Lean Management

Tutorials

MA Agile Release Planning, Metrics, and Retrospectives

Michael Mah, QSM Associates, Inc.

Mon, 11/11/2013 - 8:30am

How do you compare the productivity and quality you achieve with agile practices with that of traditional waterfall projects? Join Michael Mah to learn about both agile and waterfall metrics and how these metrics behave in real projects. Learn how to use your own data to move from sketches on a whiteboard to create agile project trends on productivity, time-to-market, and defect rates. Using recent, real-world case studies, Michael offers a practical, expert view of agile measurement, showing you these metrics in action on retrospectives and release estimation and planning. In hands-on exercises, learn how to replicate these techniques to make your own comparisons for time, cost, and quality. Working in pairs, calculate productivity metrics using the templates Michael employs in his consulting practice. You can leverage these new metrics to make the case for changing to more agile practices and creating realistic project commitments in your organization. Take back new ways for communicating to key decision makers the value of implementing agile development practices.

MN An Introduction to SAFe: The Scaled Agile Framework NEW

Ken Pugh, Net Objectives

Mon, 11/11/2013 - 1:00pm

Many organizations have achieved agility at the team level only to be unable to achieve it across teams. The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) provides both a vision and method for how to achieve this. SAFe is the first documented framework that can be used to scale agile throughout an organization. It is a combination of lean, kanban, and Scrum—lean to provide a context for an organization, kanban to manage the flow of projects, and Scrum to provide agile at the team level. Beginning with an introduction to lean and kanban, Ken Pugh explains why they are required for agile at scale.

TI Eight Steps to Kanban

Ken Pugh, Net Objectives

Tue, 11/12/2013 - 8:30am

Because transitioning to agile can be difficult—and often wrenching—for teams, many organizations are turning to kanban practices. Kanban, which involves just-in-time software delivery, offers a more gradual evolution to agile and is adaptable to many company cultures and environments. With kanban, developers pull work from a queue—taking care not to exceed a threshold for simultaneous tasks—while making progress visible to all. Ken Pugh shares eight steps to adopt kanban in your team and organization.

Concurrent Sessions

AW5 Agile Success with Scrum: It’s All about the People

Bob Hartman, Agile For All

Michael Vizdos, Vizdos Enterprises, LLC

Wed, 11/13/2013 - 2:15pm

Is it possible to be doing everything Scrum says to do and still fail horribly? Unfortunately, the answer is yes—and teams do it every day. To many, Scrum means concentrating on the meetings and artifacts, and making sure the roles all do their jobs. Bob Hartman and Michael Vizdos explore why success with Scrum means understanding the people who do the work and giving them the tools and environment to do their best in a meaningful way.

AT4 Lean Startup Tools for Scrum Product Owners

Arlen Bankston, LitheSpeed

Thu, 11/14/2013 - 10:15am

In just a few years, the Lean Startup movement has gained influence by promoting a powerful but simple agile product management toolset—one that complements agile software development approaches such as Scrum and kanban. Arlen Bankston explores the tools and techniques product owners at startup companies and others are employing today for project visioning, experimental design, evaluating new feature impact, prototyping, split testing, and gaining early customer feedback.

AT8 The Kanban Pizza Game: Maximize Profit by Managing Flow

Brad Swanson, agile42

Thu, 11/14/2013 - 2:15pm

The Kanban Pizza Game is a hands-on simulation designed to teach the core elements of a kanban system—visualize the workflow, limit your work-in-process (WIP), manage flow, make process policies explicit, and improve collaboratively.

AT11 Step Away from the Waterfall: Using Agile for COTS Implementations

Jason Fair, Genesis Consulting

Thu, 11/14/2013 - 3:45pm

Have you wondered how to deliver your COTS projects quicker and realize their business value sooner? How do you remove all of the “ceremony” and “waste” of the implementation process, while maintaining the integrity of the delivered COTS package? Commonly, traditional waterfall project methodologies are used to implement comprehensive COTS projects. However, many of these implementations finish late and over budget. Stakeholders are often disappointed at the quality of the delivered product and the reduced or delayed realization of benefits.