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Agile2012 has ended
Sunday, August 12
 

2:00pm CDT

First Time Attendee Orientation

If you find the conference schedule slightly overwhelming, make sure to attend the Agile2012 Orientation Sessions. These special sessions are designed to give first-time attendees a little "101 Guide" to Agile2012, including insight into ways to get the most out of their experience. There will also be a “Q & A” session at the end in case we miss anything. There is no pre-registration required and any registered Agile2012 attendee may attend.

 


Sunday August 12, 2012 2:00pm - 3:00pm CDT
Center Foyer

2:00pm CDT

First Time Attendee Orientation

If you find the conference schedule slightly overwhelming, make sure to attend the Agile2012 Orientation Sessions. These special sessions are designed to give first-time attendees a little "101 Guide" to Agile2012, including insight into ways to get the most out of their experience. There will also be a “Q & A” session at the end in case we miss anything. There is no pre-registration required and any registered Agile2012 attendee may attend.

 


Sunday August 12, 2012 2:00pm - 3:00pm CDT
Center Foyer

3:00pm CDT

Agile Alliance Lounge

Take a break from Agile2012 action and relax in the Agile Alliance Lounge. Check out the activities of the organization, meet board members, enjoy a refreshing beverage, and pick up Agile Alliance swag. While you are there, inquire about ways you and your company can become more involved in the Agile community, take a look at the updated Agile Alliance roadmap, and see a new graphic banner highlighting historical events in the organization’s history. You are a member - this is your professional organization - be a part of it!

 


Sunday August 12, 2012 3:00pm - 5:00pm CDT
Grapevine Foyer

5:00pm CDT

First Time Attendee Orientation

If you find the conference schedule slightly overwhelming, make sure to attend the Agile2012 Orientation Sessions. These special sessions are designed to give first-time attendees a little "101 Guide" to Agile2012, including insight into ways to get the most out of their experience. There will also be a “Q & A” session at the end in case we miss anything. There is no pre-registration required and any registered Agile2012 attendee may attend.

 


Sunday August 12, 2012 5:00pm - 6:00pm CDT
Center Foyer
 
Monday, August 13
 

8:00am CDT

First Time Attendee Orientation

If you find the conference schedule slightly overwhelming, make sure to attend the Agile2012 Orientation Sessions. These special sessions are designed to give first-time attendees a little "101 Guide" to Agile2012, including insight into ways to get the most out of their experience. There will also be a “Q & A” session at the end in case we miss anything. There is no pre-registration required and any registered Agile2012 attendee may attend.

 


Monday August 13, 2012 8:00am - 9:00am CDT
Center Foyer

8:30am CDT

Open Jam Huddle

Like bees around a jam pot, Open Jam is buzzing place for thought leaders to hang out, it’s where juicy conversations about edgy and groundbreaking topics happen. Come along to our daily huddle at 8:30AM in the Center Foyer, to grab a timeslot and announce your session to fellow conference participants. Sessions run throughout the day and late into the evening. Drop in anytime and join in!

Follow @Open_Jam on Twitter for updates of what’s happening at Open Jam stage. Be open, join our jam!

 


Monday August 13, 2012 8:30am - 9:00am CDT
Center Foyer

8:30am CDT

Open Jam Huddle

Like bees around a jam pot, Open Jam is buzzing place for thought leaders to hang out, it’s where juicy conversations about edgy and groundbreaking topics happen. Come along to our daily huddle at 8:30AM in the Center Foyer, to grab a timeslot and announce your session to fellow conference participants. Sessions run throughout the day and late into the evening. Drop in anytime and join in!

Follow @Open_Jam on Twitter for updates of what’s happening at Open Jam stage. Be open, join our jam!

 


Monday August 13, 2012 8:30am - 9:00am CDT
Center Foyer

9:00am CDT

An Agile Adoption and Transformation Survival Guide - Working with Culture: Michael Sahota
If you do not manage culture, it manages you. Much of the Agile adoption failure is a result of not understanding organizational culture. Learn how to use the Schneider culture model to assess your organization’s culture and to work effectively with it. This survival guide will provide you with the essential mental models and tools you need to navigate safely through the treacherous jungle of Agile adoption and transformation. You will apply your newly acquired knowledge to build a plan for working effectively with your own organization.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/2012-08 Agile 2012 - An Agile Adoption and Transformation Survival Guide.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Michael Sahota

Michael Sahota

Culture & Leadership - Trainer & Consultant - Certified Enterprise Coach, Agilitrix (Independent Consultant)
Michael K Sahota guides and teaches leaders how to create high-performance organizations. As a Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC), Michael has created a proven system for leading organizational change through a practical playbook for high performance. His model for Consciously Approaching... Read More →



Monday August 13, 2012 9:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Texas D

9:00am CDT

LEtGO your Organization - Design a best-fit large Agile Organization: Raj Mudhar, Catherine Louis
In large geographically distributed organizations where the size of the product exceeds what a single Scrum team can build, we think through the best way to organize teams and work. Over the past year, we have been working with large projects (over 100 people), distributed in several countries and helping them develop organizational models that they can use to visualize how teams and work could be best organized to maximize agility. In this workshop, we guide the participants through the process of assessing and developing large organizational models. The models provide business stakeholders with a tool to assess the trade-offs of different organizational models visually and rapidly. Whether you are responsible for building a large scale global Agile organization, or are a team member with ideas on how to organize teams and work, this workshop provides you with tools to develop organizational "preto-types" to use for communication and troubleshooting large-scale Agile organizational design.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Lego-handout-agile2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Catherine Louis

Catherine Louis

Founder, cll group
Product Strategy, Lean Innovation, Business Agility: nurturing an innovation culture with teams who can rapidly sense and respond. Certified Scrum Trainer, Certified Agile Leader trainer, Lean Innovator trainer. For extra fun, K9 trainer and handler with WCSAR.
avatar for Raj Mudhar

Raj Mudhar

Agilist, Raj Mudhar & Associates Ltd.
I'm passionate about technology, and the knowledge that organizations can improve, deliver higher value to customers, while making the workplace an engine of engagement, innovation, and sustainability



Monday August 13, 2012 9:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Dallas 5

9:00am CDT

Hands On Agile Immersion: Damon Poole
Learn Agile and have fun at the same time! Everything you learn will be via real Agile activities that you do as a team. You’ll form into cross-functional teams, invent your own software product to use as an example for the activites, and become completely immersed in the principles and practices of Agile. There's no actual coding, no computer required, it's just fun activities that anybody can do that show you what being on an Agile team is really like. For anybody involved in development: management, product managers, business analysts, designers, developers, testers, DBAs, technical writers, project managers, etc. Bring an existing team or create a team with other participants during the session. Activities include: * Forming cross-functional, dedicated, co-located teams * Writing actual user stories for your team's "product" * Creating a backlog * Splitting stories * Estimating the stories using planning poker * Planning a release using two iterations of work * Running an Agile implementation simulation * Doing a retrospective on the simulation Throughout the session, you will also have the experience of seeing a demonstration of self-organization on a large scale.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/HandsOnAgile2012Shared.pdf

Speakers

Monday August 13, 2012 9:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Texas C
  Agile Boot Camp

9:00am CDT

Is It Worth It? Using A Business Value Model To Guide Decisions: Kent McDonald
Product Owners are expected to consider the question "Is it worth it?" about their projects. This question is difficult to answer because the answer changes as you proceed through the project and gain more knowledge about the purpose, considerations, costs, and benefits involved in a project. Kent helps attendees explore a tool they can use to help organize the necessary information to answer the “is it worth it?” question on a regular basis. This interactive session demonstrates how teams can create a value model to make an initial decision about whether to pursue a project, and then utilize that model as knowledge grows throughout the project to revisit the question and confirm whether the project is on the right course, or if changes need to be made.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Is It Worth It_Agile2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Kent McDonald

Kent McDonald

Agile Practice Lead, B2T Training
Kent J. McDonald uncovers better ways of delivering value by doing it and helping others do it. His more than 15 years of experience include work in business analysis, strategic planning, project management, and product development in a variety of industries including financial services... Read More →



Monday August 13, 2012 9:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Dallas 3-4

9:00am CDT

The Product Partnership: Using Structured Conversations to Deliver Value: Ellen Gottesdiener, Mary Gorman
Are your stakeholder conversations less than optimal? Are your user stories alone insufficient for preparing & delivering the right software? Is everyone clear on business value? Learn effective, efficient, & creative ways for product stakeholders to converse as “product partners” for continual value delivery. In small teams, holistically analyze product needs & make just-in-time decisions on what to deliver next. Experience how to engage in “structured conversations” to explore, evaluate, & decide on high-value options for the next delivery cycle-at any level of agile product planning
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Tutorial-PreReading-TheProductPartnership-Agile2012(Gottesdiener-Gorman).pdf

Speakers
avatar for Mary Gorman

Mary Gorman

VP Quality and Delivery, EBG Consulting
Mary coaches teams and facilitates agile product discovery workshops. She trains business, customer and technology stakeholders in collaborative practices essential for defining high value products. Mary speaks at industry conferences and writes for the Agile, business analysis and... Read More →
avatar for Ellen Gottesdiener

Ellen Gottesdiener

Product Coach, EBG Consulting, Inc.
Ellen is a Product Coach and CEO of EBG Consulting focused on helping product and development communities produce valuable outcomes through product agility. Ellen is known in the agile community as an instigator and innovator for collaborative practices for agile product discovery... Read More →



Monday August 13, 2012 9:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Ft. Worth 5-6

9:00am CDT

Bad-Assed Double-Loop Learning: From Judgmental to Good Judgement: Derek W. Wade, Susan Eller
“We all know” Agile leaders foster self-organization, so why do many have little effect on their teams, or worse, actually harm their effectiveness? People act in ways that are rational to them, but differences in internal mental models can make people seem irrational to us. By uncovering your team’s mental models, you can help them achieve a common rationale. This leads to stronger, integrated teams. ScrumMasters, Coaches, Managers, & Team Members will participate in robust scenarios based on team simulation in aviation and healthcare. You will leave with practical experience in team interaction which you can immediately apply in your workplace.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/PdfPublic_Presentation-A2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Derek W. Wade

Derek W. Wade

President, Kumido Adaptive Strategies
Derek W. Wade is the founder of Kumido Adaptive Strategies, an organizational performance consultancy specializing in cognitive/learning science. His human-centered approach has improved hundreds of collaborative efforts across a broad range of industries from healthcare to finance... Read More →



Monday August 13, 2012 9:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Ft. Worth 3-4

9:00am CDT

Break Down the Silos: Collaboration Techniques for Teams: Maria Matarelli, Dan Neumann
Practice collaborative techniques in a project simulation. Walk away from this workshop with tools and techniques you can introduce to your project teams immediately to encourage more collaboration and cross team communication. See the benefits of increased team interaction and pairing through this experiential workshop developed and first used at Nokia Location & Commerce.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Break Down the Silos - Collaboration Techniques for Teams.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Dan Neumann

Dan Neumann

Agile Coach, AgileThought
Dan Neumann is an experienced agile coach and enthusiast with expertise in both traditional development methodologies and Agile development using Scrum and XP practices. Dan has a record of working in environments that require experience from a range of disciplines and requires coordination... Read More →



Monday August 13, 2012 9:00am - 12:30pm CDT
San Antonio 4-6

9:00am CDT

Users Are From Mars, Developers Are From Klingon: Derek Lane
You know it's true. Trying to understand what your users want is sometimes like talking to the wall. Have you ever delivered what you were sure a group of users asked for, only to have them reject it as not even close? Have you ever asked your development team to build you something you thought was clear only to get something that didn't meet half of your needs. This session will leverage various Agile Games to explore techniques designed to help technologists identify with what their users are asking for. It will also provide some techniques product teams can use to help close the communication gap between users and developers. Note: This session is hands-on and highly interactive. This session is for any skill set or role that is involved in product development. Due to the format of this session, it will be limited to the first 60 participants who register.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Agile2012-Klingon.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Derek Lane

Derek Lane

Agile Enterprise Transformation Coach/Architect, USAA
After years of fumbling around with fire and smoke, Derek Lane has in recent years found his calling as the World’s First Self Certified BBQ Life Coach and a practitioner of all things BBQ. In a completely unrelated but parallel universe, Derek has been known to successfully ply... Read More →


Monday August 13, 2012 9:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Texas 2

9:00am CDT

Simple Design Applied: Spend More Time Creating Valuable Code: Alistair McKinnell, Declan Whelan
Experience and research shows that developers spend as much as 70% of their time reading and understanding code. In this workshop you will learn how the rules of Simple Design help to reduce this percentage so you spend more time creating valuable code. This will be a highly collaborative workshop where you share your insights and learn from others. You’ll get to the heart of Simple Design by reviewing code - both beautiful and ugly. You’ll get to practice by improving the readability and understandability of real code. You’ll leave this workshop ready to apply Simple Design to improve your own code.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Simple Design.PUBLISHED.pdf


Monday August 13, 2012 9:00am - 12:30pm CDT
San Antonio 1-3

9:00am CDT

Distributed Agile Simulated Exercise: Dhaval Panchal, Michael Tardiff
Have you faced challenges working with distributed scaled agile projects? Do you have the means to cope with the problems in this context? Are you curious to discover techniques that could work for your project? In this workshop you will experience scaled and distributed agile project delivery. This session promises to be as interesting and close to your real life experience. This is your chance to experience and experiment in a fail-safe learning environment. You will come away with a variety of tools and techniques that can help better your distributed project delivery.

Speakers
DP

Dhaval Panchal

SolutionsIQ
CSC, CST
avatar for Michael J. Tardiff

Michael J. Tardiff

senior consultant, SolutionsIQ
Seattle sailor, transplanted from the Northeast, who brings passion, perspective, and patience to helping teams and organizations work happily. At the core of my practice is profound respect for people. I appreciate theory but embrace practice, and I love learning more about what... Read More →


Monday August 13, 2012 9:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Texas 3
  Distributed Agile

9:00am CDT

Make your iPhone Agile with automated iOS Testing: Eric Smith, Eric Meyer
Automated Acceptance Tests are the ideal way to bridge the gap between what your customer wants and what your application does. Meanwhile Unit Tests are required in order to keep your application clean, functional and Agile. Until recently these practices were not common on the most popular mobile device in the world, the iPhone, and in this workshop we'll show you how to take the customer's requirements from their brain to executable documentation and take you through the development of a real application. We will do this through the use of three tools: Fitnesse, OCSlim, and OCDSpec. Fitnesse is a wiki with a test runner for Slim Tests, that gives instantaneous feedback to the customer when your stories are complete and documents what they do. OCSlim allows Fitnesse to call into Objective-C, and OCDSpec is the Unit Testing framework for Objective-C that all your friends have been talking about. In this hands-on workshop you and your pair will implement the game Mastermind from executable specifications, both writing the Unit Tests and the making the Functional Tests green. Note: If you can, bring a Mac with Xcode and the latest iOS SDK installed. If you can't we'll all be happily pairing and willing to share.


Monday August 13, 2012 9:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Ft. Worth 1-2

9:00am CDT

Get Over It! Stop Obsessing Over CMMI and Get On with Being Great!: Hillel Glazer
Incompatibilities between CMMI and agile have largely been due to misapplication of CMMI stemming from a narrow and misguided understanding of CMMI. This is exacerbated when CMMI is viewed as a compliance standard for defining heavyweight processes rather than an improvement model to increase performance. Isn't it about time the Agile community just moved on and stopped dwelling and obsessing over CMMI and its supposed incompatibilities with agile? Yeah, I said it, _supposed_. There is nothing in CMMI that demands incompatibilities with agile practices, values, or the principles behind the manifesto. Any incompatibilities are due to either how people have inappropriately wielded CMMI, abused agile, or both. Most information/presentations about successes and failures of CMMI (with or without agile) have largely done little more than highlight what various organizations managed to do to satisfy appraisals. However, this compliance-driven perspective leaves out critical information about what CMMI actually works, how the appraisal is actually conducted, and how to use CMMI for actual improvement rather than appraisal compliance. In fact, most information and presentations on the integration of CMMI and agile have done very little to stem the tidal surge of misinformation and "CMMI malpractice" about how to actually work with CMMI -- both for the benefits of improvement as well as for getting coveted ratings. CMMI is a model. Models are tools. Before using any tool, users need instructions -- or at least they need to know what the tool is for and whether or not they've got the right problem solved by the tool. This lively, interactive, micro-tutorial will lay plain what CMMI is and how it works so that implementation of the model is clear thereby laying the groundwork for both the benefits of CMMI as well as achieving desired appraisal results. Properly used, CMMI can actually help lean and agile teams learn about themselves, find weaknesses in the way they work, improve their effectiveness and increase their performance. The session will share what I've done with clients for 10+ years that results in these outcomes -- while also achieving CMMI ratings -- while remaining entirely faithful to agile values and principles. The learning outcomes will prepare teams to pursue CMMI effectively with "level ratings" as a by-product of actual performance increases.

