Better Software West 2018 - Agile for the Enterprise

Agile initiatives always begin with high expectations—accelerate delivery, meet customer needs, and improve software quality. The truth is that many agile projects do not deliver on some or all of these expectations. If you want help to ensure the success of your agile project or to get an agile project back on track, this tutorial 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...

Agile coach Ryan Lockard interviewed fourteen of the seventeen authors of the Agile Manifesto for a special podcast project. Originally the idea was to capture the intent of authors and to chronicle the story of the Agile Manifesto, but what emerged became much more. This session covers the real story behind the rise and fall of agile in industry and what we can do to reclaim it. Ryan will dive into the history behind the Agile Manifesto and its signatories, what precipitated the manifesto's creation, and what the vision for it was. From that story emerges the rise of an industry, and to...

Agile methods aren’t just for software anymore—actually, they haven’t been for quite a while. Agile's collaborative, iterative, incremental approaches to work have caused it to go mainstream. But can we apply team-based agile straight out of the box in a nonsoftware context? Although most of the principles and patterns apply, sometimes the practices and frameworks need modification for a particular context. Mike Cottmeyer will explore two case studies of agile journeys: an international hotel chain going through a major rebranding initiative, and a well-known fast food restaurant looking...

Customers are demanding faster delivery of software products. Unfortunately, many organizations have not figured out how to automate their delivery process so they can deploy software applications on demand. In this session, Shivakumar Gopalakrishnan will discuss how Varian Medical Systems uses DevOps capabilities, AI, and chatbots to improve the operational aspects of its 360 Oncology care management platform and enable innovation by shortening time to market. As with any DevOps infrastructure for cloud-native applications, 360 Oncology's infrastructure is complex and has multiple...

Are you considering kanban but not sure how you’ll predict delivery without story points, velocity, and a burndown chart? Or are you part of a Scrum team but feeling like your team could benefit from improved flow within your sprints? In this session, join Julie Wyman and Hunter Tammaro as they explore key kanban metrics for measuring team flow and predictability. In the first half, they will introduce metrics including lead and cycle time, throughput, and the cumulative flow diagram. They’ll review what each represents, discuss easy ways to collect them, and show how they are similar and...

In agile, everything we do is an experiment. Product development is no different. We think we know what the customer wants, and the customer thinks they know what they want, but it turns out we're all wrong! To get to validated discoveries about our features, we must understand how to write a better hypothesis for our development experiments. This session focuses on challenging the mindset that we are validating options during our experiments. Natalie Warnert will show you how to eliminate options that don't work with data and feedback by looking at your product hypotheses as tests that...

Defining, understanding, and agreeing on the scope of work to be done is often an area of discomfort for product managers, business analysts, developers, and quality assurance experts alike. The origin of many items living in our defect tracking systems can be traced to the difficulties encountered while performing these initial requirements activities. Ken Pugh introduces behavior-driven development (BDD), also known as acceptance test-driven development (ATDD), and explains how it works in creating detailed requirements. He outlines the different roles that team members play in the...

Many teams make the mistake of starting their DevOps journey without a plan. They are excited that there is a way to eliminate pain and increase value in their delivery cycles and value streams, but starting without a plan often relieves pain in one part of the value stream but only causes more pain elsewhere. In this case study-style presentation, Logan Daigle will discuss the methods he has used with a variety of companies to ensure they are thinking about the whole DevOps picture from the beginning. He'll discuss best steps and practices for applying systems thinking to DevOps and give...

Ever find yourself making a sour face after talking to a coworker? Wishing your team meetings felt more like an engaging social hour? There is hope. Those everyday conflicts where something seems “off” after a conversation are often related to differences in communication styles. When team members understand themselves and others, there’s less conflict, more collaboration, and better working relationships. The DiSC model can help you understand why your team behaves the way it does and how to build trust for a more agile team. In this interactive session, agile coaches Allison Pollard and...

Implementing Agile practices in a regulated industry has its own set of unique challenges. Learn what worked and didn't work at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC) and WellCare Health Plans as they adopted Agile practices in product and software development within their regulated organizations.

Join Leon Sabarsky as he shares his advice and lessons learned on implementing Agile at the Blues and other healthcare organizations. Some or their particular challenges included scaling up, connecting with non-agile PMO’s, reconfiguring our traditional testing processes, and...