Agile Development

Tutorials

ME Build Product Backlogs with Test-Driven Thinking―and More SOLD OUT NEW

David Hussman, DevJam

Mon, 06/08/2015 - 8:30am

Many product backlogs of user stories are nothing more than glorified to-do lists. Teams have lost the idea of prioritizing real business value and focus instead only on finishing stories and accumulating story points. Join David Hussman as he drives a stake into the heart of lame backlogs and breathes new life into product design with pragmatic UX and test-driven thinking. Using real-world examples, David shares his experiences and teaches tools you can use to fuse centered-product thinking with end-to-end testing. These techniques include: developing test-driven user experiences, improving product discovery (backlog grooming) sessions with testing talk, adding story clarity with examples and tests, validating requirements with tests, connecting program teams by decomposing product ideas into small testable stories, and recomposing them to validate product level learning. Because we learn by doing and questioning as we go, show up ready to work. This session is for testers, developers, product owners, and anyone else interested in improving their product thinking and product backlog. Bring your failing product backlog stories for discussion, too.

MJ Continuous Testing to Drive Continuous Integration and Deployment NEW

Cory Foy, Cory Foy, LLC

Mon, 06/08/2015 - 1:00pm

Continuous integration and continuous testing are two vital agile feedback loops that lead to a continuous deployment environment. Continuous integration processes monitor source code―recompiling after every change, running smaller tests, and notifying the developer if anything goes wrong. Continuous testing (and potentially continuous deployment) monitors integration builds, installs the product in a staging environment, and runs integration tests, again looking for problems. Jared Richardson explains the ideas and then the tools needed to implement both continuous integration and continuous deployment. Jared demonstrates the open source continuous integration tool Jenkins as the center of the process. These powerful concepts ensure issues are detected within minutes of most code changes, and the developer is notified so he can fix the problem and learn from the experience. Even a partial adoption changes the cadence of a development organization and eliminates a great deal of ongoing code maintenance. Learn how to sell the idea and set up the process in your own organization.

MK Six Free Ideas to Improve Agile Success

Pollyanna Pixton, Accelinnova

Mon, 06/08/2015 - 1:00pm

Free? Is anything free these days? Based on her experience working with organizational leaders and her research into what drives organizational performance, Pollyanna Pixton shares six ideas—and the keys to their effective implementation—to help assure the success of your agile teams. As a bonus, her suggestions won’t cost you a thing. Pollyanna’s first free idea is how to create a culture of trust—the keystone of open collaboration—within your team and organization. The second free idea is about ownership—how to give it and not take it back. Third is empowering teams to make decisions by helping them understand and internalize the project and product’s purpose and value. The number four idea is that you can only fix processes, not people, so invest your energy toward the correct target. Idea five is to match people’s roles to their passion. Her final free idea is that integrity does matter—and matters most. Explore with Pollyanna why each of these ideas is important and how you can adopt them on your agile team.

ML Wearables: Navigating the Perfect Storm of Sensors, Big Data, Privacy, and Security NEW

Philip Lew, XBOSoft

Mon, 06/08/2015 - 1:00pm

One of the latest facets of the mobile paradigm is mobile wearables―a new generation of personalized technology that knows us better than our closest friends do. How many of your friends know how far you walked or what you ate today? Although you may think mobile wearables are just for geeks, they will become commonplace very quickly. Our challenge is to develop applications that can synthesize context from the gigantic amount of data these devices and their sensors generate. Ensuring the privacy and security of device usage and its data will be of highest concern. Philip Lew systematically analyzes context―the most important element in future design and development of mobile applications while incorporating big data, privacy, and security. Using examples, Philip shows the contextual elements you need to consider now and discusses how to identify key factors for a future generation of wearable products based on discovering anticipatory services.

MO Agile Estimation and Planning: Scrum, Kanban, and Beyond

David Hussman, DevJam

Mon, 06/08/2015 - 1:00pm

If you are new to agile methods—or trying to improve your estimation and planning skills—this session is for you. David Hussman brings years of experience coaching teams on how to employ XP, lean, Scrum, and kanban. He advises teams to obtain the estimating skills they need from these approaches rather than following a prescribed process. From start to finish, David focuses on learning from estimates as you learn to estimate. He covers skills and techniques from story point estimating delivered within iterations to planning without estimates by delivering a continuous flow of value. Going beyond the simple mechanics of estimation and planning, David explores agile techniques to enable continuous learning and ways to prevent sprint planning sessions from becoming empty rituals. Join David and your peers to practice your agile estimation and planning techniques so they can become powerful tools within your project.

TA Continuous Delivery: Rapid and Reliable Releases with DevOps SOLD OUT

Bob Aiello, CM Best Practices Consulting

Tue, 06/09/2015 - 8:30am

DevOps is an emerging set of principles, methods, and practices that enable the rapid deployment of software systems. DevOps focuses on lowering barriers between development, testing, security, and operations in support of rapid iterative development and deployment. Many organizations struggle when implementing DevOps because of its inherent technical, process, and cultural challenges. Bob Aiello shares DevOps best practices starting with its role early in the application lifecycle and bridging the gap with testing, security, and operations. Bob explains how to implement DevOps using industry standards and frameworks such as ITIL v3 (IT Service Management) in both agile and non-agile environments, focusing on automated deployment frameworks that quickly deliver value to the business. DevOps includes server provisioning essential for cloud computing in what is becoming known as Infrastructure as Code. Bob equips you with practical and effective DevOps practices—automated application build, packaging, and deployment—essential for meeting today's business and technology demands.