Speakers

Monday August 13, 2012 9:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Dallas 6-7
  Enterprise Agile

9:00am CDT

Pitfalls in Agile Testing and How to Avoid Them: Paul Carvalho
Good Agile Testing is hard. Transitioning to Agile is doomed if the testers, team or org. aren’t prepared to handle the changes in how testing is performed, managed and communicated. The path to great testing contains many traps and pitfalls along the way - including: only performing manual testing, automated tests that aren’t maintained, and user stories that aren’t “done” on time. In this interactive workshop, you will explore some of the major challenges and discover ways to avoid them. Everyone tests. Are you ready?
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Agile 2012 - Pitfalls in Agile Testing - Paul Carvalho.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Paul Carvalho

Paul Carvalho

Agile Coach, Trainer, Quality Driven Inc.
Paul is a Testing expert, Agile coach, interactive teacher, Rubyist, comic relief, and efficiency enthusiast with over 20 years of experience in various domains. A Quality consultant by trade, Paul helps companies deliver world-class value. Beware: his eyes sparkle when he talks about... Read More →



Monday August 13, 2012 9:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7

9:00am CDT

Problem Statement to Scrum Board: Design Studio Using Systematic Creativity for Innovation: Will Evans
This workshop is an introduction to how teams can use Design Studio to generate new solutions and move quickly from brainstorming to design to stories. This variation on the popular Design Studio methodology takes a new approach: using systematic creativity templates. Systematic creativity is focused, subject to specific constraints, highly actionable, and can be carried out comprehensively by a small team. Teams gain all the benefits of a design studio, such as shared understanding, generative ideation, critique and iterative refinement – but in a more focused way so that a team can, upon completion of this activity, immediately begin story gathering and estimations.

Speakers
avatar for Will Evans

Will Evans

Mr., Mr.
Will Evans explores the convergence of practice and theory using Lean Systems, Design Thinking, and LeanUX with global corporations from NYC to Berlin to Singapore. As Chief Design Officer at PraxisFlow, he works with a select group of corporate clients undergoing Lean and Agile transformations... Read More →


Monday August 13, 2012 9:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Dallas 1-2
  User Experience

9:00am CDT

Agile Alliance Lounge

Take a break from Agile2012 action and relax in the Agile Alliance Lounge. Check out the activities of the organization, meet board members, enjoy a refreshing beverage, and pick up Agile Alliance swag. While you are there, inquire about ways you and your company can become more involved in the Agile community, take a look at the updated Agile Alliance roadmap, and see a new graphic banner highlighting historical events in the organization’s history. You are a member - this is your professional organization - be a part of it!

 


Monday August 13, 2012 9:00am - 5:00pm CDT
Grapevine Foyer

9:00am CDT

Coaches Clinic

Want some help with specific challenges you have encountered on your way to a more Agile way of working? Come to the Coaches Clinic in the Open Jam area where you can speak one-on-one with an experienced Agile Coach. We can help you find the right coach to discuss technical practices, organizational change, Scrum, Kanban, Agile Coaching as a career and many other topics. The Coaches Clinic will offer appointments as well as walk-in service.

Look for the schedule board in the Open Jam area.

 


Monday August 13, 2012 9:00am - 5:00pm CDT
Center Foyer

9:00am CDT

Open Jam

Anyone at the conference can convene a session at the Open Jam stage. We encourage interactive sessions providing opportunities to explore Agile ideas and techniques. Sessions don’t need to be formal, like the ones on the program -- it’s more fun if they are not!

Like bees around a jam pot, Open Jam is a buzzing place for thought leaders to hang out, it’s where juicy conversations about edgy and groundbreaking topics happen. Come along to discuss your sticky issues and burning questions. Pick up valuable new insights into topics that are relevant to you today. Sessions run throughout the day and late into the evening. Drop in anytime and join in!

All you need to lead a session is passion and commitment. Come along to our daily huddle at 8:30AM in the Center Foyer space, to grab a timeslot and announce your session to fellow conference participants. You’re also welcome to post your session later in the day -- if you can find an open slot!

We want to keep things fresh so a new Open Jam schedule is created each day and posted up on a big board in the Center Foyer area to give everyone a view of what’s coming up. Take a look in your Badge Holder, you will find (4) nifty Z-Cards featuring the session timetable for each day, Monday – Thursday as well as floor plans and special event information for that specific day.

Follow @Open_Jam on Twitter for updates of what’s happening at Open Jam stage. Be open, join our jam!

 


Monday August 13, 2012 9:00am - 5:00pm CDT
Center Foyer

12:30pm CDT

Exhibits Area

Come visit the Agile2012 Sponsors in Grapevine ABCD!

 


Monday August 13, 2012 12:30pm - 3:30pm CDT
Grapevine ABCD

1:30pm CDT

ACT: A Planning Tool for Agile Change Agents: Jutta Eckstein, James Shore
When an organization makes a real effort to be Agile, they set in motion a series of changes that ripple throughout the entire organization. The side-effects are often surprising, and dealing with them can be challenging. In this session, Jutta Eckstein, Diana Larsen, and James Shore will present their Agile Change and Transformation (ACT) planning model. This model gives change agents a way to plan and understand their Agile change efforts. It provides a way to understand the context of a transformation, choose which changes to focus on, and decide whether to take a deterministic or adaptive approach. The ACT planning model is new and experimental. It's funded in part by the Agile Alliance's "Supporting Agile Adoption" program. In this workshop, participants will have the opportunity to try the model and help develop it further.

Speakers
avatar for Jutta Eckstein

Jutta Eckstein

Independent Coach, consultant, trainer and speaker, IT Communications
Jutta Eckstein (http://jeckstein.com) is an independent coach, consultant and trainer from Braunschweig, Germany. Her know-how in agile processes is based on over twenty-five years’ experience in project and product development. Her focus is on enabling agile development on the... Read More →
avatar for James Shore

James Shore

Consultant, Titanium I.T. LLC
James Shore teaches, writes, and consults on Agile development processes. He is a recipient of the Agile Alliance's Gordon Pask Award for Contributions to Agile Practice, co-author of /The Art of Agile Development/, and co-creator of the Agile Fluency™ Model. You can find his essays... Read More →


Monday August 13, 2012 1:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Texas D

1:30pm CDT

Shaping Your Agile Adoption Path: Jason Little, Don Gray
Adopting Agile usually involves massive change for organizations. Making matters more complex, there are a whole bunch of paths to explore many of which generate resistance. Some people consider Agile to be a mindset. Others feel Agile is simply the adoption of processes and practices. During this experiential session you will learn how to: - understand where resistance comes from and how to deal with it - use a greater level of awareness about your people and culture to shape your path to Agility. - leverage your preferred leadership style and understand its impact on the change

Speakers
DG

Don Gray

President, n-th Order Systems, Inc
Having worked in software for 30 years I focus my energy and efforts working with executives to create the conditions where teams can flourish developing business value. I facilitate team learning and interdependent work. This includes assessments, embedded coaching, focused coaching... Read More →
avatar for Jason Little

Jason Little

Agile and Organizational Change Coach, Leanintuit
Chief Product Nerd at Spero Careers Canada, Author of Lean Change Management, Change Agility and Agile Transformation, Founder of the Modern Change Community, Spark the Change Toronto.


Monday August 13, 2012 1:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7

1:30pm CDT

Agile Inception Deck - 10 questions you'd be crazy not to ask before starting your project: Jonathan Rasmusson
Software is one of those unique activities that combine design, construction, art, and science all rolled up into one. Teams face thousands of decisions and trade-offs every day. And without the right context or big-picture understanding, it’s impossible to make the right trade-offs in an informed or balanced way. The agile inception deck is a lightweight project chartering tool that gives teams the **why** behind what they are doing. More than that it defines a common vision of success upfront, and makes sure everyone is aligned before the project begins.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/99-inception-deck.pdf



Monday August 13, 2012 1:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 5-6

1:30pm CDT

Brain Science: Facilitation and Game Toolbox: Samantha Laing, Karen Greaves
Agile is about more than processes and tools; it’s about individuals and interactions. A great way to experience what this really means is by participating in facilitation exercises and agile games. This session will explain the thinking behind why we use certain facilitation techniques and play agile games. The group will then participate in several activities, and in debriefing we will discuss how these activities can be used in their environments. Participants will leave the session with a toolbox full of techniques and games they can use themselves to teach agile concepts, as well as an appreciation of the agile values and principles through their own experience in the games.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/BrainScience.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Karen Greaves

Karen Greaves

Agile Coach, Growing Agile
I love meeting new people so come introduce yourself. Check out www.growingagile.co.nz to see what I look like, or just listen for the loudest person in the room :)



Monday August 13, 2012 1:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Dallas 3-4

1:30pm CDT

Where do agile leaders come from?: Kati Vilkki
Becoming truly agile requires a significant change in the leadership practices and in behavior of the managers. One aspect of this change is the transformation from command and control to servant leadership and supporting self-organization, which is not an easy one for many managers and teams. Over the years I have worked with many organizations helping teams and managers on the road to become more self-organizing and agile. Very often I have heard from teams that "we would like to self-organize, but management will not let us”. And from managers of the same organization: "we would like the teams to self-organize, but they just don't want to take the power and responsibility". Teams and managers seem to be trapped in the same mental model of hierarchical relationships and command & control leadership without being able to get out of this. In order to get out of this trap people need to start to think differently, feel differently and behave differently. In this session I will share my experience of coaching teams, managers and leadership teams so that the needed changes happen. We will cover the key concepts we have found helpful in changing the mental models. I will also talk about the coaching and training programs we have in place and tell examples of how the process of creating new leadership culture has progressed.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/where do agile leaders come from.pdf

Speakers
KV

Kati Vilkki

Nokia Siemens networks


Monday August 13, 2012 1:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 3-4

1:30pm CDT

Improving Collaboration and Communication through Improvisation : Kupe Kupersmith
To accomplish anything you need the help of others and others need your help. Successful teams have members that are continually improving how they interact and communicate with each other. Collaboration, creativity, and results grow out of an environment that is positive and affirming. In this highly interactive and fun session, Kupe, an improvisational actor, focuses on key improvisation lessons that will help you be a more attentive and flexible team member. You will walk away with lessons to help you stay in the present, temporarily suspend judgment, keep conversations moving forward and listen generously. These skills are needed to build positive, results oriented teams.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Improving Communication Through Improvisation Half Day Workshop - Student Version V1.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Kupe Kupersmith

Kupe Kupersmith

President, B2T Training
Kupe Kupersmith - As the founder of KupeTalks and the Atlanta Engagement Director, Market Rate Consulting, Kupe’s main objective is to help you connect, collaborate, and be ready for the future. For the past 20 years Kupe has been helping organizations achieve business value with... Read More →



Monday August 13, 2012 1:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
San Antonio 4-6

1:30pm CDT

Better Code, Littler Classes: Refactoring to Separate Concerns: Moss Collum, Laura Dean
You know the basics of refactoring: you rename variables for maximum clarity, extract methods to make them nice and compact, and sometimes even extract shared code into a superclass. But how do you go beyond the basics, to get simpler classes and more modular code? In this hands-on training session, we’ll demonstrate techniques for dividing large, complex classes into small, cohesive units. You’ll learn several key class-level refactorings, when to apply them, and how to find a class for every responsibility. This is a hands-on tutorial, so bring your laptop and be prepared to write some code!
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Better Code, Littler Classes.pdf


Monday August 13, 2012 1:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
San Antonio 1-3

1:30pm CDT

TDD for [Embedded] C: Bas Vodde, James Grenning
Test-Driven Development is for Java programmers, not for C! Yes it is! Roll up your sleeves and test-drive C with us. We’ll start with a short intro to TDD, and quickly get you doing TDD. Bring your laptop. If you don’t have one, we’ll team you up with another programmer. You’ll see how to make TDD practical for embedded software development. See CppUTest Compilation Environment(http://cpputest.org/node/42) for needed tools. We’ll also have a bootable Linux DVD with all the tools so that you can join the experience.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/TDD-EC-Agile2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for James Grenning

James Grenning

Wingman Software
James Grenning trains, coaches and consults worldwide bringing modern technical and management practices to embedded systems development. He is the author of Test-Driven Development for Embedded C (http://wingman-sw.com/tddec). He invented Planning Poker, and participated in the... Read More →
avatar for Bas Vodde

Bas Vodde

Odd-e
Bas Vodde is a coach, programmer, trainer, and author related to modern agile and lean product development. He is the creator of the LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum) framework for scaling agile development. He coaches organizations on three levels: organizational,  team,  individual... Read More →



Monday August 13, 2012 1:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 1-2

1:30pm CDT

'The Big Picture': Agility and Strategic Vision: Jimi Fosdick
When organizations adopt an agile approach to development there is so much focus on the iterative nature of agile development that long range vision and strategic product design, "The Big Picture", can get lost. In this workshop, Certified Scrum Trainer and Agile Process Mentor, Jimi Fosdick, PMP, CST discusses the need to include long term product vision, coherent user experience and User Centered design and architecture along with specific best practices for achieving a coherent product that delights users and walks participants through hands on, game-based, exercises to achieve that goal. Topics will include: Discussion of Product Vision and hands-on experience crafting a compelling overall vision Discussion of User-Centered/Value-Driven design and hands-on exercises to incorporate user experience (UX) and software architecture early in the development process Explanation of the pitfalls of a lack of vision and so-called "hybrid" models for incorporating UX and architecture into agile projects including the exercise "How To Tell If Your Vision is Impaired"

Speakers

Monday August 13, 2012 1:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Texas 2
  Enterprise Agile

1:30pm CDT

Agile and the nature of decision making: Dennis Stevens
Organizations are really bad at Risk Management. And the typical approaches to risk management are flawed - resulting in bureaucratic overhead and not much improvement in the performance of software development projects. Agile efforts have rejected bureaucratic and non-value adding efforts and in the process have rejected most of what is practiced as risk management. This is unfortunate - because the nature of agile development fundamentally changes how to benefit from effective risk management. Risk management is about managing uncertainty to reduce the probability and impact of unfortunate events and the maximize the realization of opportunities. This workshop builds on concepts from SEI's MOSAIC project and Eric Reis Lean Start-up to present a practical and proven to a systemic approach to integrating threat and opportunity identification and response into the management of Agile projects. Useful for typical delivery teams, this approach is particularly valuable in the large projects and large organizations.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Agile and the Nature of Decision Making.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Dennis Stevens

Dennis Stevens

LeadingAgile



Monday August 13, 2012 1:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Texas 3
  Enterprise Agile

1:30pm CDT

Lightweight Security in Agile Enterprise Environments: Introducing Threat Modeling Express: Rohit Sethi
You care about security, but common secure Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) practices such as traditional threat modeling and secure requirements analysis seem to be geared towards Waterfall development. What can you do? In this session we will explain the concept of Threat Modeling Express and model one of the audience member's actual applications, live, together. Threat Modeling Express is a two hour activity you do once a quarter that helps you put the right security requirements in your backlog (or other ticket/story/requirements management repository). It's extremely lightweight: you need a developer (yourself), somebody with security knowledge (possibly another developer), and somebody who represents business priorities (a product owner?). Together in a room you hash out the most common user stories/use cases, possible malicious intents, technical means to achieve those intents, group risk rating, and adding countermeasures to your backlog. At the end of the session you have group buy-in on the security risks you care about and how important they are relative to everything else. This is as lightweight as application security gets: attend if the words "lightweight" and "security" both appeal to you. Threat Modeling Express is an alternative to more rigorous / comprehensive design-level security activities such as threat risk assessments, traditional threat modeling, and architectural risk analysis.Threat Modeling Express sacrifices rigor in favor of speed. Threat Modeling Express is a process defined by Security Compass (an application security consultancy), but is really just describes a set of techniques that companies have been practicing informally for years. It's not proprietary and you can do it on your own without any third party assistance if you have the necessary domain expertise in-house. The speaker is one of the people who coined the term and has taught and used Threat Modeling Express at several large companies primarily in the financial services and utilities industries. NOTE: Although the speaker's personal agile experience is with Scrum, the process works equally well in other agile environments. More information about Threat Modeling Express: * http://www.infoq.com/articles/threat-modeling-express * https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032476372&CountryCode=US%20ForceRecrawl:%200
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Threat Model Express_Agile 2012.pdf

