Agile + DevOps East 2018 - Digital Transformation | TechWell

Conference archive

Agile + DevOps East 2018 - Digital Transformation

Monday, November 5

Shaun Bradshaw
Zenergy Technologies, Inc
MI

Essential Patterns of Successful Agile Transformations

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Monday, November 5, 2018 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

The very title of this workshop is meant to challenge you. Many don’t like to use the term transformation, instead, preferring adoption, migration, transition, business agility shift or some other phrase. However, successful implementations of agile require a transformation to occur at multiple levels (teams, leaders, managers, culture, and organization), and goes beyond mere implementation of time-boxed sprints, daily standups, and the use of a product backlog. This workshop was created because so many organizations struggle with how to move towards more agile approaches to product...

Tuesday, November 6

Jeff Payne
Coveros
TI

Agile Project Failures: Root Causes and Corrective Actions

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Tuesday, November 6, 2018 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

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...

Julee Everett
CCG Analytics
TM

Innovation Garage: Supercharge your Product Engine

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Tuesday, November 6, 2018 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

Journey from “Are we doing things right” to “Are we doing the right thing?” This workshop is designed for those who are passionate about creating products that people love but are struggling to keep up with the needs of their clients while continuously trying to bring products and ideas to market. This new, global, cognitive era requires innovative thinking and proactive design of human-centric products and services that customize a customers’ experience – and provide scalable returns in an uncertain market. Join Julee Everett in this hands-on, interactive workshop to learn to apply...

Wednesday, November 7

DW4

DevSecOps - Security at the Speed of DevOps

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Wednesday, November 7, 2018 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Security specialists, especially at large organizations, believe that better security comes from robust independent gating. On the other hand, DevOps has proven that you can safely deploy orders of magnitude faster than human gating can achieve. What's needed to add security to DevOps are tools that work well with rapid-cycle CI/CD pipelines and an approach that reinforces the DevOps culture and process changes. This requires that security specialists become self-service toolsmiths and advisors and stop thinking of themselves as gatekeepers. Larry guides you through the characteristics of...

Lee Eason
Ipreo
DW7

Enterprise DevOps Is Not an Oxymoron

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Wednesday, November 7, 2018 - 2:45pm to 3:45pm

Driving enterprise DevOps transformations is a challenging but massively rewarding job. Larger organizations often struggle to justify the costs of new tooling and training. In fact, larger organizations often fail even to understand what DevOps is and what it means for their business. Putting DevOps into practice also tends to hit serious roadblocks in areas of information security. How can you get buy-in for such a difficult and widespread organizational change? And once you've got it, how do you drive change in a way that stakeholders will stay supportive of it? Join Lee Eason as he...

Michele Campbell
Lucid Software Inc
DW9

Climbing the Mountain of Continuous Deployment

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Wednesday, November 7, 2018 - 2:45pm to 3:45pm

Trying to reach continuous deployment (CD) can feel like scaling a gigantic mountain full of sheer faces, icy passes, and incredible dropoffs. When a company doesn’t take the proper precautions on its journey to CD, it can result in an overworked engineering organization and high-risk issues reaching the end-users. Join Michele Campbell as she discusses key insights about the journey to CD her company is on right now. In just three short months, the organization has managed to double its number of production releases, without overwhelming teams or causing the quality of the program to...

Thursday, November 8

Dana Pylayeva
Agile Play Consulting LLC
AT1

Self-Selection Gamified: Leave Your Fears Behind

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Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 10:00am to 11:00am

Self-selection is a facilitated process that allows people to exercise autonomy by choosing their preferred initiatives and joining new teams. As exciting as it may sound to some, the idea of self-selection may cause others to experience all sorts of fear: fear of missing out, fear of not being selected, or fear of picking a wrong team. Let Dana Pylayeva alleviate those fears by taking you through effective preparation steps and a round of self-selection simulation. Hands-on activities such as drawing, making participants cards in a Team Ingredients Assessment, and playing the...

Robert_Woods
MindOverProcess
AT2

Holistic Agile: Treat the Whole Company, Not Just IT

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Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 10:00am to 11:00am

As agile methods find more global applicability, we are finding groups outside of IT that have nothing to do with technology or software development demonstrating success with agile methods. But the approach to the solutions they deliver are often catered to their own unique circumstances. The original Agile Manifesto, principles, and supporting frameworks were formed with software development in mind, but from a holistic perspective, a different approach is needed for enterprise solutions outside of IT. Robert Woods will show you how to translate the success seen in agile software...

