Management

Have you ever wondered what kind of methodology you should use to label the releases of your software? Many projects use a structure with three numbers, each separated by a dot. I have good news for you: This structure is very common and well documented. It’s called Semantic Versioning and you’ll find all the details about it here. Building Version Identifiers with SemVer Version numbers are structured according to the X.Y.Z. structure. X stands for the major version, Y for the minor version and Z for the patch version. ...

The term MVP - Minimum Viable Product is no longer a new word. The term was first coined by Frank Robinson in 2001 and is now used very frequently. The basic idea of an MVP is to make a version of a product available to the customer as quickly as possible. The goal is not to generate sales, but to learn. Of course it’s not a bad idea and it’s also the intention to earn money with your product, but the idea here is to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and better understand their needs and requirements. This allows you to use early feedback and improve the quality of your product. ...

After I introduced Scrum in my last article, today will be about Kanban. Like Scrum, Kanban is an agile software development methodology and I have to say that I apply the principles I present today to most of my personal side projects. Kanban is Japanese and can be translated as “billboard”. Kanban was first introduced by Toyota in the automotive industry and is now mostly associated with just-in-time concepts. But I don’t want to bore you with historical details, I want to show you the usage in software development. ...

As a software developer you are certainly aware of Scrum. You may have already used Scrum or heard about it only marginally. With this article I would like to give you an overview of what Scrum is and how you can apply this methodology. Plus: You can also use many of the principles even for working on your side projects alone or in a small group. Scrum is probably the best known process model of agile software development. It is a collection of definitions and tools for managing projects. Scrum is not a rigid structure, but a flexible toolbox. A scrum project team consists of three parties: the product owner, who determines what is to be developed in the next sprint, i.e. the next iteration, the development team itself, who is responsible for the implementation and presentation of the results, and the Scrum Master, who guarantees the smooth running of the project. Scrum is designed for small, self-organized teams. ...