Project Management

Tutorials

MB Continuous Delivery: Rapid and Reliable Releases with DevOps

Bob Aiello, CM Best Practices Consulting

Mon, 06/02/2014 - 8:30am

DevOps is an emerging set of principles, methods, and practices that enables the rapid deployment of software systems. DevOps focuses on lowering barriers between development, testing, security, and operations in support of rapid iterative development and deployment. Many organizations struggle when implementing DevOps because of its inherent technical, process, and cultural challenges. Bob Aiello shares DevOps best practices starting with its role early in the application lifecycle and bridging the gap with testing, security, and operations.

ME Acceptance Test-Driven Development: Mastering Agile Testing SOLD OUT

Nate Oster, CodeSquads, LLC

Mon, 06/02/2014 - 8:30am

On agile teams, testers can struggle to keep pace with development if they continue employing a waterfall-based verification process—finding bugs after development. Nate Oster challenges you to question waterfall assumptions and replace this legacy verification testing with acceptance test-driven development (ATDD). With ATDD, you “test first” by writing executable specifications for a new feature before development begins.

MF What Do Agile Managers Do? NEW

Johanna Rothman, Rothman Consulting Group, Inc.

Mon, 06/02/2014 - 8:30am

The Agile Manifesto makes no mention of management. So does that mean that we don’t need managers? No. We need managers, but what they do changes in an agile organization.

MK Risk Management: Project Management for Grown-Ups NEW

Tim Lister, Atlantic Systems Guild, Inc.

Mon, 06/02/2014 - 1:00pm

Many organizations are childlike. They blithely plan the project as if nothing will go wrong. And then, when something does go wrong, they are shocked and dismayed. Risk management is not just worrying about your project, and it is not about running away from risk. Risk management for software projects is all about when you make decisions and when you take action. How do you deal with uncertainty? When do you decide to deal with a risk while it is still just a risk, and when do you decide to wait to see if the risk does turn into a problem and manage it then?

ML Twelve Risks to Enterprise Software Projects—And What to Do about Them NEW

Payson Hall, Catalysis Group, Inc.

Mon, 06/02/2014 - 1:00pm

Every large software project is unique—each with its own complex array of challenges. When projects get into trouble, however, they often exhibit similar patterns and succumb to risks that could have been anticipated and prevented—or detected sooner and managed better. Common responses to the problems—blaming, deferring action, or outright denial—only make things worse.

TG Agile Boot Camp for Project Managers NEW

Ken Whitaker, Leading Software Maniacs

Tue, 06/03/2014 - 8:30am

In today’s world, multiple project management approaches abound― traditional waterfall, agile using Scrum, and the methodology of the PMBOK® Guide, to name a few.

TP The Essential Product Owner: Championing Successful Products

Ellen Gottesdiener, EBG Consulting

Tue, 06/03/2014 - 1:00pm

Engaged and passionate product owners balance strategic and tactical activities to ensure that the right product is built—and built right. Yet how do these product owners guide planning toward longer-term goals while also ensuring that requirements are sufficiently understood for development and delivery? Join Ellen Gottesdiener as she shares techniques for setting context and collaboratively establishing a shared understanding of requirements. Discover methods to envision the product and identify the stakeholders and their value considerations.

Keynotes

K2 For Maximum Awesome

Joe Justice, Scrum, Inc

Wed, 06/04/2014 - 10:15am

An agile hardware and engineering company of 500 collaborators in twenty countries, Team WIKISPEED uses test-first development practices, is run by Scrum teams, and produces road legal cars, micro-houses, and social-good projects. Joe Justice shares how their 100-MPG road car was created in just three months through object-oriented design, iterative development, and agile project management.

K4 Producing Product Developers

David Hussman, DevJam

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 3:45pm

Many teams and organizations have found agile methods help them produce more. Where critical thinking is alive, a more important question arises: Are we producing the right thing? Even though agile tools and processes have helped produce more, they often fail to help us produce the right product, change our focus to product over process, or improve product learning.

Concurrent Sessions

AW3 Driving Lean Innovation on Agile Teams

Sanjiv Augustine, LitheSpeed

Wed, 06/04/2014 - 12:45pm

The Lean Startup® methodology has taken the business world by storm and is revolutionizing product development through the application of a Build-Measure-Learn cycle, and the systematic application of techniques such as Customer Discovery, Customer Development, and Pirate Metrics. With agile teams in place, how can organizations drive lean product innovation on their agile teams? How can we bootstrap product development with product roadmaps and business requirements that are truly aligned with end-user needs?

AW5 Agile Leadership and Culture

Pete Behrens, Trail Ridge Consulting

Wed, 06/04/2014 - 2:15pm

According to recent studies, CEOs want more open and collaborative organizational cultures in which employees are empowered, connected, and learning. However this remains out of reach for most. Cultural inertia—in the form of policies, procedures, and hierarchical reporting structures—is the most significant barrier to increased agile adoption. More than 50 percent of organizations are unsuccessful in embedding, growing, and sustaining real agility. Pete Behrens explains how identifying organizational values and classifying organizational cultures can guide leaders in becoming more agile.

AW10 The Software Quality Metrics Conundrum

Philip Lew, XBOSoft

Wed, 06/04/2014 - 3:45pm

When measuring software quality, we first need to understand its meaning, then its definition. Then we can begin to measure whether or not we’ve attained it. And this is where metrics come in. Unfortunately, many organizations collect and publish all sorts of metrics without considering if measuring and obtaining the data will actually lead to better software quality.

AW11 Agile Resiliency: How CMMI® Will Make Agile Thrive and Survive

Jeff Dalton, Broadsword Solutions

Wed, 06/04/2014 - 3:45pm

IT and software engineering organizations are embracing agile methods to take advantage of the benefits of incremental and iterative delivery. While more software developers are living in an agile world, many businesses continue to live under the waterfall. Large corporations and the Federal Government are increasingly directing software developers to “be agile,” but their business practices related to marketing, procurement, project management, and systems definition are anything but. Jeff Dalton shares how agile resiliency can make the critical difference.

AW12 Build the Right Product through Lean Canvas and Story Mapping Techniques

David Hawks, Agile Velocity

Wed, 06/04/2014 - 3:45pm

Too many organizations focus on maximizing output and often miss delivering the right product. Studies show more than 60 percent of system features are rarely—or never—used. You may deliver a pile of features, but if they aren’t being used, does it really matter how well or fast you do it? To deliver the right outcomes, you need to discover your customers’ real needs and validate your assumptions as early as possible. This means completing an early version of your product so you can begin testing, validating, and improving.

AT5 Make Your Mainframe Systems and Technology More Agile

Jay McFarling, Nationwide Insurance

Danielle Roecker, Nationwide Insurance

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 12:45pm

As the technology industry increasingly shifts to agile development, we’re faced with the challenge of maintaining our mainframe technologies and legacy systems. We must face the challenges of employee engagement and the problems of fitting procedural/linear technologies into the fluid world of agile, but successfully navigating these issues will allow IT leaders to breathe new life into the development of aging technologies.

AT9 From Fragile to Agile: The Roles of Product Management

Steve Johnson, Applied Frameworks

Thu, 06/05/2014 - 2:15pm

The success of agile development methods has had a detrimental effect on product management. Agile methods’ intense focus on product development has ignored the business and marketing roles of product management. Product management activities extend beyond development to shepherding the product through the entire process—from idea to creation to delivery to customers. Furthermore, many product managers are overwhelmed—with too many responsibilities that require too many areas of expertise.