AT3

Scaling Agile in a Large Matrixed Organization

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Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 10:00am to 11:00am

Two engineering teams with vastly different work styles—one waterfall and one Scrum—merged into one matrixed organization to work on a critical strategic effort. During this transition the teams experienced many problems, including growing from a small team into a large one overnight, with half of the organization now knowing nothing about agile. They had issues with how to handle communication, the right level of process consistency across the twenty-plus distributed agile teams, working through technical dependencies, a lack of subject matter expertise, and no single point of control of...

Julee Everett
CCG Analytics
AT4

The Introvert's Survival Guide to Agile

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Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 10:00am to 11:00am

Open work areas, a focus on collaboration and conversations, and group events that seem to require verbal fluency ... It may feel like the agile ecosystem is designed with extroverts in mind. But science tells us that introverts make up almost half of the workforce, and they may struggle to be productive in an agile environments. In fact, introverts might even shy away from agile opportunities because of the radical collaboration it requires. In this interactive session, Julee Everett will teach you to recognize the traits of an extrovert and an introvert through self-identification....

Mark Kilby
Sonatype
AT5

Agile Distributed Teams: Oxymoron or Viable Option?

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Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 10:00am to 11:00am

Many surveys indicate that more teams work in distributed environments. But agile approaches work best when people collocate, huddle around a problem, and closely collaborate on the best solutions that will deliver value. Is collocation the only option these days? Does distributed always imply “dysfunctional”? Does technology help or hinder? Maybe the problem is how we think about the working environment. Mark Kilby will share key principles of successful distributed agile teams that help define better working environments. Understand how the principles apply to different types of...

Anne Hungate
Daring Systems
DT1

A Successful DevOps Initiative Starts with Knowing Your Numbers!

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Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 10:00am to 11:00am

IT organizations that don’t know their risk factors and exposure are likely to make investments in DevOps that don’t matter. After working with several teams that lost their DevOps funding after making automation investments in areas that were not business constraints, Anne Hungate's “Know Your Numbers” model emerged. Join Anne to learn how to prioritize your DevOps improvements and demonstrate the impact and value you are delivering. After all, DevOps gets traction and funding when teams can show the business impact of doing it, so if you want your DevOps initiative to take off, be...

Laura Burke
IHS Markit
AT6

Make Agile Work for Any Team

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Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Are parts of your organization embracing agile while others become more resistant, disconnected, or frustrated by the idea? Or maybe your team wants to be more agile but it isn’t sure how to get started because it’s not a typical development team. Agile has been moving out of software and being embraced by nondevelopment teams for years, but it’s not always a great experience. How can we make the best parts of agility relevant to any team? This hands-on session will show you how to start teams down the path to “being agile” by taking a teamwork-centered approach. With examples from a...

John Krewson
Sketch Development
AT9

I Got a Fever, and the Only Prescription Is More Feedback

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Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

The Second City, an improvisational comedy club that launched the careers of comedians such as Chris Farley, Tina Fey, and Steve Carell, has delivered a successful product to audiences nightly for almost sixty years. How do they do it? By recognizing the power of feedback. Brian Eno, a pioneer in the music industry who produced albums for U2 and Coldplay, relies on a feedback generation system to ensure the best performances of the bands he works with. Likewise, the lean startup movement has uncovered a similar pattern of organizations that thrive on experimentation and learning. John...

Josh Anderson
kazi, LLC
AT10

Create the Self-Directed Team of Your Dreams

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Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

You've read dozens of books on agile and hundreds of articles, but no one actually told you how to build the team of your dreams. Josh Anderson brings the real-world experience of growing a team from zero engineers to thirty while shipping five products—and he did it is less than a year. Learn how to build a team from scratch or transform your existing team into a mystical self-directed team, and understand how leadership operates in a world of self-directed teams. You'll be able to take these lessons home and hire, grow, and support self-directed teams, then start changing the world.

Kevin Dunne
Tricentis
DT6

Continuous Load Testing for DevOps

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Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Ensuring that each new release delivers a positive user experience is now more critical than ever. But with cloud-native apps, microservices, and other compartmentalized elements, an application involves many highly distributed components, and a performance issue in any of them could have a ripple effect across the entire application. Now that new functionality is being released weekly, daily, or even hourly, each team needs instant insight into whether their incremental changes could negatively affect performance. However, legacy performance testing approaches are too late, too heavy, and...

