DevOps West 2016 - Concurrent Sessions

More and more organizations are realizing that while they are getting more done, they are not necessarily getting more value. More code does not mean more product and more product does not mean more market share. According to David Hussman, we need to shift our focus toward a balanced investment in discovery and delivery without going back to gathering big requirements up front. To accomplish this, we need to embrace new discovery metaphors and practices. David draws on his years of experience working with product managers, heads of product, and product owners as he introduces ideas like...

At a time when organizations of all sizes both want and need innovation, exciting approaches including lean startup and agile development have risen to the forefront. Although there is no shortage of resources and expertise on these approaches, less guidance is available on the daunting challenge of introducing and increasing innovation in our organizations. Organizations of different sizes face different challenges in innovation which, if not dealt with, end up stifling the potential results. Mimi Hoang and George Schlitz share experiences from many years of successes and failures...

In 2015, the Standard & Poor’s Ratings IT team set out an ambitious objective—to tighten the process and controls around the quality of code deployed to production. Based on internal cost of quality assessments, and supporting agile and waterfall internal engineering processes, distinct testing levels were identified to help push quality left and root out the underlying causes of defects as early as possible. The ‘14 Levels of Testing’ were defined to collaboratively span organizational functions, establish quality expectations, and help track towards the goal of eliminating defects....

In today’s business environment, organizations cannot afford to resist change and move slowly. They have to move quickly, adapt frequently, and turn on a dime when conditions demand it. This is not always easy to do. Organizations of all shapes and sizes can become rooted in habits and processes that get in the way of efficiency and productivity. Adopting lean and agile practices is a great way to break free from those impediments. However, if leaders want their teams to be transparent and agile, the leaders must first embrace those practices themselves and lead by example. Based on his...

"What do you want the system to do?" can be a loaded question for agile teams. Ideally, the product owner gives you a product backlog with fully groomed user stories prioritized by business value, ready for team discussion and estimation. Instead, you may have the “big picture” product owner who can describe high level requirements but struggles to provide clear direction on specific system behavior, or the “aspiring developer” product owner who is more than happy to give you exact system implementation in intricate technical detail. You may have the “kid in a candy shop” product owner who...

Today, knowledge workers are seeking to find meaning in their lives and purpose in their work. With this new generation of employees who are as interested in purpose as in profit, it is imperative that we revisit management schemes—top-down work assignment, the annual review, strict clock-punching work hours, and inflexible vacation policies—and recognize their negative effects on individual morale and team productivity. As leaders, it is time we recognize and own our responsibility in these counterproductive techniques and boldly move into the future with radical alternatives. With...

Penny McVay shares how her team approached improving the quality of a large policy-writing application for a global insurance carrier. The application has many pieces and parts, thousands of lines of code are changed monthly, and the business depends on a stable application. To mitigate risk, the team investigated the question of how to predict where testing needed to focus. The regression test suite the organization had built was difficult to maintain, identified few defects, and took hours of effort to run. QA needed not only to optimize the regression suite but also to determine how to...

Agile practices can be the easy part of agile. It’s getting people into the agile mindset that can be a real challenge. Do you have a team member who doesn’t quite support agile or someone who’s playing along but not really committed? One step toward obtaining real commitment is a better understanding of why agile works, why it is different, and when it is the right approach. In this fast moving session, Perry Reinert provides a fun look at some of the theory that gets to the core of why agile works. Yes, we really can use the words fun and theory in the same sentence. Combining parts of...

When a user story is too big, it is harder to understand, estimate, and implement successfully. Some teams break the “business story” into “technical stories” but this generally doesn’t help because most or all of the technical stories need to be completed before there is anything meaningful for the stakeholders. There is a better way. Chris Sims teaches four simple yet powerful techniques for breaking big stories into smaller stories that are meaningful to stakeholders and deliver incremental business value. For each of the four techniques, Chris models the technique and then gives...

Sometimes we get a little stuck. It does happen. Work is at the same place, with the same people, and the same problems. The fresh perspective we seek is overcome by everyday demands and eludes us once again. John Ryskowski says that one path to a fresh perspective is to experience something that is totally unrelated, but at the same time reveals parallels to your situation. Do you know the drummer of a big band can actually guide the band, instill a sense of confidence, and inspire musicians to play as never before while adhering to the written music? Through subtle and timely cues, the...

