Agile teams may unintentionally assume significant risk and excessive rework by not addressing dependencies in the product backlog. While the business defines the minimum requirements needed to deliver value and when to deliver that value-delivery dependencies-the agile team determines the necessary sequence of development-development dependencies. The challenge for everyone is balancing delivery and development dependencies. Taking a holistic approach to the product backlog enables the team to evaluate the impact of these dependencies and, as needed, adjust release and iteration plans. Ellen Gottesdiener and Mary Gorman share techniques they have used to master dependencies in backlogs.

Have you noticed that similar stories appear over and over again as you develop a system? According to Dan Rawsthorne, stories-those small chunks of work that make up your backlog and provide demonstrable value to the project-can be categorized by purpose: production, analysis, cleanup, infrastructure/environment, business support, or other. Within each of these categories are different “story-o-types”-patterns that define the commonalities among the stories themselves. Dan defines and describes some of the most common story-o-types, explains why they are useful, and demonstrates the concept with examples including “Alternate Path” and “Clean-Up Interface” for the production category, “Talk to Stakeholders” and “Exploratory Testing” for the analysis category, among others. For each story-o-type, Dan provides sample tasks and canonical "doneness" criteria that make planning and backlog grooming easier and more consistent.

The best software development teams find ways for programmers and testers to work closely together to build quality into their software. These teams recognize that programmers and testers each bring their own unique strengths and perspectives to the table. Only by building upon this combination can we reach our full potential to consistently deliver quality. To do this, we first have to unlearn the anti-patterns that traditional development taught us. In this interactive workshop, learn how to use Concurrent Testing to overcome these common "testing smells" by having programmers and testers working together, rather than against each other, throughout development iterations. Play games to demonstrate just how powerfully dysfunctional systems can act against your best efforts and how agile techniques can help you escape the cycle of poor quality and late delivery.

If you are an agile coach and your team or organization is struggling to adopt agile methods or is backsliding, this class is for you. David Hussman shares coaching techniques you can use to grow sustainable agility that lasts beyond the early iterations and the first few agile projects. David begins with a series of tools to help you build a solid foundation: assessments, pragmatic practice selection, chartering, and product planning tools. He shares his coaching experiences that you can adapt to help your teams establish a strong cadence while also building the essence of coaching within your organization. You'll learn to step back from prescriptive practices and use the agile principles and values to amplify existing strengths and address challenges. Whether you are new to agile methods or a seasoned player, David helps you grow your coaching skills and your ability to discover and deliver sustainable, real value.