way to start representing velocity properly is to do the same kind of statistical modelling done in traditional product management, only simulate velocity, not work items.

In this approach, discount amaryl no rx, you take the last N iterations (say 10). Determine the maximum velocity (optimistic) and the minimum velocity (pessimistic), Amaryl non prescription, and then the mode (the velocity value that seems to occur most frequently). Then you do monte-carlo simulation Buy amaryl without prescription, so you get a statistical pattern. Now, you actually can determine an answer based on confidence. If you want to be right with an 80% confidence, purchase amaryl no rx, you pick a velocity where 80% of the simulated runs were successful. (Note - there are a paucity of excel templates to do this math automatically, Amaryl uk, and often they are for sale. It would be nice to have a few functions with arbitrary distributions based on min-max-mode to help this along.)

It's not perfect, and it's a potentially huge amount of administrative overhead. Elsewhere I've referenced blogs that entirely oppose any estimation at all, but if you are gong to, then working statistically with simulation is the only way to take small sample numbers meaningful.

Commitment Velocity: Low-Ball as a policy.

Another approach, one perhaps controversial, but taught by some Scrum trainers is to pick the lowest historical delivered velocity, buy amaryl without prescription. This is a commitment-based approach, cheap amaryl, on the assumption that building trust around consistent delivery is critical to building sound relationships where product owners and teams can safely state their needs and get things done with a minimum of contractual behaviour. By taking the minimum, Buy amaryl on line, you force a low-ball capacity, which means you can have high-confidence of success after a few iterations. You have, likely, amaryl medicine, after a while, some spare time on your hands. Purchase amaryl overnight delivery, Teams can then choose to pull more work in (without adjusting their commitment velocity), work on "technical debt", improve their skills, etc, buy amaryl in canada. Buy amaryl without prescription, A team could raise their commitment velocity in certain inflection points in the project. A new team member is added that provides a necessary skill not previously available, and after a few iterations the team is consistently hitting a higher number, Best price amaryl, but this is a careful process to ensure that they are committing, and if they don't make their new number, it goes down to what they got accomplished.

Indemnify teams' learning

An arguably healthier option, if you have built enough trust, is to simply indemnify a team from failing to meet the estimate. Since you're doing mathematics on actuals to generate an expected future number, everyone can acknowledge that past behaviour is no guarantee of future behaviour, and simply use it for capacity planning. In this case, estimation is actually estimation, not commitment or contract. The team is expected to be ahead sometimes, and behind sometimes. The upside of this is that a lot of extra time isn't spent playing with fictional numbers, buy amaryl without prescription. Teams are spending their efforts on delivery as quickly-yet-sustain-ably as they can, and the organization treats them as trusted professionals in this. The temptation to assume you can predict the future is seen as folly, and the estimates are used to guide overall direction, not to make outward customer commitments.

Don't be mindless

There may be other approaches, I'm sure. The agile community is certainly not short of people who love this topic and can talk for hours on "proper" estimation. The point of this post is merely to point out some options, and ask you to look at your organizational culture, team culture, customer culture, the meaning of terms like commitment, failure, success, consistency, speed, etc. Buy amaryl without prescription, As you understand the culture, balance consistency vs. speed, trust, and other factors to choose a method of estimation that meets your goals. Don't do estimation based on your own, internal cultural assumptions, as you may have developed or been taught techniques that are useful when and where they were taught, but may no longer be so. Or maybe they weren't so useful then either. Regardless, this because estimation cuts at the heart of the dialogue between producer and consumer, and establishes parameters for that discussion, it's critical that you think your choice through.

[Christian also blogs at http://www.geekinasuit.com/]

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Christian Gruber — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 20:31:31 +0000

Isráfíl Consulting Buy bactroban without prescription, is finally prepared for the first series of its Agile Software Engineering Practices training courses. Bactroban approved, This series is offered in partnership with Berteig Consulting who are graciously hosting the registration process. Their team has also helped greatly in shaping the presentation style and structure of the course, bactroban without a prescription. Order bactroban overnight delivery, The initial run will be in Ottawa, Toronto (Markham), buy bactroban, Drug bactroban, and Kitchener/Waterloo.

Topics covered will include Test Driven Development (TDD), cheap bactroban from usa, Online pharmacy bactroban, testability, supportive infrastructure such as build and continuous integration, order no rx bactroban, Bactroban pills, team metrics, incremental design and evolutionary architecture, bactroban non prescription, Lowest price for bactroban, dependency injection, and so much more, purchase bactroban without prescription. (This course won't present the planning side of XP, but covers many other aspects common to XP projects) It makes a great complement for training in Agile Processes such as XP, Scrum, or OpenAgile, buy bactroban without prescription. Cheapest bactroban online, The overview slide presentation is available for free download from the Isráfíl web site.