TB Great Product Design with User Story Mapping NEW

Jeff Patton, Jeff Patton & Associates

Tue, 06/09/2015 - 8:30am

A story map is a simple model, built from index cards or sticky notes, which helps the people who make it envision a customer’s experience with their product. Jeff Patton explains that within a design process story maps are a core practice focused on understanding and building empathy with customers and users, and then identifying and testing solutions to improve the customer’s experience with your product or service. The design process and story mapping can identify completely new product opportunities or improve the existing product experience. Join Jeff to learn how to map your customer’s and user’s experience today and then how to deliberately improve that experience. Use empathy maps, persona sketches, archetypes and stereotypes, story mapping, and design studio concepts to speed your design work. Since all solution ideas are speculative, learn how to validate solutions as quickly and cost-effectively as possible. In the end, discover an essential design process that allows you to identify and validate innovative product solutions.

This is a hands-on workshop. Come prepared to learn.

TE Eight Steps to Kanban

Ken Pugh, Net Objectives

Tue, 06/09/2015 - 8:30am

Transitioning to agile can be difficult—often downright wrenching—for teams, so many organizations are turning to kanban instead. Kanban, which involves just-in-time software delivery, offers a more gradual transition to agile and is adaptable to many company cultures and environments. With kanban, developers pull work from a queue—taking care not to exceed a threshold for simultaneous tasks—while making progress visible to all. Ken Pugh shares eight steps to adopt kanban in your team and organization. Ken begins with a value stream map of existing processes to establish an initial kanban board, providing transparency into the state of the current workflow. Another step establishes explicit policies to define workflow changes and engender project visibility. Because you can easily expand kanban to cover many parts of development, another step is to increase stakeholder involvement in the process. Join this interactive session to practice these key steps with hands-on exercises and take away an initial plan for implementing kanban in your organization.

TF A Product Ownership Practicum for Product Owners and ScrumMasters NEW

Bob Galen, Velocity Partners

Tue, 06/09/2015 - 8:30am

Congratulations! Your boss has selected you for a Product Owner role ... or you’re a newly minted ScrumMaster trying to figure out how to play with your Product Owner ... or you’re an experienced Product Owner struggling achieve balance among your stakeholders, customers and team ... or you’re newly CSPO certified but don’t know how to be a REAL Product Owner. Well fear not. Join author and Product Owner coach Bob Galen in this fast paced, crash course in how to ROCK your new role. Explore the dynamics of user stories, product backlogs, valuation and prioritization, establishing minimal marketable deliverables, and delivering high-impact sprint reviews. Then we’ll raise the bar to talk about product ownership at scale, how to build quality into your products, and how to effectively interact with your teams. Leave this workshop with the ideas, skills, and techniques to become the Product Owner you—and your boss—envisioned you to be.

TG Agile Boot Camp for Project Managers

Ken Whitaker, Leading Software Maniacs

Tue, 06/09/2015 - 8:30am

For a project manager, successfully transitioning from traditional project management to a more agile approach can be difficult due to the staggering learning curve. Using a combination of case studies, exercises, and best practices identified in the PMBOK® Guide, Ken Whitaker gets you up to speed on the essential fundamentals you need to effectively facilitate and lead Scrum-based agile projects. Learn ways to avoid being yet another project failure statistic, how to make better tradeoffs using a simple technique based on a design hierarchy, and adopt innovative ways to better collaborate with product management to focus on what’s really important to the customer. To become an effective leader, discover how to size up and then help your team rise up in their hierarchy of needs while adapting your leadership style to effectively communicate with stakeholders. This workshop is designed to give you practical tools to help you lead and motivate your team to deliver projects on time, every time.

TI Agile Project Failures: Root Causes and Corrective Actions SOLD OUT

Jeffery Payne, Coveros, Inc.

Tue, 06/09/2015 - 8:30am

Agile initiatives always begin with the best of intentions—accelerate delivery, better meet customer needs, or improve software quality. Unfortunately, some agile projects do not deliver on these expectations. If you want help to ensure the success of your agile project or get an agile project back on track, this session 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 problems, and (non)agile testing can all contribute to project failure. Learn practical tips and techniques for identifying early warning signs that your agile project might be in trouble and how you can best get your project back on track. Gain the knowledge you need to guide your organization toward agile project implementations that serve the business and the stakeholders.

