Collaboration or Communication

Tutorials

MB Software Requirements Fundamentals for BAs, Testers, and Developers NEW

Lee Copeland, Software Quality Engineering

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 8:30am

You deal with software requirements all the time. Whether you are a developer in an agile environment, an analyst who identifies and documents requirements for plan-driven development, a software designer who studies requirements as the basis for agile development, a tester who employs or often must discover requirements as the foundation of test cases, or a technical user who describes your needs to development, you need the right approaches and skills to develop and interpret software requirements.

ME Build Product Backlogs with Test-Driven Thinking—and More NEW

David Hussman, DevJam

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 8:30am

Many product backlogs of user stories are nothing more than glorified to-do lists. Teams have lost the idea of prioritizing real business value and, instead, focus only on finishing stories and accumulating story points. Join David Hussman as he drives a stake into the heart of lame backlogs and breathes new life into test-driven thinking that is meaningful to testers, developers, product owners, and others. Using real-world examples, David shares his experiences and teaches tools you can use to fuse centered-product thinking with end-to-end testing.

MJ Building a Culture of Trust Where Agile Thrives NEW

Pollyanna Pixton, Accelinnova

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 8:30am

We know that teams and individuals who take ownership of their work outperform—often by 50 percent—those who don’t. And in agile, team ownership is a key principle. However, leaders often struggle with letting their teams own their work. Leaders are afraid that if they trust, their teams will fail. So leaders must create a culture of trust and help their teams take ownership. But what if the team builds the wrong product? Teams must align with the strategy and purpose of the business as well as with value to the customer. Finally, the organization must deal honestly with ambiguity.

MP Six Free Ideas to Improve Agile Success SOLD OUT

Pollyanna Pixton, Accelinnova

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 1:00pm

Free? Is anything free these days? Based on her experience working with organizational leaders and her research into what drives organizational performance, Pollyanna Pixton shares six ideas—and the keys to their effective implementation—to help assure the success of your agile teams. As a bonus, her suggestions won’t cost you a thing. Pollyanna’s first free idea is how to create a culture of trust—the keystone of open collaboration—within your team and organization. The second free idea is about ownership—how to give it and not take it back.

TC Eight Steps to Kanban

Ken Pugh, Net Objectives

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 8:30am

Transitioning to agile can be difficult—and often downright wrenching—for teams, so many organizations are turning to kanban instead. 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.

TD Essential Patterns of Mature Agile Teams

Bob Galen, Velocity Partners

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 8:30am

Many teams have a relatively easy time adopting the tactical aspects of agile methodologies. Usually a few classes, some tools introduction, and a bit of practice lead teams toward a fairly efficient and effective agile adoption. However, these teams often get “stuck” and begin to regress or simply start going through the motions—neither maximizing their agile performance nor delivering as much value as they could.

TH Agile Project Failures: Root Causes and Corrective Actions

Jeff Payne, Coveros, Inc.

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 8:30am

Agile initiatives always begin with the best of intentions—accelerate delivery, better meet customer needs, or improve software quality. Unfortunately, some agile projects do not deliver on these expectations. If you want help to ensure the success of your agile project or get an agile project back on track, this session is for you. Jeff Payne discusses the most common causes of agile project failure and how you can avoid these issues—or mitigate their damaging effects.

TK Essential Patterns of Mature Agile Leaders NEW

Bob Galen, Velocity Partners

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 1:00pm

Currently much of agile adoption—coaching, advice, techniques, and training―revolves around the agile teams. Leaders are typically ignored, marginalized, or, in the worst cases, vilified. Bob Galen contends that there is a central and important role for managers and effective leadership within agile environments. In this workshop, we’ll explore the patterns of mature agile managers and leaders—those who understand servant leadership and how to effectively support, grow, coach, and empower their agile teams in ways that increase the teams’ performance, accountability, and engagement.

Keynotes

K1 From Chaos to Order—Leading Software Teams Today

Ken Whitaker, Leading Software Maniacs

Wed, 11/12/2014 - 8:30am

To successfully lead “the nerd herd,” you’re expected to motivate your team to perform, encourage innovation, and produce software solutions that delight the customer. Prioritizing your time for what’s most important can be quite challenging—especially when you’re swamped with a steady stream of incoming requests, meeting overload, and the ever-present personnel issues. The expectation of even faster product deployment, the evolution of software development to agility, and the establishment of self-directed teams often require even more time devoted to planning.

K3 The Future of Agile: Dilution, Calcification, or Evolution?

Jeff "Cheezy" Morgan, LeanDog

Thu, 11/13/2014 - 8:30am

The agile revolution began more than a dozen years ago. It was started by a small band of rebels who had radical ideas, shared a common vision, and wanted to change the world by challenging the status quo. Where is that agile revolution today? Has it continued the vision of its founders? Has it stayed true to its original values and principles as set forth in its manifesto or has it been watered down to make it more palatable to the masses? Cheezy Morgan ponders the answers to these and related questions.

K4 Get Out of Your Comfort Zone―Now

Tricia Broderick, Pearson

Thu, 11/13/2014 - 4:15pm

In an industry that continues to rapidly evolve, the pressure to increase our mastery can be overwhelming. Whether browsing the web or your organization's technical library, it's discouraging to realize that many of the skills you’ve mastered are now obsolete, replaced by new, important ones that you know little about. Is there a way to change discouragement into excitement? Early in her career, Tricia Broderick was terrified to take chances for fear of failing.

Concurrent Sessions

AT3 Toward a Well-Run, Cross-Functional, High-Performance Team

Fuming Ye, Pitney Bowes

Thu, 11/13/2014 - 10:00am

Behind every successful delivery to a customer, there is a well-run, cross-functional team. They trust each other; they work well together. Yet every team, agile or not, faces the challenges of building such a team. And, despite their best efforts, many teams fail in this attempt, never fully realize their full potential, and are unable to deliver the best possible value to their customers. Fuming Ye discusses the foundations to build a high performing team: an agile team’s responsibilities to each other, problem ownership, and the discipline to execute.

AT6 Seven Principles of Cross-Continent, Distributed Development

Igor Gejdos, Roche Diagnostics

Thu, 11/13/2014 - 11:30am

Many teams practice agile development as an integral part of their organization with the benefits of collocation and local decision making. However, it is increasingly more common to develop code across continents, either in distributed organizations or with the help of offshore outsourcing partners. Igor Gejdos explains the essential principles of interfacing with distributed agile development teams and describes the essence of successful communication techniques that bridge cultural and time differences.