The courses are scheduled for:

2009-02-05: 2 Day Agile Software ENGINEERING Practices Training - Kichener/Waterloo, Ontario (15 Spots)

2009-02-12: 2 Day Agile Software ENGINEERING Practices Training - Markham/Toronto, bactroban internet, Online bactroban, Ontario (15 Spots)

2009-02-19: 2 Day Agile Software ENGINEERING Practices Training - Ottawa, Ontario (15 Spots)

The course is $1250 CAD per student, find no rx bactroban, Discount bactroban without prescription, and participants receive a transferrable discount of $100 CAD for other training with Berteig Consulting as a part of our ongoing partnership. I initially prototyped this course in Ottawa this December, buy bactroban online cheap, Buy bactroban online australia, and am very excited to see this through in several locales. Class size is limited to 15, free bactroban, Bactroban side effects, so we can keep the instruction style more involved. The above schedules are linked to Berteig Consulting's course system and have registration links at the bottom of the description, discount bactroban online. Bactroban bangkok, Locations are TBD, but will be updated at the above links as soon as they're finalized.

A further series is planned for several US cities in March, cheap bactroban in uk, Bactroban sale, and we'll be sure to announce them as well.

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Christian Gruber — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:21:15 +0000

I was vaguely annoyed to see this blog article Buy protonix without prescription, featured in JavaLobby's recent mailout. Not because Kevin Pang doesn't make some good points about the limits of code coverage, Protonix tablets, but because his title is needlessly controversial. And, because JavaLobby is engaging in some agile-baiting by publishing it without some editorial restraint.

In asking the question, cheap protonix on internet, "Is code coverage all that useful, Find protonix, " he asserts at the beginning of his article that Test Driven Development (TDD) proponents "often tend to push code coverage as a useful metric for gauging how well tested an application is." This statement is true, but the remainder of the blog post takes apart code coverage as a valid "one true metric," a claim that TDD proponents don't make, buy protonix, except in Kevin's interpretation.

He further asserts that "100% code coverage has long been the ultimate goal of testing fanatics." This isn't true. Online protonix, High code coverage is a desired attribute of a well tested system, but the goal is to have a fully and sufficiently tested system. Code coverage is indicative, protonix online sale, but not proof, Order cheap protonix online, of a well-tested system. How do I mean that, buy protonix without prescription. Any system whose authors have taken the time to sufficiently test it such that it gets > 95% code coverage is likely (in my experience) thinking through how to test their system in order to fully express its happy paths, edge cases, order protonix in us, etc. Find discount protonix, However, the code coverage here is a symptom, not a cause, cheapest protonix prices, of a well-tested system. Cheap protonix no rx, And the metric can be gamed. Actually, when imposed as a management quality criterion, order protonix from canada, it usually is gamed. Buy protonix without prescription, Good metrics should confirm a result obtained by other means, or provide leading indicators. Protonix cheapest price, Few numeric measurements are subtle enough to really drive system development.

Having said that, I have used code-coverage in this way, but in context, cheapest generic protonix online, as I'll mention later in this post.

Kevin provides example code similar to the following:

String foo(boolean condition) {    if (condition)        return "true";    else        return "false";}

... Cheap protonix from usa, and talks about how if the unit tests are only testing the true path, then this is only working on 50% coverage. Good so far, protonix prices. But then he goes on to express that "code coverage only tells us what was executed by our unit tests, Cheap protonix overnight delivery, not what executed correctly." He is carefully telling us that a unit test executing a line doesn't guarantee that the line is working as intended. Um.., buy protonix without prescription. that's obvious. And if the tests didn't pass correctly, buy protonix no rx, then the line should not be considered covered. Buy protonix on line, It seems there are some unclear assumptions on how testing needs to work, so let me get some assertions out of the way...

Code coverage is only meaningful in the context of well-written tests. It doesn't save you from crappy tests.

Code coverage should only be measured on a line/branch if the covering tests are passing.

Code coverage suggests insufficiency, purchase protonix no rx, but doesn't guarantee sufficiency.

Test-driven code will likely have the symptom of nearly perfect coverage.

Test-driven code will be sufficiently tested, Protonix rx, because the author wrote all the tests that form, in full, the requirements/spec of that code.

Perfectly covered code will not necessarily be sufficiently tested.

