Better Software West 2017 - Product Owner

Git clients and the GitHub cloud have achieved an enviable adoption rate. Major corporations as well as open source projects now host their code on GitHub. Developers, DevOps, and non-technical writers alike now use Git to work with text files in a way that enables them to go back to specific versions at any point in time. Websites at GitHub.io are proliferating. Job interviewers look to GitHub to gauge each individual's creativity, popularity, capability, and tenacity. Join Wilson Mar in this hands-on tutorial to become immediately productive with these vital tools. Wilson has...

Ever walk out of a meeting or training class struggling to remember what was just discussed? Or be annoyed that people request information that you’ve already shared? You are not alone! Leaders struggle with how to create an engaging environment that results in high collaboration and learning. Unfortunately, most leaders start off with the disadvantage of being exposed to practices that recent brain science has proven to be ineffective, such as standing up front in the room and talking with slides for an hour instead of engaging people every 10–20 minutes. In an agile environment, learning...

Has this happened to you? You try to implement a change in your organization and it doesn’t get the support that you thought it would. And, to make matters worse, you can't figure out why. Or, you have a great idea but can’t get the resources required for successful implementation. Jennifer Bonine shares a toolkit of techniques to help you determine which ideas will—and will not—work within your organization. This toolkit includes five rules for change management, a checklist to help you determine the type of change process needed in your organization, techniques for communicating your...

Now that we’ve gotten beyond the initial shock and prevalence of mobile applications, we’ve come to realize that it’s not just about making apps work. In chasing the mobile market, we often don’t really understand or choose to ignore the differences in the mobile platform when it comes to designing and building a successful app. Of course, the mobile platform is smaller, but what else do you need to consider? To be successful, you need more than just “it works.” Phil Lew explores the top mobile quality challenges, and discusses how to approach and solve them. Some of these challenges...

Do you struggle with making your ideas clear and understandable to others? Does it annoy you to sit in requirements sessions for hours only to leave with more questions than answers? As human beings, we’re made for storytelling. It is a natural form of communication. So, Jeff Howey suggests that we use some of the same techniques we use talking to friends and family when trying to share our complex ideas and define software requirements. Whether you are a product owner or a traditional business analyst trying to make your approach to requirements more lean and nimble, join Jeff to explore...

Is there symmetry between agile and football? Software development methods and one of the more physical sports. You would think the answer is no—nope, surely no similarities there. Nor can agile folks learn much from this grimy sport. Well, just as Scrum has its naming roots in the sport of rugby, perhaps there is some symmetry to it. Join Bob Galen and Josh Anderson as they explore American football and look for similarities, lessons, metaphors, and tactics that align and amplify our agile team practices. Bob and Josh explore making game time adjustments, the importance of tempo,...

When we think of planning, we often think about requirements planning. We get the initial features and functions down, and then see where agile takes us. Lisa Calkins claims that less than a third of software development projects are successful. Regarding this lack of success, process experts focus on the lack of planning early in the project. However, Lisa believes that all too often teams jump directly from “idea” to “feature sets” without any long-term product or business strategy. Software projects should be value-driven rather than focused on specific requirements or features that may...

Do you want to know how real users are interacting with your product? Do you want to know which features they don’t use? Would you like to understand how your product works internally under real operational conditions? Then you need telemetry—the instrumentation of your product to record this information and transmit it back to you for analysis. Windows 10 implemented this capability. Today, there are more than 450 million devices running Windows 10 providing constant feedback on its operation. Ken Johnston says Microsoft learned a lot about what they did right for that launch—and what...

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...

In an industry where fads come and go, people you work with probably think that DevOps is just another flash in the pan, another techno-management fad. You, however, know adopting a DevOps culture will help your organization, and you need to be able to convince the rest of the organization. Since DevOps is mostly about culture, it’s critical that you have organizational support to implement it. Ken Mugrage shares peer-reviewed research, stories from real companies, and other solid evidence that you can use to make the case for adopting a DevOps culture. Unfortunately, pure logic and...

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? This is the agile dojo, a real experiment happening in a large, complex organization. Francie Van Wirkus shares her insights and learnings of creating and sustaining an agile dojo....

Industry data indicates that untrained and inexperienced requirements authors commonly inject thirty to fifty major defects per page of text. With many requirements specifications reaching several hundred pages, potentially thousands of defects are injected into the software development process. John Terzakis says training and mentoring of authors by a requirements coach is effective in reducing defect densities by an order of magnitude—when each coach is assigned only a few authors, they are collocated and, most importantly, experienced requirements coaches are available. So what...

A visual management system is a low-tech tool with a simple mission—to visually represent the work that the team is doing. When used regularly and correctly, it can be a project acceleration tool. However, teams often go wild with visuals, decorating every inch of free wall space with gridlines, Sticky Notes, and project stats until it looks like the arts and crafts store vomited all over the office. Nichole Vanderlaan refers to this as “wallpaper,” which is often static and fails to provide much benefit. She highlights common failure modes that result in wallpaper such as not huddling...

Improvisational comedy—sometimes called improv—is a form of theater in which the performance is created spontaneously, in the moment. Successful improvisers learn and use a variety of skills and techniques which allow them to better extract ideas, expand on them, and make them meaningful and manifest. Now, reread the previous sentence but replace the word “improvisers” with “analysts.” In many ways, improv is a great analogy for requirement elicitation, analysis, and specification. In this highly interactive session, Damian Synadinos uses his extensive experience with improv and...

Lean and agile development methods, which emphasize planning on five different levels, can generate amazing high-level vision and long-term plans to achieve business goals. These methods also can produce plans for lower-level detailed iteration and daily planning. Yet when it comes to release planning—the middle time frames—lean-agile methods often degrade into a best guess by the team, architect, or project manager. Sarah Harper demonstrates how to use your team’s historical data to accurately predict and plan releases. In addition, she shows how you can use Monte Carlo methods to...

Even though most teams appreciate the benefits of test automation, it is commonly viewed as too time-consuming to be included as part of an agile sprint. This results in automation being done in isolation, typically months after the user story has been completed. This can lead to several problems including automation team members being disengaged and missing key aspects of the requirements, as well as teams going through a period where new features are being introduced but no regression testing is occurring. Angie Jones provides agile-friendly approaches to test automation that allow teams...

Wouldn’t it be great if there were a way to combine quantified business goals, direct traceability from goals to features, surfacing of value assumptions, cause-and-effect analysis, design thinking, and visual facilitation in a single approach? Mathias Eifert says there is! Impact maps support multiple stakeholders in gaining consensus on which features or actions are most useful in helping an organization achieve its goals. In the process, stakeholders agree what needs to be accomplished, create shared understanding of possible solutions, decide which user groups or personas to target...

Many approaches to implementing agile focus primarily on the adoption of common practices at the team level. While this focus on practices is important, recognizing that agile is a set of overarching values and principles is also important. Adopting agile “at scale” in organizations often means a culture change needs to take place. To facilitate change, we must understand culture, its levels, and how we can influence it. Agile transformations often stall because those leading the transformation fail to view it through the lens of a cultural change. Ebenezer Ikonne shares agile culture...

As a leader it can be difficult—whether in times of change or in times of relative stability—to stay centered and focused on what is important. The “noise” around you can be deafening and the pace can make your head spin. Paul Hammond has tried many approaches, both for himself and for his teams, to manage this sensory overload. A number of tactical methods have helped, but he has found he always returns to and relies on three core evergreen principles—simplicity, discipline, and clarity. Join Paul to gain insight into what each of these means to him with examples of situations where...