Agile Dev West 2016 - Project Manager

Built from index cards or sticky notes, a story map is a simple model,which helps the people who make it envision a customer’s experience with their product. Story maps are a core practice within a design process focused on understanding and building empathy with customers and users, and then identifying and testing solutions to improve the customer’s experience with your product or services. Jeff Patton says that design process and story mapping can help you identify completely new product opportunities or improve the existing product experience. Learn how to map your customer’s and user’...

Has this happened to you? You try to implement a change in your organization and it doesn’t get the support that you thought it would. And, to make matters worse, you can't figure out why. Or, you have a great idea but can’t get the resources required for successful implementation. Jennifer Bonine shares a toolkit of techniques to help you determine which ideas will—and will not—work within your organization. This toolkit includes five rules for change management, a checklist to help you determine the type of change process needed in your organization, techniques for communicating your...

Test-driven development (TDD) is a powerful technique for combining software design, unit testing, and coding in a continuous process to increase reliability and produce better code design. Using the TDD approach, developers write programs in very short development cycles. The developer first writes a failing automated test case that defines a new function or improvement, then produces code until the test passes, and finally refactors the new code to acceptable standards. The developer repeats this process many times until the behavior is complete—and fully tested. Rob Myers demonstrates...

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 productivity and reduce...

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 tutorial, 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. Investigate...

Transitioning to agile can be difficult—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 transition 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. Ken begins with a value stream map of existing processes to establish an initial kanban...

To be most effective, test managers must develop and use metrics to help direct the testing effort and make informed recommendations about the software’s release readiness and associated risks. Because one important testing activity is to “measure” the quality of the software, test managers must measure the results of both the development and testing processes. Collecting, analyzing, and using metrics are complicated because many developers and testers are concerned that the metrics will be used against them. Join Mike Sowers as he addresses common metrics—measures of product quality,...

Avoiding siloed development is a tricky business. It’s easy for agile teams to fall into the rut in which testers only do traditional testing activities and programmers strictly do their time-worn coding activities. Rob Sabourin shares a number of examples of how testing skills can be applied to a wide variety of activities in an agile project. Testers are among the most skilled team members in story grooming, elicitation, and exploration. Risk analysis in self-organized agile teams empowers testers to drive design decisions. A tester’s affinity analysis skills help clear the way for teams...

Agile initiatives always begin with high expectations—accelerate delivery, meet customer needs, and improve software quality. The truth is that many agile projects do not deliver on some or all of these expectations. If you want help to ensure the success of your agile project or to get an agile project back on track, this tutorial is for you. Jeffery Payne discusses the most common causes of agile project failure and how you can avoid these issues—or mitigate their damaging effects. Poor project management, ineffective requirements development, failed communications, software development...

Agile teams are charged with delivering potentially shippable software at the end of each iteration. In fact, some high-performing agile teams with advanced automation can ship working software every day. They achieve regression confidence with extensive automated test suites and other advanced practices. Rob Sabourin shares automation techniques to improve story and feature testing, exploratory testing, and regression testing. Explore ways that test-driven development (TDD) techniques, precise test and tool selection, appropriate automation design, and team collaboration can be combined...

We attend conferences, read books and articles, and discover new ideas we want to bring into our organizations—but we often struggle when trying to implement those changes. Unfortunately, those introducing change are not always welcomed with open arms. Linda Rising offers proven change management strategies to help you become a more successful agent of change in your organization. Learn how to plant effective seeds of change, and what forces in your organization drive or block change. These approaches, strategies, and patterns are useful in many different settings—not only to change your...

Linda Rising, co-author of Fearless Change and the recently published More Fearless Change, has wondered for some time whether much of Agile's success has been the result of the placebo effect—that is, good things happened because we believed they would. The placebo effect is a startling reminder of the power our minds have over our perceived reality. Now cognitive scientists tell us that this is only a small part of what our minds can do. Research has identified what she likes to call “an agile mindset”—an attitude that equates failure and problems with opportunities for...

Some consider measurement in agile development destructive—or at the very least useless. Larry Maccherone disagrees and offers eight tools to slay the dragons of agile measurement. The #1 Dragon slayer—Use measurement for feedback rather than as a lever. What's the difference? Feedback is used to improve your own behavior; a lever is employed to change someone else's behavior. The distinction is subtle but critical. If you think what gets measured gets done, you are already venturing into “thar be dragons” territory. But it's not too late. Larry shows how to create a culture where...

When testers transition from web to mobile testing, they often miss the most important issues. The biggest challenge in mobile testing is knowing the mobile-specific issues—knowing what to test, in which order, and how. Jason Arbon shares his learnings from manual and automated testing of thousands of apps, and tips from working with top app teams. How do you balance functional with performance testing? Which, if any, tests should you automate? Should tests be executed on real devices or emulators? How do you best leverage your on-site, vendors, beta testers, and app store feedback? What...