Suzette Johnson
Northrop Grumman
Robin Yeman
Lockheed Martin
AT12

Commonalities of Agile and DevOps Transformations for Large Organizations

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Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

As the adoption of agile and DevOps have been steadily growing over the years, many organizations have been taking a proactive approach to prepare for the changes needed for success. This means giving people the skills and resources they need to be successful, working with customers and users for improved collaboration and transparency, and providing teams with the tools and infrastructure to enable continuous flow of value. Are there commonalities across organizations that others can learn from to support their journeys? Join Robin Yeman and Suzette Johnson as they provide an interactive...

Julie Wyman
Excella Consulting
Hunter Tammaro
Excella Consulting
AT13

What’s Really Going On with Your Team? An Observational Skills Workshop

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Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

When it comes to our day-to-day work interactions, there are many factors that pass us by simply because we’re not used to paying attention to them. The best way to become more observant is through deliberate practice, so join Julie Wyman for a brief introduction to themes and different aspects of interactions to start observing, followed by small group exercises to practice observing and to help understand what it feels like to be observed. The exercises will be followed by a debrief and full group discussion about how to observe thoughtfully and share feedback in a neutral, nonjudgmental...

Mary_Thorn
Mary Thorn Consulting
Ian Larson
Lionbridge
AT14

How Design Thinking and Agile Can Be Friends

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Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Agile methodologies do not traditionally allot space, time, or processes for user experience design. Some teams try to accommodate design via separate design sprints that are somewhat coupled to the team's backlog, but these are typically performed two or three sprints ahead. Increasingly, designers are demanding that teams do big, upfront design phases outside of a team's backlog, followed by agile development sprints to implement the design. As markets mature and competition increases, more and more companies must become design-focused or even design-led. Ian and Mary will show you why...

Todd Olson
Pendo
AT15

Scaling the Product in an Agile World

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Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

In agile, most companies and teams associate “product” with the product owner role. While the product owner role is very important, how does this scale? How do you coordinate priorities across product owners, groups, and product lines? The product owner responsibilities are well-defined for how they interact with their team, but what about other product-related activities? Todd Olson will explore scaling the notion of product in agile organizations. He’ll look at the role beyond the product owner with a renewed focus on the profession of product management, which is often de-emphasized or...

Gene Gotimer
Coveros, Inc.
DT7

Experiences Bringing Continuous Delivery to the DoD and DHS

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Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Not every continuous delivery initiative starts with someone saying, "Drop everything. Let's do DevOps." Sometimes you have to grow your practice incrementally. Sometimes, you don’t set out to grow a practice at all—you are just fixing problems with your process, trying to make things better. Join Gene Gotimer as he walks through two case studies, one from the Department of Defense and one from the Department of Homeland Security, that took different avenues to get to agile and DevOps. Learn about the journey each organization took, the tools used to build quality into the products,...

Katy Sherman
Premier Inc.
AT16

How Agile Killed Managers

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Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm

Agile adoption has changed the corporate landscape in many different ways. And while the change has been mostly positive for the teams, some can see agile and Scrum ideas as a revolt against traditional management practices. If the team is self-organized, then what's the manager's role? Have no fear—managers are not obsolete; their job just looks a little different. Katy Sherman will discuss how agile has reshaped the manager's role. You will see examples of what not to do, such as when managers become a real obstacle during agile adoption, as well as learn how individuals, teams, and...

AT18

Limitless by Choice: Discover Your Team's High-Performing Potential

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Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm

Every one of us has the potential to be limitless in our careers, personal life, and everything in between! Yet most of us—yes, including you—are only achieving a fraction of what you are capable of. We all want more, but we aren’t sure how to go get it. This session will be an interactive and practical guide to breaking through all the things that limit you and will kickstart your journey to a limitless life. Jessica Soroky will introduce activities from the personal development program Limitless by Choice and address the potential all teams have to be high-performing when they start...

Bob Galen
Zenergy Technologies
AT20

Shu-Ha-Ri Applied to Agile Leadership

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Thursday, November 8, 2018 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm

Far too many agile instances either fail or underperform because the leadership team members don’t sufficiently understand agility and their role within it. They don’t understand the fundamentals or how to map them to effective execution. But the larger problem is that they (and the organization) are unaware of the gaps. In this session, we’ll explore a basic assessment model for determining agile leadership maturity as a means of gauging and improving leadership's understanding and your overall effectiveness in applying agile. You'll break into small groups and assess the leadership...