Better Software East 2016 - Agile Techniques
Wednesday, November 16
Five XP Practices for Agile Development
David Bernstein says that the core of Extreme Programming (XP) is comprised of five development practices: automating the build for continuously integrating software as it is written, collaborating with team members through pair programming, practicing agile design skills that enable testability, using test-first development to drive design, and refactoring code to reduce technical debt. Together, these five technical practices are essential for sustained success with XP and for many of the best agile teams. However, quite a few agile teams haven’t been exposed to...
Develop Your Agile Planning Playbook
Agile planning is often misinterpreted to mean minimal or improvised planning. However, planning and replanning with discipline and rigor are essential in agile, and no amount of execution effort can compensate for poor planning. Satish Thatte presents a customizable Agile Planning Playbook where each planning level guides and aligns planning at the next lower level. The planning process itself is agile with periodic adjustments based on customer feedback, plan execution, and changes in market or customer needs. Learn how to increase your agility by practicing...
The Agile Dojo: Shiny Toy or Best Idea Ever?
Remember your first two weeks on a Scrum team? It was fantastic and miserable all at the same time. And when things got difficult, your team teetered on the edge of the waterfall. What if there were a way to help teams gel more quickly and accelerate their agile learning by immersing them in it? What if there were a place where they could practice what they’ve learned in training, without interruption? Enter the Agile Dojo, a real experiment happening in a large, complex organization. Francie Van Wirkus shares her insights and learnings of creating and sustaining...
Thursday, November 17
Managing Agile Software Projects under Uncertainty
In chasing velocity, we often ignore or don’t understand the uncertainties and associated risks in our processes and their results. Agile is designed to handle uncertainty in requirements as new features are requested and priorities shift. But shouldn’t we also be thinking about and mitigating the uncertainties that are unique or even introduced by using agile? Phil Lew suggests that our problem is that we sometimes carry assumptions which either cause us to spend too much effort on things we can’t control or give us unfounded comfort and reassurance. If we can’t...
Experience Agile Emergence through Sketch Comedy
“The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.” Most people read this principle from the Agile Manifesto and focus on the self-organization element. What about the concept of emergence? Exactly how do requirements and designs emerge? And how do self-organizing teams enable emergence? Get a hands-on lesson on emergence and self-organization using an unlikely source of inspiration: sketch comedy. John Krewson leads courageous delegates to envision, write, rehearse, and perform an episode of The Waterfall Comedy Hour....
Scrum, Kanban, or Scrumban: Which Is Right for You?
Agile is on everyone’s minds today, as more and more organizations are eager to reap the benefits of rapid iterations using customer-centric approaches. Organizations tend to run to Scrum first because it is the most recognized agile framework. But is Scrum always the right answer for a team and a business? Heidi Araya discusses the types of scenarios and projects in which Scrum may not be a good fit. She shares other frameworks—including Kanban and Scrumban—as potential alternatives to consider to ensure teams and projects select the right fit and can deliver...
Agile at the Intersection of Mobile, Cloud, and the Internet of Things
The Internet of Things (IoT) will be a $1.7 trillion market by 2020. Don MacIntyre explores how agile is being used well beyond traditional software development in the Internet of Things. First, Don dives into how agile is being used today in a wide range of development environments. He discusses cloud-based software-as-a-service, large complex mission critical systems, and both mobile software and hardware. Next, he reviews the IoT, describes how it is disrupting many traditional markets, and shares how traditional device manufacturers are applying agile. Don...