What exactly is DevOps? It’s not just Dev, and it’s not just Ops. In fact, successful DevOps implementations meld development and operations activities with agile practices and a strong dose of automated testing. Organizations cannot afford to wait for a manual testing process to do the job. Developers need fast feedback loops, and managers need agile organizations. Join Jonah Stiennon as he discusses the importance of agile and testing in DevOps. Jonah introduces practical ways engineering departments can shorten the iteration cycle between Dev and Test. Automating the repetitive parts of...

"What do you want the system to do?" can be a loaded question for agile teams. Ideally, the product owner gives you a product backlog with fully groomed user stories prioritized by business value, ready for team discussion and estimation. Instead, you may have the “big picture” product owner who can describe high level requirements but struggles to provide clear direction on specific system behavior, or the “aspiring developer” product owner who is more than happy to give you exact system implementation in intricate technical detail. You may have the “kid in a candy shop” product owner who...

Today, knowledge workers are seeking to find meaning in their lives and purpose in their work. With this new generation of employees who are as interested in purpose as in profit, it is imperative that we revisit management schemes—top-down work assignment, the annual review, strict clock-punching work hours, and inflexible vacation policies—and recognize their negative effects on individual morale and team productivity. As leaders, it is time we recognize and own our responsibility in these counterproductive techniques and boldly move into the future with radical alternatives. With...

Penny McVay shares how her team approached improving the quality of a large policy-writing application for a global insurance carrier. The application has many pieces and parts, thousands of lines of code are changed monthly, and the business depends on a stable application. To mitigate risk, the team investigated the question of how to predict where testing needed to focus. The regression test suite the organization had built was difficult to maintain, identified few defects, and took hours of effort to run. QA needed not only to optimize the regression suite but also to determine how to...

Agile practices can be the easy part of agile. It’s getting people into the agile mindset that can be a real challenge. Do you have a team member who doesn’t quite support agile or someone who’s playing along but not really committed? One step toward obtaining real commitment is a better understanding of why agile works, why it is different, and when it is the right approach. In this fast moving session, Perry Reinert provides a fun look at some of the theory that gets to the core of why agile works. Yes, we really can use the words fun and theory in the same sentence. Combining parts of...

When a user story is too big, it is harder to understand, estimate, and implement successfully. Some teams break the “business story” into “technical stories” but this generally doesn’t help because most or all of the technical stories need to be completed before there is anything meaningful for the stakeholders. There is a better way. Chris Sims teaches four simple yet powerful techniques for breaking big stories into smaller stories that are meaningful to stakeholders and deliver incremental business value. For each of the four techniques, Chris models the technique and then gives...

Sometimes we get a little stuck. It does happen. Work is at the same place, with the same people, and the same problems. The fresh perspective we seek is overcome by everyday demands and eludes us once again. John Ryskowski says that one path to a fresh perspective is to experience something that is totally unrelated, but at the same time reveals parallels to your situation. Do you know the drummer of a big band can actually guide the band, instill a sense of confidence, and inspire musicians to play as never before while adhering to the written music? Through subtle and timely cues, the...

In the past few years we’ve used cloud technologies to improve pre-production flexibility and solve many problems that previously prevented us from delivering high quality apps to production. However, one problem consistently prevents full test coverage prior to deployment—the lack of comprehensive test data. As we try to get faster and leaner in our agile development processes, the problem with data becomes even more difficult to solve. Robert Kelman describes the evolution of DIRECTV’s (now AT&T) Agile Test Data Management program. He explains the five critical elements—centralized...

Often referred to as the “Zen Master” for his unorthodox coaching style, professional basketball coach Phil Jackson won more professional sports championships than any other coach in history. Jackson led the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers to a total of eleven NBA championships, but rather than studying and following the strategies of other coaches, Jackson developed a set of coaching principles aligned with his personal beliefs. Dion Stewart believes that agile coaches can learn a lot from Jackson’s focus on selfless teamwork, mindfulness, compassion, and ritual rather than simply...

In many ways, the rapidly evolving mobile banking application industry is challenging for testers. Adding a wearable device brings new challenges, new user behaviors, and untested devices. To ensure a well-tested product, what changes and adaptations do you need to make to your test approach? Carl Johnson shares his hands-on experiences going from testing a mobile banking application to testing a wearable “watch-bank,” an application that makes it possible for customers to see balances and transactions on their smartwatches. Carl presents examples of his learnings—tools that could help you...

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...

Software development is a process of continuous discovery. When writing software, we create ideas, we try them in code, we learn what works and what doesn’t—and that steers us to a better solution. And sometimes we do this all day long! Woody Zuill says that this same process of continuous discovery works for making improvements for our teams, and in our workplaces and organizations. With continuous discovery we do numerous micro experiments that guide us along the path to a better future. If we follow the values and principles expressed in the Agile Manifesto, which provides us a powerful...