What I'm driving at is that Kevin is arguing against something entirely different than that which TDD proponents argue, order no rx protonix. Buy protonix without prescription, He's arguing against a common misunderstanding of how TDD works. On point 1 he and I are in agreement. Order cheap protonix, Many of his commentators mention #3 (and he states it in various ways himself). His description of what code coverage doesn't give you is absurd when you take #2 into account (we assume that a line of covered code is only covered if the covering test is passing). But most importantly - "TDD proponents" would, generic protonix cheap, in my experience, Fda approved protonix, find this whole line of explanation rather irrelevant, as it is an argument against code-coverage as a single metric for code quality, and they would attempt to achieve code quality through thoroughness of testing by driving the development through tests, where to order protonix. TDD is a design methodology, not a testing methodology, buy protonix without prescription. You just get tests as side-effect artifacts of the approach. Protonix without prescription, Useful in their own right. Sure, but it's only sort of the point, buy protonix online australia. It isn't just writing the tests-first.

In other words - TDD implies high or perfect coverage. But the inverse is not necessarily true.

Buy protonix without prescription, How do you achieve thoroughness by driving your development with tests. Buying protonix online, You imagine the functionality you need next (your next increment of useful change), and you write or modify your tests to "require" the new piece of functionality. They you write it, generic protonix, then you go green. Order generic protonix, Code coverage doesn't enter into it, because you should have near perfect coverage at all times by implication, because every new piece of functionality you develop is preceded by tests which test its main paths and error states, protonix india, upper and lower bounds, Cheap protonix online, etc. Code coverage in this model is a great way to notice that you screwed up and missed something, but nothing else.

So, cheap protonix in canada, is code-coverage useful. Heck yeah, buy protonix without prescription. No prescription protonix, I've used coverage to discover lots of waste in my system. I've removed whole sets of APIs that were "just in case I need them" APIs, because they become rote (lots of accessors/mutators that are not called in normal operations), protonix in uk. Is code coverage the only way I would find them. Certified protonix, No. Buy protonix without prescription, If I'm dealing with a system that wasn't driven with tests, or was poorly tested in general, I may use coverage as a quick health meter, but probably not. Going from zero to 90% on legacy code is likely to be less valuable than just re-writing whole subsystems using TDD... and often more expensive.

Regardless, cheap protonix tablets, while Kevin is formally asking "is code coverage useful?" he's really asking (rhetorically) is it reasonable to worship code coverage as the primary metric. Protonix without a prescription, But if no one's asserting the positive, why is he questioning it. He may be dealing with a lot of people with misunderstandings of how TDD works, lowest price protonix. He could be dealing with metrics bigots, buy protonix without prescription. He could be dealing with management-imposed-metrics initiatives which often fail. It might be a pet peeve or he's annoyed with TDD and this is a great way to do some agile-baiting of his own. I don't know him, so I can't say. His comments seem reasonable, so I assume no ill intent. But the answer to his rhetorical question is "yes, but in context." Not surprising, since most rhetorically asked questions are answerable in this fashion. Hopefully it's a bit clearer where it's useful (and where/how) it's not.

(This article is a cross-post from "Geek in a Suit")

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Christian Gruber — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:47:03 +0000

Buy periactin without prescription, Bob C. Martin (Uncle Bob to you and me) suggested, periactin for order, Periactin online stores, in his "quintessence" keynote at the Agile2008 conference that he had the perfect metric for code quality. Cyclomatic complexity and others were interesting mostly to those who invented them, periactin for sale, Buy cheapest periactin on line, etc. His answer was brilliant, purchase periactin, Order periactin online, and was easily measured during code reviews:

WTFs per minute

I love it. All you need is a counter and a stop-watch, periactin pharmacy online. Approved periactin pharmacy, Start code-review and start watch and start clicking anytime you see code that makes you say or think "What the F???". This dovetails nicely with his original recommendation for a new statement in the agile manifesto: "Craftsmanship over Crap".

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Mishkin Berteig — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 03:55:15 +0000

Buy keppra without prescription, One of the challenges with agile methods is to get a clear perspective on how to measure process improvements. I recently had a brief discussion with a C-level executive at a small organization about this. His concern was that cycle time was meaningless because it depended so much upon the size of the work package. So how do we use cycle time as a meaningful measurement, keppra internet. What else can we use to measure process improvement.

Let's look at the difference in measuring cycle time in an agile vs, buy keppra without prescription. non-agile environment. Discount keppra, Then we'll get to other measurements.

Cycle Time , Waterfall and Agile

First, let's define cycle time, keppra without prescription. From iSixSigma we have:

Cycle time is the total time from the beginning to the end of your process, as defined by you and your customer. Buy keppra without prescription, Cycle time includes process time, during which a unit is acted upon to bring it closer to an output, and delay time, during which a unit of work is spent waiting to take the next action.

