Agile Development Practices East 2010

If people in your organization are spending time "going agile," "being agile," or "doing agile" instead of simply using agile methods that work in your context, this session is for you. Ten years into the agile movement, the original ideals around lightweight process are putting on some pounds and calcifying in dangerous ways. David Hussman challenges you to stop focusing on improving your process and start focusing on improving your product-that thing your process produces-and your people-you know, the ones who do the work.

Agile initiatives always begin with the best of intentions-accelerate delivery, meet customer needs, improve software quality, and more. Unfortunately, agile projects do not always deliver on these expectations. Sometimes failure is due to external factors beyond our control; other times we have the power to get things right the first time or turn things around. If you are seeking ways to assure the success of your agile projects, this class is for you.

Are you looking for tips to help scale your Scrum deployment to the larger organization? Is the "Scrum of Scrums" concept not working out the way you thought it would? Have you had success with multi-team Scrum projects and want to share what you've learned with others? If you answered yes to any of these questions, join Melanie Paquette in this interactive session where she shares the experiences of organizations that have had success-and challenges-in scaling Scrum.

The switch from traditional, top-down management to agile project practices poses a dilemma for managers and the team. If agile teams self-manage their work, what does a manager actually do? And without strong guidance from a traditional manager, how do teams organize their work? Dale Emery describes how successful agile teams resolve these conundrums-by adopting a seemingly paradoxical way of collaboration called "servant leadership." A servant leader leads by serving and serves by leading.