Welcome to the June 3rd edition of the Carnival of Agilists - the bimonthly roster of the best posts from the Agile Blogosphere. Sorry about the delay, we had some crossed wires.
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

• Simplicity ain’t easy - a long, thoughtful post by Brad Appleton. Lots of interesting points and a great linkography of interesting websites and documentation at the end.
• Scott Sehlhorst writes about the same topic, but in the context of testing - Test Smarter, not Harder.
• Mishkin Berteig takes a page from Malcolm Gladwell, and talks about how people problems are easier to understand and accept than technical problems. Can you reframe your problems so they’re about people, not technology?
• Jon Kern gave a talk at Dave Nicollete’s company, and it didn’t go as well as Dave had hoped. He shares his thoughts on Jon’s approach, what might have gone wrong, and what to do with a semi-hostile audience.

Working software over comprehensive documentation

• Glen Alleman says that software development methodologies are a zero sum game. I vehemently (but respectfully) disagree. What do you think?

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

• In the spirit of agile development, Tom Looy asks his son - How long is a piece of string?
  
• Skip Angel talks about 5 types of bad estimators and what to do about them.

Responding to change over following a plan

• Dave Churchville says that agile methodologies are far more disciplined at the business level than BDUF models. This connected well with me - agile development is focused on the discipline of getting the customers what they need.
• A similar post from Ed Gibbs - Early Releases provide early return-on-investment.

Case Studies and Analysis

• Jeff Sutherland and some friends have produced an interesting case study of a large-scale Scrum/XP project using partially outsourced teams.

Books

• Clarke Ching is working on an “agile novel”, and of course, he is releasing his work early and often. You can read it, and provide feedback here.

Previous Editions
All previous editions of the Carnival are referenced at the Agile Alliance website.

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