WHITE PAPERS - FREE DOWNLOADS

Please choose from the following free downloadable files developed by Three Beacons focused on agile methods and related topics.

Click on the text links below to begin the download process.

• Title: Webinar: Agile for Mobile App Development
  Smartphones are quickly becoming the compute platform of choice. With all the rich capabilities available in mobile platforms like iPhone and Android, new and innovative software applications are being developed every day. In addition, various existing enterprise applications are making available mobile client interfaces. While common principles of Agile development are fully applicable to mobile application development, there are some additional techniques which are particularly more powerful for teams doing mobile application development. In this Webinar, we discuss three Agile techniques specific to developing mobile application software: (1) Hyper-Prototyping has similar goals as rapid prototyping, but is characterized with much faster development cycles, shorter feedback loops, and heavy collaboration. Hyper-Prototyping can result in numerous development cycles every day. In effect, it is rapid prototyping on steroids. (2) Community Code Scrounging is the discovery and use of source code snippets and examples available on the internet from the software community at large. In effect, it becomes a new agile development paradigm but not without a few warnings! (3) User Design Studio is a new agile technique which addresses the challenge of quickly designing a product user interface (UI) under the constraints of compressed schedules and short iterations. Imagine collaboratively developing the best UI design possible in a single day!



• Title: Webinar: Emerging Agile Techniques
  In this Webinar, we discuss three new emerging agile techniques: User Design Studio, Pomodoro, and Done-Done Ceremony. (1) User Design Studio is a new agile technique which addresses the challenge of quickly designing a product user interface (UI) under the constraints of compressed schedules and short iterations. Imagine collaboratively developing the best UI design possible in a single day! (2) Effective software development requires long, thoughtful periods of effort. The Pomodoro Technique is gaining fast traction as an excellent and lightweight personal time management technique for software developers. It includes a built-in strategy for task switching and managing interruptions. In effect, it is a microcosm of all good things from agile! (3) “Done-done” means completing a user story or task while faithfully adhering to your definition of done. Done-done is a significant accomplishment and deserves to be celebrated. This new agile technique describes how to hold an informal done-done ceremony and its many intangible benefits.



• Title: Webinar: QA Role in Agile Teams
  The Quality Assurance role is fundamentally different in an Agile team. This webinar presentation compares and contrasts the traditional QA role in a waterfall organization with the new emerging QA role in an Agile team. The Agile QA team member responsibiltiies are discussed in detail, such as participation in release planning, iteration planning, developing user stories, writing acceptance test cases, recommending items for the product backlog, adding tasks to the iteration backlog, developing a strong "definition of done", functional slice testing, test case automation, release testing, regression testing, continuous feedback, and team-based approach to quality. The presentation ends with a discussion of some common mistakes and how to avoid them.



• Title: Dual-shore Agile Outsourcing - Challenges and Best Practices
  As dual-shore (offshore) outsourcing of software development projects matures, companies are attempting to combine Agile Methods with offshoring to achieve even greater business value. However, team distribution is somewhat contradictory to the use of Agile Methods and presents some unique challenges. This paper describes these challenges in terms of people, information sharing, and project organization. To provide solutions for the challenges, a set of comprehensive “best practices” are described and organized in areas such as preparing for, executing, and ending the project. Finally, the emerging business case for Dual-shore Agile is presented.



• Title: Webinar: Distributed/Dual-Shore Agile Software Development - Is It Effective?
  The business case for Dual-Shore development is solid. The business case for Agile Methods is solid. But, what happens when you combine these two approaches? What are the challenges and best practices of Dual-Shore Agile? In addition to presenting the business case, this webinar presentation details the "best practices" for preparing, executing, and ending a Dual-Shore Agile project.



• Title: Mobile Device Platforms
  This is a presentation I gave recently to Samsung. It covers the major mobile device platforms currently in the market, including Apple iPhone, Google Android, Windows Mobile, RIM Blackberry, LiMo, Moblin, Symbian, and others. It concludes with a prediction on who will survive and who will not.



• Title: The Business Case for Agile
  Agile Methods are increasing in popularity worldwide as a better way to build software. We now have empirical evidence showing how Agile Methods affect business factors in a positive way. This paper covers five individual case studies and the recent collective findings of QSM Associates evaluating Agile development projects against plan-based / waterfall counterparts.



• Title: The Three Beacons of Software Project Success
  Your software development team's ability to build high-quality working software rapidly will impact your business bottom line from a time-to-market and customer perception perspective. This paper proposes three main guiding lights (beacons) of software development: agile methods, rigorous quality plans, and trust. Shifting over or providing more attention to these areas will improve your team's ability to deliver.