Better Software West 2017 - Lean & Kanban
Monday, June 5
Principles and Practices of Lean Software Development
PreviewLean 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...
Tuesday, June 6
Thinking Inside the Box – Root Cause Analysis with The Six Boxes
Do you want to improve business and user value delivery, quality, efficiency, and productivity of your software engineering team? OK, who doesn’t? Poor productivity problems, quality issues, failing to meet commitments, and general team inefficiencies are unfortunately still commonplace. And what is at the root of most problems? James Waletzky says the answer is those highly imperfect creatures—humans. So how do we go about fixing the problems? First, we must discover the root causes, not just the symptoms, and those are not always obvious. In this hands-on tutorial, James focuses on a...
Lean/Agile Data Driven Decisions Demystified
For many agile practitioners, software metrics beyond a burndown chart are little understood or, perhaps, very scary because poor metrics can be worse than no metrics. In this enlightening session, Larry Maccherone explores how you and your organization can use metrics to bring management and lean/agile teams closer rather than becoming a wedge that drives them into conflict. Larry covers the entire lifecycle of the metrics process—from metric selection to reporting data—in compelling ways. Join Larry to gain an understanding of a wide range of concepts including common (101-level) metrics...
Wednesday, June 7
From Scrum to Kanban: Our Journey
Two of Scott MacIntyre’s teams expressed frustration upon reaching a “Scrum plateau.” After meeting with both teams and hearing their thoughts, Scott decided to move from Scrum to a kanban-style process. One year into their kanban journey, the teams have moved from only visualizing their workflow to improving collaboratively with a focus on flow. Scott relates his teams’ experiences with adopting a new software development mindset including its successes and failures, and shares a set of practices that ensures as smooth a transition as possible for those teams interested in moving to...