This definition is important because it gives us a clue about the potential difference between a waterfall vs. Buy keppra from us, agile method of delivering value. Let's imagine the typical process used in a waterfall environment. The following are the high-level steps:

Customer / User / Stakeholder sees a need, validates it and submits a request to have that need fulfilled, order keppra from us. This is when we start the clock on cycle time.

The fulfillment organization (IT, Product Development, Cost keppra, R&D) puts the request in a queue, backlog or requirements management system.

Along with other requests, the fulfillment organization schedules the work on the request, usually by creating a project to fulfill it and other related requests, keppra generic. The project is estimated at a high level, the current status of in-flight projects is noted, and the new project is prioritized relative to other projects.

At some point, based on the schedule and the reality of the work on other projects, the project containing our customer's request is started, buy keppra without prescription. Here, "started" means that detailed requirements are gathered.

After sufficient requirements are gathered, Price of keppra, a detailed technical analysis is done including architecture, high-level design, risk analysis, etc.

Development begins, keppra overnight delivery. (Note: many people mistakenly start measuring cycle time here.)

Developers and testers work to validate the results of development and fix any problems discovered.

Final acceptance testing is done.

The results of the project are deployed to users, sold to the client, Keppra overnight, or in some other way passed back to the original requestor. This is when we stop the clock on cycle time.

So from the start of the customer request formally submitted to the time that the fulfillment of that request is made is our true cycle time. There are a few important things to note here. First Buy keppra without prescription, , there is a queue of work based on requests made but not yet scheduled. There is another queue for work scheduled but not yet started, generic keppra. We know that if we can reduce the size of these queues, we can improve cycle time in a general sense. Order keppra no rx, Second, we know that most organizations of any significant size will have different queues based on the urgency of the request. For example, a high severity bug discovered in the production system of a company's largest client will be treated differently than a wish list item for a small not-yet-client, no rx keppra. These two requests won't even go in the same queue: the high priority problem will be quickly escalated to a support or development team that can work on it immediately, buy keppra without prescription. Third, it is tempting for the development group to measure their local cycle time. Buy keppra in canada, This is a Really Bad Idea since it leads to sub-optimizing behaviors. For example, it is easy for the development team to improve their cycle time by sacrificing quality... but this just causes the QA cycle time to increase, cheap keppra without prescription, and probably the overall cycle time (true cycle time) is affected more than the local improvement in the development group's cycle time.

Now let's look at the steps that occur in an ideal agile environment:

Buy keppra without prescription, As before, the Customer / User / Stakeholder sees a need, validates it and submits a request to have that need fulfilled.

That request is immediately placed in a ready state for the next iteration (cycle, sprint) of a delivery team. Elapsed time: maximum one month.

Team completes the request including all work to actually deliver/deploy and work is delivered to the stakeholder at the end of the iteration. Keppra free sample, Elapsed time: maximum two months.

So the ideal method of doing agile has a maximum cycle time of two months to deliver from the time a request is made... how many teams are doing this. Not many.

The ideal is extremely difficult to accomplish, buy keppra without prescription. Getting to that state requires that the development organization catches up to the business side so that there are zero pending requests at the start of each iteration, cheapest keppra online. It also requires that the business side users and stakeholders are able to articulate their requests so that they are small, and appropriately detailed for the team doing the work. Keppra buy, A realistic agile implementation actually is a lot more messy. Depending on the type of request, the cycle time for a piece of work can vary widely. Buy keppra without prescription, Some low priority items may take years even in an agile environment. A low priority request is made and approved but then never quite makes it into a project.., keppra no rx. and then once in a project never quite makes it to the top of the team's product backlog. This is interesting to look at sometimes, Lowest price keppra, but it points out another important aspect of measuring cycle time: mostly we care about average cycle time (or some other statistically interesting aggregate measure).

The predominant factor in most organizations' cycle time is the number and size of the queues they use as work is processed. In most organizations there are several queues and most of them contain large numbers of requests or bits of work in process, buy keppra without prescription. Queues represent huge amounts of waste. It is easy to see that queue size and cycle time are closely related: the more items in a queue, lowest price for keppra, the longer the cycle time.

This leads to a simple conclusion: regardless of lifecycle approach, Buy keppra low price, reducing the size of an organization's queues is one of the easiest ways to reduce cycle time. What are some common queues. Buy keppra without prescription, There are often queues of projects, queues of enhancement requests, queues of defects to be fixed, queues of features, queues of tasks, queues of email (large inboxes), queues of approval requests, queues of production database changes. The number of queues increases the more an organization is oriented around functional groups, and the number of queues decreases the more an organization arranges work to be handled by cross-functional teams, keppra order.

