The good news: Agile methods deliver superior results compared to traditional approaches. The bad news: For IT projects, mainstream agile methods-Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), and Agile Modeling (AM)- provide only part of the overall solution. Agile IT projects require some time and effort for upfront planning at the start and activities for sophisticated deployment scenarios at the end. Additionally, most agile projects in large IT organizations cannot escape compliance with governance standards. Mark Lines describes and explores the realities of agile development in enterprise IT environments. Discover how IBM’s freely available Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) process framework combines common practices and strategies from mainstream agile methods to address the full delivery lifecycle-from project initiation to solution release into production.

Are you suffering from chronic disinterest in what your team is delivering? Are your product owners unavailable or distracted? Are your sprint reviews ho-hum experiences with low attendance? If you answered Yes to any of these questions, your agile teams are in trouble-and you need to attend this session. Experienced agile coach Bob Galen explores real-world patterns for how to increase the interest in-and the energy and value of-your sprint reviews. First, Bob explains how to prepare properly, the keys to dry runs, and the role of a Master of Ceremonies. Then he examines ways to orchestrate pro-active reviews that include the whole team and engage your audience when demonstrating "working software." Next Bob discusses how to perform a review follow-up and gather feedback for high-impact improvements. Finally, Bob wraps up by exploring ways to make sprint reviews a centerpiece of your agile adoption and transformation.

In agile projects, design ideally "emerges" over the course of development. However, if teams primarily focus on independent user stories, they risk losing sight of the product's vision and the integrity of well-thought-out architecture. Ken Kubo shares techniques he's used to improve the chances that a product's design will emerge into a cohesive and coherent architecture that serves its customers for many years. Join Ken to find out how you can incorporate contextual design principles and simple, visual techniques as part of his "A-Little-Before-Its-Time Design" framework. You can add these practices into your agile workflow to maintain a shared team understanding of your product's vision and the system's emerging design. Ken believes that you can only realize all the promises of agile development with a clearly and constantly communicated product vision and a set of architecture goals.

If you live and work in a highly regulated environment (HRE)-medical devices, DoD and its contractors, nuclear energy, or other life-critical systems-this session is for you. For the past three years, the SEI has been researching agile and lean adoptions in the US Department of Defense. Suzanne Miller presents the organizational and cultural factors they identified as most important for development organizations to demonstrate when embarking on an agile adoption program. In the SEI's technology transition research, Suzanne and her team found that the more closely an organization meets the readiness and fit criteria, the more likely it is that the adoption will succeed. Suzanne discusses the risks and challenges that agile adoption presents to HREs, and presents ways to mitigate risks and overcome challenges.