This article by
Jeff Gothelf asks the question “Is Agile finally over?” after 20+ years of
implementation to tech field. He argues that even though Agile’s widespread
adaptation hasn’t got the result that Agile was intended for. Many companies
claimed to be “Agile” as they copy each other, but the implementation of it was
shallow or almost non-existent to make changes according to it. Therefore, he
says that agile does not seems working as companies try to make employee follow
set of rules instead of working in following the basic principles of Agile. He
concluded that organizations need to focus on true organizational agility
rather than rigid framework adoption.

This article
caught my attention while searching through the internet as it criticizes Agile’s
current status in the business world as ideal of agile does not really fit in
reality in organization experience. The vague promises and core ideas are often
overlooked to the ‘wants’ of either customer or the organization. The output is
never about efficient program but a program that works made in short amount
time. In the end, it feels like the organization’s internal culture and goals
must align with the methods it adopts to fully be efficient which does not seem
to work for a lot of groups that ‘follows’ agile. Learning that to me, teamwork
following agile principle is hard from top-down management as they try to
follow rules made by the organization to follow the given framework, that is
why agile is not working for many in my opinion.

This got me to
reflect that to practice agile in the future, that I need to try to make sure
that if the company says they do ‘agile’ format for development, I need to check
with others so that if they want ‘agile’ following company standard or the real
agile that I learned in class. I feel like this way even more because when I work
at a part time job, company wanted to follow xyz because and it was annoying
and required lot of process which contradicted for the speed of work they
wanted us to work on. Therefore, no one really followed by the book or the procedures
were implemented shallow, so it was not effective at all, I think this was the same
case for agile in the long run. It feels like agile manifesto was built for
small teams or companies where they could discuss things multiple times in
small groups not to be used by large companies as it will be always shallow or
just another term to company’s rules to schedule how work is done. Therefore, I
feel like widespread use of agile is dying down unlike what the author says
because no one tries to keep that rule in big companies. 

https://jeffgothelf.com/blog/is-agile-over/

From the blog Sung Jin's CS Devlopemnt Blog by Unknown and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This week, while looking for blog posts to write about, I came across an article by Kiera Abbamonte on the Zapier blog called “The Best Free Project Management Software in 2025.” Kiera’s article dives into eight top project management tools that are totally free and packed with features for task management, collaboration, and keeping things productive. Zapier really went all out testing each one, breaking down what each tool does best. It’s a great find if you’re trying to manage projects without spending a ton.

Kiera starts off by explaining that while some people manage fine with just a to-do list or calendar, teams usually need more structured tools to keep everyone on the same page. When you’re working with others, it’s important to have ways to track tasks, communicate easily, and stay organized. Her list includes some well-known options, like Trello, which is big on visual task organization, and Asana, which focuses on teamwork. She also mentions tools like ClickUp for flexible task views and Airtable for custom workflows. For developers, Jira is recommended because it’s designed with Agile in mind, and Height even has some AI features for automating repetitive tasks. Finally, there’s Paymo, which is especially helpful for freelancers since it includes time tracking and invoicing all in one place.

I chose this article because it lines up well with what we’re learning about project management. It doesn’t just list a bunch of apps; it actually dives into why certain features—like flexibility, integrations, and collaboration tools—matter. Kiera does a great job highlighting the pros and cons, which helped me think about what I’d really want in a project management tool. It also got me thinking about how each tool might suit different types of projects.

After reading, I feel like I have a better sense of how the right project management setup can make a difference, especially for group projects. Trello’s visual boards, for example, seem like a simple, flexible way to keep tasks organized, whether it’s for personal projects or something with a team. Asana’s team-focused features make me realize how much clear task assignments and easy communication can help everyone stay on track. This article has definitely given me a few ideas on organizing future group projects to keep things moving smoothly.

If you’re curious about free project management tools, I’d definitely recommend checking out this article. It’s a practical guide for anyone looking to get organized without spending a fortune, and Kiera’s insights make it easy to see which tools might fit best based on your project needs.