Cycle Time and Work Package Size

This is where queueing theory and agile methods intersect really well. Cycle time is related to the load on your system, Purchase keppra without prescription, in particular your units of work processing. In most organizations, teams are created to handle work. The more work given to a team simultaneously, the higher their utilization level, buy keppra without prescription. Many organizations like high utilization levels because it gives them a guarantee that people are doing valuable work all the time that they are paid to work, buy keppra on internet. This is a completely false benefit and in fact is extremely destructive to overall productivity. From queueing theory we know that the cycle time for a piece of work increases exponentially to the utilization level. Keppra australia, We see this whenever we over-load a server... Buy keppra without prescription, but for some reason we fail to see this when we overload a person or a team or an organization even though it still happens.

Cycle time is also related to the variability in the size of the work packages. Low variability means that the exponential factor related to load is low, and high variability means that the exponential factor is high, buying generic keppra. In other words, if you have a highway that only allows motorbikes, Find cheap keppra online, you can have a very high load without getting bad traffic jams. On the other hand, if you have a highway that allows anything on it, you get traffic jams even with low levels of load, purchase keppra online. This is why HOV or commuter lanes and the left lane in multi-lane highways don't typically allow transport trucks and buses, buy keppra without prescription. This result from queueing theory is not intuitively obvious so it is even harder for us to apply to software development.

But apply these two ideas, Cheap keppra pharmacy, load and work size variability, we must if we wish to create a high performance development organization. The simplest way to do this is to have a single team work on a single project at a time and use iterations to ensure that the work being done is always exactly the same size - the size of the iteration.

Improving Cycle Time

It is possible to have very short iterations and still have a long cycle time, keppra buy drug. Buy keppra without prescription, Many organizations make a few common mistakes with agile that cause this. If the work done inside each iteration is restricted to pure development work and everything else is done outside the iterations, then cycle time likely stays long. Order no rx keppra, A common example of this is having the QA folks remain separate from the development team and do their work after a development team releases their work.

There is really only one way to avoid this: have a comprehensive definition of "done" that is met by the team every single iteration. This ensures that all work from idea to release for a given customer request is done inside a single iteration. A side effect of this is that all the pieces of work need to be small, buy keppra without prescription. It also gets rid of all the queues except one: the queue of ideas approved for delivery, buy keppra online. With a single queue to manage, it becomes easy to measure cycle time, Free keppra, and therefore easy to improve it.

Improving cycle time can now be done in a few ways:

Put a cap on the number of items in the work queue. Since cycle time is directly related to the size of the queues in a system, this is a sure way of putting a maximum on cycle time.

Go through all existing requests and throw as many away as possible, keppra from india. Buy keppra without prescription, This can be tough to do, but if you are able to do a cost benefit analysis, you will typically find that older items in the queue are no longer worth while.

Provide more stringent gating functions for allowing requests onto the queue. The few items added, the faster the size of the queue is reduced.

And of course, Buy discount keppra, increase the performance of your team(s) so that they go through items on the queue more quickly.

Productivity and Cycle Time

Once you have control of cycle time, it is possible to make reasonable measurements of productivity and two more metrics become extremely important (not that they weren't important before, but they are easier to work with now). The first is Return on Investment (ROI) and the second is customer satisfaction, discount keppra online.

ROI is in its simplest form a measure of how much benefit there is to doing something as compared to the cost of doing it. It takes into account the importance of time and timing, Keppra in malaysia, the importance of other options you may have, and of course, hopefully takes into account the business reality of your work. It also takes into account costs, buy keppra without prescription.

In software development, discount keppra overnight delivery, the primary cost is the cost of the staff doing the work, and the time factor is your cycle time (Ah. Order keppra no prescription, that's where we use it). If you have a consistent team working on iterations that are always the same size and if you have little or no work being done outside of the iterations, it is very easy to calculate ROI in a useful way. Simply measure how much value a given iteration worth of work will generate and divide by the cost of the team for an iterations (and if the team is not yet doing work as it comes in, take into account the time value of money since the work might not be done for several iterations). Buy keppra without prescription, Now, productivity is simply a measure of the Return for each Team-Iteration. Dollars/iteration. Simple. If the team's productivity goes down, you can ask some really simple questions:

Did the expected return of the work go down. If so, is there more valuable work the team should be doing. This becomes an opportunity for product improvement.

If not, what caused the team to get less done, buy keppra without prescription. Was the work harder than expected. Was there a skill gap. Was there an organizational obstacle that was revealed. Was someone sick. This becomes an opportunity for process and team improvement.

