One of the seven principles of Lean Thinking is "eliminate waste." Eliminating waste means minimizing the cost of the resources we use to deliver software to our stakeholders. Jean Tabaka proposes three pivotal practices that we must embrace to aggressively attack waste in software delivery—Software as a Service (SaaS), Community, and Fast Feature Throughput. SaaS eliminates waste by deploying software-based services without the cost inherent in traditional software delivery—materials, shipping, time delay, and more. Community involves stakeholders working together to create products rather than competing among themselves for limited resources. Community eliminates waste by democratizing software development to obviate the need for multiple systems with the same functionality. Fast Feature Throughput refers to development methods that embrace change and quickly deliver value to customers.

In large outsourced projects, the contractual aspects of testing are often poorly defined even though testing may be half the overall project cost. Why is this? Test activities may be split between the development organization, customer, and test outsourcing partners. When things go wrong, the test process and the contractual obligations relating to testing will come under close scrutiny. Unfortunately, many projects get their contracts wrong with regard to testing. In Paul Gerrard's experience, few organizations’ contract and legal experts know how to structure a contractual testing schedule that is fair, unambiguous, explicit, and comprehensive. As testers, we may need to help our own “experts.” Paul describes the critical aspects of a contract that must be included to ensure supplier obligations for testing are documented and will be met.

With quite a few successful agile implementations under his belt, Hubert Smits guides you through the steps for implementing Scrum in an organization. Scrum implementation grows from a single team working on a pilot project, to multiple development programs running in parallel-all with Scrum as the underlying methodology. Hubert explains how to train and motivate your pilot teams and replace your project requirements documents with a backlog. He outlines the roles of architect, business analyst, and tester in a Scrum-led project. Learn what happens when multiple teams have to work together and how dependencies between teams are discovered and managed. Find out how change management becomes an integral part of the project and discover new management tools that you can use in an agile project.

Scrum is the most popular agile project management method today. Hubert Smits illustrates the basics of this method based on his experiences in implementing Scrum in many organizations. He explains the concepts of Scrum to software developers, development managers, and CIOs who are adopting-or thinking about adopting-Scrum in their organizations. After discussing the position of Scrum within the agile world and comparing it to methods like Extreme Programming and Lean Software Development, Hubert takes you through the full Scrum methodology and explains the meanings and practical implementations of Product Backlog, Sprint Planning, Product Increments, and Retrospectives. Join Hubert for a highly interactive discussion of this important project