Read this interesting post from Agile: In a Flash http://agileinaflash.blogspot.com/2010/06/agile-roles.html about Agile Roles. If you are working with an agile software development model, you may struggle with how to map the agile / scrum roles to your teams, both on and offshore. Jeff Langr proposes a simplified view of the agile roles, such as : Customer […]
Innovation + Product Development
JSSH – the driver of Firefox
This article will reveal you the secret of Watir/Watin. Background As popular as Selenium, Watir/Watin is another open source tool which can be used to conduct automated testing on different browsers. To support multiple browsers, drivers of different browsers have been developed by Watir & Watin. And for firefox, JSSH is employed to fulfill the […]
Congratulations to our own Vernon Stinebaker – Certified Scrum Trainer!
I’m very pleased to announce that on June 3rd, Vernon Stinebaker in our Global Delivery Center was certified by the Scrum Alliance as an official Certified Scrum Trainer! This is a HIGHLY prestigious recognition and certification. In fact, there is only one other company in all of China that is lucky enough to have an […]
Onshore liaison matters
I’ve been working on multi-sourcing projects for years. According to my observation, the most successfully projects usually are the one which has engaged both onsite team (onshore in US) and offsite team (offshore in China), along with an onshore liaison who is typically a member of China and travelling to US. Why does this type of […]
Why PP is over AA?
During the past year, we’ve began to use Pair Programming (PP) as part of our interview process. Having interviewed many candidates using this approach, I have begun to prefer this method to the traditional approach of asking and answering (AA) because: Traditional interviewing skill emphasize on asking behavioral questions. Since it is so, why not take […]
The Emerging Markets and Innovation
Think that the emerging markets are just a great source of ‘cheap labor’ ? Read a terrific article in this week’s Economist about how these markets are quickly becoming centers of innovation and changing the business landscape. I can personally attest to this with regard to the China market. What I see in our folks […]
Innovation and offshore
I’ve read some interesting articles lately regarding how to get your offshore partner to innovate. One in CIO magazine; http://bit.ly/dl9YJB covered the topic pretty well with regard to what you have to change to spark innovation. But I’d like to add some specific areas where a multi-shore arrangement can transcend the usual SLA / price […]
Another option of doing estimation for your first sprint: Just don’t do it
Everybody knows how important planning and estimation is inside a Scrum development cycle – it helps the Scrum team to communicate and break the User Stories down into measurable pieces; it helps to estimate how much work the team could finish within a short period of time so that team would make commitments that they […]
Measuring the Performance of Multi-Shore Delivery Teams: Can it be done?
How much can you save by using a multi-sourced delivery team, where some of the work is done offshore? Depending on whom you ask, the answer can vary wildly. The reason is that a truly accurate answer from a mature IT organization takes more into account than simply multiplying ‘rates’ by ‘body count’. Mature IT […]
Single source test data
Most people might not think test data preparation is important in software engineering. However it becomes an improvement area as more and more companies start to apply TDD (test driven development) now. Managing test data differently may impact your project more than you think. First, let’s look at a question many developers might have: How […]
Developer involved testing establishes new low defect rate benchmark
Last week I was facilitating an interesting conversation between my development team and testing team. The great experience we had on that conversation was how the two teams broke the silos down to secure code quality together at an earlier stage. I related a story that shared how that team made a significant difference in the […]
Enhancing Communication among Distributed Teams by Using Jira (GreenHopper)
One of the Agile principles is:
“The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.”
Yes, I agree. However, face-to-face communication is unfortunately often a luxury for most multi-shore projects because of the time-zone and location difference. In my recent projects, we found Jira (with GreenHopper) is useful