Some challenges in cloud computing for developers

- programming language,
- one of the main challenges to developing for the cloud is understanding how application service dependencies are handled. Application service dependencies include databases, message servers or other services deployed in a distributed environment. Traditionally this has been handled by mapping service references to the physical IPs during the deployment process, but the cloud introduces a new variable, and even the IP addresses are not known beforehand.
- Another issue with developing for the cloud is addressing horizontal scalability

Agile contracts with fixed budgets

Good link on Agile contracts - it describes how to contract agile projects in fixed cost model

http://www.slideshare.net/pzol/agile-contracts-with-fixed-budgets

Tools/skills for PaaS cloud model

Each cloud vendor technology provides the basic enterprise application building blocks you will need in order to build new skills or to deepen your current skills. They include message queues, databases, Web services and specific APIs to access specific cloud services. This collection of services is known as Platform as a Service or PaaS

The fastest way to skyrocket your skills to the cloud is to get some hands on experience with real tools. Google’s App Engine (GAE) is a super fast way to get started. Of course, this assumes you are a Java or Python developer. Microsoft .NET code jocks can start by looking at Microsoft Azure.

Some tools you use for development will have to change, especially if going to a PaaS cloud model. Vendor solutions have their own tools to streamline development on their platform. However, PaaS providers such as Google offer a plugin for the Eclipse development IDE. This plugin drastically simplifies development for the GAE. If you use Eclipse, no further tool skills are required.

Role of the manager in Scrum - by Pete Deemer

Open source tools for Agile/Scrum

After looking into many tools, I found some really useful open source tools  for agile/scrum -

- IceScrum (http://www.icescrum.org) 

- XPlanner (http://www.xplanner.org/)

- Agilefant (http://www.agilefant.org)

- Agilo (http://www.agile42.com/agilo/)