How well are we served by our current metrics? Do metrics such as developer and tester productivity, ROI, and on-time / on-budget help us improve results? Or, do such metrics drive us towards negative behaviors? In this workshop, we describe the foundation for meaningful metrics. Workshop participants, via a series of exercises, translate this foundation into metrics that they can immediately use. This workshop results from the response I received during my Agile 2008 presentation on the CIO and agile teams. There was a great deal of interest on the topic of aligned, meaningful metrics.

This tutorial is a detailed look at several Agile practices and the HOWTO of Adopting each practice successfully. We will cover the business value delivered and the context where they are most effective. For each practice you will learn what steps can be done to effectively get from “I want to do this practice” to “I’m doing it and getting obvious value” and, just as importantly, what happen when things go wrong and how you can diagnose these difficulties.

A variety of practices will be covered including: Stand Up Meetings, Iterations, Demos, Automate Developer Tests, and Refactoring.

Transitioning 25,000 developers to agile development processes is a challenge on its own—and making the transition during a global recession is even more ambitious. Join Sue McKinney as she discusses her experiences leading the move to agile at IBM, how their agile teams often struggled, and ways leaders provided support and understanding at many levels. As the global recession set in, Sue looked for tools leaders could use to increase productivity—even after cost cutting—and unleash the talent and innovation agile teams need to continue succeeding.

This tutorial, the “small card game”, is a simulation game introducing the concepts of Agile planning, story value, and story cost. Learn to manage scope and optimize return on investment. The students practice planning a project with varying levels of information about the features needed, and experience how “nature” deals with their plan. Again, very appropriate for all team members, in-house customers, marketing, and management, to learn how the process works and what their part in it is.

If you’re a practicing Agilist who has tough questions about Agile methods, how they fit together, or how they can be more widely adopted in your organization, then this session is for you. This energy-filled workshop explores the central themes of Agile Project Leadership, why they work, when they don’t and why. Delegates are expected to come with their difficult questions about Agile. Answers will be explored and shared in a fun and interactive way.

Flirting is about connecting. A German university now requires their IT engineers take a flirting class—not to attract a partner, but to learn how to interact more effectively in the workplace. We will explore how flirting techniques translate to use in a business setting—inspiring us to create stronger connections with our customers. Our 8 Steps to connecting with your customers will help teams better understand customer requirements and build business value. “Flirting” With Your Customers creates the connection that can make a significant difference in a project’s success.

We want to deliver maximum business value. Prioritising is easy if someone assigns business value to each story. How do you estimate business value? How should you prioritise between stories, projects or clients?

The aim of the game is to deliver maximum value. Your development team only has a finite capacity, so you’re going to have to make some tough choices. We provide the clients and their requests. We suggest techniques for estimating business value. The rest is up to you.

The game teaches you how to build and use a Business Value Model to deliver maximum value.

Max. 50 players