New Looks Here and There

For those of you who have received this newsletter in the past you will notice it has a much different format. We’ve decided to greatly simplify our lives by simplifying the newsletter format. For previous editions it would take more than three hours to get the formatting correct each month. Now we just type and it just works! This is so much nicer for us.

The thought of updating the newsletter was quite daunting, but it was dwarfed by our desire to give our website a significant facelift. We worked long and hard on the website and never could quite bring ourselves to pull the trigger and make it go live. For some reason we kept stalling and changing things. Then, through a very random sequence of events we were introduced to the Thesis Theme for WordPress. That was a good day! We recognized the advantages of using a common theme, but had never really considered doing it because quite frankly, we felt blog based websites were too static and boring other than the page where the blog entries were posted. The flexibility of Thesis changed our minds and we gave it a chance.

Within two days of installing Thesis we had the basics of a nice website running pretty well. Most of our prior work transferred easily. The custom code we had written in PHP to drive portions of the website worked without changes at all. With the help of Martin Maldin we were able to find plugins and support for areas where we had concerns. We feel the result is a substantial improvement over the previous website, but more importantly it is incredibly easy to maintain and change. Check out the new website at www.agileforall.com. Be sure to let us know what you think!

The new website has saved so much time that Agile Bob has been able to increase his blogging to two to three times per week. Check out the new blog entries and add your voice to those who have already commented. Subscribe via RSS feed and get new posts delivered directly to your RSS reader whenever they are created!

Agile Bob says…

Can I just say WOW! That felt good! The new website, the ease of maintenance and the pure fun of putting it together has really been great. OK, I’m not supposed to echo the main article, so let me move on quickly.

This month I want to write about something I consider extremely important – we are growing in conjunction with several other agile consulting companies! This is truly exciting news. Agile For All is teaming with Agile Institute, Effective Agile Development, Techniques of Design, VimStreet and Humanizing Work to form the Agile Cooperative. On April 7-10, 2009, principals from all of these companies were in Denver, Colorado making plans for the creation of an umbrella organization which would promote a truly holistic view of agile. The combination of organizations allows co-op members to access training and coaching skills from other members with world-class reputations in different areas. For example, my company, Agile For All is a fantastic choice for agile process transformations, but maybe it wasn’t the best choice for courses and coaching on agile architecture. Through the formation of the co-op we now have access to training and coaching provided by Techniques of Design. The co-op has member companies specializing in every aspect of agile development process or engineering practices.

I am extremely excited about this because it means our clients can now get one stop shopping for everything agile. There will be many more details about this in the coming weeks and months. Feel free to call or email to get more details. In the meantime, if you have a need for any sort of agile help including training or coaching in the agile process, business analysis, coding practices, acceptance testing, test-driven development, architecture, automation, business process improvement, portfolio management or any other agile related practice, be sure to try us first! With the advent of the Agile Cooperative I am sure we can meet your needs.

Featured Book of the Month

After reading “The Goal” by Eliyahu M. Goldratt you will feel incredibly challenged to go out and do something to help your company improve. This is high praise for a business book which reads like a novel! “The Goal” was the first book to describe the Theory of Constraints (TOC) in a way which is understandable for those of us who don’t have doctoral degrees in manufacturing process. As you read the story you can see parallels to your company, which makes it even harder to put the book down.

While the book is about a manufacturing plant, it is written in way which makes it useful for any organization. We usually deal with software product development companies or IT shops, and in those organizations the Theory of Constraints is extremely useful! Recognizing bottlenecks and how to deal with them effectively is one of the keys to getting maximum performance out of agile teams. Ignoring TOC will doom most teams to reaching less than their full potential.

If you are looking for a book that reads like a novel, but allows you to improve your company when you are done reading, then this is the book for you.