Speakers


Monday August 13, 2012 1:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Dallas 6-7
  Enterprise Agile

1:30pm CDT

Getting to the Next Level: Practicing Leadership Agility for Effective Agile Management: Bill Joiner, Michael Hamman
Sustaining and growing agile capability in large enterprises presents significant challenges for leaders. Underlying these challenges is the challenge of leadership itself. What does it mean to lead an agile organization? What manner of leadership does agility call for? In this hands-on workshop, we explore three “levels” of leadership agility, from the award-winning book, *Leadership Agility*. Going beyond previous conceptions of agile leadership, you will learn the rarely practiced “Catalyst” level of leadership agility, and think through how to apply its principles and practices to the larger challenges posed by today’s Agile initiatives.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Agile 2012 -- Leadership Agility Workshop Slides -- FINAL.pptx.pdf


Monday August 13, 2012 1:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Dallas 5
  Leadership

1:30pm CDT

The Fastest Learner Wins: Exploring the Innovator’s DNA: Mary Poppendieck, Tom Poppendieck
No matter how large and successful a company is today, it's long term survival is by no means guaranteed. Only a few large companies have been able to sustain growth over time by coming up with a steady stream of new disruptive businesses. How do they do it? Innovative companies create a climate in which cross functional teams conduct rapid, inexpensive experiments directly with customers. They foster the five innovation skills described in Clayton Christensen's book: The Innovator’s DNA - Observing, Questioning, Associating, Networking, and Experimenting. This Workshop is about using continuous feedback to speed up learning and radically improve the process of developing of software-intensive systems. It covers: 1. Continuous Delivery 2. Continuous Design 3. Continuous Experimentation 4. Continuous Progress Participants will explore questions such as: 1. Do our value streams bring together into a single network all of the capabilities necessary to create and deliver a compelling offer to customers? 2. Do team members understand who their customers are and why these customers will choose our product above all alternatives? 3. Does value flow from idea to delivery on a continuous basis and in a disciplined manner that delivers unassailable quality? 4. Are features validated against real customer behavior and modified based on whole system feedback? 5. Does everyone constantly challenge the status-quo and experiment with alternate ways of delivering even more compelling value to customers?
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Innovation.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Mary y Tom Poppendieck

Mary y Tom Poppendieck

Lean Software
Llevaron los conceptos Lean al mundo Agile a través de sus cuatro libros sobre Desarrollo de software Lean, comenzando con el clásico "Desarrollo de software Lean, An Agile Toolkit". Mary escribió su primer programa hace 60 años y Tom escribió el suyo hace unos 50 años. Están... Read More →


Monday August 13, 2012 1:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Texas C
  User Experience

1:30pm CDT

The UX of User Stories: Anders Ramsay
Agile methods emerged in the highly task-oriented world of enterprise software, where it made a good deal of sense to expect that a customer would be able to tell developers what features the software should contain. "I want to first be able to do this, then that, and then I want to see a list of the other thing." And thus User Stories were formed around that premise. Within that world, they’ve become incredibly powerful and nimble tools for team communication, planning, and more. But software products have moved well beyond those shores. Today’s software is often either too complex or too experience-oriented for customers to know what features to ask for, or worse, they think they know what to ask for, but that is based on a dated understanding of rapidly evolving interface paradigms. In this hybrid lecture/workshop, we’ll show how a UX-oriented approach to story development can help teams transform often fuzzy and emotion-oriented customer needs and desires into actual estimable features that a software team can build and deliver. We’ll also show how the old delivery-focused model of story development is highly revealing of the origins of Agile UX anti-patterns (e.g. the “feeding the beast” phenomenon), and how a UX-oriented approach can mitigate or eliminate much of it. Topics covered will include: * Methods for eliciting both feature and experience-oriented stories. * Mapping experience-oriented stories vs the more common storymapping. * Integrating UI exploration into story development. * From experience-oriented stories to dev-ready stories. * The UX of story estimating. * Stories and the product road map and MVP. * Stories and sprints/iterations. * Stories and the concept of Done vs Validated.

Speakers
avatar for Anders Ramsay

Anders Ramsay

andersr@gmail.com


Monday August 13, 2012 1:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Dallas 1-2
  User Experience

3:00pm CDT

Agile Philanthropy Dev Lab Startup

The Agile Philanthropy Coding Lab allows attendees to participate in a real agile project for a Not for Profit. Our lab will be staffed with experienced mentors to help you maximize your ability to contribute and learn in the lab. We are dedicated to creating a unique lab experience that uses real projects with real deliverables.

Participate:

• Donate Time by participating for 10 minutes or a Day

• Observe an Agile Project in Action

• Donate money to help the cause

By marrying the efforts of dedicated professionals experiencing Agile Development techniques with communities that need high quality software we hope to be a small part of a positive change. Code developed during the course will be deployed in the final product.

 


Monday August 13, 2012 3:00pm - 5:00pm CDT
Center Foyer

7:00pm CDT

Ice Breaker Reception

Join us for Agile2012's Opening night reception. The night will be filled with food, drink and fun! After chatting with new attendees and reconnecting with old friends, be sure to stop by the Agile2012 vendors to see what's new in the industry.

Be sure to participate in the evening’s entertainment! Try a hand at calf roping with real live Rollo Roper or ride the mechanical bull --- or even better, both! If you want to lay low, have your butt sketched [yes, we really mean your backside] by a live sketch artist!

 


Monday August 13, 2012 7:00pm - 10:00pm CDT
Grapevine ABCD

7:00pm CDT

Exhibits Area - Ice Breaker

Come visit the Agile2012 Sponsors in Grapevine ABCD!

 


Monday August 13, 2012 7:00pm - 10:00pm CDT
Grapevine ABCD
 
Tuesday, August 14
 

TBA

Dinner with a Stranger

Socializing and networking are an integral part of Agile2012. If you'll be attending Agile2012 alone, make sure to stop by the registration desk and sign up for "Dinner with a Stranger" on Tuesday, August 14th. Just add your name to one of the sign-up sheets. Later that night, put a smile on and meet your fellow participants for dinner and great conversation. Seating is limited, so sign up early!

 


Tuesday August 14, 2012 TBA
Registration Desk

8:30am CDT

Open Jam Huddle

Like bees around a jam pot, Open Jam is buzzing place for thought leaders to hang out, it’s where juicy conversations about edgy and groundbreaking topics happen. Come along to our daily huddle at 8:30AM in the Center Foyer, to grab a timeslot and announce your session to fellow conference participants. Sessions run throughout the day and late into the evening. Drop in anytime and join in!

Follow @Open_Jam on Twitter for updates of what’s happening at Open Jam stage. Be open, join our jam!

 


Tuesday August 14, 2012 8:30am - 9:00am CDT
Center Foyer

9:00am CDT

Scaling up Excellence: Bob Sutton
Scaling up Excellence

Speakers

Tuesday August 14, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Texas A-B
  Keynote

9:00am CDT

Agile Alliance Lounge

Take a break from Agile2012 action and relax in the Agile Alliance Lounge. Check out the activities of the organization, meet board members, enjoy a refreshing beverage, and pick up Agile Alliance swag. While you are there, inquire about ways you and your company can become more involved in the Agile community, take a look at the updated Agile Alliance roadmap, and see a new graphic banner highlighting historical events in the organization’s history. You are a member - this is your professional organization - be a part of it!

 


Tuesday August 14, 2012 9:00am - 5:00pm CDT
Grapevine Foyer

9:00am CDT

Agile Philanthropy Dev Lab

The Agile Philanthropy Coding Lab allows attendees to participate in a real agile project for a Not for Profit. Our lab will be staffed with experienced mentors to help you maximize your ability to contribute and learn in the lab. We are dedicated to creating a unique lab experience that uses real projects with real deliverables.

Participate:

• Donate Time by participating for 10 minutes or a Day

• Observe an Agile Project in Action

• Donate money to help the cause

By marrying the efforts of dedicated professionals experiencing Agile Development techniques with communities that need high quality software we hope to be a small part of a positive change. Code developed during the course will be deployed in the final product.

 


Tuesday August 14, 2012 9:00am - 5:00pm CDT
Center Foyer

9:00am CDT

Coaches Clinic

Want some help with specific challenges you have encountered on your way to a more Agile way of working? Come to the Coaches Clinic in the Open Jam area where you can speak one-on-one with an experienced Agile Coach. We can help you find the right coach to discuss technical practices, organizational change, Scrum, Kanban, Agile Coaching as a career and many other topics. The Coaches Clinic will offer appointments as well as walk-in service.

Look for the schedule board in the Open Jam area.

 


Tuesday August 14, 2012 9:00am - 5:00pm CDT
Center Foyer

9:00am CDT

Open Jam

Anyone at the conference can convene a session at the Open Jam stage. We encourage interactive sessions providing opportunities to explore Agile ideas and techniques. Sessions don’t need to be formal, like the ones on the program -- it’s more fun if they are not!

Like bees around a jam pot, Open Jam is a buzzing place for thought leaders to hang out, it’s where juicy conversations about edgy and groundbreaking topics happen. Come along to discuss your sticky issues and burning questions. Pick up valuable new insights into topics that are relevant to you today. Sessions run throughout the day and late into the evening. Drop in anytime and join in!

All you need to lead a session is passion and commitment. Come along to our daily huddle at 8:30AM in the Center Foyer space, to grab a timeslot and announce your session to fellow conference participants. You’re also welcome to post your session later in the day -- if you can find an open slot!

We want to keep things fresh so a new Open Jam schedule is created each day and posted up on a big board in the Center Foyer area to give everyone a view of what’s coming up. Take a look in your Badge Holder, you will find (4) nifty Z-Cards featuring the session timetable for each day, Monday – Thursday as well as floor plans and special event information for that specific day.

Follow @Open_Jam on Twitter for updates of what’s happening at Open Jam stage. Be open, join our jam!

 


Tuesday August 14, 2012 9:00am - 5:00pm CDT
Center Foyer

11:00am CDT

Software Change in the Solo Iterative Process: An Experience Report: Vaclav Rajlich, Chris Dorman
This paper reports an experience of a solo programmer who added a new feature into an open source program called muCommander. The process is observed on two granularities: Granularity of software change (SC) and granularity of Solo Iterative Process (SIP). The experience confirms that both SC and SIP process models can be successfully enacted, are able to implement the described feature, and produced a high quality code in reasonable time. The lessons learned, particularly the exit criteria for SC phases, are discussed in more detail in the paper.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Solo Iterative Process.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Vaclav  Rajlich

Vaclav Rajlich

Professor, Wayne State University
Vaclav Rajlich focuses his research on software development. His papers deal with staged model of software lifespan, Agile development, software change processes and techniques, and similar topics. He published book "Software engineering: The current practice", CRC Press, 2012. He... Read More →



Tuesday August 14, 2012 11:00am - 11:30am CDT
Ft. Worth 7
  Research at Work

11:00am CDT

Achieving Business Agility to Survive and Thrive: Mike Russell
To survive, businesses must balance new product/service development effectiveness and operations efficiency. Companies fail every day from lacking balance between opposing needs of “right now” profit and investing in innovation to thrive long-term. Sometimes they careen chaotically between the two needs. Understanding business dynamics and the prevailing bias toward “stability” will help both agile adoption and achieving appropriate levels of business agility. In fact, agile approaches hold the key to a successful balance, meaning you as an agile practitioner can help your company succeed!
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Business Agility and Innofficiency - Agile 2012 final.pdf

Speakers


Tuesday August 14, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Texas D

11:00am CDT

Agile In a Nutshell: Jonathan Rasmusson
If you’ve been doing Waterfall delivery most of your career agile can be down right scary: changing requirements, adaptive planning, iterative development. These are all intimidating things for managers and organizations used to doing things in discrete phases one stage at a time. In this introductory talk, we will look at agile in simple terms explaining: * what agile is * what working on an agile project is like * some of it’s myths * which agile method is right for you, and * three steps you can take to becoming more agile today.



Tuesday August 14, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Texas 2
  Agile Boot Camp

11:00am CDT

Stop Listening to Your Customers! Techniques for Deeper Customer Understanding: Brandon Carlson
Agile practices such as ATDD, TDD, and On-site Customer have gone a long way to help us build better products but are they sufficient? Even after all these years, we still wind up building products with lackluster results. Through more data driven requirements techniques we can better utilize our IT dollars to produce better software, tailored to the needs of our users. In this session, we'll take a look at some of the existing Agile techniques for eliciting requirements and how we can improve them by ignoring our customers and using data to refine product requirements.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/stop-listening-to-your-customers.pdf

Speakers


Tuesday August 14, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 5-6

11:00am CDT

Cracking Your Big Rocks - Large Problems Don't Talk Back: Simon Cromarty, Johanna Hunt
Ever faced a huge or insoluble problem? Did it keep you up at night? Did it give you that feeling of mild panic (or worse)? Did you keep avoiding it and putting it off? How do your teams tackle their defect backlogs, technical debt, replacing a large legacy system or splitting epics? How do managers overcome the hurdle of having to complete 20 performance appraisals in a month (or less) and reporting on large programs of 40+ scrum teams? How do *you* approach your biggest personal challenges? This is a session for anyone who has faced or continues to face large hurdles in either their professional or personal lives - to share your successes and failures with others and to gain new strategies and insights in demolishing the rocks that will fall in your path in future. Note, there may be occasional bursts of Brit/pirate humour :)
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/CrackingBigRocks-Agile2012-20120812.pdf


Tuesday August 14, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 3-4

11:00am CDT

Quality Assurance - A Team Sport: Jeff Morgan
Who is responsible for QA on an Agile team? The answer is “Everybody”. And yet this is rarely the case. Often the Testers write their test cases and automation in isolation and execute them after development is finished. Developers write their code without talking to the testers except to understand how to reproduce the latest discovered defect. Product Owners elaborate requirements in isolation and then hand them off to the team only to check back at the end of the sprint. Business Analysts spend their time in meetings away from the team working on documents that have questionable usefulness. Join Cheezy as he paints a different picture. This picture includes techniques and practices that foster collaboration between all team members that have the side effects of dramatically improving quality and achieving better flow resulting in a more streamlined development effort. This new picture is a picture of teamwork and quality assurance.

Speakers
avatar for Jeffrey "Cheezy" Morgan

Jeffrey "Cheezy" Morgan

Continuous Delivery Coach, Tango
Jeff been helping companies improve the way they build software since the early days of Agile. His emphasis on Continuous Delivery has fostered new technical and collaborative techniques that help teams deliver high quality software every day. He is driven by Lean values and principles... Read More →


Tuesday August 14, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
San Antonio 4-6

11:00am CDT

Clean Code: Robert Martin
Get ready for a challenge as Robert Martin dives deep into the topic of clean Java code by examining what makes a good function. In this talk you will look at a lot of code; some good and some bad. You will experience how such code is analyzed, critiqued, and eventually refactored. You will understand the decisions made by an expert in the field as bad code is gradually transformed into good code. How big should a function be? How should it be named? How should it be documented. How many indent levels should it have? How should it deal with exceptions, arguments, and return values. This talk is all about code at the lowest level. And yet the principles and techniques presented have far reaching implications.

Speakers
avatar for Robert Martin

Robert Martin

CleanCoders
Robert Martin (Uncle Bob) (@unclebobmartin) has been a programmer since 1970. He is the Master Craftsman at 8th Light inc, co-founder of the on-line video training company: cleancoders.com , and founder of Uncle Bob Consulting LLC.  He is an acclaimed speaker at conferences worldwide... Read More →


Tuesday August 14, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Texas C

11:00am CDT

Embracing HTML and CSS as Beautiful Code: Jim Morris
It's time we treated HTML and CSS as more than an annoying implementation detail. Developers who carefully craft their code need to stop treating HTML and CSS as annoying implementation details. We need to up our game, bringing craftsmanship to the presentation layer. Does CSS drive you nuts? Do you struggle through getting your site looking okay on one browser, only to find out that it looks like a trainwreck on others? Do suffer recurring nightmares about Internet Explorer? Do you fight with your designers because they keep sending you things that look pretty, but just don't seem to work in real life? Is your HTML and CSS a pile of ugly, hacky, brittle code that mars your otherwise beautiful codebase? HTML and CSS can be beautiful, and - dare I say it - fun. The trick is to think like they do, so you can outsmart them. I'm a dev at heart, but I've learned some great secrets along that way that have helped me develop - and more importantly, maintain - some high profile, beautiful websites. I'll share 8 important tips for coming to terms with, outsmarting, and kindling a romance with HTML.