Link to the post: The Best Free Project Management Software in 2025

From the blog CS@Worcester – Harley Philippe's Tech Journal by Harley Philippe and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This week, I explored the blog post “Rebasing: What Can Go Wrong?” by Jessica Rose, a software engineer who delves into the potential pitfalls of using Git’s rebase command. In class, we use Git extensively, which made this post especially relevant. Rose provides a detailed explanation of rebase, a tool used in Git for streamlining commit histories. While it can be incredibly powerful, Rose emphasizes that it’s easy to make mistakes that can lead to confusion, conflicts, or even the loss of code changes.

The blog post highlights several common issues developers may encounter while using rebase, such as accidentally overwriting commits, losing track of the original branch history, or making errors when dealing with merge conflicts. Rose walks the reader through how to prevent these issues, offering advice like creating backups before rebasing and using interactive rebase for a more controlled process. She also provides helpful tips for handling conflicts during the rebase, stressing the importance of careful attention to detail and understanding the consequences of each decision made during the process.

I chose this blog post because it directly relates to our class’s frequent use of Git. Git is a powerful version control system that helps manage code, but as we work with it, we often encounter challenges in mastering commands like rebase. Understanding the nuances of rebase can help avoid the frustrations that come with making mistakes in a shared repository. This post offered practical insights into some of those mistakes, providing guidance on how to handle them more effectively.

What stood out to me the most was how Rose emphasized the importance of understanding what’s happening at each step of the rebase process. It’s not just about executing commands but also being aware of the impact on the entire commit history and potential conflicts. I found this especially helpful, as I’ve been guilty of rushing through Git commands without fully grasping their implications. The blog helped me realize that, even with powerful tools like rebase, the key is taking time to understand the underlying mechanics and risks involved.

The material from this post will certainly influence how I approach Git in the future. I now feel more confident using rebase, knowing that I should always create backups before rebasing and be mindful of merge conflicts. In future collaborative projects, I’ll make sure to use interactive rebase more carefully, ensuring I don’t overwrite commits unintentionally. Additionally, I’ll aim to avoid common mistakes like rewriting history that others depend on.

Overall, Rose’s blog provides an insightful and practical guide to understanding rebase and avoiding its common pitfalls. For anyone who works with Git or is learning it, I highly recommend reading the post to better understand the potential risks and how to manage them effectively. It’s a perfect resource for improving Git workflows and ensuring smoother collaboration in teams.https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/11/06/rebasing-what-can-go-wrong-/

From the blog CS@Worcester – CS Journal by Alivia Glynn and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

https://www.blackduck.com/blog/generative-ai-risks-in-software.html

This blog posts discusses the issues that AI generated code causes for licensing caused by the use of proprietary code in model training, and issues for coding standards caused by the varying quality of AI code. I chose to look at this blog because I know many of my peers, including myself, occasional use AI to generate code for debugging and for small chunks of code that they don’t feel like making on their own for the sake of efficiency. Even in these small cases, we run the risks proposed by the blog.
Reading this blog made me reflect on how I use AI in my own coding, especially as it relates to coding standards. Typically I use it for debugging, which really means the only thing I need to concern myself with is making sure I understand the adjusted code and it follows the same formatting I used. However, this has affected my thoughts about using AI for small snippets that would be more efficiently written with AI. Upon reflection with the article, it made me realize the reason we allow AI to write code, is the same reasons we always write bad code; we just want to get it done. The most interesting part is, it also has the same consequences as just rushing to get it done. There have been a handful of times when I’ve been looking at a peer’s code, and it did something I thought was quite impressive, then I went to ask them about the functionality of it, but they were unable to do the fact that they were not the ones who actually wrote the code I was interested in, and it was so abstracted that they themselves did not really understand it.
I will admit I’ve had similar things happen before. For example, there was one time when I was working on a project, and there was a method I had to write that was very annoying. So I asked an AI to write it for me so I could move on with my project unannoyed. The code it wrote functioned in the tests I gave it, and it was even formatted correctly, it also had comments that describe what it was doing. Later on in the project I was getting very ludicrous results, and I had no idea why. After a while, I went back to the code and realized, the comments it wrote basically just recited the prompt I gave it, and did not actually describe what it was doing. After making attempts at fixing it, I ultimately had to completely rewrite the method on my own, wasting much of my time. My experiences as well as this article have allowed me to realize just how important writing clean, and understandable code is, and why we should avoid trying to cut corners on our projects even if it seemingly save us time. It is far more important to make good code at an efficient, than generate functioning code at a fast pace.

