Agile Dev East 2016 - Quality Assurance
Monday, November 14
Acceptance Test-Driven Development
Defining, understanding, and agreeing on the scope of work to be done is often an area of discomfort for product managers, developers, and quality assurance experts alike. The origin of many items living in our defect tracking systems can be traced to the difficulty of performing these initial activities. Ken Pugh introduces acceptance test-driven development (ATDD), explains why it works, and outlines the different roles team members play in the process. ATDD improves communication among customers, developers, and testers. ATDD has proven to dramatically increase...
Help Retain Knowledge: Increase Engagement to Achieve Learning
Ever walk out of a meeting or training class struggling to remember what was just discussed? Or be annoyed that people request information that you’ve already shared? You are not alone! Leaders struggle with how to create an engaging environment that results in high collaboration and learning. Unfortunately, most leaders start off with the disadvantage of being exposed to practices that recent brain science has proven to be ineffective, such as standing up front in the room and talking with slides for an hour instead of engaging people every 10–20 minutes. In an...
Tuesday, November 15
Thinking Inside the Box – Root Cause Analysis with The Six Boxes
Do you want to improve business and user value delivery, quality, efficiency, and productivity of your software engineering team? OK, that’s a stupid question because who doesn’t? Poor productivity problems, quality issues, failing to meet commitments, and general team inefficiencies are, unfortunately, still commonplace. And what is at the root of most problems? James Waletzky says the answer is those highly imperfect creatures—humans. So how do we go about fixing the problems? First, we must discover the root causes, not just the symptoms, and those are not...
How to Improve the Mobile User Experience (UX)
Many enterprises are migrating to mobile while new organizations are adopting a mobile-first or mobile-only strategy. Because of the special characteristics of mobile and its user base, usability and the user experience (UX) are of increased importance, especially with SaaS-based business models where users can pay by the month and switch applications in a heartbeat. This is intensified with mobile users who can download another app and try it for free. So you've got about thirty seconds for your users to understand how to use your app and get value. How do you do...
Lean/Agile Metrics for the Rest of Us
For many agile practitioners, software metrics beyond a burndown chart are little understood or, perhaps, very scary because poor metrics can be worse than no metrics. In this enlightening session, Larry Maccherone explores how you and your organization can use metrics to bring management and lean/agile teams closer rather than becoming a wedge that drives them into conflict. Larry covers the entire lifecycle of the metrics process—from metric selection to reporting data—in compelling ways. You’ll gain an understanding of a wide range of concepts including common...
Wednesday, November 16
Lead Teams that Deliver the Goods
In software development—and in many life activities—success often depends on how well we collaborate with our team and our stakeholders. Yet getting a group of people to truly work in partnership—let alone self-organize—is a daunting challenge. And we’re often left with lingering tensions, anxieties, and sub-par performance because teams are made up of people with varying degrees of knowledge, skill, and commitment. Although we need our team focused on delivering a great outcome, sometimes egos, personalities, and agendas get in the way. Andy Kaufman asks you to...
A New Approach to Software Safety, Risk, and Vulnerability Analysis
Software has found its way into almost every part of our lives. Increased automation in the cars we drive can lead to failures which could result in physical injury, unacceptable risk, or cyber security vulnerabilities. In order to prevent accidents, identification of hazards, risks, and security vulnerabilities is required during development. The problem is the traditional hazard analysis techniques—failure effects and modes analysis, fault tree analysis, and root cause analysis—were developed for simplistic hardware controllers and are based on single point...
Evangelize for Your Project, Team, or Cause—No Matter What Role You Play
Whether you’re a developer, tester, ScrumMaster, CTO, or CEO, you know you have to listen to the needs of your customers and team; accept the fact that they are going to change their minds; and respond, adapt, tap dance, iterate, raise your voice, stand up, and delight your audience in order to ship out the best software of your entire life. Can I get a witness?! Jonathan Silva shares evangelizing strategies that can help you inspire at any level—whether a Fortune 500 company or a startup software company. These approaches include developing your point of view,...
Your Agile Team Needs a Therapist
Imagine you’re on an agile development team—and something feels weird. People disagree constantly, and when they finally do agree, no one commits to deliver the solution. Vocal team members dominate the conversation. You don’t trust your teammates. They don’t trust you. This isn’t a team. It’s just a group of people. Does this sound familiar? Because people are people—not interchangeable robots—building high-performing, self-organizing teams takes specific skills and a lot of work. In his experience working with agile teams, Robb Pieper has often taken on the role...
Thursday, November 17
Managing Agile Software Projects under Uncertainty
In chasing velocity, we often ignore or don’t understand the uncertainties and associated risks in our processes and their results. Agile is designed to handle uncertainty in requirements as new features are requested and priorities shift. But shouldn’t we also be thinking about and mitigating the uncertainties that are unique or even introduced by using agile? Phil Lew suggests that our problem is that we sometimes carry assumptions which either cause us to spend too much effort on things we can’t control or give us unfounded comfort and reassurance. If we can’t...
Teach by Doing: Conversation-Driven Development with ChatOps
Despite the proliferation of tools and processes aimed at lowering barriers and reducing friction across teams, do you still find yourself struggling to make sense of the information hairball, constantly asking—How's the deployment going? Who's responding to that incident? Is staging green? It’s time to STOP! Raj Indugula and Robert Brown introduce the essential concepts and benefits of ChatOps, discuss the anatomy of a chat application/robot, and demonstrate how to leverage ChatOps to help team culture through automation and sharing. ChatOps can improve your...
Take Control! Managing Your Time and Commitments
One of the most consistent concerns expressed by project teams everywhere is: We don’t have enough time! The stress of having too much to do and not enough time to do it is overwhelming. In this interactive session, Andy Kaufman shares practical lessons to help you get a better handle on what it takes to more successfully manage your time and commitments. Topics include understanding the importance of taking care of yourself (including getting more sleep and exercise), factors that drive procrastination (with approaches to overcome them and help you manage your...
Don't Ask "Can You Hear Me Now?" Start Listening Instead
Most of us believe we are good listeners. However, we often overestimate this skill and are hard-wired to short change it by making assumptions, providing answers, and jumping in when we think we know what people are trying to say. In doing so, we rob ourselves of the chance to encourage growth, build trust and respect, and promote ownership. Listening is about more than hearing the words; it is about tone, body language, and so much more. But wait … listening well can be learned, so join Judith Mills to understand and practice this underutilized skill....