Introducing INCEPTONE.COM

Hello all, it is my pleasure to announce that we’re releasing the first version of Inceptone.com. It is a custom website with its own domain name. We have already ported most of the popular posts to the new website and will be porting the rest soon. Once that is complete, we’ll be redirecting inceptone.wordpress.com to inceptone.com.

This is exciting because, with the custom website we have the opportunity to do way more than what we can do on a simple blog. As we roll out these new features, we’ll be providing updates on the blog at inceptone.com.

Please feel free to check out the new website at http://www.inceptone.com/

 

Who is a Scrum Master?

Responsibilities of the Scrum Master

As organizations continue to embrace Agile practices more and more (and specifically Scrum), the role of Scrum Master is becoming more and more prevalent. Scrum brings together project teams to work with Product Owners to iteratively build great products with continuous feedback and guidance from the Product Owner. The operations of a scrum team is like a super-productive machinery when it is working well. However, none of this is possible without the one person who holds everything together and makes this machinery to productively work – that person is the Scrum Master.

What is an Agile Project?

An Agile project is a project that follows one of the methodologies within the Agile umbrella of methodologies and practices. Some of the well known methodologies or practices within Agile include Scrum, Lean, Kanban, Xtreme Programming etc. Each of these essentially forms a tool-kit within the Agile Project Manager’s toolset. While some of the tools may be mutually-exclusive, most of the tools can be used in combination with others in order to allow for best results.

What is a Web Development Project?

A Web Development Project is a project that involves creation or major overhaul of a Web property – a website or a web application. While traditionally these projects tended to be run in using a waterfall methodology, now-a-days you’d see most of these projects run in various flavours of Agile. Depending upon the organization, the project would go through a  variable size of an initiation stage.

What is a Waterfall Project?

Waterfall SDLC

Traditionally, most projects were organized in work-specific phases. As one phase of the project is completed, the project moves to the next phase. Without the first phase being completed, the next phase would not start. Some projects maintained strict gates between the phases while others allowed for some overlap. This phase by phase progression of a project when laid out on a timeline almost looks like a waterfall, thus being known as a Waterfall Project. Waterfall being the name of the methodology being used here.

Who is a Software/Enterprise Architect?

Software or Application is not a result of a chaotic process of people putting different pieces of code anywhere they wish to. It generally follows a design principle – there is a method to the madness. The person or role who is responsible to envision this architecture within the software (or application) is known as the Software (or Application) Architect.

An enterprise’s information technology landscape may comprise of many applications or softwares. How these sets of applications  are structured and how they talk to each other is governed by a vision, generally defined by the Enterprise Architect. Thus the Enterprise Architect plays at a higher level as compared to a Software or Application Architect. On a day-to-day basis they may be known simply as an “Architect”.

You may need to involve an Architect in you are building a new software or application or making significant changes to the software or application or to that of the bigger enterprise landscape.

 

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Related Posts:

• Who is a Software Developer?
• Who is a Tester or Quality Analyst?
• Who are the people involved in a Project?
• Who are the people involved in an Agile Project?

 

Who is a Software Developer?

Software is becoming a core part of our lives. Software however needs special skills in order for it to be configured or customized. And in order to be on the cutting edge, a lot of organizations try to maintain customizations to software they use for a number of their core competencies. This leads to software customization or more often customized software development – which done by one or more specialist called the Software Developer.

Who is a Tester or Quality Analyst?

Every product or service release or upgrade needs the team to ensure that the product or service functions the way it is supposed to. The extent to which the product or service meets the needs of its customer represents its quality, which is a collective responsibility of the team. One of the ways to ensure quality is through verification through testing. A person who is dedicated to complete testing and verification on the whole or a part of the product is generally known as the Tester or Quality Analyst.

A tester or quality analyst may perform various types of testing, on various fronts to ensure quality. Some examples are – functional testing, load testing, performance testing, security testing etc.

Who is a Graphical Designer?

Creating something new is always a leap forward. And leaping forward is not easy – especially if you are working with a group of people – a team, or multiple teams. In case of products with graphical interfaces, this needs getting everyone aligned on how the new product interface would look like. This is where graphical designers come into play. Graphical designers help put the vision of the new interface on paper (or software). Depending upon your organization, project or stakeholders, the graphical designer might have different levels of autonomy and control of the future vision – varying from defining the vision, providing ideas to just following instructions and laying things out on the grid based on instructions.

What is a Team?

Team is a very interesting concept. At a very basic level, a team is a group of people put together to achieve a special objective. But, a well-formed team is way more than a group of people. Its output could be way more than sum of the outputs of the individuals comprising the team. A great team could help the individuals achieve way more than they individually can.