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Lean Management

Tutorials

MJ Principles and Practices of Lean Software Development
Ken Pugh, Net Objectives
Mon, 11/09/2015 - 1:00pm

Lean software development has often been described as “better, faster, cheaper” and focused on “eliminating waste,” but those are misnomers. Going after speed improvement and waste elimination can actually reduce the benefits you might otherwise get from lean. Ken Pugh describes what lean software development really is and why you should be incorporating it into your development efforts—whether you use Scrum, kanban, or SAFe. Ken explains the mindset, principles, and practices of lean. Its foundations are systems thinking, a relentless focus on time, and an understanding that complex systems require holistic solutions. Employing lean principles, you optimize the whole, eliminate delays, improve collaboration, deliver value quickly, create effective ecosystems for development, push decisions to the people doing the work, and build integrity in. Lean practices include small batches, cross-functional teams, implementing pull, and managing work in process. Ken describes how to use lean—no matter where you are in your development process.

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Keynotes

K2 Continuous EVERYTHING: How Agile Is Changing Our World Forever
Jeffery Payne, Coveros, Inc.
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 10:00am

Everywhere we look these days we see the word continuous—continuous delivery, continuous integration, continuous deployment, continuous testing, continuous security, and continuous ______ (fill in the blank). It’s continuous everything! So, what’s happening in our industry? Will a move toward more continuous practices result in better software? Will agile have any long-lasting effect on how software is built, tested, delivered, and maintained? Join Jeffery Payne as he discusses the link between agile and continuous software engineering capabilities. Learn how operating in a continuous manner not only speeds things up but also results in better software quality and security. Discover how the continuous nature of agile is changing our world. Leave with an understanding of what this change means for us as software professionals. Take back knowledge about how we can get more involved in the continuous processes that surround our work.

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Concurrent Sessions

BW7 Visualization to Improve Value Delivery
Michael Harris, David Consulting Group
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 2:45pm

Small organizations usually lack the time and money to make mistakes in what they work on next, so prioritizing by business value is a survival skill. In large organizations, work is organized into projects to which resources are assigned to maximize their utilization. Lean product development flow theory suggests that this strategy of assigning resources to projects and optimizing their utilization is a poorer—and sometimes catastrophic—strategy for delivering economic value. Instead, the flow of work through small teams of expert resources is preferred. Mike Harris gives an overview of the key elements of flow theory and shares five simple but essential metrics—value visualization—for defining and tracking business value. These metrics optimize the flow of economic value and bring economic value metrics into tactical decision making in the software development process. Mike explains how these metrics require more involvement from the business and represent more accountability for the business and IT.

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BW10 Lean Entrepreneurship for Software Professionals
Thomas Vaniotis, Liquidnet
Wed, 11/11/2015 - 4:15pm

Software teams are faced with the prospect of building a product, only to have unexpected shifts in customer demand, changes in the competitive landscape, or swings in the economic climate undermine their plans and turn their product into expensive waste. What is an entrepreneurially-minded software developer, designer, or tester to do? Thomas Vaniotis guides you toward a shift in thinking that is manifest in the Lean Startup and Lean UX movement. Learn to value information that comes from quickly exposing an idea to market pressures rather than considering the delivery of a particular feature as the goal. Identify wasteful activities in your product cycle and re-invest that energy by innovating around the build-measure-learn loop that drives value. Lean thinking and using meaningful production data to drive decisions will assist you—whether a tester, developer, product manager, or designer—in operating under the uncertain conditions of modern markets, regardless of your company’s age or size.

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