Three Agile articles in this months Crosstalk magazine

Crosstalk is an excellent journal about software engineering in defense.  This months issue has the following three articles about Agile software development:

1.  What Engineering Has in Common With Manufacturing and Why It Matters  ( PDF 171KB)
by Dr. Alistair Cockburn
This article equates software engineering decsions to manufacturing products. It then picks six lessons from the last 50 years in manufacturing and applies these lessons to software development.    

2.  Collaboration Skills for Agile Teams  ( PDF 98KB)
by Esther Derby
In this article, Esther Derby outlines key collaboration skills that help teams maintain productive relationships, avoid destructive conflict, and benefit from everyone’s best ideas.     

3.  Toward Agile Systems Engineering Processes  ( PDF 270KB)
by Dr. Richard Turner
This article presents thoughts on agility and systems engineering, looking at how systems engineering can be more agile and how it can support agility in other disciplines, hoping to look at systems engineering through the agile lens and to extend the dialogue between agile and plan-driven software proponents into the systems engineering world.

Plus this one, looks very promising.  The OODA loop is – according to many of my TOC colleagues - very important, but I always find myself drifting when I read about it.  Hope this article helps:

4.  “OO-OO-OO!” The Sound of a Broken OODA Loop  ( PDF 142KB)
by Dr. David G. Ullman
In this article, the author explores why the Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act Loop gets stuck at the decision step process, and it instructs how to put the D in the loop as a basis for effective action.