Buy keppra without prescription, Customer satisfaction can be measured in many ways. If you have already started using agile practices, there is a good chance that your customers will already be more satisfied than they were before. This will show up informally through word-of-mouth. However, it is good to have a more systematic way of measuring customer satisfaction. One of the simplest and most commonly used methods of measuring customer satisfaction is the Net Promoter Score. From WikiPedia:

Companies obtain their Net Promoter Score by asking customers a single question (usually, "How likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague?"), buy keppra without prescription. Based on their responses, customers can be categorized into one of three groups: Promoters, Passives, and Detractors. In the net promoter framework, Promoters are viewed as valuable assets that drive profitable growth because of their repeat/increased purchases, longevity and referrals, while Detractors are seen as liabilities that destroy profitable growth because of their complaints, reduced purchases/defection and negative word-of-mouth. Companies calculate their Net Promoter Score by subtracting their % Detractors from their % Promoters.

The Net Promoter Score is closely linked to quality including the hard-to-measure parts of quality like responsiveness, ease of use, and fitness for purpose.

Cycle time also affects customer satisfaction. Buy keppra without prescription, The faster you can respond to requests by customer, users or other stakeholders, the more likely they are to be satisfied. This happens for two reasons: fast response time means that solutions are more likely to still be useful and correct when actually delivered, and it also gives more opportunities for feedback.

In fact, if we look at these three measures, cycle time, ROI and customer satisfaction, we see that they form a mutually supporting and cross-checking system of ensuring productivity and effectiveness. Measuring anything else muddies the waters and can cause sub-optimal behaviors. The real challenge for most teams is realizing that all their local measures of performance and effectiveness may actually be causing harm (unintentionally) because they draw the team's attention away from the three organizationally important measures.

Cycle time is the measure that is most closely related to process improvements, but ROI and customer satisfaction should also be used to ensure that process improvements don't accidentally harm the organization.

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Mishkin Berteig — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 23:08:57 +0000

Buy fml without prescription, We wouldn't do agile if we didn't think it was better in some way. More and more, where to buy fml, Find discount fml, I am seeing the adoption of agile methods being driven by business management (rather then engineering). There is a clear reason for this: agile methods offer the possibility of early return on investment compared to other methods of working, buy fml us. Generic fml cheap, This benefit is only one of five essential benefits of agile, but it is one of the most practical and easiest to measure, cheapest fml prices. Buy generic fml, Therefore it is important to clearly understand how agile methods can deliver this benefit... and how they can fail to do so, buy fml without prescription.

Early Return on Investment

The basic process structure of agile methods consists of the short cycles (iterations, where to order fml, Cheap fml without prescription, Sprints) of delivery of valuable results. The key word there (aside from "short") is "Valuable", fml purchase. Fml order, Now in software, "valuable" is relatively easy to define, fml india. Low price fml, One definition that works nicely is "Running Tested Features". Buy fml without prescription, In other industries or types of work, valuable is defined in some other way.

An agile process delivers valuable results every single iteration, fml cost. Fml canada, This provides the basis of early return on investment. The organization can then take those results and start to realize their benefits immediately after the very first iteration.., fml us. Fml in us, ideally... (which we will come back to in a moment), buy fml without prescription.

Here's a graphical contrast between a traditional waterfall approach versus an agile approach that maps value delivered vs, fml drug. Real fml without prescription, time.

buying generic fml. No prescription fml, Waterfall.png" src="http://www.agileadvice.com/archives/Agile Work - Value Delivery vs. Waterfall.png" width="400" height="221" /> Buy fml without prescription, The waterfall project delivers all its value at the end - the red spike. An agile project starts delivering value very early on, purchase fml without prescription, Purchase fml, increases to a maximum rate of value delivery and then gradually tapers off. The reason for the shape is simple: at the start of the project there is often a fair amount of uncertainty, cheap fml in canada, Get fml, and some dead-ends are pursued before getting to the really valuable work, and then as that work is completed, fml prescription, Order fml from canada, the team starts working on lower and lower priority features.

The early delivery of value has an additional benefit, fml bangkok. Fml from india, By delivering value early, the time value of that investment is increased, fml malaysia. Revenue or cost savings can be realized sooner and therefore more funds are feed up for other investment, buy fml without prescription. Buy cheap fml internet, Sounds great, what's the catch, fml without rx. Buy fml online,

Agile Pitfall: Not Getting Done

This benefit being realized rests completely on the assumption that the work delivered at the end of each iteration is actually valuable. If for some reason it's not, order generic fml, Buy fml from us, then this benefit falls apart completely. Most organizations when starting with agile, buy fml once daily, Fml sales, cannot realize this value immediately because their teams do not deliver completed valuable results. Buy fml without prescription, Rather, most organizations are set up so that a team delivers an intermediate result which is useless on its own. Realizing this benefit of agile methods often requires substantial, fml discount, Cheap fml overnight delivery, strenuous, disciplined change in the way that people work, fml in malaysia, Certified fml, teams are set up, bureaucracy functions, and management supports it all. Perfecting agile is sometimes a lengthy process. Fortunately, the other benefits of agile do not depend so heavily on this assumption.