From the blog CS@Worcester – CS ZStomski by Zachary Stomski and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

So, this video here is by a channel called Software Developer Diaries and is a quick rundown of what software licenses are and to avoid the dangers of not properly dealing with a software license. As well as going over the different types of licenses and the particulars of each type. I decided to look more into the topic of software licenses as I felt I wanted another perspective from someone in the field who was actively developing and using licenses. Also, I felt I needed a bit of a refresher on the different licenses and this quick video seemed perfect. Everything in this video is kind of exactly what you would expect aside from using a few examples of each license and then providing some use cases for each license. There were a few things I did learn from this video like permissive cases being the most popular form of license or how I forgot that copyleft licenses are freely used but can have different stipulations based on the license. Otherwise, I thought a lot of this information was nice and succinct and helped quite a bit to remember the importance of why we even use licenses and also to remember what each license does specifically. I think this video did reveal me to me some questions while I was watching it. It made me consider how in the future I will probably be constantly tangling with licenses all the time when using some kind of proprietary code or some piece of code I found somewhere and that I’ll need to remember to always look for the license file whenever I’m in github or something similar so as to avoid any kind of legal repercussions or worse. So for me this tells me to expect quite a bit of future annoyance and stress down the line but if I can just memorize the various licenses and what they are now I’ll be able to know what each does at a glance when I’m hunting for code. But otherwise this does make me wonder if there are other licenses other than the ones mentioned in this video, also it makes me wonder about why we initially started to use licenses. I understand now why we currently use them but what was the impetus for starting to use them? But that’s something to think about in the future, for now I need to concentrate on remembering the rest of these licenses.

Here’s the video:

From the blog CS@Worcester – aRomeoDev by aromeo4f978d012d4 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The article I found today that I want to write about is titled “My 5 Biggest Screw-Ups as a Scrum Master”. I chose this article because the title of it really jumped out and resonated with me when I read it. I figured it would give me some good insight on what it’s like to be a scrum master and possibly have some good tips or tricks on how to avoid common mistakes when you’re new to it.

The article mentions his five major mistakes and how he fixed them, which I’ll get into below.

For the first mistake, he mentioned how when he heard differing viewpoints than his own, he would be upset. He fixed this by putting himself in the other people’s shoes, and trying to understand why they were seeing it how they were. For his second mistake, as it sort of ties into the first one, any feedback he got was very tough to swallow. To fix this, he actively sorted out as much feedback as he could in order to get used to it and learn from it. For the third mistake, he pretty much just simply allowed his group to “self-manage” on their own, but it led to a lot more confusion than anything. To fix this, he set goals and clear responsibilities for all members of the group but still allowed for the sense of freedom that self-management implies. As he says “it gives a sense of direction and vision for the state they want to achieve”. The fourth issue was missing out on signs of lack of trust; meaning not realizing the group members may have issues with each other. For his solution here, it really seems he doesn’t really have one. He tried everything he could but, at the end of the day, the two group members were never going to get along. I guess the takeaway here is to just recognize this and either reconstruct the group or direct your energy elsewhere. The fifth issue, working beyond his experience, was simply just that. He thought it would be a piece of cake to be a scrum master, but it was far from it. He learned you must expand your comfort zone by going into uncomfortable situations with the intent to learn, and that honesty is extremely crucial.

Although we learned about Scrum in class, this article did a good job summarizing and explaining the issues you may experience within it, especially as a first time scrum master. It’s honestly probably something I would have never thought of and I probably would’ve made the same mistake as the writer by thinking it would be a piece of cake. Because of this article, I now know a little bit more as to what to expect whenever I have my first big project as a scrum master and HOPEFULLY I can avoid some, if not all, of the mistakes made by the person here.

Link: https://medium.com/serious-scrum/my-5-biggest-screw-ups-as-a-scrum-master-f912be2ed2d4

From the blog CS@Worcester – RBradleyBlog by Ryan Bradley and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.