Conference Presentations

Collaborative Leadership: A Secret to Agile Success

When members of a development project are asked to become a self-directed agile team, some claim that leadership and leaders are obsolete. Or, is a different type of leadership exactly what agile teams need to truly flourish? Pollyanna Pixton describes a new, collaborative leadership style that does not attempt to control or micro-manage. It's one that asks the right questions at the right time to generate new ideas and develop creative products that customers need and want. Pollyanna explains the four areas of collaborative leadership-creating an open environment where the best people can work, learning from stakeholders throughout the enterprise, prioritizing innovative solutions based on business value, and standing back to allow the team to succeed.

Pollyanna Pixton, Accelinnova
Value Stream Mapping - Extending Our View to the Enterprise

What if the process improvements you are trying to make are not where your real problems lie? Assuming where your problems are is often the biggest problem. Alan Shalloway presents value stream maps, a Lean tool that focuses on finding waste in your development process. Alan presents an example of a value stream map that resulted in a twenty percent productivity improvement to the development team without modifying how the team worked. After this introduction to value stream mapping, you will create your own maps to learn how to improve your own processes and to learn the basic lean principles of optimize the whole, deliver fast, and build quality in. Alan demonstrates how focusing on improving the flow of software development from a time perspective can lead to a higher quality, lower cost process.

Alan Shalloway, Net Objectives
Agile Project Metrics

Agile projects and traditional projects are tracked differently. The key difference is that agile projects track outcomes; traditional projects track activities. Project managers who are new to agile are often unsure which measures are relevant to which stakeholders and how to interpret them, and how agile metrics tie back to some of the more familiar forms of project reporting. Dave Nicolette explains how agile projects are tracked, which metrics are useful to which audiences, and how to monitor project health, delivery effectiveness, and the quality and value of the results. Dave describes the reasons to choose particular metrics, how to use metrics for informational, diagnostic, and motivational purposes, and the time-sensitivity of metrics. Dave also explains the meaning and use of measures peculiar to agile methods, such as "velocity," "running tested features," "earned business value," and "burn charts".

David Nicolette, Valtech Technologies
Calling all Agile Skeptics - the Curious, and Die-Hard, Non-Agile

Not convinced about agile? Curious about this new approach, but not sure it makes any sense? Does it feel like agile goes against everything your experience tells you is the right thing to do? Damon Poole examines your concerns, doubts, counter-examples, and horror-stories. If you are interested in helping to answer the concerns of others, then bring your answers, positive examples, and experiences. In either case, bring an open mind, a sense of humor, and at least one anecdote. Delegates will share the floor and help to keep the atmosphere fun and relaxed. Come and learn how some of the practices that may be fueling your skepticism are either optional or only work when done in conjunction with other practices. For instance, frequent releases are not required and short iterations work best when coupled with automated regression testing.

Damon Poole, AccuRev
Driving Agile Transformation from the Top Down

While agile practices are starting to make their way into large enterprises, in most instances this has been a "bottom up" movement driven through grassroots efforts. But, as success stories draw attention to the benefits of agile practices, an increasing number of executives are considering making an organization-wide agile transition. It is an attractive idea, but what does an agile transition look like when it comes as a mandate from the top? How do you scale agile principles from a single team to an enterprise with multiple teams working on multiple projects? Pete Morowski shares practical answers to these questions, addressing issues such as the role of management in creating an agile culture, bridging "two worlds" as traditional and agile co-exist in the enterprise, and rewriting the "rules" to fit the organization.

David Wilby, Borland Software
Organizing to Fulfill the Product Owner Role

At Yahoo!, the product owner role is defined as the "single wringable neck" who ensures that software products and projects deliver value. Many organizations struggle to fill this role that collaborates with stakeholders to define value and manage a backlog, provides tactical support to the delivery team, and directs the product and project vision and roadmap. For most organizations, the reality is that it takes a whole team of people to fill this role. Ronica Roth begins with a quick overview of the product owner responsibilities, particularly in the context of the five levels of agile planning. She then presents patterns and examples for organizing product and customer groups in product companies, consulting shops, and internal IT departments. Soliciting your ideas, Ronica leads a discussion of the successes and challenges of those patterns and of your experiences with them.

Ronica Roth, Rally Software
Re-thinking Scheduling: Parkinson's Law Inverted

The Empire State Building-the tallest building in the world for over forty years-took just 13½ months to build. Amazing as this may seem today, it was not remarkable at the time; most skyscrapers were built in about a year. How did they do that? In those days, cash flow was more important than cost, and schedule routinely trumped scope. The paradigm was the inverse of Parkinson's Law-work should contract to fit the time allotted. Today, Parkinson's Law is alive and well in current scheduling approaches that break work down into tasks, estimate the tasks, and sum up the result. This approach invites work on each task to expand to fit the estimated time. Mary Poppendieck will show why you should not ask, "How long will this take?", but ask instead, "What can be done by this date?" You will learn how to accomplish more with less by applying cash flow thinking and turning Parkinson's Law upside down.

Mary Poppendieck, Poppendieck LLC
Agile Contracting

Many software development organizations work within the bounds of contractual agreements where the limitations imposed by the "Iron Triangle" of fixed timelines, budgets, and scope challenge their ability to embrace change and focus on value delivery. Agile practitioners often comment that agile contracting is a difficult problem, but proven solutions are rarely presented. Rachel Weston and Chris Spagnuolo offer some tools they have used in their own agile contracting work to help agile practitioners deal with different contracting scenarios while promoting agile practices, protecting the development organization, and still providing value and protection to the client's organization. Through a combined workshop and facilitated collaborative session, Rachel and Chris present new agile contracting tools that can be added to your toolbox.

Rachel Weston, Rally Software Development
Agile Development Practices 2008: The Agile PMP: Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks

Agile methods put a great deal of emphasis on trust, empowerment, and collaboration. Agile moves us away from command and control project management toward an approach designed to harness the passion, creativity, and enthusiasm of the team. A successful transition to agile project management hinges largely on how well traditional project managers are able to adopt new ways of thinking about project structure and control. Building on the principles of PMI® and the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), Mike will explore how a PMP can adapt their knowledge and experience to become an effective agile project leader. Mike will tackle the hidden assumptions behind the PMBOK and explore a more agile approach to managing time, cost, and scope. He will take an in-depth look at the PMI Processes and Knowledge areas and explore how to adapt them to agile projects.

Michael Cottmeyer, VersionOne, Inc.
What are they Doing Down There? A CIO's Perspective on Agile Software Development

What are the factors critical to the success of a CIO? How can a CIO consistently deliver business value? Do development teams, in general, and agile teams, in particular, understand how to contribute to this success? In this interactive presentation, Niel Nickolaisen presents the metrics and drivers that influence CIO behavior and longevity. These metrics and drivers also influence the organization's decision to embrace agile methods. Niel shares his experiences and the survey responses from his CIO peers on how development teams and CIOs can work hand-in-hand to make agile the preferred development method. Niel introduces and describes immediately-implementable, proven tools that dramatically improve IT and business value while reducing project risks.

Niel Nickolaisen, Headwaters, Inc.

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