Speakers
JG

Jon Galloway

Technical Evangelist, Microsoft


Tuesday August 14, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
San Antonio 1-3

11:00am CDT

TDD And A New Paradigm For Hardware Verification: Neil Johnson
The practices of unit testing and test-driven development (TDD) are mainstream for agile software development teams. While they also seem perfectly suited to the world of hardware development, where intense rigor is essential to avoiding the high costs of failure, unit testing and TDD are very rarely used. This talk proposes a new paradigm for achieving hardware quality where existing development and test practices are transformed through the addition of unit testing and TDD.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/TDD and a new paradigm for hardware verification.pdf

Speakers
avatar for neil johnson

neil johnson

Hardware Verification Engineer, XtremeEDA
Neil Johnson is a hardware test specialist and currently holds the position of Principal Consultant at XtremeEDA Corp, a design services firm specializing in all aspects of ASIC and FPGA development. He is co-moderator for AgileSoC.com, a site dedicated to the introduction of Agile... Read More →



Tuesday August 14, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 1-2

11:00am CDT

The AWG - An Engine of Sustainable Agile Enterprise Adoption: Jorgen Hesselberg
As Agile has crossed the chasm into the enterprise, it is evident that "going Agile" at scale is vastly different from adopting Agile in small or medium sized organizations. This talk covers the critical role, practical responsibilities and tangible deliverables of the Agile Working Group (AWG), a dedicated set of internal Agile resources responsible for driving a sustainable adoption of Agile at the enterprise level. Developed as part of Agile Alliance's "Supporting Agile Adoption" workshop, this presentation aims to share proven practices for enterprise adoption of Agile methods.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Hesselberg_AWG_Handouts.pdf



Tuesday August 14, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Austin 1-3
  Enterprise Agile

11:00am CDT

Why Agile Needs More Cowboys: Mike Griffiths
This presentation takes the leadership ideas of Jeffrey Pinto author of “Project Leadership: from Theory to Practice” and transforms them into an agile setting. Cowboys are resourceful, daring, and are as quick with their wits as they are with their fists. In many ways, we see cowboys as the embodiment of agile leaders. Yet, life is not a Hollywood movie. What do cowboys actually do? They lead cows. Have you ever seen anything that indicates that John Wayne knows how to lead cows? They ride horses, shoot guns, and always get the girl. But have you ever seen them with a cow? Would you want them around a cow? Your cow? They can teach us as much about being a good cowboy as Homer Simpson can teach us about being a good father. Go behind the myth, and true agile leadership characteristics emerge. A herd of cows is a lot like an organization: massive and, at times, rather aimless. It takes dedicated leadership using a score of methods to energize this bovine bulk. A good cowboy knows how to select a lead cow, direct the herd into natural flows to help lead the herd. Moving a herd into Dodge City required considerable skill. It is the real cowboy, not a stylized caricature, that teaches us something about leadership. Agile leadership is not a cookbook. You will find no recipes for leadership stew here. Rather, this presentation is intended as a guide to leadership thought and practice. Good theory underlies good leadership. Theory has received a bad rap. After all, we want doers, not thinkers, right? But, at its heart, leadership is concerned with transforming ideas and concepts into action. Your knowledge of basic principles is essential to you taking the first step to being an effective agile leader. Our six-shooter of agile leadership topics to be introduced is: 1. Craft a compelling vision of the completed project 2. Model the desired behaviour towards this vision 3. Resist meddling and recognize team conflict as a positive step 4. Act for the simultaneous welfare of the team and the project 5. Create an environment of functional accountability 6. Take time to reflect on the project and challenge the process  

Speakers
MG

Mike Griffiths

Consultant, Leading Answers
Mike Griffiths is an experienced project manager and agile coach with a long history of contributions to the agile and project management community. He helped create the agile approach, DSDM, in 1994 and has been using agile approaches on his projects ever since. He served on the... Read More →


Tuesday August 14, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Austin 4-6
  Leadership

11:00am CDT

The 0-Page Agile Test Plan: Paul Carvalho
Get rid of heavyweight Test Plan documents that no one reads, focus on process, make it difficult to respond to change and don’t help with customer collaboration. In this hands-on session, you will create a multi-dimensional Test Strategy that _radiates_ information (i.e. helps everyone know what’s important to test _right now_), highlights non-functional requirements, and easily adapts to changing requirements. Everyone on an agile team can use this method to get on the same page - this is **not** just for testers.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Agile 2012 - The 0-Page Agile Test Plan - Paul Carvalho.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Paul Carvalho

Paul Carvalho

Agile Coach, Trainer, Quality Driven Inc.
Paul is a Testing expert, Agile coach, interactive teacher, Rubyist, comic relief, and efficiency enthusiast with over 20 years of experience in various domains. A Quality consultant by trade, Paul helps companies deliver world-class value. Beware: his eyes sparkle when he talks about... Read More →



Tuesday August 14, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Dallas 3-4

11:00am CDT

Lessons Learned Integrating UX into Agile Teams: Brian Sobus
As Agile has evolved, it has become a challenge to get dependent teams working together in a synchronous fashion. One type of team that has always presented a challenge to me, as a development manager, has been the UX team. This talk explores my various attempts at integrating UX into Agile Teams. It tells of the sordid history, of what worked, and what truly did not. I will also work with the audience and gather their ideas, patterns, and potential solutions. After the conference, I will gather the results and publish them.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Lessons Learned Integrating UX into Agile Teams.2012.08.With Notes.pdf



Tuesday August 14, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Dallas 1-2
  User Experience

11:30am CDT

Knowledge Management in Distributed Agile Software Development: Siva Dorairaj, , James Noble and Petra Malik
Software development teams need highly valuable knowledge to carry out knowledge-intensive development activities. Agile teams are cross-functional teams that promote sharing of project-specific knowledge through frequent face-to-face interaction, effective communication and customer collaboration. Knowledge sharing is difficult for distributed Agile teams due to spatial, temporal, and cultural barriers, which negatively affect face-to-face interaction, communication and collaboration. There seems to be very few studies that focus on knowledge management in distributed Agile teams. Through a Grounded Theory study that involved 45 participants from 28 different software companies in the USA, India and Australia, we investigate distributed software development from the specific perspective of Agile teams. In this paper, we describe how Agile teams gather, store, share and use knowledge in distributed software development.

Speakers
avatar for Siva Dorairaj

Siva Dorairaj

Teaching Fellow, Victoria University of Wellington
A PhD researcher from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Through a Grounded Theory study which involved 55 participants from 38 different software companies in the USA, India and Australia, I investigated key concerns of distributed teams in Agile software development... Read More →


Tuesday August 14, 2012 11:30am - 12:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7
  Research at Work

1:30pm CDT

A Methodology for Assessing Agile Software Development Methods: Shvetha Soundararajan, James Arthur
Agile methods provide an organization or a team with the flexibility to adopt a selected subset of principles and practices based on their culture, their values, and the types of systems that they develop. More specifically, every organization or team implements a customized agile method, tailored to better accommodate its needs. However, the extent to which a customized method supports the organizational objectives, i.e. the ‘goodness’ of that method, is questionable. Existing agile assessment approaches focus on comparative analyses, or are limited in scope and application. In this research, we propose a structured, systematic, and comprehensive approach to assessing the ‘goodness’ of agile methods. We examine an agile method based on (1) its adequacy, (2) the capability of the organization to support the adopted principles and practices specified by the method, and (3) the method’s effectiveness. We propose the Objectives, Principles and Practices (OPP) Framework to guide our assessment. The Framework identifies (1) objectives of the agile philosophy, (2) principles that support the objectives, (3) practices that are reflective of the principles, (4) linkages among the objectives, principles and practices, and (5) indicators for assessing the extent to which an organization supports the implementation and the effectiveness of that practice. In this paper, we discuss our solution approach, preliminary results, and future work.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/SoundararajanArthurBalci_Agile2012_Handout_v1.pdf

Speakers


Tuesday August 14, 2012 1:30pm - 2:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7
  Research at Work

1:30pm CDT

Agile and PMI: Barbarians at the Gate: Andrew Burns
How to react as stones fall on our Agile heads from lofty towers? Transcendence of Agile limitations in the quest for Enterprise Agility calls for a planned siege, not a mob. Make a blueprint in this session! Become masters of siege engines delivering customer value, not Barbarians at the Gate. The PMO and keepers of the corporate yearly planning cycle still cling to traditions of waste. The true need to optimize the whole is fog bound by mystic thinking. In revered enterprise Keeps, day is night. It is possible to know all the requirements at the start. Omniscient customers 'do know' what they want a year from now. Interim feedback is a waste of time and only generates scope creep. Interim milestones measure progress well enough. Demanding that work be done, delivers desired results. Complex program management software can squeeze 150% out of a person! Keepers of the enterprise ken know Agile is wrong. The status quo is correct. Affronts are hurled down on Agile teams. Self-organizing teams can never improve processes beyond the team. It is not feasible to deliver value to the customer every sprint. Agile teams can not plan beyond the current sprint. Scrum of Scrums is a failed theory to coordinate multiple teams. It just can’t scale. Agile sees no need for automated testing or up front unit testing. We need documentation!

Speakers
avatar for Andy Burns, PMP, PMI-ACP, of Siemens PLM

Andy Burns, PMP, PMI-ACP, of Siemens PLM

Siemens PLM, Chief Scrum Master
Andy Burns PMP, PMI-ACP is the Chief Scrum Master for Siemens PLM Software. Being a proud traditional project manager with agile capabilities in his skills portfolio, Andy now scales agile with several hundred software engineers around the world working in a mixed portfolio of agile... Read More →



Tuesday August 14, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Texas D

1:30pm CDT

This One Goes to 121: James Shore, Arlo Belshee
This talk will either be a resounding success or a flop. But hey, what’s the point of mediocrity? We will explore excellence. What it is, how one achieves it, and how one exceeds it. What determines the outer limits of your team’s capability? How can you be continually more awesome? We’ve each got a decade of transitioning to (Jim), being on (Arlo), and building (both) awesome Agile teams. We aim to distill that down to an essence that you can inhale in 90 minutes, yet still apply directly as soon as you get home.

Speakers
avatar for James Shore

James Shore

Consultant, Titanium I.T. LLC
James Shore teaches, writes, and consults on Agile development processes. He is a recipient of the Agile Alliance's Gordon Pask Award for Contributions to Agile Practice, co-author of /The Art of Agile Development/, and co-creator of the Agile Fluency™ Model. You can find his essays... Read More →


Tuesday August 14, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Texas C

1:30pm CDT

Baby Steps and Pervasive Feedback: George Dinwiddie
If you are new to Agile and attempting to transform your organization, it’s easy to get lost in the details of recommended practices and ceremonies. Too many groups try so hard to exactly follow the descriptions "by the book" that they miss the benefits of those practices. They overlook the very reason the practices exist. It’s more important to be effective than to attempt a large number of suggested practices. George Dinwiddie will highlight one way to judge the effectiveness of your practices in a manner that guides you in improving them.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Baby Steps and Pervasive Feedback-Agile2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for George Dinwiddie

George Dinwiddie

Grand Poobah and Jack of All Trades, iDIA Computing, LLC
George Dinwiddie helps organizations develop software more effectively. He brings decades of development experience from electronic hardware and embedded firmware to business information technology. He helps organizations, managers, and teams solve the problems they face by providing... Read More →


Tuesday August 14, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Texas 3
  Agile Boot Camp

1:30pm CDT

Kanban Pizza Game - the Kanban experience for foodies: David Bland, Dave Sharrock
The Kanban Pizza Game is a unique experience of the benefits of one-piece flow or limiting your work-in-process. You are the proprietor of a new entrepreneurial enterprise, your very own Pizza Shop. You will experience the frenetic energy required to keep up with your customers' needs before using the three simple prescriptions of Kanban to increase your productivity and even offer your customers more choice. You'll experience some subtleties of the Kanban approach before we tie everything back to how software is delivered using Kanban. -- The Kanban Pizza game was created in the summer of 2011, and has been used at Tampere Goes Agile 2011 in Finland and the Agile Coach Camp in Columbus, OH in Sept 2011. Feedback was enthusiastic, and the game has been used numerous times with clients in the passed 6 months to very positive feedback. The benefit of this game over other Kanban experiences is the level of complexity that can be introduced through the variations of pizza slices (for example, incorporating subtle changes in flow through the system). Some feedback from the Tampere exercise can be seen on the [agile42 blog](http://www.agile42.com/en/blog/2011/09/23/kanban-pizza-game/ "Kanban Pizza Game"). Kanban is a tool that allows optimization of a process by visualizing it. Kanban has just three main prescriptions: 1 Visualize the workflow 2 Limit WIP 3 Measure and optimize the average lead time **Visualize the workflow** With the physical production of the Pizza the workflow is always visually present, and with the drawing of the workflow we can reflect the current process. **Limit WIP** Through the game some bottlenecks and queues will emerge. During the game we introduce work-in-process limits to highlight the (often counter-intuitive) benefit of focusing on single piece flow, and so that the teams don't lose points for unused materials. The participants experience that WIP limits are more than just imposed limitations - they change behaviour; people interact more on the overall production, communicate more and help each other when needed. **Measure and optimize the average lead time** In the game we measure the lead time and the cycle time. We also use a point system to approximate value delivery, and in particular the cost of inventory or waste. **Some Benefits of Kanban** - Bottlenecks become clearly visible, leading to increased collaboration - Evolutionary path to agile software development - Provides a way to be agile without iterations, starting where you are - Natural tendency to spread throughout an organization

Speakers
avatar for David J Bland

David J Bland

Principal, Neo
Organizational Coaching, Lean Startup, Business Model Generation, Customer Development, Kanban
avatar for Dave Sharrock

Dave Sharrock

Agile Coach, agile42
Dad, internet veteran, husband, entrepreneur, occasional seismologist. British and almost Canadian. Agile coach and change agent. Only Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC), Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and Certified Agile Leader (CAL) in Canada.



Tuesday August 14, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Texas 2
  Agile Boot Camp

1:30pm CDT

Strategies for Agile Portfolio Management: Kenny Rubin
Traditional portfolio management frequently uses principles that are at odds with agile thinking. For example, believing that people should be 100% utilized might lead to us to start many simultaneous projects leading to high levels of team-member multitasking. Managing a portfolio according to these principles all but guarantees a continuous stream of impediments that interfere with team-level agility and sub-optimizes delivered value. In this session I discuss strategies for aligning portfolio management with agile development to ensure a better end-to-end flow of value.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Rubin_Agile_2012_Strategies_for_Porfolio_Management.pdf.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Ken Rubin

Ken Rubin

Managing Principal, Innolution
Ken Rubin is the author of Amazon’s #1 best-selling book Essential Scrum: A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process. As an agile thought leader, Ken founded Innolution where he helps organizations thrive through the application of agile principles in an effective and economically... Read More →


Tuesday August 14, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 5-6

1:30pm CDT

Building a Team from Values to Principles: A Step by Step Approach: Erin Beierwaltes
Building a high efficiency team can often be elusive and challenging. With all of the focus on jumping into an Agile framework or process, we often forget that these frameworks are built on a set of Values and Principles. By not establishing a shared understanding with the team, our overly processed focus may leave our team in a state of "norming" without reaching a truly "performing" state. This session offers a unique guide for team growth through building values, evaluating agile principles and acknowledging benefits with an iterative, interactive and visual team building activity.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/AgilityTreeBV.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Erin Beierwaltes

Erin Beierwaltes

Skipstone Consulting
Erin Beierwaltes counts herself lucky to have found a passion in the agile movement.  Through a unique mix of system thoeories, agile principles and business practices, Erin partners with businesses to discover what customers need, how to efficiently build it and how to empower... Read More →



Tuesday August 14, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 3-4

1:30pm CDT

Team Dynamics Interactive Games : Ken Howard
This session teaches several aspects of organizational and team dynamics in a fun, interactive environment. Three different games/exercises are played. The first game, Communication Origami, teaches the importance of collaborative communication and how different organizational models affect communication effectiveness. The second exercise, the Bridge, demonstrates facets of team organization and leadership including self-organizing teams. The final session, Close Encounters with the Other Kind, teaches how to increase communication effectiveness between individuals and the team as a whole.

