In a Scrum context, the definition of a “spike” is “a story or task aimed at answering a question or gathering information, rather than at producing shippable product.” In this article, Bill Ambrosini discusses how to manage them and when to use this activity.

Atlassian has unveiled the latest version of JIRA, its project and issue management software used by more than 19,000 companies worldwide. Wrapped in a brand new, modern user interface, JIRA 6 features faster navigation and editing, simplified workflow creation and powerful mobile functionality so teams building software can get more done with less effort. To get teams up and running quickly, JIRA 6 is available OnDemand – Atlassian’s cloud offering – or behind the firewall starting at just $10 for 10 users.

It’s fairly hard to know what solid testing is all about within Agile and Scrum teams. What traditional practices are fine to continue, which ones need modification and what totally new approaches are necessary. Moving from traditional to agile testing is often a high-wire balancing act to some degree with no clear direction.

Backlog refinement is an important part of the Scrum team activity as it allows to gain a shared understanding of the work flow. Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) is a technique that use a business language to define acceptance testing (test cases) of requirements. In this article, Zia Malik explains how teams can use BDD to support product backlog refinement.

We know that self-organization is a critical aspect of every successful Agile and Scrum team and we also know that it takes trust, respect, openness and responsibility; so why many teams have a hard time to achieve it?

Scrum Gathering® India Regional 2013 is the first ever Regional Scrum Gathering® conference in India that will take place in Pune, July 36 and 27 2013. Scrum Gathering® is the flagship conference of Scrum Alliance, the organization which provides the globally-recognized Certified ScrumMaster™(CSM) certification.

The top priority for a ScrumMaster should be to remove anything impeding his team to progress, in other words the impediments. In his article, Ilan Goldstein defines an impediment as “An event that impedes the ability of any of the team members to work to their estimated sprint capacity.”

VersionOne has announced the availability of its Spring 2013 release. With the introduction of a new Portfolio Timeline and enhanced Conversations, the new release extends VersionOne’s enterprise agile offering to help customers improve organizational visibility and collaboration and simplify coordination of their agile portfolio management (APM) initiatives.