Reply to: Bcs Agile foundation/practitioner

[TheFaQQer]

If you are looking for the basic to pass the exam, the BCS Agile Foundation book is the one to have.

Or get a lifetime subscription to actualtests.com and download the exam to memorise

[Andrew Sutton]

This...

Read the official book that the exam is based on - I did this, had no training and passed wfc

If you are looking for the basic to pass the exam, the BCS Agile Foundation book is the one to have.

[Untouchable1]

I've been working on an "agile" project for the first time and well I don't really see much difference. A project meeting is a "scrum meeting" and you have them every day, although it's a waste of time you regurgitate what you're doing and no-one's interested. Requirements are called "stories", the PM is a "Scrum Master", the BA is a "Product Manager" and a release is a "Sprint".

That's all you need to know.

If the inventors of Agile had spoken to Quality Engineers in the 1990's they could have saved themselves a lot of effort, because it's all in the ISO9000 standards.

Great....now you can claim you 'know' agile. And at the same time you can bastardize it.

[kaiser78]

Read the official book that the exam is based on - I did this, had no training and passed wfc

[SueEllen]

The alternative to agile is spiral.

Spiral model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Waterfall is rarely used and virtually every development team uses some form of incremental development.

Agile is an informal approach.

Personally find it chaotic and more likely to lead to hacked solutions because too little thought put into a longer term plan, as it ignores formal approaches to analysis and design. That's not to say you can't use them, but then that would effectively be spiral development, which is how waterfall evolved.

Unfortunately unless you can nail down companies on their requirements which in lots of cases you can't then Spiral projects just don't work. Where the requirements are pretty much nailed down from the beginning then there is no point using an agile methodology.

Agile projects are simply ways of trying to get requirements out of the business and delivering what they want. They also allow the business to see - if you work next to them - if they change their mind every second how much extra work the changes cause.

Also not doing analysis, design and documentation is laziness as nothing in the Agile Manifesto says you should not do any of this. It just states working software is valued over documentation. Plus if you need to do research on something then you simply do a spike in a prior sprint.

[BlasterBates]

The alternative to agile is spiral.

Spiral model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Waterfall is rarely used and virtually every development team uses some form of incremental development.

Agile is an informal approach.

Personally find it chaotic and more likely to lead to hacked solutions because too little thought put into a longer term plan, as it ignores formal approaches to analysis and design. That's not to say you can't use them, but then that would effectively be spiral development, which is how waterfall evolved.

[Smartie]

Agile isn't some wonder cure for poor projects and it isn't new - been going in various guises for over twenty years (see Rapid Application Development). It was developed as a response to the terrible success rates for waterfall based IT projects. It's not really surprising that we're still learning how to do it as we've been building bridges for thousands of years but building (complex) software for less than a century.

No methodology will succeed if you're missing the basic project requirements such as the support of the business/senior stakeholders.
Equally, Agile isn't suitable for all projects and failure occurs when people try to apply it in situations where it simply won't work.

Stick to the basics, apply it in appropriate projects and it's more likely to succeed than waterfall.

That means daily interaction between the business and the team, a highly skilled, motivated team, a co-located team (possible to do it with offshore resource but harder), face to face discussions preferred over email/phone/whatever, an appropriate environment and support (other areas such as infrastructure can screw you), continuous improvement through reflection on process and progress. Don't use it to run very large, very complex critical systems such as nuclear power station control software.

Unfortunately Agile is the methodology du jour but saying your project is Agile doesn't make it so.

[leovzla]

Try This free book

Can any recommend a good book that would give me enough knowledge to sit the exams.

This book helped me passing my exam I hope it helps others too! And the best part, it´s free!

mplaza.pm/product/scrum-master-training-manual - The Scrum Master Training Manual | MP

Regards

[SpontaneousOrder]

As far as I can gather, Sky and Mail Online are very good when it comes to agile.

[SueEllen]

That would be "agile experience" rather than actual useful and effective software development experience?

You've really got to question the Client about this.

You would need to get through the agent first which is easy if you know what "Agile" is and you have written appropriate things on your CV.

If you aren't interviewed by a idiot, then most Clients will admit what they are doing has loads of flaws in it and if you are really lucky they will admit it's not Agile at all.

[flipFlop]

The Ignorance of Clients

More and more positions now request agile experience

That would be "agile experience" rather than actual useful and effective software development experience?

You've really got to question the Client about this.

[SpontaneousOrder]

That alone deserves a

This is where the guys that have been sent on a 2 day Scrum/Agile course will fall over.

Now they're running 2 week iterations to, among other things, allow the client to change their minds about something or change direction because perhaps the market has moved unexpectedly, or perhaps they simply have a better understanding of what they need now than they did when they started.

BUT... when the client does ask for a change it's huge deal because that project probably hasn't been built on solid 'Agile' foundations - without a high quality & comprehensive suite of automated tests anything but a trivial change is going to be a real issue. People are going to go home and sleep disturbed after making pervasive changes across the code base.

What's worse that team has probably developed features in isolated silos meaning that a fundamental change in strategy is going to cause real problems when applied to a code base developed without a common understanding of it's particular intricacies, without a common style and shared overall vision.
Perhaps the contractor who worked on feature X & Y has left now, and the contractor who worked on feature A & B has left too - and no one else is quite sure exactly how it works or if there are any hidden pitfalls because they haven't paired up or at least rotated developers among different areas of the system regularly, and there aren't any self-documenting tests to highlight exactly what the requirements were and the peculiar circumstances that should be taken into consideration.

So what was the point of adopting Scrum? Someone was hoping for a magic 2 day silver bullet, and someone else was happy to make a quick buck out of selling that silver bullet.

'Agile' is for losers. Real men embrace agility

I feel your pain.

[SpontaneousOrder]

I'd suggest what you're talking about is XP which is classically labelled an Agile 'framework' - although it's application is perfectly applicable in isolation.

Exactly. XP isn't 'Agile' (the hypothetical noun), nor is Scrum. XP is set of practises and techniques which when done well will help you to achieve agility; And Scrum is a SDLC which when done well (and in the right context) will help you achieve agility from a lifecycle perspective.

I would suggest that the latter is not much use without the former though (agile processes built on a foundation of rigid and clumsy practises?), which is what irks me about current clientCo sending every man and his dog on a ScrumMaster course. It makes very little sense IMO without a fundamental understanding of what agility is and what is required to achieve it.

[eek]

That alone deserves a

You are, of course, right. Crap 'agile' projects are just crap projects wrapped in fancy packages.

If common sense and competence using any method were commonplace we'd all be earning a lot less money than we do.

and be bored while doing it....

[cojak]

Then there's the agility when it comes to working closely with clients and drawing requirements out of them, etc. We don't mind that they might change their minds because we have awesome test coverage making any changes to existing code stress free. We embrace the idea that requirements will change, rather than throwing a tantrum like some people would in a more old-school environment, because ultimately the whole reason we're doing this is to deliver the client value.

That alone deserves a

You are, of course, right. Crap 'agile' projects are just crap projects wrapped in fancy packages.

If common sense and competence using any method were commonplace we'd all be earning a lot less money than we do.