Speakers
avatar for Ken Howard

Ken Howard

Author of Individuals and Interactions: An Agile Guide from Addison Wesley


Tuesday August 14, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
San Antonio 4-6

1:30pm CDT

Behavior Driven Development: Look, no frameworks!: Elizabeth Keogh
Behavior Driven Development helps business and development teams to communicate, through collaborative writing of examples of how a system will behave. Nowadays frameworks like Cucumber and JBehave exist which allow those scenarios to be written in English - but what would you do if they weren't there? We look at strategies for writing small, readable domain-specific languages on top of ordinary TDD frameworks like NUnit and JUnit, and show how to structure the underlying steps to keep scenarios maintainable - lessons which can be applied to all scenarios, even with frameworks. We also look at the costs of using frameworks, alongside the benefits, and how to know when to use them - and when to step away from the tools.

Speakers
avatar for Liz Keogh

Liz Keogh

Lunivore Limited
Liz Keogh is a Lean and Agile consultant based in London. She is a well-known blogger and international speaker, a core member of the BDD community and a contributor to a number of open-source projects including JBehave. She has a strong technical background with almost 20 years of... Read More →


Tuesday August 14, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
San Antonio 1-3

1:30pm CDT

Scaling Agile with Multiple Teams: Using Lean to Drive Business Value: Alan Shalloway
This program will share Lean-Agile principles that guide both what to build and how to coordinate the teams that need to build it. We will cover how to apply these principles when there are several teams involved in creating software using either Scrum or Kanban development approaches. A common intent of all Agile methods is threefold: 1. Build the most valuable features 2. Build them efficiently 3. Minimize creating extra work The challenge to accomplishing this is not that great for one team working independently. However, when several teams have to coordinate, the challenges greatly magnify. When implementing software over several teams, we have found it to be valuable to manage the workflow from the perspective of what will provide value to the business – not quite the same thing as customer value. This can be used to guide how to slice work up into smaller chunks, enabling at least quick feedback, if not quick delivery, to ensure the right products are being built. A lot of thrashing can take place when teams work with poor coordination – greatly lowering efficiency. In large scale development, it is clear that working on the right functions, and coordinating their construction across teams is essential. Having teams coordinate amongst themselves has been the popular method. Unfortunately, this approach, typified by Scrum-of-Scrums, has a dismal track record. Having discovered the correct principles underneath large scale development, we now believe we understand why coordinating teams as a set of peer development organizations, can rarely be an optimal approach. Teams need to be guided by the value they are building, while self-organizing to improve the embedded feedback loops of development. The self-organization techniques required vary, depending upon several factors. These principles, not surprisingly, are directly related to the 3 intents mentioned above. This seminar will present both the principles underneath large scale feature implementation, as well as a few case studies demonstrating different implementations of these principles.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/ScalingAgileWithLean_Agile2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Al Shalloway

Al Shalloway

CEO, Net Objectives
Founder and CEO of Net Objectives.Co-founder of Lean-Kanban University (no longer affiliated). SPC Trainer. Co-author of 4 books on Lean, Scrum, Design Patterns and Agile Design. Happy to talk to anyone who wants a free consult. Also, are looking for folks who'd like to work with... Read More →


Tuesday August 14, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Austin 1-3
  Enterprise Agile

1:30pm CDT

Leading Conflict: A Systems Intelligence Approach to Conflict Facilitation for Leaders: Michael Spayd, Lyssa Adkins
Sometimes hot and messy, other times cold and hidden, conflict surrounds us as leaders. There are two obvious choices: become the arbitrator who breaks the tie, or throw up your hands in exasperation deciding it's the team's problem. A third, more powerful approach is to become a skilled conflict facilitator. This hands-on workshop provides four interrelated systems intelligence tools and mindsets to help you prevent destructive conflict and encourage the creative kind: the positive/negative ratio, deep democracy perspective, conflict protocols and creating alignment without agreement. First laying a foundation with the team’s positive/negative behavioral ratio, this creates a positive emotional bank account to strengthen resiliency and help people "assume positive intent." We then add a behavioral structure, conflict protocols, to prepare teams for the heat of conflict, and finally introduce two core practices (deep democracy and distinguishing ‘interests’ from ‘positions’) for navigating active conflict as it occurs. The relationship systems approach, from CRRGlobal, will be taught and facilitated by two experienced agile+systems coaches.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/leading conflict handout - agile 2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Lyssa Adkins

Lyssa Adkins

Agile Coach & Consultant, LyssaAdkins.com
I came to Agile as a project leader with over 15 years project management expertise. Even with all that experience, nothing prepared me for the power and simplicity of Agile done well.My Agile experience, along with my professional coaching and training abilities, gives me the perspective... Read More →
avatar for Michael Spayd

Michael Spayd

Dragon Rider, LLC
In a word, Michael Spayd life's work is about transformation. He is wired to help people and systems change, beginning with himself. Drawn to cutting edge 'technologies' for coaching organizations, leaders and teams, he has been an organizational change coach and consultant for more... Read More →


Tuesday August 14, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Austin 4-6
  Leadership

1:30pm CDT

Teams are made of People! Personal Kanban for healthy self-organization and real-time: Jim Benson
Sample questions include: How does Personal Kanban contribute to team self-organization? Why should we focus on the people so much, isn’t it more important to fill the right roles with the right skills? People need processes and tools to do their work, what methods and tools do you recommend? What’s the difference between healthy and unhealthy self-organization, and how can I tell what’s going on on my team?

Speakers

Tuesday August 14, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Dallas 6-7
  No Bull Know How

1:30pm CDT

Testing System Qualities: Rebecca Wirfs-Brock, Joseph Yoder
Agile teams incrementally deliver functionality based on user stories. In the sprint to deliver features, frequently software qualities such as security, scalability, performance, and reliability are overlooked. Often these characteristics cut across many user stories. Trying to deal with certain system qualities late in the game can be difficult, causing major refactoring and upheaval of the system’s architecture. This churn isn’t inevitable. Especially if you adopt a practice of identifying those characteristics key to your system’s success, writing quality scenarios and tests, and delivering on these capabilities at the opportune time. We will show how to write Quality Scenarios that emphasize architecture capabilities such as usability, security, performance, scalability, internationalization, availability, accessibility and the like. This will be hands-on; we present some examples and follow with an exercise that illustrates how you can look at a system, identify, and then write and test quality scenarios.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/TestingSystemQualities - Agile2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Rebecca Wirfs-Brock

Rebecca Wirfs-Brock

Wirfs-Brock Associates
I'm best known as the "design geek" who invented Responsibility-Driven Design and the xDriven meme (think TDD, BDD, DDD..). I'm keen about team effectiveness, communicating complex requirements, software quality, agile QA, pragmatic TDD, and patterns and practices for architecting... Read More →
avatar for Joseph Yoder

Joseph Yoder

Agilist, Computer Scientist, Consultant, Object Oriented Developer, ..., The Refactory, Inc (www.refactory.com)
Joseph Yoder is a founder and principle of The Refactory, Inc., a company focused on software architecture, design, implementation, consulting and mentoring on all facets of software development. Joseph is an international speaker and pattern author, a long standing member of the... Read More →



Tuesday August 14, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Dallas 3-4

1:30pm CDT

Extreme Design — The Secrets to Successful Design Pairing: Samuel Bowles
Whether you're a designer or a developer there's a simple way to get better at both, help others around you improve, and make working together more enjoyable. The power of design pairing can produce better ideas faster and instill greater empathy for both design and programming throughout your company. Samuel Bowles will explore how his team has adopted the principles of design pairing in a number of contexts and configurations. His observations are based on the contrast between his work in traditional design firms and as a member of various Agile development teams. He will explore the various types of design pairing and especially the power of cross-functional pairing.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Design Pairing — Version 5 Agile 2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Samuel Bowles

Samuel Bowles

Software Craftsman, Mutually Human
Samuel Mikel Bowles' started his 16 year career at Burger King where he held the ambiguous title of webmaster. Still a polyglot he works as a visual & interaction designer, front end developer, and Agile practitioner at Mutually Human. He is a dedicated practitioner and international... Read More →



Tuesday August 14, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Dallas 1-2
  User Experience

2:00pm CDT

Agile Testing: Past, Present, and Future: Theodore D. Hellmann, Abhishek Sharma,, Jennifer Ferreira and Frank Maurer
Testing has been a cornerstone of agile software development methodologies since early in the history of the field. However, the terminology used to describe the field – as well as the evidence in existing literature – is largely inconsistent. In order to better structure our understanding of the field and to guide future work, we conducted a systematic mapping of agile testing. We investigate five research questions: which authors are most active in agile testing; what is agile testing used for; what types of paper tend to be published in this field; how do practitioners and academics contribute to research in this field; and what tools are used to conduct agile testing? Of particular interest is our investigation into the source of these publications, which indicates that academics and practitioners focus on different types of publication and, disturbingly, that the number of practitioner papers in the sources we searched is strongly down since 2010.


Tuesday August 14, 2012 2:00pm - 2:30pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7
  Research at Work

2:30pm CDT

User Experience Design Goes Agile in Lean Transformation – A Case Study: Minna Isomursu, Petri Voltti,, Markku Halonen and Andey Sirotkin
This paper describes the results of a single-case case study, exploring the role of user experience (UX) work in agile software development. The case study company is a large multinational telecommunication company undergoing a lean transformation process. In this case, lean transformation includes the adoption of agile software development practices. Transformation to agile practices had taken place one year prior to the analysis. The analysis is based on documentation analysis and semi-structured interviews of seven software development professionals. The results show that there were difficulties integrating UX design and software engineering work in an agile and iterative manner. The transition process succeeded in shifting UX and related documentation to a central planning role. The roles of the UX designers in the teams were still under re-definition. There was also a clear need to establish new ways of collaboration between UX professionals and software designers.


Tuesday August 14, 2012 2:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7
  Research at Work

3:30pm CDT

Estimate of the appropriate iteration length in agile development by conducting simulation: Ryushi Shiohama, Hironori Washizaki, Shin Kuboaki,, Kazunori Sakamoto and Yoshiaki Fukazawa
"Agile development refers to the group of software development methodologies based on an iterative and incremental process model. It divides the development period into short time frames called iterations and uses a body of knowledge obtained from past experience called practice to ensure agile software development Although the iteration length is an important factor in agile development however it has so far been decided by the qualitatively and it has been reported that projects with an inappropriate iteration length are more preme to failure. We thus propose a new methodology for estimating an appropriate iteration length through the conduct on of a simulation based on project constraints. In this study we first, propose a method of calculating an appropriate iteration length for a particular project to promote the easy use of agile development. Second, the relationship between the iteration length and project constraints was investigated by varying the parameters to create diverse situations. "


Tuesday August 14, 2012 3:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7
  Research at Work

3:30pm CDT

Continuous Delivery: Jez Humble
Businesses rely on rapidly getting valuable new software into the hands of users, while keeping production stable. Continuous Delivery is a revolutionary and scalable agile methodology that enables any team to achieve rapid, reliable releases through better collaboration between everyone involved in delivery, and automation of the build, deploy, test and release process. I’ll present the principles and practices of continuous delivery, including the deployment pipeline, acceptance test driven development, devops, and techniques for low risk releases.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/continuous_delivery_agile_2012.pdf

Speakers


Tuesday August 14, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 1-2
  Agile Boot Camp

3:30pm CDT

What's Done Is Done: An Exploration of What 'Done' Means At Various Levels: Daniel Gullo
The definition of done is a fairly popular (and sometimes emotional) topic in the Agileverse. It seems everyone has an opinion on the matter ranging from “It depends,” to “Let the teams decide,” to a meticulously designed set of business rules and criteria that account for every possible scenario. However, as organizations adopt Agile practices (and specifically, Scrum), they seek to leverage guidance from those of us who have already blazed the trail. Why then is this such a complex topic? This session will discuss what the "Definition of Done" means to different stakeholders across the organization at the User Story, Sprint, Release, Product, and Program Level. The session is based on a series of articles that I have published on this topic. Also, I have presented various versions of this session for my clients and will be doing a dry-run of the actual Agile 2012 format for one of our Wilmington ALN meetings this Spring.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/What's Done is Done - 081412 0800.pptx.pdf

Speakers

Tuesday August 14, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Texas 2
  Agile Boot Camp

3:30pm CDT

Working Effectively with User Stories: Silent Sizing and Definition of Ready: Ken Power
User stories are used to describe the functionality delivered in a product or system. Two common challenges we see recurring, even with experienced teams, are (1) they spend far too much time planning and estimating, getting trapped in the details, and (2) they have difficulty finishing user stories in a time-boxed iteration or Sprint – often realizing, despite the promise of further conversation, that they just didn’t know enough about the user story before taking it on. This hands-on session introduces participants to two techniques to deal with these problems. The first is Silent Grouping, which allows teams to collaboratively size even very large backlogs in minutes. The second is Definition of Ready, which is a set of agreements that lets everyone know when a user story is ready to begin. Combined, these techniques can save your teams literally hundreds of hours in time.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Agile 2012 Working Effectively With User Stories.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Ken Power

Ken Power

Software Engineering Leader, https://kenpower.dev/
Ken Power has held multiple positions in large technology organizations. His current responsibilities include leading global, large-scale engineering organization transformations. He has been working with agile and lean methods since 1999. He holds patents in virtualization and network... Read More →



Tuesday August 14, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Texas 3
  Agile Boot Camp

3:30pm CDT

Questions not Stories: Build a business-value oriented team: Adrian Howard
User Stories are a fantastic agile tool, but they are not the only way for the product owner and team to reach a mutual understanding of what needs to be delivered. This workshop explores the use of hypotheses and experiments from the Lean Startup community. We see how using hypotheses instead of stories brings advantages to the development team, the customer, and the user. Stop telling stories about your product - start asking questions.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/questions-not-stories-placeholder.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Adrian Howard

Adrian Howard

Quietstars
Adrian Howard is passionate about building effective teams and great products. He co-founded Quietstars to help organisations do that using Lean, Agile and User Experience practices. You'll find Adrian working with startup and product development teams — doing everything from... Read More →



Tuesday August 14, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 5-6

3:30pm CDT

The product owner role is a stupid idea: Improving how we handle customer requests: Jeff Patton
My team takes a lot of time to write user stories in a standard format, what else can we do to develop a good backlog? Aren’t user stories just slimmed down use cases? How does the team start work if you don’t do requirements gathering? What alternatives have you seen to having a product owner/customer proxy on the team? What are the characteristics of a good product manager?

Speakers
avatar for Jeff Patton

Jeff Patton

Chief Troublemaker, Jeff Patton & Associates
Jeff makes use of over 20 years of product design and development experience to help companies create great products.Jeff started in software development in the early 90s as a project leader and senior developer for a small software product company. There he learned that well written... Read More →


Tuesday August 14, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Texas C

3:30pm CDT

The Power of Observation: Jukka Lindström
_“To observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.” Jiddu Krishnamurti_ Ability to observe and share observations is one of the most fundamental skills for coaches. Sharing observations increases awareness and empowerment in others to make their own decisions and take responsibility of the situation, where as sharing interpretations has potential for conflict or disempowerment. How are your powers of observation? The workshop is for both new and experienced coaches. Participants will learn self-awareness and observation techniques to help themselves and others.

