Agile + DevOps East 2023 - Agile Team Member
Monday, November 6
Product Ownership 2.0: Navigating the New Demands of Agile Leadership
Many Agile organizations wildly misunderstand the crucial role of the Product Owner. Historically the role focused on being the voice of the customer for a development team. However, the exponential pace of the digital age requires today's Product Owners to be genuine product leaders by maintaining continuous alignment with broader groups of stakeholders while utilizing sophisticated techniques that solicit rapid feedback. This interactive tutorial will explore tools for communicating with the Product Owner's three primary constituents - Leadership, Customers, and Development Teams. First...
Tuesday, November 7
Supercharge Your Workflow: To GitHub and Beyond
Whether you are new or experienced with GitHub this class is for you! Supercharging your workflow caters to anyone who wants to enhance their Agile and DevOps process with the capabilities of GitHub. GitHub has long been the premier site for open-source projects and is now turning a pivotal corner into becoming the predominant platform for all aspects of the development lifecycle. Some examples of this include; protecting company code through various GitHub Products or curating marketplace actions and workflows prior to use. This tutorial will look at how to leverage GitHub Actions (CI/CD...
Agile Project Failures: Root Causes and Corrective Actions
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...
Approaching Conflict Productively
When it comes to high-performing teams, conflict is inevitable and necessary. The very essence of gaining the best value outcomes is a result of leveraging the wisdom of various perspectives and experiences. Those variances will generate conflict. Yet, this is only a negative if we are unequipped with the knowledge and tools to embrace and approach conflict. In this tutorial, expect to unpack the differences and the relationship between conflict and drama. Discover tools for helping all voices be heard. Plus, have fun practicing skills in preparing how to react to conflicts productively...
Wednesday, November 8
Agile Hell II: Post Apocalypse Agile Hell...And How to Escape
In this session, the Dave's are ready to share their ideas and thoughts, including how to ESCAPE agile Hell. Combined, the Dave's have half a century of experience in government, ranging from technical to agile contracting, and yet they are hopeful and optimistic! The agile hells they've escaped include no transformation hell, too fast hell, technical hell, no trust hell, product owners hell, too big hell, collaboration hell, stove-piped hell, and leadership hell. For each agile hell, they will focus on successful techniques to escape from these common dynamics. Unlike other talks, the...
'Redefinement' of Refinement & Other Quips on Retuning Agile Ceremonies
In this talk, Melissa Tondi will examine the top agile ceremonies and show how they can be retuned to create more value in their present-day practice. Melissa will share her experience consulting with and working for companies that have embarked on their agile transformation. Over the last 12 years, she has seen similarities between companies in their implementation of agile. At some point, a company's approach to agile no longer meets the needs of the teams responsible for delivering so a retune is required to optimize their efficiency instead of using a 'one-size-fits-all' model. This...
Exploring Non-ChatGPT Ways to Use AI in Testing
Artificial intelligence and machine learning tools like ChatGPT are bringing AI to the public. The goal and purpose of code generation and refactoring tools like GitHub’s Co-Pilot are evident. However, it may not be as obvious to tell which tools are specifically tailored for testing and quality engineering. Join Carlos Kidman as he compares multiple AI/ML tools and practical applications that testers and quality engineers can use right now. You’ll discover AI for functional testing solutions and tools for test data management. While not all of these tools are free, this session will give...
Tales of Dojo Coaching—Insights for All
In the agile space, do you ever wonder why we use words such as "transformation" and "journey"? It's because it's really freaking hard. As an Agile coach, there are days when you move a group one step forward only to realize that they've fallen two steps back. You are part practitioner and part therapist. You experience frequent memory lapses like "I could've sworn we've worked on this anti-pattern before." Or, did you? What day is it again? Now, imagine throwing gasoline on that by condensing a team's journey into six weeks. What breakthroughs might emerge when we accelerate the journey...
Transitioning to Agile: Changing Processes in the Pandemic
A large-scale effort project with multiple teams decided to establish a transition in their development process from the traditional waterfall methodology towards agile development. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. As with any transition, there were stepping-stones and falling points. However, doing so in the midst of a global pandemic certainly did not make it any easier! The program initially was one large organization with a single work area. It since has been transformed into three different work areas within a division, experimented with a number of different processes and tools, and...
