Technical Excellence: Engineering Practices That Drive Agility and Quality

Adding more staging environments does not reduce deployment risk; true safety comes from automated testing, continuous integration, and quality …

The foundation of Agile: clean code, automation, and test-first development.

Explains how technical leaders can break down organisational silos and enforce better branching, team structures, and architecture to improve software …

Explores how fostering a culture of quality and engineering excellence across teams leads to better, safer products, highlighting the impact of …

Explains why business logic should not be written in stored procedures, highlighting testability, maintainability, scalability, and strategies for …

Explains how adopting test-first practices in software development improves quality, reduces bugs, and enables confident continuous delivery by …

NKD Agility helped SLB unify build and release processes across 90 teams in 13 countries, boosting team ownership, efficiency, and engineering …

Explains how audience-based deployment and testing in production enable faster feedback, safer rollouts, and higher software quality by targeting real …

Learn how evolving engineering practices like Feature Flags, TDD, and refactoring enable smoother Sprint workflows and reduce technical debt in Scrum …

Driving software design through automated tests for better quality.

Test First is a practice that defines success before implementation. It supports manual and automated testing, with a strong preference for automation …

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

Explains how the Definition of Done evolves in Scrum, aligning team practices with organisational standards to ensure consistent quality, compliance, …

Continuous delivery is achievable for any software, regardless of complexity. Success depends on investment in automation, quality, and process …

Scrum teams must deliver working software to real users every Sprint; true progress is measured by delivery to production, not just by completing …

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

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

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

Explains how to engineer a robust, fault-tolerant token counting server using FastAPI and PowerShell, covering error handling, retries, fallbacks, and …

Automating software testing to improve quality and accelerate feedback loops.

Explores how automation in testing, deployment, and validation streamlines development, reduces technical debt, and builds confidence for teams and …

Explores how frequent code deployments improve code quality, reduce technical debt, enable faster feedback, and support iterative, user-focused …

Explains how to set up a scalable release pipeline using Release Management in Visual Studio 2013, covering continuous release, feedback environments, …

Explains how automation in continuous delivery improves software reliability, reduces risk, and enables faster, safer deployments through consistent, …

Explores code review practices for quality assurance, highlighting automation, pull requests, and early defect detection to ensure high-quality, …

Explains how feature flags enable safe, incremental software releases, support continuous delivery, and use user feedback to improve features before …

Explores how automation boosts software development by reducing errors, speeding up deployments, and ensuring consistent, high-quality releases in …

Explores how Visual Studio 2012 supports continuous quality enablement, automated testing, and rapid delivery in modern software development for …

Explains how to set up and use Standard Environments in Visual Studio 2012 TFS for automated software deployment and testing, enabling consistent, …

Explains the role of automated testing in modern software development, covering types, integration, benefits, challenges, and tools for maintaining …

Explains how to unit test applications against the Team Foundation Server 2012 API, focusing on handling authentication for automated and unattended …

Explains how short-lived topic branches in source control improve software quality, enable modularity, speed up integration, and support agile, …

Technical debt requires leadership investment to resolve; without support for automation and quality improvements, continuous delivery is not …

Explains why staggered iterations harm software delivery, increasing technical debt, and recommends cross-functional teams, test-first, and working …

Explains how Scrum supports continuous flow and agility by prioritising Sprint Goals, Done increments, CI/CD practices, and outcomes over rigid sprint …

Argues that the Scrum Master role requires proven mastery and real-world experience, not entry-level skills or certifications, and should be earned …

Explains the difference between subjective goals and the objective Definition of Done in Scrum, highlighting how clear, measurable criteria ensure …

Resilience must be designed into products from the start, not added later. Build systems to detect, contain, and recover from failures, making …

Explores how technical excellence in Agile development reduces risk, prevents technical debt, and boosts product quality and delivery speed through …

Is your team’s “done” really done? Discover how a clear, objective definition of done boosts quality, agility, and trust in product delivery.

Learn key strategies for building business resilience and continuity, including observability, system decoupling, routine deployments, team …

Explores how optimising systems, reducing technical debt, and strong leadership improve engineering quality, productivity, and innovation while …

Achieving excellence in software craftsmanship, architecture, and engineering practices.

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

Ensure software quality and reliability with Automated Testing. Detect issues early, reduce manual effort, and accelerate delivery.

True organisational resilience means improving technical health—like testing, automation, and architecture—beyond just surviving incidents or …

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

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

Explores why fixed best practices don't suit complex continuous delivery, highlighting adaptive approaches like audience-based delivery, testing in …

Explores how test-driven development and pair programming improve software architecture, code quality, team skills, and long-term productivity by …

Explores a developer’s transition to DevOps, highlighting key challenges: cultural change, toolchain automation, and continuous learning for effective …

Explains how defining quality standards, acceptance criteria, and automation in software delivery leads to predictable outcomes, fewer bugs, and …

Explains how to automate and streamline software release management using Team Foundation Server 2012, Lab Management, and Octopus, focusing on build, …

Intensive five-day course for software developers covering Scrum, Visual Studio 2010, .NET, and Agile practices through hands-on team sprints and …

Step-by-step guide to building an automated Release Management pipeline for professional developers, covering build, deployment, environment setup, …

Explores how automation in software development reduces human error, improves reliability, and streamlines workflows, using real-world examples and …

Explains how to configure MSTest for automated testing of web services on Team Foundation Build Services 2010, including handling dynamic server ports …

Explores whether test-driven development (TDD) accelerates software delivery by reducing complexity, rework, and design flaws, and improving …

Technical debt includes slow feedback, fragile systems, and manual processes that hinder progress. Addressing it early with automation and testing …

Stop relying on memory for quality. Discover why automated pipelines beat manual checks, and how embedding quality gates ensures trust, speed, and …