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Agile Development Practices 2009
Keynote Presentations


 Wednesday, November 11, 2009 8:30 a.m.

 

 

Beyond Scope, Schedule, and Cost: Rethinking Performance Measures for Agile Development
Jim Highsmith, Cutter Consortium
A recent Business Week article proclaimed, “There is no more Normal.” With businesses in the throes of pervasive change, the traditional emphasis on “following the plan with minimal changes” must be supplanted by “adapting the plan to inevitable changes.” If agile development practices are about focusing on and delivering customer value, then how can adherence to traditional scope, schedule, and cost be a good way to measure performance? It can’t. Jim Highsmith explains the need to move beyond the classic Iron Triangle measures to instead focus agile software development success on value, quality, and constraints. Even today, many agile teams are asked to be flexible and adaptive and then are told to conform to planned scope, schedule, and cost goals. They are asked to adapt—inside a very small box. If we are to truly bring agile values to our organizations, then we must change our performance measures. To paraphrase the Agile Manifesto, it’s not that scope, schedule, and cost are unimportant but that value and quality are more important. Jim explores the rationale behind moving to this new set of agile performance measures.

Learn more about Jim Highsmith

  

 

 Wednesday, November 11, 2009 4:30 p.m.
 
 

Agile: Resetting and Restarting
Alistair Cockburn, Humans and Technology, Inc.
The Agile Manifesto—ten years in the making—was published in 2001. Now, with more than eight years of practice, the manifesto has greatly influenced the process of software development. It has influenced the IEEE's software contracting models, the Project Management Institute's view of software project management, the Software Engineering Institute's CMMI™ assessment model, and helped change the development process for thousands of organizations around the world. During these years, agile practices have moved forward and continued to mature, adopting ideas from lean manufacturing and the theory of constraints to add more rigor to our work. Still, many agile projects today tend to fail because they are overly tactical and do not take the long-term view. Join Alistair Cockburn, one of the seventeen original signers of the Agile Manifesto, as he re-examines the original thinking behind the manifesto, where it has succeeded, how it has been perverted, what is happening in the agile world today, and how agile practices might evolve in the coming years.

Learn more about Alistair Cockburn

 

 

 Thursday, November 12, 2009 8:30 a.m.
 
 

Agile Brushstrokes: The Art of Choosing an Agile Transition Style
Joshua Kerievsky, Industrial Logic, Inc.
Agile software processes vary in detail, depth, impact and endurance as much as painting styles like graffiti differ from Baroque or Impressionist art. What can artists teach us about successful Agile transitions? And what can past Agile transitions teach us about styles that endured or faded away? Joshua Kerievsky will map Agile transitions to art styles and identify elements that lead to success or failure. We will look at palettes of principles and practices, how and when Agile styles may be effectively blended, when or how to do a sketch before jumping to the canvas, how initial transitions can morph into wholly different styles and whether to spread a consistent or varying style across a department or organization. Joshua will focus on four fundamental Agile transitions styles as he walks you through case studies from the past decade. You will come away from this talk with an excellent perspective on the art of Agile Transitioning and learn what style(s) will work best for you.

Learn more about Joshua Kerievsky

 
     

 Thursday, November 12, 2009 4:30 p.m.
 
 

Navigating Conflict on Agile Teams: Why "Resolving" Conflict Won't Work
Lyssa Adkins, Cricketwing
On many agile development teams, conflict lurks under the surface and can erupt as a volcano of destruction and suffering. On many agile teams, conflict is viewed mostly as a distraction that keeps the team from getting the job done. However, on great agile teams, conflict is constant and welcomed by all as a catapult to higher performance. In all these situations, conflict is not a mechanistic system one can simply take apart, fix, and put back together. It is not about mechanisms; it is about human beings working together, day after day, in the maelstrom of constant collaboration and change. In this turbulence, how can teams chart a course through conflict and turn it into a force for greatness? Lyssa Adkins reveals a conflict model that helps you do just that, walking you through five levels of conflict from “Problem to Solve” to “World War” with each step finely tuned to view conflict in a deeply human and humane way. After all, agile is about people and interactions and nowhere is this more apparent than in the midst of conflict.  Come learn a framework you can use right away to help your teams navigate conflict and move toward high performance.

Learn more about Lyssa Adkins

 

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