Agile Benefits: Rapid Learning Agile Benefits: Early Return on Investment Agile Benefits: Satisfied Stakeholders Agile Benefits: Increased Control Agile Benefits: Responsiveness to Change Agile Benefits: Summary Article.

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Mishkin Berteig — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 10:36:50 +0000

Buy glucotrol xl without prescription, Ah, tools... Low price glucotrol xl, For agile training and consulting, I always recommend starting with the standard physical tools of note cards on a wall plus a whiteboard and digital camera, cheap glucotrol xl no rx. Buying glucotrol xl online, However, I am still interested in what tools people have used when they have found that note cards are not sufficient, order glucotrol xl online. Discount glucotrol xl without prescription, Here is a list of the tools that I am aware of, as well as a link to a survey.., glucotrol xl drug. Best price for glucotrol xl, This list is in alphabetical order:

CardMeeting

Custom In-House Tool

Defect/Enhancement Tracker (e.g. Jira)

Spreadsheet

Wiki (e.g, buy glucotrol xl without prescription. Fitnesse)

XPlanner

The survey is extremely short (four questions) and will be closed on Sept, find no rx glucotrol xl. Find cheap glucotrol xl online, 15th:
Click Here to take the Agile Management Tools surveyI will publish the results here.

If you know of other tools (open source, cheap glucotrol xl on internet, Glucotrol xl in bangkok, products, etc.) please let me know in the comments, cheap glucotrol xl pill. Glucotrol xl pill,

Here are more tools for managing agile projects/requirements/planning that have been mentioned by folks in the comments:Tackle

Thanks to everyone for including the urls in the comments!!. Certified glucotrol xl. Glucotrol xl pharmacy online. Order glucotrol xl cheap online. Find discount glucotrol xl online. Cheap glucotrol xl tablets. Cheap glucotrol xl pharmacy. Canadian pharmacy glucotrol xl. Where to buy glucotrol xl. Glucotrol xl buy. Purchase glucotrol xl online. Cheap glucotrol xl. Glucotrol xl online cheap. Glucotrol xl bangkok. Buy cheapest glucotrol xl on line. Buy glucotrol xl cheap. Glucotrol xl information. Glucotrol xl side effects. Buy glucotrol xl low price. Buy glucotrol xl in us. Best price glucotrol xl. Glucotrol xl free sample. Buy cheap glucotrol xl online. Cheap glucotrol xl without prescription. Glucotrol xl online without a prescription. Buy cheapest glucotrol xl. Order glucotrol xl from us. Glucotrol xl without rx.

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Mishkin Berteig — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 18:04:51 +0000

I just read a recent article on PMHut called "Schedule Questions: Pair Programming and the PNR Curve Buy heartz (medium dogs) without prescription, ". There is much in this article that is important for agile project management.., heartz (medium dogs) pills. Discount heartz (medium dogs), and much that should be avoided at all costs.

Estimating Projects

The bulk of the article is an explanation of the PNR curve (Putnam Norden Rayleigh curve), tablet heartz (medium dogs). Approved heartz (medium dogs) pharmacy, The explanation is sufficient and can be checked against other web articles about software estimation. The basic idea of the PNR curve is to find an ideal number of people with which to staff a project based on an estimate of overall project size (e.g, buy heartz (medium dogs) without prescription. 72 man-months), heartz (medium dogs) uk. Sale heartz (medium dogs), Take a moment to go read Fantasy Estimation (the comments here provide good additional material).

It should be clear now that any initial sizing estimate based on units such as man-months is ridiculous, purchase heartz (medium dogs) overnight delivery. Cheap heartz (medium dogs), So what is our alternative. Buy heartz (medium dogs) without prescription, What about an agile approach to estimation and planning.

Agile Estimation

Well, buy discount heartz (medium dogs), Heartz (medium dogs) internet, at a minimum, in an agile approach to estimation, heartz (medium dogs) us, Buy heartz (medium dogs) pills, we need to resolve some of the problems identified in "Fantasy Estimation". So, buy heartz (medium dogs), Heartz (medium dogs) purchase, we:

Get the whole team that will be doing the work to do the estimation
We weight estimates based on team maturity, knowledge of tools, heartz (medium dogs) medication, Order heartz (medium dogs) no rx, knowledge of the business domain and the physical proximity of team members to each other
We adjust our estimates of work remaining based on our results for work completed

The great thing about an agile approach is that it allows all these things to be done and to be done well. Scrum has a specific set of "Drag Factors" that can be used to weight the team's estimates, heartz (medium dogs) buy drug. Cheap heartz (medium dogs) online, And using a team's past estimates vs. "actuals" is possible on an iteration by iteration basis.., buy heartz (medium dogs) without prescription. and this is possible because every iteration the team is doing the "same thing": delivering an increment of valuable results (working software, order heartz (medium dogs) in canada, Where to order heartz (medium dogs), edited video, organizational change, buy cheap heartz (medium dogs) online, Cheap heartz (medium dogs) tablets, whatever is contributing to the project goals).

