Agile Dev West 2016 - Agile Techniques
Wednesday, June 8
Determining Business Value in Agile Development
Both agile and lean focus on delivering business value to the customers as rapidly as possible. On agile projects, story points are often used to estimate and track development effort for user stories. However, to concentrate on delivering value, we must be able to place a business value on these stories. Through lecture and interactive exercises, Ken Pugh explains how to estimate and track business value, presenting two methods for quickly estimating value for features and stories. He shows the relationships between business value and story points, and discusses how to chart business...
Integrate Regulatory Auditing with Agile
When attempting to audit agile in regulated enterprises, auditors all too often hear “We are agile, so we have no evidence for you to examine.” For a profession rooted in plan-driven methodologies—from validating software development to documenting audit work papers—agile presents a unique conundrum for auditors. Join Chong Ee as he explores ways for agile teams to develop and sustain an open dialogue with auditors on internal controls. From updating age-old mindsets such as segregated development and testing phases to employing the agile artifacts of user stories and burndown charts,...
Architecture vs. Design in Agile: What’s the Right Answer?
Is architecture the same as preliminary design in agile? It shouldn't be. Do we create architecture up front, then do iterative development after the architecture is done? That is edging back toward waterfall. Can you explain the purpose of the architecture in just two or three statements? Anthony Crain says that when he asks that question, he gets either verbose answers or blank stares. So Anthony shares an elegantly simple two bullet explanation of what an architecture does. Explore the models architects and designers should produce and learn why these models are so important to keep...
The Issues Agile Exposes and What To Do about Them
Before the short iterations in agile, projects were segmented into large blocks of work taking many weeks or months. If problems emerged, it was relatively easy to hide them. Now, with agile, many of these problems and issues can’t be hidden for long. Lee Copeland exposes these issues—trust, organization, work, measurement, and change—and explores solutions. Leaders often distrust their teams; teams often distrust their leaders. Learn the symptoms and solutions to these trust issues. A key organizational issue is that organizations cannot give up their previous team structures. Explore...
Thursday, June 9
Implementing Agile in an FDA Regulated Environment
Developing medical devices that are subject to FDA approval has traditionally followed the waterfall methodology, largely due to the structure of the regulations that govern development practices. But we know from myriad case studies in different industries that agile methodologies are far superior in providing the highest value to customers in the shortest time to market. Neal Herman shares how one developer of complex medical devices embraced agile software development practices and proved that it could not only develop software faster with higher quality but also meet all regulatory...
Playwriting, Imagination, and Agile Software Development … Oh My!
Agile practitioners are constantly striving to improve their processes and delivery to gain a competitive edge. To become a cross-functional T-shaped rock star, you have to be open to learning from other disciplines and adapting quickly. Tania Katan knows a little about crossing disciplines and adapting at a breakneck pace. She is a playwright by training who recently made the audacious leap into software. Tania helps you find your inner “T” so you will have the breadth and depth to take on the unpredictability of software development with the imagination and insights of a playwright....
How Far Can You Go with Agile for Embedded Software?
With the proliferation of IoT and consumer demand for smarter homes, appliances, automobiles, and wearables, many traditional product-based manufacturing companies are now becoming embedded software companies. This means that the design and manufacturing of physical products is becoming more complex since it now requires the integration of the physical components of the product, the firmware, and the myriad software components these products contain. Historically, embedded software developers have lagged behind IT in the adoption of agile development practices, largely due to the...
Use Feature Flags for Clean Deployments
Software teams want to move faster and deliver features to end users sooner. Continuous delivery and DevOps promise to deploy quickly. However, pushing faster and deploying more often increase the risk of breaking—and subsequent downtime. Edith Harbaugh finds that a feature flagging system of gating features—and being able to quickly turn them on or off—enables development teams to ship more frequently. With feature flags, engineering changes are pushed live to production “off” and then turned on for different users. Feature flags allow developers to separate deployment from rollout,...