Nine years ago, I started on a project that was going to prove that agile processes could work within the US Department of Defense (DoD). Our goal was to introduce agile development processes, like unit testing and continuous integration, into a tool that promoted agile practices for other DoD projects. We started by making incremental […]
I’ve arrived at work and gotten myself a coffee. I’m feeling pretty wakeful and eager to get started for the day. I walk over to the corkboard to check what work is needed to be done. I am sort of feeling in the mood to do something on the smaller side, so I look for […]
Most of the organizations I work with are embracing agile or some variant of lean development and delivery. While agile has been around for a while, there are still several organizations that are just beginning their agile transformation journey or are continuing to refine their agile practices. In the Scrum implementation of agile, we have […]
2018 was a historic year for Coveros. It marked the start of our second decade of service to the software community. We joined forces with a global leader in software conferences and training. And our company more than doubled in size. Early in the year, Coveros united with TechWell in a synergy that couldn’t have […]
I recently had the pleasure of doing a webinar with Jeff Payne on test automation. In it, I rehashed some of the points from my Keynote out at STARWEST, but mainly we got to have a wonderful discussion on some key talking points. Despite what some people thought, none of these questions were pre-planned or […]
To succeed with distributed rapid development, a branch-merge strategy is key. A good strategy facilitates processes among multiple developers or teams and is the basis for any well-functioning DevOps pipeline that uses continuous integration (CI). While there are many ways to implement CI and DevOps without a branch-merge strategy, most mature organizations use them to […]
Our people are our most important asset. We have found that mentoring is the best way to support the growth of our people. The purpose of mentoring at Coveros is to help employees succeed by finding ways to add value and contribute to the company’s growth. Success within the company means growing professionally, helping Coveros […]
I work and interact with multiple software development teams. Some are just beginning their agile and DevOps journeys and others are well on their way, but they have many of the same questions or concerns: How do we get all team member roles on the same page? How do we communicate and collaborate more effectively […]
There’s lots of confusion about what DevOps is. This has resulted in the emergence of DevOps “antipatterns”—DevOps patterns of behavior that will not result in success. Having worked with many organizations to successfully implement DevOps principles and practices, there are often clear signs that what you are doing isn’t going to work. Let’s delve into […]
When I teach classes on root causes of agile project failure, I’m often asked which of the causes is most difficult to overcome. From an enterprise perspective, that is an easy answer: bad culture. Sociologist Ron Westrum defines culture as “the patterned way that an organization responds to its challenges, whether these are explicit (for […]