If we observe the world through the lens of software testing, we discover that there are lessons all around us we can apply on the job, and one venue that’s packed with these tidbits is the movie theater. Bernie Berger gives examples of a few unlikely yet credible lessons from the language of some classic Hollywood movies—and how we can apply them as we test. Learn about the primary root cause of many software bugs from Office Space; see how the characters in Saving Private Ryan enacted ideas of exploratory testing; discover how to apply the skills of situational...

In the past few years we’ve used cloud technologies to improve pre-production flexibility and solve many problems that previously prevented us from delivering high quality apps to production. However, one problem consistently prevents full test coverage prior to deployment—the lack of comprehensive test data. As we try to get faster and leaner in our agile development processes, the problem with data becomes even more difficult to solve. Robert Kelman describes the evolution of DIRECTV’s (now AT&T) Agile Test Data Management program. He explains the five critical elements—centralized...

As organizations grow, they find themselves looking for opportunities to enhance the rate at which features can be delivered while minimizing negative business impact. Carlyle Davis believes that we are responsible for creating an system environment that provides simplicity and resiliency as complexity increases. Various non-functional qualities lead us rethink system architecture more deeply to satisfy the often ignored dimensions of scalability, auditability, and performance. The Command Query Responsibility Segregation (CQRS) and event-driven architectures are potential solutions to...

Too many of us continue to suffer through schedule-driven crunch mode and cost overruns. We all know the usual suspects, including bad estimates and changing requirements. But what if we set aside myths and embraced reality? Estimates are uncertain, but that doesn’t make them bad—only inconvenient. We can’t manage away the uncertainty, but we can choose where it lands. Robert Merrill believes that our longing for stable requirements tells us where the uncertainty wants to be—in the scope. What if we stopped fighting it? What if we broke the taboo and said we’re done with crunch mode, with...

Whether writing unit tests after coding or using test-driven development (TDD), developers often ask themselves—How much testing is enough? Or too much? Or not enough? Rob Myers helps answer these questions using the techniques from his experience doing and teaching TDD. Look for those tests that cause us to write code, look for unique behaviors and code-paths, and strive to narrow in the boundary conditions. This gives us pinpoint accuracy when something breaks. Rob demonstrates what this approach looks like using graphs, tests, and code. To answer “What needs to be tested?” Rob...

Whether you are just starting agile or have already made the transition to using agile in your organization, you may face the issues that Susan McNamara describes. Is your team not firing on all cylinders? Do people feel stuck or bored? Is your team having trouble getting to Done at the end of each sprint? Susan has booted up agile in three different organizations and has found valuable approaches that work across different environments. She covers topics including getting the most out of your product owners/product managers, dealing with organizational constraints in the agile group,...

Through the years, Linda Rising has given presentations about the use of stories instead of science in the industry, so in this session she has decided to be more helpful and talk about experiments. There's an increasing emphasis on experiments as a part of being more innovative but sometimes Linda says we need a nudge and some examples to help us get going. No, this is not too rigorous! Rather than talking about statistics, she is going to explore cheap, easy experiments—what to do, what to be aware of, and our own cognitive biases, including the confirmation bias that does its best to...

If testers sit passively through agile planning, important testing activities will be glossed over or missed altogether. Testing late in the sprint becomes a bottleneck, quickly diminishing the advantages of agile development. However, testers can actively advocate for customers’ concerns while helping the team implement robust solutions. Rob Sabourin shows how testers can—and should—contribute to the estimation, task definition, clarification, and scoping work required to implement user stories. Testers apply their elicitation skills to understand what users need, collecting great...

Choice can be a wonderful thing—when you’re buying a car and research abounds to help you decide. But when selecting the best agile scaling framework for your organization, choice can be downright intimidating and costly. SAFe, Scrum of Scrums, DAD, LeSS, or SSwS? There is a lot at stake. With many scaling frameworks to choose from, you’re probably questioning what each brings to the table. How can we assess which will result in the best outcome? What selection criteria should we use? Join Tom Weinberger as he shares expert insights, comparing and contrasting the capabilities of the most...

In his book Reinventing Organizations, Frederic Laloux describes the “Teal Organization” model. Teal organizations have an evolutionary purpose, self-managing teams with little or no organizational hierarchy, and individuals who bring their whole person to work rather than putting on a work face when leaving the house. Zappos is the most talked about organization attempting a transition to Teal. Bob Payne describes how his organization is becoming a Teal Organization. Since the concept of Teal is not a specific recipe, they are basing their transition on practices gleaned from...

