Agile2016

Abstract:
What is this thing everyone calls Agile? If you have been doing software development a different way your whole career you may be wondering why should I change, what’s so different? In this introductory talk we will define why Agile is more than a process or methodology; it really involves changing your culture to improve your software development. To provide some additional context we’ll also:

• Look back at how the Agile methods and practices emerged
• Discuss the Agile Manifesto and 12 Principles and their resulting impact on the way that we do software development today
• Describe what it’s like to work on Agile Project
• Describe what you can do next Monday to get started

Learning Outcomes:

• Learn common myths and misconceptions of agile
• Understand the why behind what we do
• Understand the importance of identifying your existing culture and how it impacts adopting agile

Attachments:

• Agile2016_IntroductionV1.pdf

Abstract:
One of the most challenging and trouble-prone aspects of agile product development is discovering the right product requirements to deliver at the right time, for the right customer. User stories and product backlogs are useful tools, but wait—there’s more!
Join Mary Gorman in this fast-paced introduction to a common-sense, tested approach to agile requirements. You will follow a story as it’s sliced across seven product dimensions with a constant focus on delivering value. You’ll realize the power of sketching analysis models to “see” agile requirements and the strength of using acceptance criteria to ideate and confirm agile requirements. Mary also will showcase creative ways to engage in collaborative conversations that result in right and ready agile requirements.
Discover how a holistic, adaptive approach to agile requirements provides a sound foundation for your product backlog through effective stakeholder conversations, collaboration, and a shared understanding of ever-evolving product needs. This session will help you appreciate how adaptive planning replaces change management with value management.
Learning Outcomes:

• Understand how valuing product options is key for slicing user stories
• Define the four functional and three nonfunctional dimensions of every user story
• Outline several ways agile teams holistically analyze user stories
• Describe how adaptive planning enables agile teams to deliver value faster

Abstract:
Implementing a feature in a two week timebox is easy enough: Reduce scope to a few small changes. The real problem comes when we try to compress testing from months to a day or two.
It is possible, but it will take a lot more than stories, sprints, and standups. The whole team will need to work together, to figure out what to build before we build it, to check for and ensure quality is high at every step, instead of letting uncertainty rise and conducting a mass inspection at the end. Learn to put down old tools, like test cases, test plans, and test strategy documents, along with what to pick up in their place - Exploration, Specification by Example, Unit tests, Build and Deploy automation.
Matt Heusser describes this new way of thinking about testing, how it changes the way we work, and where to go to keep going.
Learning Outcomes:

• Understand why traditional testing fails in an Agile Environment
• Understand how frequent delivery changes the way software is built and tested
• Compare whole-team quality to QA as gatekeeper
• Understand the impact of first-time quality on a release
• Understand why traditional attempts to build quality in failed, and how Agile Quality is different
• Understand Exploratory testing, tooling, and unit tests (TDD), Continuous Integration, and how the four play off each other
• Know where to go to get started

Attachments:

• whole_team_testing_pdf.pdf

Abstract:
Tim (and his imaginary friend Floyd) take us on a tour of "how agile works."
Everyone in your project can understand the agile practices, not just the programmers!
This session goes behind the mechanics of agile processes, and mechanics of agile practices, to dig into the reasons we do the things we do.
Learn the reasons behind the ceremonies, practices, and measures.
How does your "agile" measure up?
Learning Outcomes:

• Understand why we use agile practices, in terms that work not only for developers, but for anyone who might be the member of an agile team -- with a few tips along the way for those who are required to either lead volunteers or get children to do chores.

Attachments:

• 2016-AgilePracticesForEverybody.pdf

Abstract:
Self-organized, committed, collaborative, happy and hyper-performing.
That’s the description of the ideal Agile team. It sounds almost too good to be true. And indeed, many teams never reach that phase. So how is it possible?
Come to this session to learn what it takes to craft that collaborative Agile team. How to make the shift from individual contributors to jointly accountable team members. Learn about lift-offs, feedback loops, swarming and T-shaped people. Get insights in team locations, team space, culture and tools. Have a look at distributed teams. And experience different communication patterns and teambuilding activities.
After this introductory session, you will have basic understanding of the latest ideas and jargon on Agile collaboration and teamwork. And you will be well equipped to pick your next conference sessions to dive deeper into the subject.
Learning Outcomes:

• Participants will have basic understanding of the latest ideas and jargon on Agile collaboration and teamwork. And they will be well equipped to pick your next conference sessions to dive deeper into the subjects.