Speakers
avatar for Jukka Lindström

Jukka Lindström

Principal Coach and Trainer, Reaktor
I'm a Principal Coach and a Trainer at Reaktor. I am very passionate about thinking and personal growth. Not just myself's :), but of others'. I love helping people to reach whatever dreams they have through facilitating their thinking. I've been working with topics around self-organization... Read More →


Tuesday August 14, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 3-4

3:30pm CDT

The Silence of Agile: Steve Rogalsky
We've all sat through painful requirements, planning, and brainstorming sessions that provide little useful output and where the outcome was already decided by the loudest few before the meeting even started. Learn how silence can increase collaboration and help your agile project be more productive. Silent brainstorming allows everyone to have a voice – the loud people can’t dominate the conversation, the quiet people are provided with a way to contribute, and cognitive fixation is reduced. We’ll discuss the science of brainstorming and then practice several silent brainstorming techniques in order to generate a user story map, do agile chartering, brainstorm a list of user stories, prioritize your user stories, and generate ideas for your retrospective.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/TheSilenceOfAgile.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Steve Rogalsky

Steve Rogalsky

Sr. Technical Product Manager, D2L
An agilist and product manager at D2L with a passion for agile and lean principles and practices. Speaker, coach, dad, husband, founder of Winnipeg Agile User Group



Tuesday August 14, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
San Antonio 4-6

3:30pm CDT

Writing High Quality Code: David Bernstein
This presentation will help you quantify software qualities. Quality in delivered software is intangible and very different from quality in physical goods. Some external attributes of quality software—free from defects and easy to maintain—are reflections of the code’s internal qualities. When classes and methods are cohesive, non-redundant, well-encapsulated, assertive, and explicitly coupled, they are less prone to mistakes and far easier to debug, test, and maintain. David Bernstein asserts that paying attention to code quality helps us focus on the key principles, patterns, and practices used by expert developers. If you don’t pay attention to critical code quality attributes, iterative development practices can quickly degrade code into a maintenance nightmare. Join David and take a deep dive into the code qualities that make software more maintainable and less bug friendly. Create software that not only provides value now but also is easy to change and extend so it can continue to deliver value far into the future.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Writing High Quality Code for Agile2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for David Bernstein

David Bernstein

Consultant, To Be Agile
David Scott Bernstein is the author of the new book _Beyond Legacy Code: Nine Practices to Extend the Life (and Value) of Your Software._ It’s an insider’s view of the software industry drawn from his decades of hands-on experience as a software developer, trainer, and consultant... Read More →



Tuesday August 14, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
San Antonio 1-3

3:30pm CDT

Lean from the Trenches: Managing Large Scale Projects with Kanban & Scrum & XP: Henrik Kniberg
Find out how the Swedish police combined Kanban, Scrum, and XP in a 60-person project. This is a high-paced talk based almost entirely on photos, diagrams, and concrete examples. We’ll go beyond the basics and walk through the project step by step, from customer engagement, to the "daily cocktail party”, test, cross-team synchronization, multi-layer kanban boards, version control, metrics, and more. The project was finalist in the Swedish “Project of the Year” awards for 2011. We start with an organization in desperate need of a new way of doing things, and finish with cross-functional teams all working in sync to develop a scalable, complex system while continuously improving their development process.

Speakers
avatar for Henrik Kniberg

Henrik Kniberg

Agile Coach & Consultant, Crisp
Henrik Kniberg is a consultant at Crisp in Stockholm. He does Minecraft gameplay design, development and team coaching at Mojang, and has previously worked at Lego and Spotify.Henrik enjoys helping companies succeed with both the technical and human sides of product developmen... Read More →


Tuesday August 14, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Austin 1-3
  Enterprise Agile

3:30pm CDT

Creating a Shared Vision: Strategies and Techniques to Inspire Teams: Brad Swanson
Does your vision inspire your team to achieve greatness? Peter Senge describes the shared vision as one the core disciplines of the Learning Organization. In this interactive session, we will explore five strategies for creating a shared vision (for a product or an organization) to move people beyond mere compliance toward a true commitment to the vision. We will then use some concrete visioning techniques, from Innovation Games(R) and elsewhere, to create our own shared vision. You'll leave with a toolbox of strategies and techniques to build a shared vision that truly inspires your team.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Shared Vision.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Brad Swanson

Brad Swanson

Senior Agile Coach, agile42 LLC
Brad Swanson is a Senior Agile Coach and Vice President at agile42. He started his software career at age 10 on the Apple IIe and is now a Certified Scrum Trainer® (CST) and Coach (CSC) with 19 years of experience in management, project and program leadership, product management... Read More →



Tuesday August 14, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Austin 4-6
  Leadership

3:30pm CDT

A learningful life: Staying relevant and agile in high tech: Linda Rising
What kinds of learning will keep me relevant? Learning and agile seem to go together, why is that? How do you decide where to focus learning? How does learning contribute to resilience, versatility, and adaptability? Is this like that generalizing specialist thing I hear about in agile? Why can’t I just get good at one thing and have that be enough?
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Beyond the Agile Mindset - Agile 2012.pdf

Speakers

Tuesday August 14, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Dallas 6-7
  No Bull Know How

3:30pm CDT

The SQALE method: Meaningful insights into your Technical Debt: Jean-Louis LETOUZEY, Oana Juncu
Fluid delivery stream is a strong requirement for business performance. Managing Technical Debt is a key factor for sustaining this delivery stream. The **SQALE open sourced method** is used in numerous places; from small to ultra large companies for monitoring their Technical Debt (one of the largest banks in the world is using SQALE on a daily basis across 3,500 builds and 30,000 + developers). Jean-Louis Letouzey, the author of the SQALE method will introduce it, explain and demonstrate how its indices and indicators provide valuable information for managing and optimizing Technical Debt.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/SQALE-Meaningful Insights into your Technical Debt.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Oana Juncu

Oana Juncu

Founder, cOemerge
Oana's over 15 years of experience in Software Development and System Management led her choice to Agile, as the most effective approach for 21st century leading organizations focused on quality products creation that matter . She recently embraced the entrepreneurship path by founding... Read More →



Tuesday August 14, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Dallas 3-4

3:30pm CDT

Simple Methods for Reliable User Involvement: Hugh Beyer
One of the difficult problems faced by an Agile team is that of getting reliable user input. Because Agile projects depend on minimal up-front planning and specification, user feedback is critical. But product owners are rarely users themselves and the actual end-users are often located elsewhere and may be highly diverse. This session introduces participants to Contextual Inquiry (CI), a proven field research method for understanding users and their needs. We introduce CI, show how it fits into Agile development, and give participants practice in gathering data and then writing user stories.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Simple_Methods_for_Reliable_User_Involvement.pdf

Speakers


Tuesday August 14, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Dallas 1-2
  User Experience

4:00pm CDT

Agile Development and User Experience Design Integration as an On-going Achievement in Pra: Jennifer Ferreira, Helen Sharp and Hugh Robinson
Little is known about how Agile developers and UX designers integrate their work on a day-to-day basis. While accounts in the literature attempt to integrate Agile development and UX design by combining their processes and tools, the contradicting claims found in the accounts complicate extracting advice from such accounts. This paper reports on three ethnographically-informed field studies of the day-to-day practice of developers and designers in organisational settings. Our results show that integration is achieved in practice through (1) mutual awareness, (2) expectations about acceptable behaviour, (3) negotiating progress and (4) engaging with each other. Successful integration relies on practices that support and maintain these four aspects in the day-to-day work of developers and designers.


Tuesday August 14, 2012 4:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7
  Research at Work

4:30pm CDT

Documentation Work in Agile Teams: The Role of Documentation Formalism in Achieving a Sust: Christoph Johann Stettina, Werner Heijstek and Tor Erlend Fægri
As its second guiding principle, agile software development promotes working software over comprehensive documentation. In this paper we investigate alignment between two different documentation practices and agile development. We report upon an experiment conducted to explore the impact of formalism and media type on various dimensions of documentation practice in agile teams. 28 students in 8 teams were divided into two groups: SAD and UML. Group SAD was to update and deliver their high-level software architecture in form of a textual description defined by RUP templates. Group UML was instructed to update and deliver their low-level software design in form of UML models. Our results show that iterative documentation practices led to more extensive and more detailed textual documentation. We found that writing documentation was perceived as a intrusive task leading to task specialization and allocation of documentation to less qualified team members. Consequently, this hampered collaboration within the team. Based in our findings, we suggest that if documentation is to be delivered with the project, producing documentation should be communicated and accepted by the team as a proper product. Furthermore, we argue that codification of internal development knowledge should be a non-intrusive task.


Tuesday August 14, 2012 4:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7
  Research at Work

5:30pm CDT

Industry Analyst Panel Discussion

Agile Trends and Future Directions - Come join the leading industry analysts as they discuss the latest trends and emerging best practices around Agile software development. Learn how the most successful software organizations are utilizing Agile to drive business performance. Find out how the latest innovations in Agile practices continue to mature as development organizations deploy Agile further across the enterprise.

  • Tom Grant, Forrester
  • Thomas Murphy, Gartner
  • Melinda Ballou, IDC
  • Christopher Rommel, VDC

 


Tuesday August 14, 2012 5:30pm - 6:30pm CDT
San Antonio 4-6
 
Wednesday, August 15
 

8:30am CDT

Open Jam Huddle

Like bees around a jam pot, Open Jam is buzzing place for thought leaders to hang out, it’s where juicy conversations about edgy and groundbreaking topics happen. Come along to our daily huddle at 8:30AM in the Center Foyer, to grab a timeslot and announce your session to fellow conference participants. Sessions run throughout the day and late into the evening. Drop in anytime and join in!

Follow @Open_Jam on Twitter for updates of what’s happening at Open Jam stage. Be open, join our jam!

 


Wednesday August 15, 2012 8:30am - 9:00am CDT
Center Foyer

9:00am CDT

A story about dinosaur called Mainframe and a small fly Agile: Zuzana Sochova, Eduard Kunce
This is an experience report about adopting agile principles on a huge, conservative, and inflexible environment of hi-performing mainframe applications. Working for critical bank and insurance projects, supporting airport infrastructures, security governmental processes, mainframes are the core backbone of many Fortune 500 companies. Such transformations bring unique challenges, and not only the technical ones. There are other challenges too, such as facing tons of legacy code and working with huge amounts of data. Both come with testing challenges as well.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/MainframesAgile2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Zuzana Sochova

Zuzana Sochova

Agile Coach & Scrum Trainer, CST, sochova.com
Zuzana “Zuzi” Šochová is an independent Agile coach and trainer and a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) with more than fifteen years of experience in the IT industry. She started with agile and Scrum back in 2005, when she was implementing agile methods in the USA. From that time... Read More →


Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:00am - 9:30am CDT
Ft. Worth 7

9:00am CDT

Let's Stay Agile! Applying the Framework for Agile Sustainability in our Teams: Mali Senapathi, Meghann Drury
How do we sustain the use of agile methodologies both in our project teams and in our organisations? How do we know we have improved our project performance by using agile methods? How can we assimilate agile methods more deeply into our organisations? These questions are the focus of this workshop on agile sustainability. Much of our time is spent understanding how to implement agile methodologies but less is spent on understanding how we can sustain these methodologies and the ramifications if we do not sustain them. Agile methodologies have well passed the phases of adoption in many organisations. Yet the ultimate success of an agile methodology depends on the sustained use of the method both on the project team and in the organisation. Within an organisation, the greater the amount of project teams using agile methods and the deeper the use of agile practices are assimilated into that organisation, the greater the likelihood of specific improvements in agile systems development outcomes. However, what facilitates the early stages of agile assimilation in an organisation is different to what facilitates the later stages of the assimilation. Therefore, this workshop and its participants will discuss the key factors that either facilitate or prevent the sustainability of agile methods in an organization. We will discuss how to achieve significant improvements in agile systems development projects and provide an overview of mechanisms that can be used to track improvements during organizational assimilation of agile methods. Participants should have at least two years working experience in agile projects and include a wide range of roles such as manager, scrum master, business analyst, product owner, testers and developers.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/2012_Senapathi_Drury_Agile Sustainability Workshop Slides.pdf


Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Ft. Worth 1-2

9:00am CDT

The Lean Pyramid - The Equilibrium of Agile Forces: Samuel Crescêncio
The Lean Pyramid presents a model to help companies start their agile adoption strategy effectively. Reliably delivering valuable working software frequently is much more than just creating, estimating and prioritizing a backlog and developing it iteratively. In order to succeed with agile you have to understand the needed equilibrium of forces among strategy, management and engineering efforts. Through a deep explanation of the fundamental Lean principles, you will learn how they translate to agile software development in order to create a strong and successful culture in your company.


Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Texas D

9:00am CDT

What's the Point of Story Points - A Business Guide to Agile Estimation: George Dinwiddie, Bob Payne
The use of story points originated with Extreme Programming, but have become a common “best practice” for planning on Scrum teams since Mike Cohn’s book, _User Stories Applied_, was published. The use of relative estimation is quite often, a mystery to product owners and management. We will explore how story points are used, misused, abused and determined on teams. This interactive session will explore the business value that story points support, and look at ways to achieve that value with or without points.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Agile2012-What's the Point Of Story Points.pdf

Speakers
avatar for George Dinwiddie

George Dinwiddie

Grand Poobah and Jack of All Trades, iDIA Computing, LLC
George Dinwiddie helps organizations develop software more effectively. He brings decades of development experience from electronic hardware and embedded firmware to business information technology. He helps organizations, managers, and teams solve the problems they face by providing... Read More →



Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Ft. Worth 5-6

9:00am CDT

Cultural change with Spiral Dynamics to transform from 'doing agile' to 'being agile': Dajo Breddels
Agile software development is no longer the sole domain of little obscure IT companies with their own gurus. Even the most traditional companies are adopting agile methodologies. Finally, recognition! But alas it comes with some drawbacks. “Doing Agile” instead of “Being Agile” is one of those drawbacks I keep encountering more and more. Values don’t change overnight by just showing people the agile manifesto and sending them to a two day training. But how can you change the values of individuals and teams or even worse, whole organisations? That's what this session is about! Luckily, there is a thing called Spiral Dynamics and it’s all about: how people get certain values, why they defend them and how these values evolve over time. Spiral Dynamics is based on 30 years of research done by psychology professor Clare W. Graves. With the help of Spiral Dynamics we are going to: 1) Discover the different kinds of Agile implementations based on value systems. 2) Recognize them in our own teams and organisations. 3) Know how we can help teams and organisations move from “Doing Agile” to “Being Agile”.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Cultural change with Spiral Dynamics_A2012.pdf

Speakers


Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Ft. Worth 3-4
  Coaching & Mentoring

9:00am CDT

Affordance-Driven Process Improvement: Designing a Process that Works for Your Team: Michael Keeling, Ariadna Font
The best processes are those that encourage teams to naturally do the right things at the right times. Amazing processes like this don’t happen by accident; they are specifically designed to encourage desirable behavior while discouraging harmful behaviour. By carefully choosing the process’s affordances -- practices or artifacts that direct our thinking toward a specific goal -- a team can tailor a process that makes success intuitive. The session will begin by presenting the core concepts behind affordence-driven process improvement before diving into a collaborative workshop. During the workshop teams will use information from the introduction to brainstorm practices that will help them promote those values, as you would in a team retrospective. Intended Audience * People new to agile who don’t know where to start * High-level executives and managers who want to take an active role in shaping their team’s future * Process improvement professionals who want to explore a new way to look at teams and organizations * All design, Process and team fanatics
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/process-affordances-workshop.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Ariadna Font

Ariadna Font

UX Lead & Development Manager, IBM
I'm the UX Lead at Vivisimo, an IBM Company, building enterprise search software. I have been practicing, introducing and spearheading Agile and UX methods at Vivisimo with the ultimate goal to improve communication, gain shared understanding and increase happiness. I strive to... Read More →
avatar for Michael Keeling

Michael Keeling

Staff Software Engineer, LendingHome
Michael Keeling is a software engineer at LendingHome and the author of Design It!: From Programmer to Software Architect. Prior to LendingHome, he worked at IBM on the Watson Discovery Service. Keeling has a Master of Science in Software Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary... Read More →


Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Texas 3

9:00am CDT

That Settles It! Techniques for Transparent & Trusted Decision-Making on Your Agile Team : Ellen Gottesdiener
How does your team make decisions? Do they reflect your agile team values & engender mutual trust? Do decisions result in true commitment from the right stakeholders? Are they defensible & sustainable? Agile teams make countless product and process decisions. Ex. include: features to deliver, platforms, tools, backlog management, metrics, delivery cadence, definition of done. Explore how participatory decision-making practices cut to the heart of your team values. Learn practical techniques for deciding how to decide. Leave with a toolkit to align decision-making with your team values.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/ThatSettlesIt_Gottesdiener(Agile2012)-WebsitePartialDeck-v2.pptx.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Ellen Gottesdiener

Ellen Gottesdiener

Product Coach, EBG Consulting, Inc.
Ellen is a Product Coach and CEO of EBG Consulting focused on helping product and development communities produce valuable outcomes through product agility. Ellen is known in the agile community as an instigator and innovator for collaborative practices for agile product discovery... Read More →



Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
San Antonio 4-6

9:00am CDT

Fluid Code in the Real World: Arlo Belshee
In the end, you get rated on your software's ability to meet your customers' goals. All the Agile practices wrap around one core, inner loop: writing the software. In this hands-on session, we explore that inner loop. How do you write fluid software? How do you test first and design last? How do you get a good design to emerge, every time, even when your first ideas are guaranteed to be wrong? We will explore the engine that makes Agile go: TDD and Refactoring. You will do these in both basic and advanced cases. And we'll do it in the real world, indebted code and all.


Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
San Antonio 1-3

9:00am CDT

High-Gravity Distributed Agile Teams: Derek W. Wade
Distributed Agile can work, but distance often harms self-organization. Typical reaction: load down teams with tools and rigid structure. Typical result: the death of self-organization. The trick to effective distributed Agile teams is the same as for colocated Agile teams: give them focus, then get out of the way and let them form into a hive-mind. But how? Distributed Cognition is a technique from cognitive psych proven in helping teams go from “norming” to “performing.” Come explore how to create gravity that pulls your team together, rather than you pushing them.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/!Sim_HighGravityDistributed.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Derek W. Wade

Derek W. Wade

President, Kumido Adaptive Strategies
Derek W. Wade is the founder of Kumido Adaptive Strategies, an organizational performance consultancy specializing in cognitive/learning science. His human-centered approach has improved hundreds of collaborative efforts across a broad range of industries from healthcare to finance... Read More →



Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Texas 2
  Distributed Agile

9:00am CDT

Risky Business - An Outside-In Look at Real Options for Managing Risk: Olav Maassen, Todd Little
All software projects have risk. Often the most valuable projects carry the most risk. Other industries also encounter risk and generate value by understanding and managing that risk effectively. Todd and Olav explore some of the techniques used in a number of risky businesses such as product development, oil and gas exploration, investment banking, medicine, weather forecasting, and gambling. They also present studies of software development uncertainties and highlight how software practitioners can learn from better understanding the uncertainties and dynamics. Through this process they introduce techniques and approaches to risk and risk management including utilizing real options and how this helps manage risk for software practitioners.


Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Austin 1-3
  Enterprise Agile

9:00am CDT

Scaling Lean|Agile Development to the Large Enterprise with the Scaled Agile Framework: Dean Leffingwell
The continuing knock on XP, Scrum and Kanban is that they may work well for small, collocated teams, but they do not scale to the needs of the larger software enterprise. In this presentation, Dean Leffingwell will finally dispel this myth by describing the Scaled Agile Framework™, a well-defined and publicly available set of practices which have been used to successfully scale Lean|Agile development to hundreds—and even thousands—of practitioners at companies like BMC Corporation, John Deere and many others. Results typically include quality and productivity improvements of from 20-50%, along with increases in employee engagement and job satisfaction. In this presentation, Leffingwell will describe how the three key Agile constructs — team, backlog and timebox— can be scaled to the program and portfolio levels of the enterprise. However, since simply making Agile things bigger does not necessarily keep a system lean, Leffingwell will describe how the framework a) keeps work in process visible and limited, b) keeps backlogs and queues short, c) uses cadence and synchronization to align teams to a common mission, and d) applies system-level continuous integration to facilitate fast customer feedback. The presentation also includes a description of kanban systems to manage the flow of the business and architectural epics that drive the agile programs. The presentation concludes with a discussion of how lean thinking executives are instrumental in helping the enterprise achieve the ultimate business benefits that these innovate processes can deliver.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Agile2012 rev4.pptx.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Dean Leffingwell

Dean Leffingwell

Chief Methodologist, Scaled Agile, Inc.



Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Texas C
  Enterprise Agile

9:00am CDT

Transforming a Worst Nightmare Leader to Situational Leader: Dave Neuman
Individual and team performance varies by the competence and commitment with the task at hand. Leaders must be adept at diagnosing situations and versatile in applying the matching leadership style to improve the individual's or team's performance. Leaders at all levels (functional leads, scrum masters, agile coaches, managers, etc.) will gain valuable insight into the behaviors of various leadership styles and the appropriate application of those styles in situations that improve the effectiveness and outcome. Participants will have their eyes opened to the characteristics of everyone's worst nightmare leader, learn about leadership styles and versatility, and apply the concepts to turn their worst nightmare into a role model for leadership. This workshop is based on the Situational Leadership II model developed by Ken Blanchard.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Transforming Worst Nightmare Leader - Agile2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Dave Neuman

Dave Neuman

Digital Engineering & Emerging Technologies Leader, Brady Corporation
Dave Neuman is a seasoned technology and business leader with almost 20 years of experience working with organizations of various sizes from Fortune 100 to small, regional consulting to advising startups in roles of software engineering, product engineering, consultant, IT, PMO, and... Read More →



Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Austin 4-6
  Leadership

9:00am CDT

Testing As We Go: Perspectives on Testing as part of Done: Elisabeth Hendrickson
How does Testing fit into the definition of Done? Isnʼt meeting the quality standards everyoneʼs job? What is the role of Testers on an agile team? How do you keep from doing all the testing at the end of the sprint? Doesnʼt going agile mean that software development doesnʼt need Testers anymore?

Speakers
avatar for Elisabeth  Hendrickson

Elisabeth Hendrickson

Author, "Change Your Organization"
Elisabeth Hendrickson is a leader in software engineering. She most recently served as VP R&D for Pivotal Software, Inc. A lifelong learner, she has spent time in every facet of software development, from project management to design for companies ranging from small start-ups to multinational... Read More →


Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Dallas 6-7
  No Bull Know How

9:00am CDT

Creating Maintainable Automated Acceptance Test Suites: Badrinath Janakiraman, Jez Humble
Creating automated end-to-end functional acceptance tests is hard. Maintaining them over time is harder. Some agilistas even claim that the cost outweighs the benefit. In this tutorial, Jez will explain how to create valuable, maintainable acceptance test suites and keep costs under control. First, he describes how to layer acceptance tests to reduce coupling between the test harness and the system under test. Then he discusses how teams should be organized in order to efficiently manage acceptance test driven development. Next Jez shows how to manage the evolution of acceptance tests by organizing them as scenarios rather than as suites of story tests. Finally he discusses how to manage data for acceptance tests.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/automated_tests_workshop.pdf


Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Dallas 3-4

9:00am CDT

Agile UX Research Practices Applied : Miki Konno
The Sprint team often has to create practices to quickly iterate, develop and test user experiences within the sprint cadence. I will cover how the teams applied "Quick Pulse Studies" to put new ideas, designs, and concepts in front of customers on a regular basis; it requires minimal advance planning, can have immediate product impact, and can meet urgent needs. I will use rich examples and case studies to see how the engineering team all work together toward one goal - getting user feedback frequently and consistently into working software during the agile development cycle.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Agile2012_Presentation_Miki_Konno (Aug2012).pdf

Speakers

Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Dallas 1-2
  User Experience

9:00am CDT

Hands on keyboards! Coding with Corey Haines (Part 1): Corey Haines
Bring your laptop to this session with your favorite development environment(s) set up and ready to write some code. This session will be hands-on. Come and practice what you're learning at the Agile Conference. Each half-day workshop (morning and afternoon) consists of 3 hands-on, focused exercises around the practices and techniques involved in successful agile software development. Each session helps you level up in skills, such as test-driven development, pair-programming and emergent design. This special day of practice consists of 2 half-day workshops. By joining for both morning and afternoon, you'll get a wide range of experience that you can take back to your work.

Speakers

Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Dallas 5

9:00am CDT

Agile Alliance Lounge

Take a break from Agile2012 action and relax in the Agile Alliance Lounge. Check out the activities of the organization, meet board members, enjoy a refreshing beverage, and pick up Agile Alliance swag. While you are there, inquire about ways you and your company can become more involved in the Agile community, take a look at the updated Agile Alliance roadmap, and see a new graphic banner highlighting historical events in the organization’s history. You are a member - this is your professional organization - be a part of it!

 


Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:00am - 5:00pm CDT
Grapevine Foyer

9:00am CDT

Agile Philanthropy Dev Lab

The Agile Philanthropy Coding Lab allows attendees to participate in a real agile project for a Not for Profit. Our lab will be staffed with experienced mentors to help you maximize your ability to contribute and learn in the lab. We are dedicated to creating a unique lab experience that uses real projects with real deliverables.

Participate:

• Donate Time by participating for 10 minutes or a Day

• Observe an Agile Project in Action

• Donate money to help the cause

By marrying the efforts of dedicated professionals experiencing Agile Development techniques with communities that need high quality software we hope to be a small part of a positive change. Code developed during the course will be deployed in the final product.

 


Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:00am - 5:00pm CDT
Center Foyer

9:00am CDT

Coaches Clinic

Want some help with specific challenges you have encountered on your way to a more Agile way of working? Come to the Coaches Clinic in the Open Jam area where you can speak one-on-one with an experienced Agile Coach. We can help you find the right coach to discuss technical practices, organizational change, Scrum, Kanban, Agile Coaching as a career and many other topics. The Coaches Clinic will offer appointments as well as walk-in service.

Look for the schedule board in the Open Jam area.

 


Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:00am - 5:00pm CDT
Center Foyer

9:00am CDT

Open Jam

Anyone at the conference can convene a session at the Open Jam stage. We encourage interactive sessions providing opportunities to explore Agile ideas and techniques. Sessions don’t need to be formal, like the ones on the program -- it’s more fun if they are not!

Like bees around a jam pot, Open Jam is a buzzing place for thought leaders to hang out, it’s where juicy conversations about edgy and groundbreaking topics happen. Come along to discuss your sticky issues and burning questions. Pick up valuable new insights into topics that are relevant to you today. Sessions run throughout the day and late into the evening. Drop in anytime and join in!

All you need to lead a session is passion and commitment. Come along to our daily huddle at 8:30AM in the Center Foyer space, to grab a timeslot and announce your session to fellow conference participants. You’re also welcome to post your session later in the day -- if you can find an open slot!

We want to keep things fresh so a new Open Jam schedule is created each day and posted up on a big board in the Center Foyer area to give everyone a view of what’s coming up. Take a look in your Badge Holder, you will find (4) nifty Z-Cards featuring the session timetable for each day, Monday – Thursday as well as floor plans and special event information for that specific day.

Follow @Open_Jam on Twitter for updates of what’s happening at Open Jam stage. Be open, join our jam!

 


Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:00am - 5:00pm CDT
Center Foyer

9:30am CDT

Scaling Scrum step by step: “The mega framework”: Rafael Maranzato
We will describe our experience of scaling scrum from one single team to seven teams during 2010 and 2011. To do that, we will talk about the new meetings we added to our scrum framework to improve team communication and synchronize the parallel sprints that we run to develop the most important online payment system in Brazil. We will address the steps that we did and the focus on values instead of rules that is the basis of our agile environment. This work is a continuation of our first paper about this topic (Moving back to scrum and scaling to scrum of scrums in less than one year)) presented at SPLASH 2011 conference. Now we plan to emphasize our “mega scrum framework”, that allows us to add more teams to the same product more easily. Our first work was focused on our experience of implementing scrum in a team that had already tried it and failed and in less than year scaled it to four teams. At this moment, we can say that we have learned how to handle multiple teams in parallel in the same product. Nowadays, we have a framework and for us it is quite simple to start a new team (but it was not easy in the beginning). The focus of the first paper was on values like transparency and commitment and a vision that we could have more than two teams working in different backlogs but everyone belonging to one big team. In this propose to agile 2012, we will emphasize the mechanism of framework that we created to scale scrum: “the mega framework”. It is important to say that the development team and the business team agreed that the product backlog had a lot of different areas and the existent team was not sufficient to deliver as the market expected (There are historical reasons for that and we will detail them in the paper). So we started our strategy of adding and hiring people to existent teams before creating new ones. As new people learned the values and how we work, we started a new team. With more than three teams we learned that it would be important for everyone to know the sprint backlog of the other teams and to know the course of the parallel sprint. So we created two meetings: mega planning and mega daily. The first one happens just after the plannings and the second one in the middle of the sprint. At this point we created our “mega framework” with the challenges of continuing being agile. In the beginning (with two or three teams) it was possible to have meetings with everyone, but nowadays, there are so many people – the meetings were not productive and there is no room for everybody. So we learned and adapted them to meet our needs. We will detail that in the paper. One important lesson that we learned was the necessity of improving the communication of the team and between product owners and scrummasters. So we created some rules to do that, improving our development process. Another important lesson that we learned was that scrummasters and product owners must be synchronized but that was not only their responsibility – the team must know what the other teams are developing. We can detail that and we believe that point is one of the biggest challenges to scale scrum. Another relevant point to share is that we improved the productivity of the team. We observed that the velocity of the teams increases when they have a focus – with two or three teams, there were many different subjects to handle. Another metric is that the revenue of the business increases in a ratio that is bigger than the team expansion – so the team is delivering value to the clients can be observed in this scenario. So, we think that story is very useful to the agile community because we have learned a lot (and continue to learn) and now we have a framework that makes easy to add new teams. We also believe that everyone can adapt that to start a process of scaling agile in their teams. Of course we have more details of each point and we plan to discuss them in the paper.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/scaling-scrum-mega-framework.pdf

Speakers


Wednesday August 15, 2012 9:30am - 10:00am CDT
Ft. Worth 7

10:00am CDT

Successfully bootstrapping a large scalable Scrum practice at Royal Dutch Shell: David Segonds
We will present the saga of a successful transformation from a struggling software development group to a scalable Scrum practice within Royal Dutch Shell. This group of sixty individuals encountered many obstacles on their journey to carry on the development of a large, 25 year old, legacy application. Come and see how, over two years, we implemented a set of organizational, technological, procedural, and cultural changes to lead this group forward. Finally, we will present our vision to further strengthen and accelerate this value delivery system.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Successfully-bootstrapping-a-large-scalable-Scrum-practice-at-Royal-Dutch-Shell.pdf

Speakers


Wednesday August 15, 2012 10:00am - 10:30am CDT
Ft. Worth 7

11:00am CDT

Embracing Nihilism as a Software Development Philosophy: Ryan Bergman
How do we get developers to let go of their ego and do what’s best for the customer? How do we encourage an environment where developers do not hold code sacrilegious and feel free to refactor or delete code? This session will go over strategies for teams to embrace YAGNI and celebrate the purging of dead code. For the majority of the presentation I will talk about how a team I was on came to produce a 500+ page “Big Book Of Dead Code” off of a legacy application. Producing this book reduced build times, reduced bugs, and became rallying point for developers. It’s very existence helped encourage simple design and clean code. It also spawned a competition amongst developers to see who could add more to the book. I will also talk about how this powerful visualization helped to change the way the business itself thought about code, planning, and quality. I would expect this presentation to be of benefit to almost everyone involved in software development but especially for anyone struggling with trying to introduce agile and TDD to a legacy application. I have presented at various Iowa technology related user groups and IT departments. I have also been involved with the Hyperstream project from the Technology Association of Iowa. This is a project where local technologists work with high school and middle school students on projects that benefit the school and the community. The goal of the project is to encourage young people to purse careers in technology. This goes beyond just programming and includes art and design, marketing, business, and science. I work directly with students as a mentor on a weekly basis and I help the students present their projects to school boards and the community. My style is pretty loose and I try to keep the group engaged by not overloading on too much raw data at once. If you are looking for Agile Alliance reviewers who have worked with me and can give you a feel for my style please talk to Tim Ottinger or Brandon Carlson. This is a new presentation but some of the content can be found in these two blog posts: http://ryber.tumblr.com/post/4745553646/the-big-book-of-dead-code http://ryber.tumblr.com/post/11716935907/night-of-the-undead-code
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/DeadCodePresentation.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Ryan Bergman

Ryan Bergman

Lead Product Engineer, John Deere Intelligent Solutions Group
I care about the craft of writing good, working code. I have a passion for agile practices that help enforce repeatable, predictable behavior and produce software clients actually want to use. Areas of particular interest include architecture, security, application usability, CI... Read More →



