Project Management

Tutorials

MC Agile Program Management: Networks, Not Hierarchies NEW

Johanna Rothman, Rothman Consulting Group, Inc.

Mon, 11/11/2013 - 8:30am

When you think of program management, do you think of big lumbering organizational beasts that add little value, and people demanding “When will you be done?” or “Can we add this feature before the desired release date?” Agile program management encourages small-world networks of collaborative teams that can solve problems and deliver features fast. That requires the entire program be agile and lean—using small batch sizes, integrating continuously, having short iterations, and tracking cycle time so you can coordinate across the organization.

MD Dealing with Estimation, Uncertainty, Risk, and Commitment

Todd Little, Landmark Graphics Corporation

Mon, 11/11/2013 - 8:30am

Software projects are known to have challenges with estimation, uncertainty, risk, and commitment—and the most valuable projects often carry the most risk. Other industries also encounter risk and generate value by understanding and managing that risk effectively. Todd Little explores techniques used in a number of risky businesses—product development, oil and gas exploration, investment banking, medicine, weather forecasting, and gambling—and shares what those industries have done to manage uncertainty.

TA Deliver Projects On Time, Every Time

Ken Whitaker, Leading Software Maniacs

Tue, 11/12/2013 - 8:30am

Ken Whitaker shares pragmatic techniques to help project managers and software development leaders put into practice innovative scheduling techniques, make consistent customer-centric decisions, reduce project risk, quickly negotiate with product owners the most important project scope, and transition teams to become more agile. Ken shares revealing statistical data on how waterfall is simply not suited for modern-day adaptive software development projects. With fellow participants, you’ll spend time performing a “Scrum walkabout” to get the idea of just how an agile project really works.

TN Twelve Risks to Enterprise Software Projects—And What to Do about Them

Payson Hall, Catalysis Group, Inc.

Tue, 11/12/2013 - 1:00pm

Every large software project is unique—each with its own complex array of challenges. When projects get into trouble, however, they often exhibit similar patterns, and succumb to risks that could have been anticipated and prevented—or detected sooner and managed better. Common responses to the problems—blaming, deferring action, or outright denial—only make things worse.

Concurrent Sessions

BW2 Validating Assumptions: From Unknown to Known

Ade Shokoya, AgileTV

Wed, 11/13/2013 - 10:15am

Although many organizations are successfully using agile practices to develop higher quality, customer-satisfying solutions faster and cheaper, an increasing number of companies are using the same practices to develop the wrong solutions—faster and with a higher level of quality, too. Why is that? Even though most people know that assumptions are the mother of all things that go badly wrong, many “agile” adopting organizations still invest time, money, and resources developing “solutions” based solely on assumptions, opinions, and guesses.

BW12 Game Changing Practices in Software: Data from Recent Benchmark Research

Michael Mah, QSM Associates, Inc.

Wed, 11/13/2013 - 3:45pm

As agile practices become mainstream, compelling patterns are being revealed about defect rates, time-to-market, and effort/staffing. Industry data from QSM Associates reveals that many companies grapple with collocation, pair programming, offshoring, and combining agile with waterfall methods. Some of the best teams find significant schedule and quality implications that are literally redefining the economics of software; others are not. What factors make a meaningful difference?

BT1 Program Management: Collaborating across the Organization

Johanna Rothman, Rothman Consulting Group, Inc.

Thu, 11/14/2013 - 10:15am

To be most effective when managing a large program, the component projects should limit their batch size, create networks of people, and report status in a way that works for the entire program. For those of you who are not quite ready for agile, Johanna Rothman explains how to use staged delivery, release trains, or RUP as lean(er) alternatives to waterfall and agile. Johanna explains how to encourage project teams to create communities of practice using their social networks—start with the existing rumor mill and build on it more formally.