Agile + DevOps East 2023 - General Management
Customize your Agile + DevOps East 2023 experience with sessions covering general project management.
Monday, November 6
Introduction to DevOps with Chocolate and LEGOs
Organizations today can no longer afford to deliver new features to their respective markets once a year or even once a quarter. In the attempt to catch up with the competition, they jump onto DevOps journey starting with the "How" and losing the sight of "Why" and "What". Join this gamified simulation tutorial to gain a solid understanding of foundational principles of the DevOps culture. Experience the benefits of DevOps transformation even before initiating one in your enterprise! This tutorial is ideally designed for organizations that are evaluating their approach to DevOps...
Tuesday, November 7
Creating a High-Performance Agile Team
Many teams have a relatively easy time adopting the tactical aspects of agile methodologies. Usually, a few classes, some tools’ introduction, and a bit of practice lead teams toward fairly efficient execution. However, these teams are quite often simply going through the motions—neither maximizing their agile performance nor delivering as much value as they could. Borrowing from their experience and lean software development methods, Bob Galen and Mary Thorn explore high-performance team patterns, which are the thinking models of mature agile teams, including large-scale emergent...
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...
The Craft of Highly-Effective Agile Leadership
Based on the learning objectives from the iCAgile, Leading with Agility workshop, this ½ day version will explore the craft of agile leadership in guiding your journey to becoming a catalyst leader. Along the way, we'll explore the why of leading with agility, how to develop and grow your personal agility, tactics for developing and deepening your organizational relationships, and approaches for leading cultural and organizational transformation. Critical topics include your responsibility in shaping a culture that is inclusive, safe, empowered, aligned, and results/impact-focused. We also...
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...
We Got Our Monolith to Move at Light Speed
PreviewIn the financial industry, investment in modernization can take a long time to gain support which slows down momentum for change. While the industry focuses on the next hottest technology, many of us simultaneously continue to own, run, and operate legacy systems. How do we adopt a DevOps culture around a legacy system? How do you evolve the legacy mindset to embrace modernization? Modernization is not solely an application evolution; it is a mindset as well. Embracing a DevOps culture is not technology dependent, it is people dependent. Teaching people the right tools and...
Integrating Generative AI in Your Workflow
Delve into the vital importance of Generative AI and its profound impact across various domains, revolutionizing workflows and fostering innovation and creativity. As the digital landscape rapidly evolves, harnessing generative AI becomes imperative to remain at the forefront of progress. Attendees will explore how this cutting-edge technology unlocks the potential to generate realistic and novel content, spanning from images to music and text, fundamentally transforming traditional workflows. Three key takeaways are emphasized: First, the integration of generative AI empowers attendees to...
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...
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...
Copilot Wants to Write Code and Be Your Friend!
Have you ever wanted to be able to pair program by yourself? Did your coworker write incoherent code at 3 in the morning? Do you hate writing unit tests by hand? If you answered yes to any of these, then Copilot is the perfect tool for you! Copilot will suggest code snippets as you work based on the assumptions it makes on what you are trying to accomplish. It can explain those pesky chunks of code that you don’t understand, saving you valuable time. You can even have Copilot write out unit test code for you based on the methods that you are trying to test. Merging two tabs into one, dive...
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,...
Building Hyper-Scalable and Cost-Effective Solutions with Serverless Cloud Technology
Cloud computing has become the de facto platform of choice for companies to deploy software that they build. Gone are the days when owning a data center was the only way to host critical, high volume and mission critical systems. As companies adopt the cloud and mature their cloud experience, they are faced with a variety of options to choose from. "Serverless" technology, which is offered by all major cloud providers is one such question faced by anyone who is adopting the Cloud. While it may seem quite attractive at first, there are many considerations to be made before an organization...
Agile and Earned Value Management
The Agile Earned Value Management (A-EVM) approach provides effective scope variance analysis, comprehensive performance reporting, and predictability that aid in keeping the program on time and on budget. A-EVM is an adapted implementation of the traditional EVM method. In A-EVM, we use the Agile framework artifacts as inputs, use traditional EVM calculations, and Value Delivery is expressed in traditional EVM metrics. CGI specializes in translating traditional Project Management Institute (PMI) Earned Value Management concepts to fit an Agile Delivery Framework. The A-EVM approach...
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...
Pipelineless Security
It's 2023 and security still needs to earn some respect if they want to slide their Sec between Dev and Ops. Their tooling slows down deployment pipelines, typically finding more false positives than real bugs, usually in code written years ago, and often harming development velocity. To their credit, security teams will occasionally make concessions, like pulling long-running rules out of static analysis engines, but that means that the bugs those tools would otherwise find get caught months later in bug bounties, penetration tests, or security incidents. Bug reports for code you didn't...
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....