Software Development: Accelerating Delivery Through Agile and DevOps Practices

The Agile ideal: teams with all the skills needed to deliver end-to-end value.

Agnostic Agile is a movement that promotes ethical, context-driven agility by prioritising principles over rigid frameworks. Championed by thought …

Gain practical skills in Scrum, Agile, and DevOps for software development, with hands-on team exercises and preparation for the Professional Scrum …

Explores Scrum Team effectiveness, emphasising that consistent delivery is essential and highlighting the Scrum Master's accountability for enabling …

Master Agile Planning to balance flexibility with predictability. Align teams, optimise delivery, and drive value continuously.

UX is integrated into Scrum, not handled separately. Design and validation happen within Sprints and backlog refinement, supporting continuous, …

Unlock better flow and real value with the Open Guide to Kanban—a practical, community-driven resource for teams in any industry. Join the movement!

Technical debt limits business agility, slows engineering, and hinders innovation. Managing it with automation and transparency is key to staying …

Explores how leaders can foster an agile mindset in development teams by promoting autonomy, mastery, purpose, and a culture of quality and continuous …

Worried about cloud migration chaos? Discover why a hybrid approach beats “lift and shift” and how to align teams for a seamless, risk-free …

Rollback is often riskier than rolling forward, especially for stateful apps. Safer deployment relies on progressive delivery and fail-forward …

Explains how Windows OS updates shifted from infrequent, risky releases to safe, staged rollouts using ring-based deployment and real-time user …

Many agile transformations restrict team autonomy, leading to control and compliance instead of true ownership, adaptability, and meaningful …

The end of a Sprint is a checkpoint for review and adaptation, not a deadline. Focus on flow, learning, and continuous improvement over strict task …

Explore practical strategies for Agile training, including virtual class setups, continuous forecasting, and using metrics to improve planning, …

A Service Level Expectation predicts how long work items take to complete, helping Scrum Teams improve workflow, identify issues, and set clear …

Inspecting and adapting the increment to ensure transparency and stakeholder feedback.

Kanban focuses on improving workflow by removing bottlenecks and constraints, reducing work in progress, and increasing process efficiency—not by …

Optimise Agile execution with Agile Planning Tools. Enhance backlog management, forecasting, and collaboration across teams.

Explores why Scrum Masters need authority, not just influence, to enforce Agile practices, remove blockers, and ensure teams follow Scrum for true …

Enhance forecasting in Agile and Scrum. Use empirical data to predict delivery timelines, manage risk, and optimise value delivery.

Is legacy tech slowing your team? Discover how removing friction unlocks agility, innovation, and faster delivery in your organisation.

Explores how staging environments aim to reduce risk in software development, their hidden costs, and modern alternatives like feature flags and …

Microsoft’s switch to 3-week Sprints increased team anxiety due to greater transparency, exposing inefficiencies but enabling faster, more frequent …

Explains why using blocked columns for stalled tasks on project boards harms workflow, and suggests better ways to highlight and address blocked work …

Practical experience is essential for effective Scrum Masters; certification alone is insufficient. True expertise comes from guiding teams, solving …

Staging environments can’t fully replicate production, often leading to false confidence. Real risk reduction comes from safe, incremental releases to …

Teams struggle not from lacking frameworks, but from ignoring feedback. Success depends on acting on signals, fostering safety, and empowering real …

Balancing backlog refinement prevents wasted effort and chaos. Aim for just enough detail so developers can plan sprints confidently without …

Improve clarity and readiness with Backlog Refinement. Ensure work is well-defined, prioritised, and ready for execution.

Explores common misconceptions about Agile teams, clarifying that true agility demands discipline, planning, and professionalism—not chaos or lack of …

Explains how self-managing teams in Scrum need structure and leadership, clarifying the Scrum Master's role in maintaining clarity, alignment, and …

Explains how self-managing teams thrive with autonomy balanced by structure, highlighting the need for clear goals, accountability, and alignment …

Explains how Scrum reveals team dysfunctions by clarifying roles and accountability, highlighting its purpose to expose issues that hinder value …

Explores how teams misuse self-management to dodge alignment, clarifying that true autonomy requires accountability, shared goals, and adherence to …

Explores how Product Owners can drive strategy, maximise value, and lead Scrum teams effectively, highlighting the need for empowerment beyond basic …

Agile and Scrum expose underlying team and workflow issues, helping organisations address real problems rather than masking dysfunction with process …

Discover how evidence-based management empowers Agile leaders to make data-driven decisions, foster continuous improvement, and boost team performance …

Explains how fragmented automation and tool silos harm software delivery, and advocates for unified engineering systems and platform engineering to …

Scrum Masters are most effective when they combine leadership skills with technical, business, and organisational mastery to support teams, Product …

Explains how managing technical debt and distinguishing it from poor quality can boost product efficiency, reduce costs, and support sustainable …

Explore proven strategies from Azure DevOps for building resilient, reliable software systems—covering transparency, automation, telemetry, incident …

Explores how DevOps transformation, refactoring, and ownership reduce technical debt, streamline development, and boost efficiency, team satisfaction, …

Explores the financial, productivity, and reputational impacts of poor-quality code, and offers practical steps to turn code quality into a …

Professional Scrum Teams prioritise software quality, accountability, and continuous improvement, ensuring each release is reliable, defect-free, and …

Explains why true Scrum requires real team agency, not just self-management in name, and how lacking agency leads to ineffective, ritualistic Agile …

Explores how Agile principles, technical leadership, and engineering excellence help teams manage unpredictability, adapt to change, and deliver …

The Definition of Done can evolve to improve quality but should not be weakened or vary per backlog item. Consistency ensures transparency and …

Explains technical debt in software development, its impact on teams, and practical strategies to identify, manage, and reduce it for long-term …

Learn how NKD Agility supports organisations in building engineering excellence through modern practices like performance engineering, testing in …

Explains the risks of the pick-n-mix branching anti-pattern in source control, its impact on code quality, and recommends feature branching and …

Explains why Sprints are valuable even with continuous delivery, highlighting benefits for planning, feedback, communication, and predictability in …

Explores how increasing deployment frequency, stable environments, and fast feedback loops improve software delivery, reduce time to market, and align …

Learn key practices for adopting modern source control and DevOps, including automation, release pipelines, and team collaboration to improve software …

Scrum alone does not cause project failure; lacking strong engineering practices and effective retrospectives leads to technical debt and poor Agile …

Explains how Scrum Sprints are primarily for planning, not fixed delivery, and discusses aligning delivery schedules, continuous deployment, and …

Explains how managing and repaying technical debt improves software quality, delivery speed, and long-term value by addressing both known and unknown …

Explains how simplifying complex software and committing to change enables continuous delivery, highlighting the need for cultural shift, resilience, …

Scrum Masters with deep knowledge and competence enable teams to deliver better products, drive business outcomes, and foster real improvement in …

Explores how early assumptions about competence led to Agile’s current skills gap, highlighting the need for continuous learning, better hiring, and …