DevOps West 2017 - Career & Personal Development
Monday, June 5
Git and GitHub for Developers and Testers
PreviewGit 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...
Facilitation Skills for All: Create Engaging Meetings
Are you looking for techniques that will foster collaboration within meetings? Are you recognizing that meetings have become painful experiences where people struggle to achieve the purpose of the meeting and question the value of meetings? Tricia Broderick and Jake Calabrese recognize that most facilitators understand the basics of the role, such as creating a meeting goal and agenda. Unfortunately, this alone does not guarantee a meeting’s success. Join Tricia and Jake to challenge the typical ways meetings are planned and conducted. Discover alternative techniques in dealing with common...
Help Retain Knowledge: Increase Engagement to Achieve Learning
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...
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...
Leading Change: Even If You’re Not in Charge
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...
Wednesday, June 7
The PM's Guide to Team Dynamics
Jerry Weinberg once said, “No matter how it looks at first, it's always a people problem.” In the past, the challenges for any team leader, regardless of specialty, were basically the same when it came to people issues. Now, with the popularity of agile and its cross-functional teams, leaders have another factor to consider in addition to people―their different specialties. How can our leadership approach help us achieve great results and a happy team? Join Julie Gardiner as she presents a communication model that can be used to help motivate every team member—and minimize personality/...
Software Craftsmanship in an Agile Environment
In the past two decades agile has become the popular development methodology. Businesses have been rushing to adopt agile processes because it promises to save money and deliver working software more quickly. However, for many businesses, software quality has not improved—and often has gotten worse. In response, some software engineering leaders found it necessary to create the software craftsmanship movement. Why has agile failed to deliver on its promise of higher quality software? What can be done about it? What solutions do these craftsmen offer? Chris McKenzie explains that the core...
Thursday, June 8
The Agile Dojo: Shiny Toy or Best Idea Ever?
PreviewRemember 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....
Experience Agile Emergence through Sketch Comedy
“The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.” Most people read this principle from the Agile Manifesto and focus on the self-organization element. What about the concept of emergence? Exactly how do requirements and designs emerge? And how do self-organizing teams enable emergence? Get a hands-on lesson on self-organization and emergence using an unlikely source of inspiration—sketch comedy. John Krewson leads courageous delegates to envision, write, rehearse, and perform an episode of The Waterfall Comedy Hour. Others watch the process unfold and...
Happy and Productive Teams: A Divine Saga
Matti Klasson believes we live in a world where our social networks and relations are becoming more important in everything we do—and this is reflected in our work environment. Social relations and networks within the organization will supersede traditional hierarchical structures. We need to support the new paradigm of networking and socially connected organizations where teams are enabled to deliver value to the customer as fast as possible. A new agile leadership is needed to create and maintain an environment where people can be highly creative and innovative. This is the story of how...
Your Resume is Now What You Do on GitHub
Increasingly, recruiters are looking at GitHub accounts to identify candidates who demonstrate a proven history of work over several years with specific technologies. Rather than looking at your résumé, employers prefer looking at your GitHub account because it’s verifiable. Anyone can analyze your GitHub history to see what you have been working on, when, with whom, and with what technologies. They can see how “technical” you are by what type of files you changed. Wilson Mar helps you create your own GitHub account, your personal website available from anywhere in the world, with keywords...
Friday, June 9
Impact over Progress: Learning from Evidence over Following the Process
All too often, David Hussman finds that teams are overly certain that “following a process” equates with finding success. For many of these teams and organizations, their focus is on progress over product, running the risk of getting the wrong thing done faster. Expect to be challenged by examining whether you are leading process adoption rather than impact produced. Explore how leaders can support the practices that are working, challenge the practices that are not working, and convert team goals to make real change for the organization in the form of better products, better user...
The Triumph of Simplicity, Discipline, and Clarity
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...
Leadership Coaching Dojo: A Chance to Practice What You Preach
A recent Harvard Business Review article referenced a survey in which 70 percent of leaders reported being uncomfortable with employee conversations. And these were simple conversations—not crucial or pivotal conversations. It is no surprise that most leaders really struggle as they engage in difficult conversations such as individual employee or team performance improvement discussions or those challenging leadership assumptions. Bob Galen says that these are the very conversations you need to have as you envision, engage, and guide your teams through the changes toward a successful agile...
Agile Leadership in the Public Sector
Less than a decade ago Gartner reported that 75 percent of large-scale government IT projects resulted in failure. In 2014, government software project failures such as Healthcare.gov again called national attention to this continuing problem in the public sector. To become more responsive, many federal, state, and local agencies began using agile software delivery methods. Yet, public service leaders still struggle to embrace new ways of thought or challenging long-term processes to instill agility into the public sector culture. Todd Holden examines what he sees as a fundamental thought-...