Abstract:
What will happen when your team tries to deliver software with Agile? In this fun and interactive session, you'll play a game simulating the first two and a half years of a new Agile team. Every quarter, you'll decide where to devote your team's effort. Will you focus on develop features? Or put your effort into mastering Agile practices? Will you start with team-oriented practices like Retrospectives, or technical practices such as Test-Driven Development? Choose wisely, and don't get fired!
Learning Outcomes:

• Learn the costs and benefits of a cross-section of Agile practices
• Experience the trade-offs involved with developing features vs. mastering practices
• Gain insights into the challenges and risks of learning various practices early vs. later

Abstract:
When not uncovered and resolved, impediments can do harm to an otherwise well run project in ways that are often subtle and easy to miss. If impediments undermine the success of our teams, then we as project managers, leaders, and stakeholders should all be very passionate about removing impediments. In order to accomplish this we need to do three things: we need to give impediments the proper attention, we need to become experts at uncovering them, and we need to integrate them into the process of continuous improvement within the team.
In this session Tom makes a passionate appeal for the importance of the lowly impediment - often ignored, but never missed.
Learning Outcomes:

• This session will give you hands on experience with impediment busting tools you can apply with your own team.
• An understanding of the fundamentals of impediment tracking, management, and removal that you can apply to any project.
• If you are already managing impediments for your team, then this session will give you a few new creative ideas that you can try out as well.

Attachments:

• Agile_Leaders_Recognizing_and_Removing_Impediments_Agile2016.pdf

Abstract:
Introducing Agile on team level is a quite well solved challenge. However, “scaling” agile on enterprise level is hard: there are a couple of proposed approaches and thousands of opinions about them. What advice to listen to?

Many (if not all) organizations struggle with the enterprise transition challenge. The reason is that - though there are very similar practical challenges in different companies - the company and leadership cultures vary a lot. Due to that, what works for one organization, likely will not exactly work for another.
In this talk we will look at how you can identify your approach to your enterprise transition towards Agile. We will also look at some approaches that have worked in several companies and thus might be good for you to look at or try out. And I will share some common pitfalls and challenges and how to deal with them.
During the talk I will share my own experiences from the agile transition of the company I am working at (>20000 people in R&D) and the insights I got from working as a Program Director for the Agile Alliance’s “Supporting Agile Adoption” initiative, connecting to Agile Change leaders from many different companies.
Learning Outcomes:

• You will learn a method how to identify your own potentially successful approaches to your agile transition.
• You will learn about several good practices that you might try out at your company.
• You will learn about common pitfalls and how to deal with them.

Attachments:

• IntroductionToAgileEnterpriseTransitions_final.pdf

Abstract:
Innovation is a complicated topic. Product folks often focus the discussion externally: how do we build products that customers and buyers find more innovative? ...attract more users, out-design the competition, create strategic advantage? Process folks often focus the discussion internally: how do we boost quality and delivery speed? ...better understand the true needs and ROI models of our users? ...create more joy for our teams?
In this session, we will suggest a few different definitions or metrics for innovation. Then we will unpack several approaches to innovation: team-level improvements through retrospectives and incremental process changes; innovation iterations to rethink delivery routines; lean UX approaches to mapping customer problems; market experiments/customer development to validate early product concepts; revenue and market share as proxies for innovation. We'll also explode a few popular myths about products we love (e.g. iPod). We may discover that each attendee has a different slant on innovation.
Learning Outcomes:

• What are different definitions of innovation? How might we measure it?
• Compare market-facing product innovation with internal-facing process innovation
• See a few different approaches to boosting innovation
• Danger of hindsight and selective memory as innovation exemplars

Attachments:

• Agile16-Mironov-Innovation.pdf