Thursday, November 9
Chasing Predictability with AI: The Model of You Outperforms You
Usually, the first question a client asks about software development is: "When will it be done?". Traditional methods to answering this question are fraught with errors. The most common errors include heavy reliance on estimates and the use of averages to give a deterministic answer. What goes through your mind when you try to answer this question? Now imagine that we could take the same process that your mind goes through and model it? Get rid of the biases that we as humans have by using the data our systems already track. Advances in AI, combined with the rapid growth of data across...
Smooth Sailing: Navigating Release Management in the DevOps Landscape
Embark on an illuminating voyage with me ( Priyanka Halder) as we delve into Release Management's uncharted territory within the DevOps era. As a Quality Engineering Leader, I invite you to explore the synergy of agility and stability for triumphant software deliveries. We'll uncover strategies that steer us through challenges, nurture collaboration, and embrace evolution in this dynamic sphere. Unravel core DevOps principles, cultivate collaborative cultures, and refine robust release processes. Discover the pivotal role Release Management plays in bridging the agility-stability divide,...
Generative AI in Quality Assurance
The need for a new test automation model has been an imperative over the last 10 years as we have moved from waterfall to agile and agile to DevOps. Moving from test coverage to application coverage and reducing test time from months to an hour or less has created a substantial pressure for full success. Now AI in test is a reality. The first generative AI offerings in QA became available in 2018 and since then marked improvements have been made in outcomes. This has changed QA teams' focus, tasks, and work effort. With the ultimate goal of AI finding all our bugs, the advent of...
The Art of Getting to Less—Embracing the Agile Principle of Simplicity
PreviewIn this session, attendees will hear about the application of one of the trickiest agile principles: "simplicity, the art of maximizing the amount of work not done, is essential"! This agile principle is frequently overlooked when organizations or teams create or improve products. Humans love to add to improve. This gets in the way of faster, smoother, and better delivery. Hear about the psychology behind why we do this and how organizations like Discover have utilized dojos and academies to helps teams improve.
Elevating IT: A Journey Towards Engineering Excellence
In the fast-paced and ever-evolving landscape of Information Technology, the pursuit of Engineering Excellence has become not only a competitive advantage but a necessity. Join Adam Auerbach, a leader in Engineering Excellence, for an insightful journey as Adam delves into the strategies, principles, and real-world experiences that can empower your IT organization to embark on a transformative path towards Engineering Excellence. In this talk, Adam will explore the critical components that constitute Engineering Excellence. Adam will talk about the journey of transformation, from...
Transforming Testing with Generative AI: A Demonstration
Are you looking to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the agile testing process? Join and explore the future of agile testing with Generative AI. In agile software development, feature grooming, refinement, user story generation, acceptance testing, and test automation are all critical steps to ensure system quality. While these steps are critical to the project's success, they are not always handled effectively. They can be time-consuming and things like writing test cases and automation code can be labor-intensive and often fall short of covering all requirements. To address...
Breaking Down Silos: Overcoming Upper Management Behaviors That Hinder Agile and DevOps Team Collaboration
Agile and DevOps methodologies are designed to foster collaboration, but siloed behavior in upper management can undermine their effectiveness. In this talk, we'll explore how to overcome siloed behavior in upper management and create a culture of collaboration that supports agile and DevOps success. We'll discuss the common siloed behaviors exhibited by upper management, including lack of communication, limited transparency, and resistance to change. We'll also provide strategies for breaking down these silos and fostering collaboration, including building trust, promoting cross-...
Agility for Ops: Maximizing Efficiency & Adaptability of Non-IT Teams
Agile principles are a natural fit for software development teams. We can get them scrumming, prioritizing product features, and working in sprints. However, when it comes to embodying these same tenets in volatile teams, such as operations, sales, accounting, and people & culture divisions, the approach will vary. How do we modify a concept initially engineered for software development, to fit teams that deal with client acquisition, checks and balances, and human resources? In this talk, Sheyinka will explain how to apply agile principles to maximize the adaptability, efficiency, and...
How to Build High Performing Product Teams
Many organizations have embarked on their lean-agile transformation journey with the aim to benefit from business agility advantages such as faster responsiveness to changing customer demands, higher customer satisfaction, improved employee engagement, or stronger collaboration between Business & IT. But most of those organizations struggle to capture the value of the transformation, they fail to realize a holistic cultural shift, and/or their teams operate way below their potential. In this talk, we focus on how to build up high performing product teams and why it really matters....