agile transition

As agile methods find more global applicability, we are finding groups outside of IT that have nothing to do with technology or software development demonstrating success with agile methods. But the approach to the solutions they deliver are often catered to their own unique circumstances. The original Agile Manifesto, principles, and supporting frameworks were formed with software development in mind, but from a holistic perspective, a different approach is needed for enterprise solutions outside of IT. Robert Woods will show you how to translate the success seen in agile software delivery to parts of the organization that don't deliver technology as its core solution.

As organizations begin to scale their agile adoptions from independent teams to a more organized "team of teams" structure, one of the challenges that is typically harder to address is budgeting and forecasting funding. The traditional approach of project-based annual funding doesn't allow for the effective integration of new information and market changes into the funding strategies. As organizations mature in their adoption of agile, they begin to better understand the need for changing the way they do lean portfolio management (LPM). Attend this session to get a basic overview of what LPM is and how it differs from a more traditional approach. You'll learn some typical problems that organizations encounter, hear from the audience about specific challenges they are having, and, finally, walk through a novel way of approaching these challenges.

The most common requests Dawn Haynes gets as a consultant these days is to help testers transition to an agile development process, or to help testers be more effective in “agile-ish” environments. But Dawn recognises that transforming the process and the environment is not enough. Interestingly, the core answer to these questions starts with forgetting the process for a moment and focusing on yourself and what you’re trying to accomplish. Being agile starts with a mindset and an attitude that drive focus, approaches, and solutions. When you start there, the path to improvement can almost always be summarized as “being more agile”—which is surprisingly independent of whether your team follows an agile process. Join Dawn as she shares with you what it means for a tester and a test team to be more agile (whether or not you do agile) and what benefits you can experience if you decide to increase your agility as a tester.

The business analyst (BA) has played a key role in software development. But within a modern agile context, the role of the BA is less clear, and there is some confusion as to whether the product owner role subsumes that of the traditional BA. Let’s look at the roles the BA can play with agile teams and how to fully leverage their expertise to supplement or augment that of the product owner.