Author Archives: Todd

About Todd

Todd Little is VP of Product Development for IHS, the leading provider of information and analytics shaping today’s business landscape: energy, economics, geopolitical risk, sustainability and supply chain management. For over 30 years he has been involved in almost all aspects of software development with a focus on commercial software applications for oil and gas exploration and production. He is on the Board of Directors for the Agile Alliance. In 2003, he co-founded the Agile Development Conference, and served as the General Chair for ADC2004, Agile2005 and Agile2006. He has returned for the 10 year anniversary of the Agile Manifesto to be the General Chair of Agile2011. He is a co-author of the Declaration of Interdependence for Agile Project Leadership (www.pmdoi.org) and a founding member and past President of the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN). Along with Pollyanna Pixton, Niel Nickolaisen, and Kent McDonald, he is a co-author of the book “Stand Back and Deliver: Accelerating Business Agility,” Addison Wesley

To Estimate or #NoEstimates, that is the Question

The bard ponders #NoEstimates with some real data Chris Verhoef and I decided to look for some real project data to explore the value of software estimates and #NoEstimates. We have submitted our research as an article to IEEE for … Continue reading

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The Cost of Delay and the Cost of Crap

I’ve noticed a lot of people in the agile and lean communities lately talking about the Cost of Delay. I think it is a great idea (I wrote about the concept in an article in IEEE Software “Value Creation and … Continue reading

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The Testing Diamond and the Pyramid

This posting is about the challenges of testing applications and building quality in with a solid testing strategy. All good software engineers know that they should be writing units tests, but still due to a number of reasons they don’t … Continue reading

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The ABCs of Software Requirements Prioritization

One of the best and simplest approaches I have used to help teams get clarity and focus around feature prioritization has been to categorize each feature by an A/B/C prioritization. Using this approach can help provide the balance necessary to … Continue reading

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The Context Leadership Model

The Context Leadership Model shown below is a model that I have written about in an Agile2004 Experience Report, IEEE Software and in the book “Stand Back and Deliver: Accelerating Business Agility” (Free Chapter or Amazon) The following post is … Continue reading

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The Purpose Alignment Model

I often see teams struggle with aligning their development approaches with the market strategy of how their product is going to be successful in the marketplace. To be successful, a product must do something really well that solves a particular … Continue reading

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Collaborating with Non-Collaborators

I recently came to the realization that often the issue that we face when talking about who we label as non-collaborators often has more to do with whether they agree with us or not.  When someone agrees with us, we … Continue reading

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Selling Agile to Your Team and Upwards

I’m often asked by passionate agile champions how to help sell agile within their company.  Selling Agile is all about change management.  As with any change management you need to look to the mindset of the people that you wish … Continue reading

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Welcome to Todd’s blog

Welcome to Todd’s blog.

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