TK Essential Patterns of Mature Agile Leaders SOLD OUT

Bob Galen, Velocity Partners

Tue, 06/09/2015 - 1:00pm

Currently much of agile adoption—coaching, advice, techniques, and training―revolves around the agile teams. Leaders are typically ignored, marginalized, or, in the worst cases, vilified. Bob Galen contends that there is a central and important role for managers and effective leadership within agile environments. Join Bob to explore the patterns of mature agile managers and leaders—those who understand servant leadership and how to effectively support, grow, coach, and empower their agile teams in ways that increase the teams’ performance, accountability, and engagement. Investigate training and standards for agile adoption, and situations and guidelines for when to trust the team and when to step in to provide guidance and direction. Examine the leader’s role in agile at-scale and with distributed agile teams. Good leadership is central to sustaining your agile adoption; bad leadership can render it irrelevant or a failure. To inspire you and your teams, join Bob to walk the path of the good and to examine the patterns of the bad.

Keynotes

K1 Why DevOps Changes Everything

Jeffery Payne, Coveros, Inc.

Wed, 06/10/2015 - 8:30am

DevOps is more than a buzzword or a passing fad. It's a radical new approach to rapidly deliver and manage high quality software applications. However, many organizations don’t fully grasp the magnitude of this change or what it means for everyone involved in the software development lifecycle. When done well, DevOps drives higher quality and efficiency into software development, software testing, and application management activities. It empowers teams to remove quality and productivity impediments throughout the entire software lifecycle. When done poorly, critical bugs are deployed directly into production and software failures increase. Today, team members are often confused about their changing role and become frustrated. Jeffery Payne discusses how DevOps changes everything and what you must implement to reap the benefits of this movement. Learn what steps to take to successfully implement a DevOps process while avoiding the pitfalls. Take home ideas for how to leverage DevOps to advance your career.

K3 Lean UX: Turn User Experience Design Inside Out

Jeff Patton, Jeff Patton & Associates

Thu, 06/11/2015 - 8:30am

It’s usually the finer points of the user experience (UX) design that separate good-enough software from really-great software. For companies launching new products or adding new capabilities, how well they understand their users and their needs differentiates the wild successes from the dismal failures. This is user experience design, and doing it well in the past took experienced specialists and lots of time. But the world has changed. Jeff Patton describes how Lean UX turns product design into a team sport in which everyone participates. Learn how Lean UX thinking breaks what we thought were good design rules. In Lean UX design, it’s OK to guess. It's OK for developers to talk to users. It’s OK for bad artists to design user interfaces. And, it’s OK to demonstrate half-baked ideas. You’d think that if we break all these rules, good user experience couldn’t possibly result—but it does. Jeff shares examples of how all this rule breaking is supported by a culture of experimentation and learning—and that makes all the difference.

K4 Shaping the Future of Agile Software Development

Christin Wiedemann, Professional Quality Assurance, Ltd.

Thu, 06/11/2015 - 4:15pm

Software development needs to continuously re-invent itself to take full advantage of new and evolving technology trends—and to keep up with user expectations. Are our agile approaches evolving as quickly as the new technologies, or are we being left behind as we use the same methods and techniques of a decade ago? Christin Wiedemann says that the future of agile development is ours to shape, and in shaping it we must be willing to question our habits and overturn today’s conventions. We must create a collaborative environment that encourages creativity and innovation. Christin shares what she means by innovation and why the future of agile depends on innovation. She explores ideas around brainstorming and collaboration, and discusses the importance of having the creativity and courage to investigate new approaches. Christin says we must continuously challenge and question methods, techniques, and core beliefs. Discover new insights that can change how you view the future of agile.

Concurrent Sessions

BW5 Integrating Agile and Traditional Projects in the Enterprise

Steve Caseley, Sensei Project Solutions

Wed, 06/10/2015 - 1:30pm

Is your organization using agile on some projects and classic waterfall on others? Are you concerned with integrating your agile projects into your current PMO, tool, and reporting structure? Are you afraid you might require two totally separate approaches? Steve Caseley believes you can support agile without having to introduce a new suite of tools. Project vision, release and sprint planning, product backlog management, and automated production of Scrum artifacts are all possible with your existing project management tools. Steve demonstrates how Microsoft Project and Project Online can provide full support for Scrum/agile projects. Having a framework based on existing tools is key, as it fully integrates your agile projects into established PMOs, ensuring consistency across your organization’s project portfolio independent of the delivery approach selected. Learn how to provide full support and manage all projects—both traditional and agile—in your portfolio in the same tool set.

BW16 Lean Software Development Is for Everyone

Ken Pugh, Net Objectives

Wed, 06/10/2015 - 4:15pm

Lean software engineering emphasizes continuous delivery of high quality applications. Ken Pugh explains the principles and practices that form the basis of lean software development―concentrating on developing a continuous flow by eliminating delays and loopbacks; delivering quickly by developing in small batches; emphasizing high quality which decreases delays due to defect repair; making policies, process and progress transparent; optimizing the whole rather than individual steps; and becoming more efficient by decreasing waste. Ken describes lean’s emphasis on cycle time rather than resource utilization and demonstrates the value stream map which helps you visualize the development cycle flow to identify bottlenecks. He explores the differences between push and pull flow, describes how lean thinking shows up in agile processes including Scrum and Extreme Programming, and discusses how lean can be applied to the entire workflow—not just to the development portion. Ken concludes with a discussion of how you can begin your lean transformation.