Agile 2009 - Agile Adoption

A comical approach to project smells

anda — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:56:11 +0000

A series of cartoons depicts the terrible things that happen when agile practices aren’t followed. This session is valid for any persona, but especially for the product owner who will suffer when their product fails because they follow a process that isn’t helping their team deliver!

Descending from the Architect's Ivory Tower

arendell — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:06:51 +0000

This experience report, by a project’s technical architect, details the adoption of agile methods across several teams after one high profile success. The organization had a long history of waterfall development and a clearly defined remit for technical architects. Years of refinement had led to a set of techniques which contradicted many of the ideals held by agile practitioners. The author’s challenge was to maintain agility and fulfill responsibilities inherited from waterfall processes without reverting to the conventional practices that ultimately lead to the architect’s ivory tower.

Creating Your Enterprise Adoption Plan: A Seven Layer Framework

mspayd — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 14:21:14 +0000

Leading an Agile adoption? This tutorial will give you guidance, fresh perspectives, and a real deliverable. Distilling 7 years’ experience leading large-scale Agile implementations, we will examine patterns, anti-patterns, techniques and case histories from 7 different perspectives (or layers): Individual, Team, Management, Program, Business, Strategic, and Organizational. Using a template, your class team of 5 will help you create your adoption plan covering selection, sequence, sponsorship, culture, org change, job change, role of customers & management, training, methodology and metrics.

The Ogre and The Wimp: Clever Influencing Tricks - Help the Most Reluctant Teams

anda — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:07:46 +0000

What happens when the CIO decides the dev team needs to adopt agile practices and the dev team nods their heads but don’t plan on doing zilch? It is time to leverage those fancy shmancy influencing skills we agilists are so famous for. We’ll cover new fun tactics that have not yet been explored in some of the prevalent literature. All fresh information from the field.

Do I Still Have a Job? Roles and Org Structure in an Agile Transition

alexpukinskis — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:24:19 +0000

As an organization becomes more agile, people often worry about the future of their jobs. If detailed requirements documents aren’t needed anymore, what happens to a business analyst? If people aren’t constantly shuffling from one project to another, what does a program manager do? If testers are part of scrum teams, how can a QA lead increase quality? In this workshop, participants will explore how different roles change during an agile transition, envision new roles for everyone, and discuss strategies for change that help address the fears that often prevent successful agile adoption.

Don't Sell Buzzwords to Business Leaders, Learn How to Describe Real Value

rsheridan — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:35:16 +0000

As Development VP, Rich Sheridan transformed his organization by adopting radical co-location and XP practices. Rich will share the history of this transformation including the tactics he used in selling this idea to his peers, his CEO, the Directors, and ultimately his team members. Rich now runs a software design and development company that was built from the ground up with an Agile culture and Agile processes. As the CEO of this company, Rich routinely has to sell customer executives on why they will realize business value from practices such as unit testing and paired-programming.

Use of Agile Methods in Software Engineering Education

dfrico — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 17:27:43 +0000

Dr. Rico will provide an experience report introducing agile methods to a master’s degree program in software engineering at a large online university. He will describe the goals, objectives, strategy, and implementation plan for transitioning the program from traditional to agile methods. He will describe the adoption challenges he faced from both the faculty and students who were steeped in traditional methods. He will describe how three teams of 15 students in four time zones successfully built three fully functional e-commerce websites, lived to tell about it, and became agile converts.

May the Forces Be With You, Exploring the Forces Driving and Restraining Agile

rodclaar — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 18:13:01 +0000

Understanding the forces driving and restraining the adoption of Agile in your organization is key to your success. This audience participation workshop creates two teams, the Drivers and the Restrainers and has them present the forces at work in the most original and humorous way possible.

This results in a lot of fun and learning.

The workshop will be led by two experienced coaches to bring out the subtle details of the forces and lead the discussion on how to improve the success given the forces at work.

The Bold, New Extreme Programming Experiment - Now In Its Ninth Year

bspears — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:37:34 +0000

In 2001, Follett Software Company (FSC) began work on the next generation of its library software. Many options were considered, including sending the effort off shore. In April 2001, members of the Destiny team attended a C-SPIN meeting where Martin Fowler spoke about Extreme Programming (XP). In what was considered a bold experiment at the time, the team chose to adopt an XP process “the most well-known and controversial” of the new agile processes.

This experience report will tell of a “do-it-yourself” Agile success story, with changes, challenges and lessons learned along the way.

Team Start-up: one of the first Agile Adoption activities

lyssaadkins — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:02:11 +0000

Starting up an Agile team is one of the first things you might be asked to do when a company wants to “go Agile.” What do you need to know before starting up a team? In the start-up, how much do teams need to know about Agile before they “go”? What do they need to know about each other…what the project is all about…who they will become as a team? These and other questions are answered as we walk through good ways to start-up Agile teams.