The other thing that agile methods allow is to make a distinction between estimation for planning and estimation for commitment, where to buy heartz (medium dogs). Cheap heartz (medium dogs) overnight delivery, So. It's cool to learn about the PNR Staffing curve and the thinking behind it, heartz (medium dogs) for sale. Buy heartz (medium dogs) without prescription, It's a little scary to see it being applied in an agile context when we have tools that are much better. Find cheap heartz (medium dogs), Pairing and Estimation

At the end of the PMHut article, the author, compare heartz (medium dogs) prices, Cheap heartz (medium dogs) no prescription, Mike asks a question:

What about pair programming. When using pairs on a team we could either:

Continue as is, buy heartz (medium dogs) low price, Heartz (medium dogs) non prescription, use the model to determine optimal team size and then encourage pairing to increase efficiency.
Treat a pair as one hyper-effective person, so count pairs not individuals and increase team sizes accordingly.

This second option seems counter intuitive to agile, real heartz (medium dogs) without prescription, Buy heartz (medium dogs) from us, we strive for small teams to reduce communication channels, so Iâ€™m not convinced by this idea, buy heartz (medium dogs) online. Discount heartz (medium dogs) without prescription, I would be very interested to hear peopleâ€™s thoughts on agile staffing curves. So, heartz (medium dogs) information, Order heartz (medium dogs) online, lots more questions than answers in this post, please let me know if you have any research or thoughts on the matter.

I wrote in response:

Mike, buy heartz (medium dogs) on internet, Purchase heartz (medium dogs) no rx, I feel like the options you present in your question at the end actually miss the true point of pairingâ€¦ which has to do with communication. I have never seen pairing done in such a way that two people always work together as a pair, buy heartz (medium dogs) without prescription. Rather, heartz (medium dogs) price, Heartz (medium dogs) overnight, pairing is promiscuous: people switch pairs frequently throughout a day, iteration or project. This switching has two communication effects: 1) the human interaction and gradual diffusion of information as people switch pairs 2) helping everyone understand all parts of the work as a result of frequently working on many different things. From an estimation standpoint, I expect that neither of your two options is quite right. Rather, the third option is to continue as is with existing estimation and then encourage pairing to increase communication. Buy heartz (medium dogs) without prescription, Increased communication shows up in a number of different ways, not just efficiency: risk mitigation, accelerated individual and team learning etc.

I would like to expand on this just a little. To me, pair programming or pair work of any kind has always been able to provide a number of benefits to projects. Problem avoidance is one benefit (lower defect rates, better code quality through constant inspection, spotting each other). Better communication is another benefit. Increasing the Truck Factor is yet another benefit.

None of these benefits have any direct bearing on estimating a project at the start, particularly since most projects sacrifice quality for schedule. From an agile perspective, since planning estimation is not commitment, it actually doesn't even really matter. Get a conservative estimate for you project using whatever method you like, then start working and get a commitment velocity and see what the team can really do.

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Mishkin Berteig — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 19:43:22 +0000

Buy lodine without prescription, Okay, this is only marginally related to agile, but I thought it was interesting nevertheless: How to Write a Detailed Strategic Plan. The main connection to Agile Work, cheap lodine no prescription, Order discount lodine online, is that you need to have a clear performance goal in mind towards which you are working. This may be a great way to clarify your thoughts about such a goal, buy cheapest lodine on line. Cost of lodine. Order lodine no rx. Lodine online without prescription. Order lodine without prescription. Lodine non prescription. Lodine medicine. Buy cheap lodine. Find lodine no prescription required. Lodine in bangkok. Find cheap lodine. Canada lodine. Order discount lodine. Find lodine. Buy lodine cheap. Order lodine from canada. Online pharmacy lodine. Lodine free sample. Lodine tablets. Order lodine online. Lodine for order. Lodine prescription. Lodine. Buy lodine online australia. Cheap lodine pill. Cheap lodine tablet. Lodine without prescription. Cheap lodine overnight delivery. Cheap lodine from uk. Pharmacy lodine. Buy lodine us. Cheap lodine in usa. Buy lodine online cheap. Buy lodine lowest price. Lodine overnight. Lodine information. Buy lodine overnight delivery. Lodine buy drug.