You’re a senior engineer who decides to switch to management for experience in leading a team. How is your work going to change? What challenges are you going to face? How are you going to keep up with new technologies? Are people reporting to you going to see you as a leader and follow you? Sebastiano Armeli asked himself all these questions when he became a manager. See what he found it and learn how you can bring this information into your work. While management varies greatly by organization, Sebastiano explores leadership and management behaviors you can apply at your company. At...

Software development has improved dramatically over the past several years due in part to techniques, approaches, and development environments that take advantage of the power of modern computing machines. Software testing techniques have, by comparison, lagged. As projects and teams become more agile, the lines between the roles blur. Testers cannot remain uninformed about the underlying code and technologies that power the products they test. Join Robert Vanderwall as he shows how to take a deeper look at the code, using test-driven development (TDD) tests as a roadmap. Robert outlines...

More and more large organizations are adopting agile methods. As they do, many are adding more process than needed and are not stopping to work out what level of process will actually help their products or projects. David Hussman discusses the use of agile methods on large programs and small teams at large organizations like Disney, Target, Siemens, and others. David uses real-world experiences as examples for teaching concrete ideas about when scale is needed and not, as well as how to generally spread lasting agility that is based on concrete measures of success. Be warned: You will be...

Scrum is a project management framework and does not specify a set of how-tos or checklists that some other development processes define. Since Scrum can be implemented in various ways, it is easy—and often common—to misinterpret Scrum’s guidelines and make mistakes while implementing it. A new team, in their eagerness to “go agile” and adopt Scrum, often succumb to common pitfalls. Being aware of these mistakes is the first step toward avoiding or resolving them. Sumedha Ganjoo discusses and shares examples of some common mistakes that she notices new teams making. Examples include shared...

You are understaffed, overworked, and behind on your commitments. Your go-to person just quit, leaving an unbelievable void of knowledge. If the old-school ways of attracting talent—advertising on job boards, filtering résumés, interviewing candidates are not working, then this session is for you. Catherine Louis says the tables have turned. The balance of power has shifted from the employer doing the hiring to candidates operating more as free agents and selecting the job. Leaders must learn how to build teams that engage employees as sensitive, passionate, creative contributors. A shift...

Test automation should be an activity that involves the entire project team—not just the testing group. Test automation is a technical testing task, and the test team benefits from the assistance of others in the organization. Jim Trentadue outlines the various testing activities with the corresponding contributions and benefits of each team member. Project managers can coordinate the effort and schedule. Business analysts can manage technical test requirements. User acceptance testers can provide proper steps and screenshots for IT personnel. Developers can write code with testability in...

How do you successfully transform 700 people working on one product? The answer: Give them ownership. Value people over process. This requires that leaders learn how and when to step back—and when to step up. In the past eight years, the Veritas NetBackup organization had tried three agile transformations: two unsuccessful and one showing promise. The key difference has been the transformation of the leaders, helping teams take ownership rather than focusing only on artifacts and ceremonies. What did the leaders learn—and how? Julie Urban and Jeff Byron describe NetBackup’s transformation...

Scrum is a simple framework allowing a single team, working from a single backlog, to maximize the value it delivers to its stakeholders. Unfortunately, your organization probably has more than one team and more than one backlog—but you still need to maximize the value to your stakeholders. You need Scrum, but how do you scale it for your organization? Dan Rawsthorne proposes Scale Scrum with Scrum™; tie your organization’s development scrum teams together with Leadership Teams and Coordination Teams. These are scrum teams that assure that each development team has a backlog, that the...

In today's competitive market, employers increasingly depend on business analysts to act as change agents. This puts BAs in the powerful position of influencers—providing the analysis and evidence needed to support an organization’s strategic direction and decision-making. In their book, Think Like a Freak, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner provide a blueprint for critical thinking, offering to “retrain our brains” toward a new approach to problem-solving. Faye Thompson explores this framework and how the popular economists have used it to analyze complex economic problems. Faye then...

What is the most challenging aspect of running automation tests? Anshul Sharma believes it is covering multiple browsers and cross-device testing combined with faster execution of tests. One way to do this is parallel execution of tests concurrently over a Selenium Grid, but that comes with a substantial burden of managing and maintaining the platforms and browsers. Now that cloud-computing resources are available and affordable, an alternative is leveraging the cloud. Moving to the cloud makes tests easier and faster to run for several reasons. First, no installing/upgrading the browser...