Better Software West 2018 - Requirements & User Stories
Monday, June 4
Get Started with Acceptance Test-Driven/Behavior-Driven Development
Defining, understanding, and agreeing on the scope of work to be done are often areas of discomfort for product managers, developers, and quality assurance experts alike. The origin of many items, living in our defect tracking systems, can be traced to our difficulty performing these initial activities. Ken Pugh introduces acceptance test-driven development (ATDD)/behavior driven development (BDD), explains why it works, and outlines the different roles team members play in the process. ATDD/BDD improves communication among customers, developers, and testers. By decreasing re-work, ATDD/...
Coaching Workshop: Taking Your Scrum to the Next Level
Are you struggling to achieve results from your agile and Scrum teams? Are you having trouble with user story writing or with effective estimation and forecasting? Are your sprint reviews and retrospectives low focus and low energy? What about gaining traction on the organization-side of things? Do your leaders actually understand the underlying principles? Are they measuring things properly? And what about Scrum at Scale—how’s that going? If you have questions, any questions, about how to improve specific practices or generally how to improve your agile journey, then this tutorial is for...
Tuesday, June 5
Advanced Backlog Refinement and Estimation Techniques
One of the greatest challenges organizations face when embracing Agile is how to streamline the process of analyzing, defining, and refining the product backlogs so they can be easily consumed by their teams. Join Lee Henson to take a deep dive into advanced techniques that allow you to refine the work and ultimately achieve more accurate complexity estimates—for better project and release forecasting. Explore techniques including the creation of the Agile Press Release, which defines the who, what, where, when, why, and how behind the scope of an agile project or release in a simple one-...
Building the Right Thing by Focusing on the Customer
This tutorial is for product creators who are passionate about delighting their customers by solving their true needs. Join Catherine Louis as she walks you through Design Thinking, Build- Measure-Learn loops to validate assumptions, and Scrum to deliver as table stakes for building the right thing rather than building the wrong thing faster. In this highly interactive workshop, you will be “learning by doing”. Some of the topic we’ll explore include practical Product Discovery tools and how to effectively en-Vision your products. We’ll use User Story Mapping as means of defining and...
Wednesday, June 6
Essential Patterns of Mature Agile Testers
Testing in agile teams is still one of the great mysteries of the agile world. In many organizations, testers continue to be marginalized. In others, testers are active but rarely understand or reach the full potential of their role. In this session, Shaun Bradshaw, an experienced agile coach and tester, will explore the practices and mindset of fully empowered agile testers on high-performance agile teams. Throughout Shaun’s agile coaching experience, he’s seen it all—from total dysfunction to high performance and everything in between. He’ll share with you real-world tactics to help you...
Outcome Over Output: Don't Be a Backlog Lumberjack
As agile goes mainstream, many organizations are only focused on mastering different elements of agile frameworks. Progress is measured by vanity metrics such as velocity and burndown charts. These metrics can turn agile teams into backlog lumberjacks! Teams, ScrumMasters, and leadership must realize that while speed to launch is crucial to delivering software, speed to learning is even more important. To accomplish this mindset shift, product owners need to learn to change their focus from mastering the art of writing user stories to connecting their teams with the users of their products...
Beating the Feature Factory Mindset
On a human level, we crave outcomes and impact. But in software product development, there is something addictive about the "build more and more features" approach that often leaves people frustrated and unsatisfied. Developers understand the challenges of working in output-focused environments and the adverse effects this has on productivity, morale, and business impact. Join John Cutler as he discusses these "feature factories," why they exist, how they impact your business, and how you can shift the focus to outcomes and impact. John thoroughly makes the case that churning out features...
Thursday, June 7
Fuel Agility with Transparent Expectations
PreviewDo you know how your work is aligned to tactical and strategic goals? Success is rooted in a productive and cohesive team-centered culture. When culture and execution are misaligned, failure is almost certain. Everyone on and around the team must understand their role in defining, delivering, and growing value. It sounds easy, but the discipline can be tough, which leads to disappointments and unwelcome surprises. Nabila Safdar focuses on curating transparent expectations by the following six core practices. First, foster candor and respect. This leads to unity. Second, have fresh...
Stop Guessing and Validate What Your Customers Want
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...
Using Behavior Driven Development and Acceptance Test-Driven Development to create GREAT requirements
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...
The Five Biggest Mistakes Your Team Is Making in Requirements Definition
Google pioneer Alberto Savoia offered this sage advice: Build the right "it" before you build It right. But few software companies take the time to define, much less build, the right "it." The problem starts with a poor requirements definition process. In this session, join Kathryn Campbell as she examines the five most common mistakes that software companies make during requirements definition—and how to avoid them. First Kathryn defines thinking too small as a huge problem and shows you how to broaden your perspectives. Next, she exposes being stuck in the past, with legacy systems...
Building the Perfect Product Backlog
"Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things." This quote from Peter Drucker identifies why even the most productive agile teams may not always deliver the most successful business solutions. The agile team depends on the product owner to correctly identify the business requirements with the highest values, to clearly describe each feature at the right level of granularity, to provide the necessary supporting documentation, and to continuously adapt the product backlog to meet the emerging needs of the organization. Otherwise, the team could be measuring its...
Agile Lighthouses: Navigating toward Successful Products
PreviewDirectional awareness in product development is one of the most challenging aspects of building things—whether applications, services, or true products. Gaining a true north in your journey and having a light to show you the way are often the difference between success and failure. But what is your compass? Where is your lighthouse? It’s your customer, and your challenge is determining how to effectively engage the customer. Agile product management provides a distinct mindset with techniques and patterns useful in navigating these often-convoluted courses. And Anu Smalley is an...