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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.
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David Wilby, Borland Software
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Driving User Stories from Business Value Implementations of agile and Scrum typically employ user stories as the primary method for discovering requirements. User stories provide the mechanism for the fast, flexible flow of ideas into completed increments of software. What's missing is a practical approach to discovering user stories from top-down, business valued, and prioritized capabilities. Guy Beaver shares proven approaches to allow a project-driven organization to transition to business features that can be predictably estimated and planned for release. The stories unfolded from business features have clear line-of-sight to business goals and allow for the timely discovery and management of technical considerations.
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Guy Beaver, Net Objectives
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Agile Development Practices 2008: Refactoring: Where do I Start? Since Martin Fowler completed his now-classic work Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, few programming practices have been more effective-and more controversial-than refactoring. Refactoring is effective when you study and practice it diligently. It remains controversial because many development managers think developers should be adding features, not reworking old code. J. B. Rainsberger takes you deep inside the process of refactoring, including how to start reaping the benefits of refactoring while minimizing the disruption of learning a new practice, how to safely refactor code you don't know well, and the four key elements of simple design that should guide your refactoring. He explains the hazards of refactoring, when not to refactor, and how to refactor in such a way as not to upset your boss. After this presentation, you will be able to refactor your own code more confidently and effectively.
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JB Rainsberger, Diaspar Software Services
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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.
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Ronica Roth, Rally Software
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Agile Development Practices 2008: Pragmatic Agility What is agile software development all about? Why is it fundamentally different from other approaches and will it work for you and your organization? Join Andy Hunt, one of the seventeen original authors of the Agile Manifesto and a founder of the Agile Alliance, for his pragmatic answers to these and other questions. Examine the foundations of agile software development and learn what problems agility seeks to address. Don't be distracted by dogma-take some time to explore the core aspects of agile development. Andy presents the real foundations of agility and walks you through a typical day in the life of an agile developer. Find out what's really important about the agile approach, and take back new ideas to help you transition to agile while avoiding common stumbling blocks. Join Andy to find out how to make agility work for you.
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Andrew Hunt, Pragmatic Programmers
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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.
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Mary Poppendieck, Poppendieck LLC
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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.
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Rachel Weston, Rally Software Development
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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.
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Michael Cottmeyer, VersionOne, Inc.
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Integrating Enterprise SOA Architecture with Scrum Development Methodology Many processes used to implement an enterprise architecture are in conflict with the agile development approach. An effective enterprise architecture framework represents the organization as it is today and as it is envisioned in the future. However, a key agile concept is that we design and build for today-and worry about the future only when it arrives. Steven Driver has found that a small change to the Scrum process flow allows easy integration of an enterprise architecture into the agile development of new systems. The translation of enterprise architecture into application architecture requires critical touch points within the Scrum process to emphasize service-based development required within the sprints. By combining an enterprise architecture approach using SOA (service-oriented architecture) and the Scrum development methodology, an organization can achieve effective system development-in both the short and long term.
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Steven Driver, Airlines Reporting Corporation
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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.
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Niel Nickolaisen, Headwaters, Inc.
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