Welcome to the July 27th edition of the Carnival of Agilists.
The next edition will be on August 3rd (next week). So if you missed the deadline to have your article included in this edition, make sure to send us email to get into the next one!

If you’d be interested in helping create a future issue/edition of the Carnival, please let me know!

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

• J Timothy King writes a great summary of the Build-A-Bear workshop story, and applies some of the lessons to customer relationships in software construction.
• Brian Marick is a contrarian on Leadership in agile project management.

Working software over comprehensive documentation

• Alex Bell, a software architect at Boeing, rants about the new wave of “silver bullets” in software development
• Timothy King writes another interesting article, thinking about all the indirect benefits of test-first/test-driven development
• You’ve been working on a project for a while, and there’s a lot of technical debt that’s accumulated. Johanna Rothman suggests some techniques to help pay off that debt while keeping your sanity and your schedule intact.

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

• PierG has a series of discussions about improving communications in email (part 1 of 4). Previous thoughts on communications are here and here.
• At Agile 2006 Ken Schwaber discussed software quality, and when and how it should be compromised to make deliverables in a timely manner. You should definitely read the comments as well.
• Thoughts on the interactions of agility and usability, by David Churchville.

Responding to change over following a plan

• Most of the readers here are familiar with Scrum. Many may be familiar with the ToC. Alex Pukinskis talks about how they can fit together to make everyone more successful.
• In the midst of Microsoft’s struggles with delivering Vista, Glen Alleman has some thoughts on large project management and some techniques that make it easier.
• Dilbert shares his thoughts.
• Gantt charts not doing it for you? Johanna Rothman suggests Rolling Wave Planning.
• Is a plan a commitment, or is it a strategy? Jeffrey Phillips wrote about this a while back, and now Frank Patrick provides some additional thoughts on effective planning in a changing world.

In the news

• Read an exerpt from “Practices of an Agile Developer” by Venkat Subramaniam and Andy Hunt.
• If you need to combine Agile development with the CMMI, Brad Appleton has a great rundown of links on the topic.

Previous Editions
All previous editions of the Carnival are referenced at the Agile Alliance website. You can also find it at the Blog Carnival
Join in the Fun!
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Future editions will be on the first and third Thursday of each month. If you would like to participate, please send us a link to your post at agilists.carnival@gmail.com. Or, if you prefer, use this handy dandy carnival submission form.