Have you experienced difficulties eliciting “what would you like the system to do” from customers and SMEs? Have you then delivered the system only to find that the users don’t like it, even though it meets their stated requirements exactly? Cathy Sargent shares a technique for using mockups early in the development process to help overcome the challenges of gathering complete functional and business requirements, and establishing a mutual understanding of what a system should do. Put a visual representation of the application in the hands of your SMEs, testers, trainers, and development...

Choice can be a wonderful thing—when you’re buying a car and research abounds to help you decide. But when selecting the best agile scaling framework for your organization, choice can be downright intimidating and costly. SAFe, Scrum of Scrums, DAD, LeSS, or SSwS? There is a lot at stake. With many scaling frameworks to choose from, you’re probably questioning what each brings to the table. How can we assess which will result in the best outcome? What selection criteria should we use? Join Tom Weinberger as he shares expert insights, comparing and contrasting the capabilities of the most...

In his book Reinventing Organizations, Frederic Laloux describes the “Teal Organization” model. Teal organizations have an evolutionary purpose, self-managing teams with little or no organizational hierarchy, and individuals who bring their whole person to work rather than putting on a work face when leaving the house. Zappos is the most talked about organization attempting a transition to Teal. Bob Payne describes how his organization is becoming a Teal Organization. Since the concept of Teal is not a specific recipe, they are basing their transition on practices gleaned from...

You’re a senior engineer who decides to switch to management for experience in leading a team. How is your work going to change? What challenges are you going to face? How are you going to keep up with new technologies? Are people reporting to you going to see you as a leader and follow you? Sebastiano Armeli asked himself all these questions when he became a manager. See what he found it and learn how you can bring this information into your work. While management varies greatly by organization, Sebastiano explores leadership and management behaviors you can apply at your company. At...

It seems impossible for a DevOps team to even attempt planning its work. The team deals with customers’ never-ending requests and constantly-changing priorities. And don’t forget those unfriendly infrastructure errors that always seem to show up at the worst possible time. Best to live day-by-day and try to keep our heads above water, right? Maybe not. Through a case study of a department that helps make great Electronic Arts games, Ben Vining illustrates how a metrics-driven DevOps team can become reliable, responsive, and predictable—with happy staff and delighted customers. Ben details...

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...

Facilitation is the art of leading people through processes toward agreed-upon outcomes in a manner that encourages participation, ownership, and creativity from all involved. So how do you take this definition and turn it into facilitating powerful meetings? Most agile practitioners can read about facilitation and the “right” way to do it. However, it can be challenging to take that book knowledge and feel comfortable facilitating agile meetings and ceremonies. Whether you are looking to coach a single team/product or scale agile to the program/enterprise, Darrin London says that...

Are you on a team where people avoid conflict or shy away from saying anything that might sound critical? Reluctance to speak up can block important challenges from being identified, and deny your team and organization the opportunity to learn and improve. According to Lorraine Aguilar, this avoidance is most evident in peer-to-peer communications. Lorraine designed a tool for agile coaches, facilitators, and team leaders who want to make it easy and safe for people to speak authentically during retrospectives and other opportunities for performance feedback and continuous improvement....

Your operational tools deliver continuous monitoring and alerting for applications deployed in the cloud. So why doesn’t your security suite do the same? Although no single path to a secure DevOps approach works for every organization, Tim Prendergast offers a set of key principles and techniques that have distinct advantages for delivering safe and secure products in the cloud. Security can no longer be thought of as a separate step in a product’s launch and must be integrated into the overall processes of continuous development and deployment. Implementing continuous security monitoring...

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,...

Channel 4 broadcasting company in Finland provides live streams of sporting events on the Internet (Ruutu.fi). The software development is done by agile principles but even more straightforward and quicker than normal agile projects. Tomi Kaleva says they have changed the entire production environment and renewed all the mobile apps in the past year. As a result, the normal agile development speed wasn’t enough. The fast software development cycle makes software testing challenging as there isn’t sufficient time for test...

Agile teams are solving real-world complex problems every day. These problems require creative problem solving by team members. In its truest sense, brainstorming is intended to be a practical approach to this task. Brainstorming entails “using the brain to storm a creative problem and to do so in commando fashion, with each 'stormer' audaciously attacking the same objective.” In this highly practical workshop, Pradeepa Narayanaswamy introduces you to a variety of brainstorming games that get the creative juices flowing to yield better collaboration and ideas among team members. Delegates...

As organizations try to meet faster delivery schedules and improve collaboration between development and operations, DevOps has become a hot topic. So, where does testing fit into a DevOps strategy? By narrowly focusing on just Dev and Ops, the term DevOps itself ends up missing testing. Nikhil Kaul gives an overview of recent trends in DevOps, specifically changes that have taken place in the testing industry in the past year. Nikhil explores why testing is becoming more important than ever before. With Apple, Google, and Microsoft making it easier for Dev and Ops to build and deploy...