Wednesday August 15, 2012 11:00am - 11:30am CDT
Ft. Worth 7

11:00am CDT

Agile Transformation - What to do with managers?: Arto Eskelinen
One of the major obstacles in big change initiatives is manager resistance. Agile transformations do not make an exception. If you don't get middle managers on your side when introducing a change, your changes of success are thin. What might be the reasons for resisting agile? What can be done to get managers to support and drive new, agile ways of working and become leaders for an agile organization? How can my life become better if I am a manager? This talk will give you thoughts from a manager who went through this path.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/What to do with Managers Agile2012 final.pdf

Speakers


Wednesday August 15, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Texas D

11:00am CDT

The undocumented Agile Practice: take your team to the next level!: Gino Marckx
Some teams seem to benefit more than others from the agile practices they introduce. Why is this? Most of the agile practices are well described, some of them even have whole books dedicated to how they work and how they can be customized to your specific organization and context. Yet, for many teams, applying these practices seems a significant challenge that sometimes even leads to less than good results and moving away from the introduced practices altogether. The foundation of many of the agile practices is collaboration, not just working next to one another, but true collaboration around a common goal. Great collaboration comes from a healthy team dynamic, and without this, a lot of the value of agile practices goes to waste or might even result in counterproductive situations. This session will show you how a healthy team dynamic creates a solid foundation for any agile implementation and how coaching can help to set your team up for success!
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Undocumented Agile Practice - Agile2012.pdf

Speakers


Wednesday August 15, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Austin 4-6

11:00am CDT

The Stakeholder Management Framework for Teams, Programs, and Portfolios: Drew Jemilo
Stakeholder management is one of the most important responsibilities of a Product Owner. It can also be one of the biggest land mines if you don't continuously inspect and adapt your planning and communication. How do you interact with your stakeholders based on their level of interest and the degree of influence the have over your team's success or failure? In this session, you will learn how to apply the stakeholder management framework to: 1. Identify, analyze, prioritize, and engage your stakeholders 2. Manage expectations through the continuous process of setting expectations, acting on them, reviewing them, and resetting them 3. Build your communication plan using the stakeholder mapping technique and the Net Promoter Score (NPS) to plot your sponsors, major stakeholders, minor stakeholders, and subject matter experts 4. Gain consensus with your stakeholders regarding their rights and responsibilities 5. Scale to the program and portfolio levels
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Stakeholder Management by Drew Jemilo (Agile2012).pdf

Speakers


Wednesday August 15, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 5-6

11:00am CDT

Turning and turning in the widening gyre: Elizabeth Keogh
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. Test-first and outcome-oriented disciplines such as PDCA or BDD's scenarios are fantastic when someone else knows what they want and you know how to achieve it. But what do you do in high-learning and exploratory environments? What patterns still work when the team have given up on process altogether? What if some functionality is completely new, the rest is covered by third parties, you don't know what the libraries will do for you, and your business stakeholders are still learning too? In this workshop we explore what it means to be in chaotic, complex and complicated environments, and we look at patterns of delivery that can still work effectively when you know you're delivering the wrong thing, but you don't know what the right thing is.

Speakers
avatar for Liz Keogh

Liz Keogh

Lunivore Limited
Liz Keogh is a Lean and Agile consultant based in London. She is a well-known blogger and international speaker, a core member of the BDD community and a contributor to a number of open-source projects including JBehave. She has a strong technical background with almost 20 years of... Read More →


Wednesday August 15, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 3-4

11:00am CDT

Beyond Functional Silos with Communities of Practice: Brian Bozzuto, Dennis Stevens
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before… An organization aligns its operation around business products with cross-functional teams focused exclusively on each one. The business likes the focus, but soon people start to complain. Functional experts feel isolated and aren’t able to tap into their technical peers now isolated in other teams. Common practices become difficult. Functional managers feel left out now that their people are permanently assigned to dedicated cross-functional teams. Overall, the organization gains benefit from the re-alignment, but people can’t help but feel they are neglecting their institutional knowledge and have reduced their technical capacity to solve problems. You might think we’re talking about an Agile development team, but actually we’re talking about Chrysler in the 1990′s when they re-organized their engineering around auto lines. (Wenger et al, Cultivating Communities of Practice 1) This session will explore the concept of communities of practice and how they are a vital component for agile organizations. From providing tactical support in issue resolution, to being stewards of knowledge across vast enterprises, and even helping create support for the larger organizational change, communities of practice are a vital component in improving organizational agility. We will walk through the history of communities of practice, from their emergence in fields as disparate as auto manufacturing, consulting, and oil exploration, and show how these concepts apply to agile organizations. Participants will hear several cases about how communities have been used at our actual clients to help support the organizational change, as well as get some tactical steps they can use to implement their own communities of practice at work.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Agile2012_COP.pptx (Read-Only).pdf

Speakers

Wednesday August 15, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
San Antonio 4-6

11:00am CDT

Raving Retrospectives -Innovation Games® & other techniques to facilitate creative retros: Kate Megaw, Brian Rabon
Do you find it challenging to keep your retrospectives innovative and creative so you get the maximum feedback from your scrum team? This session will review traditional retrospectives and give you 3 new innovative tools to add to your "tool kit" to help you facilitate creative, fun and engaging retrospectives. No matter what your project, project methodology or delivery model, everyone benefits from feedback on what they could do differently next time. The session will involve a mix of lecture, workshop and discussion. No death by PowerPoint here! This session will look at: 1) What is a retrospective 2) Why do we do retrospectives 3) How to plan a retrospective 4) Traditional retrospectives 5) Creative retrospectives Session attendees will be divided into teams of 6-9 (easily adjustable for audience size) and will do an exercise using one of the following creative retrospective techniques: - The Boat (Innovation Games®) - The Retrospective Starfish - Spiderweb Retrospectives The audience for this presentation is anyone looking for feedback on how their project, implementation or work is going. Whether from a more traditional environment or a more Agile environment there is something in this session for everyone; from beginners with no retrospective experience to experienced coaches wanting to expand their "tool box"! I will use PowerPoint to cover the introduction to retrospectives and why we do them. I will then demonstrate using a white board / flip chart and post it notes some of the traditional retrospective techniques. I will introduce 3 new retrospective techniques and then divide the attendees into groups of 6-9 and have each group try one of the new techniques (easily adjustable for audience size). I will ask them to come up with a topic on which to do a retrospective and I will give them some examples in case they don't have ideas at hand: Agile 2012 Conference Retrospective, iPad 2's, Facebook. After they are done trying their new techniques, we will do a 10 minute debrief with the entire group to discuss why they felt their technique was effective / wasn't effective, what they liked and what they didn't like so that all attendees get feedback on all the techniques.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Raving Retrospectives.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Kate Megaw

Kate Megaw

Certified Scrum Trainer & Agile Coach | President, Braintrust Consulting Group
Kate is the President of the Braintrust Consulting Group where she specializes in working with executives and C-level professionals as well as serving as an Agile Coach and Certified Scrum Trainer®. Before co-founding The Braintrust Consulting Group, Kate worked as a Project Manager... Read More →



Wednesday August 15, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Texas 3

11:00am CDT

Does Pair Programming Have to Suck?: Angela Harms
On some teams pairing is the norm; developers enjoy the collaboration & experience enhanced productivity. Others, though, work on teams where pairing is shunned, avoided, or just faked. Why do some craftsmen thrive with pairing while others want nothing to do with it? Why does coach-enforced pairing turn into something dry, distracted, imbalanced & ineffective? Effective pairing can increase creativity, energy, speed & quality. What factors make that possible? Join in an honest discussion & learn about which pairing styles drag teams down & what sort of pairing helps teams rock. Whether you've never paired before, or you're on a team that's trying, you'll have fun and come away with a clear sense of the best that pairing has to offer.

Speakers

Wednesday August 15, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
San Antonio 1-3

11:00am CDT

Release Planning on a Budget -- Taking it Virtual!: Stephen Chin
There is no substitute for face-to-face collaboration, and in highly distributed organizations the one time you can get all the teams together in person is for Release Planning. But what about when budgets get tight and travel is not an option? In this presentation you will learn several practical techniques for bridging the physical divide without breaking your corporate budget. Your crash course in Virtual Release Planning facilitation will include the following:
  • Virtual Facilitation Techniques: Practical advice on adapting agile facilitation techniques to the virtual world. (For all of us who tried --and failed-- at doing a fist-of-five over the phone...)
  • DIY Video Conferencing: We will do a live demonstration of how to do video conferencing on a budget with readily available consumer hardware. (No need to buy a fancy telepresence system from Cisco or AT&T!)
  • Practical Time Zone Planning: Problem/solution scenario planning around different distribution and timezone challenges. (Curious why folks will happily attend 8AM meetings after being on a red-eye, but don't seem thrilled to stay up until 2AM on a video conference?)
Time to stop overpaying for business class international flights and palatial hotels. You can take back control of your budget and destiny without sacrificing effective communication!

Speakers
avatar for Stephen Chin

Stephen Chin

Director, Developer Marketing, Oracle


Wednesday August 15, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Texas 2

11:00am CDT

How to play basketball with a soccer team? Making IC development more agile.: Tobias Leisgang
How different is software and IC development? Let's answer with a relative estimation: It's as different as soccer and basketball. Besides both being team sports and the goal to score more points than the other team, everything else if different. If software and IC development are that different, why should Agile work in an IC development environment? Wait! Let's have a closer look. There are more commonalities as you can see on the first glance. IC development also requires satisfying customer requirements as early as possible, deals with changing requirements, needs to have frequent product releases and requires technical excellence and good design. And these are certainly areas where agile principles have been proven to be successful. As an IC development organization for an embedded microcontroller we experienced over the last projects that the "game" changed. While projects got more complex and development cycle times longer, customers required products earlier than before and new requirements came up more frequently. It was time to change the way we play! This talk demonstrates how we changed our existing IC development flow to an Agile IC development process. It shows which agile practices we’ve chosen and how we applied them to our development process. It shows the challenges we faced in the transition and the success stories we experienced. It also gives an outlook how the process can be even more agile. The session isn’t tailored to hardware developers only. I envision a lively discussion among participants from different domains on how the development process can be further refined, enhanced, applied to other organizations and maybe it can also trigger some additional thoughts for existing agile practitioners.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Agile2012_SoccerWithABasketballTeam.pdf

Speakers


Wednesday August 15, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 1-2

11:00am CDT

Agile Enterprise Architecture? Oxymoron or Savior?: Scott Ambler
Agile software delivery strategies have taken organizations by storm, and those very same organizations are now scaling agile strategies across the entire IT organization as well as on very complex projects. Agile strategies are even being applied on enterprise architecture teams and are proving to be successful in practice. This presentation overviews IBM’s Agile Scaling Model (ASM) and how to take an agile approach to enterprise architecture. It also summarizes industry data exploring the effectiveness of agile strategies and of various enterprise architecture strategies.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Ambler Agile EA.pdf

Speakers

Wednesday August 15, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Austin 1-3
  Enterprise Agile

11:00am CDT

Scaling Agile Teams: Principles and Practices: Esther Derby
Agile methods depend on effective cross-functional teams. We’ve heard many Agile success stories…at the team level. But what happens when a product can’t be delivered by one team? What do you do when the “team” that’s needed to work on a particular product is 20 people? Or 20 teams? One response is to create a coordinating role, decompose work, or add layers of hierarchy. Those solutions introduce overhead and often slow down decision making. There are other options to link teams, and ensure communication and integration across many teams. There are no simple answers. But there are design principles for defining workable arrangements when the product is bigger than a handful of agile teams. In this talk, I'll cover principles and practices and explain how they work together to address coordination, integration, and technical integrity. These are the principles and practices I'll illustrate. 6 Principles: Manage dependencies in the backlog as much as possible
Aim for long-lived cross-functional teams
Go as far down the technology stack as feasible
Organize teams around context boundaries rather than component boundaries were ever possible
Make cross-context communication explicit
Avoid late learning Technical Practices: Continuous integration (CI) within context
Integration across contexts at some other interval (keeping in mind “avoid late learning”)
Mutually agreed upon and developed automated test across context boundaries
Architectural & coding standards
Technical reviews Social Practices: Scrum of Scrums
Integrating Teams (keeping in mind “avoid late learning”)
Decision Boundaries
Component shepherds
Tech council
Product council
I've attached a PDF of the current version of my slides on this topic. I'm sure they will evolve by next August.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/ScalingAgileTeamsDerby2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Esther Derby

Esther Derby

Founder, esther derby associates, inc.
I draw on four decades of experience leading, observing, and living through organizational change. In 1997, I founded esther derby associates, inc. and work with a broad array of clients from Fortune 500 companies to start ups. My approach blends attention to humans and deep knowledge... Read More →


Wednesday August 15, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Texas C
  Enterprise Agile

11:00am CDT

Developers Exploratory Testing - Raising the bar: Sigge Birgisson
There is a common practice in our company to perform Developers Exploratory Testing (DET) sessions, explained by my colleague Davor [here](http://www.stickyminds.com/sitewide.asp?function=DETAILSIDX&tvniu=1&sqry=*Z(SM\)*J(ART\)*R(createdate\)*&ObjectId=17003&ObjectType=ART&sidx=1) . The cool thing is that this way of performing higher level testing has actually become accepted by our developers, and [they really enjoy it.](http://blog.jayway.com/2010/10/11/three-reasons-for-me-as-a-developer-to-love-developer-exploratory-testing/) In my current work of [developing our organization wide practices for quality](http://blog.jayway.com/2011/12/01/organization-wide-test-strategy-step1-deriving-our-quality-values/), I have made a deep dive into how DET is carried out on a regular basis. What I have seen is that DET is accepted and acknowledged as a valuable practice, however it is not really carried out in its full potential. There are many details and aspects of it to work on, especially regarding reporting and follow-up. This talk will gather my learnings from coaching many of our different development teams in their DET sessions. Some improvements are achieved just by carrying out ET in a better way, but there are also specifics about the involvement of the whole team testing together that give alot of value back to the project. One example is about what information that is gathered which are not plain bugs.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/20120815_Siggeb_DET_Agile2012.pdf

Speakers


Wednesday August 15, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Dallas 3-4

11:00am CDT

User Driven Development: Alline Watkins
As Agile Development drastically changed the Waterfall world, the Lean Startup concepts will drastically change Agile Development, mainly for enterprises. [Eric Ries](http://startuplessonslearned.com) is brilliantly teaching us how to deal with uncertainty in the business world. It is about time to take advantage of these techniques and learn how to apply them in the whole software development process. User Driven Development is Agile Development revised to incorporate the Lean Startups principles.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/User_Driven_Development.pdf

Speakers


Wednesday August 15, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Dallas 1-2
  User Experience

11:30am CDT

Agile's Role in Developing Robust Software Competency at Precor: Brent Barton, Brent Brooks
Established in 1980, Precor sets the standard for quality, innovation, and performance in exercise equipment. Precor has distinguished itself as a worldwide industry leader, providing state-of-the-art fitness equipment to health clubs, hotels, spas, fitness centers, and private homes all over the world. Precor is number one in the fitness equipment industry in both product offerings and service quality [Source: 2009 Health Club Equipment Benchmarking Report]. At the same time Precor is a great place to work, as evidenced by honors as a finalist in the Puget Sound Business Journal's 2010 Washington's Best Workplaces in the Large Business category. Precor began by launching the first ergonomically sound rowing machine in 1980, and have been supporting the natural movement of the human body ever since. In 1990, Precor created the first cushioned treadmill. Precor introduced the world to the Elliptical Fitness Crosstrainer™ (EFX®) in 1995. Then in 2007, Precor released the revolutionary Adaptive Motion Trainer® (AMT®), a breakthrough piece of cardio equipment that constantly and fluidly adapts to your stride length and motion. Precor decided to continue its leadership and innovation by delivering a completely new fitness experience through the use of embedded and networked capabilities. This represents a significant shift from a product mindset to a platform capability for Precor. Software became extremely complex and a critical competency for Precor which was a radical and transformative change. This research paper investigates the trials and tribulations of developing a whole new competency in software in order to deliver our next level of innovation.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Precor Agile Alliance Presentation - 1208.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Brent Barton

Brent Barton

Founder, River Rock Endeavors
As Principal and Founder of River Rock Endeavors, Brent strives to bring agility into the business side of organizations so we can leverage what lean and agile methods offer. Previously, Brent was a Product Line Director at Rally Software. Rally Software acquired Agile Advantage... Read More →



Wednesday August 15, 2012 11:30am - 12:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7

12:30pm CDT

Exhibits Area

Come visit the Agile2012 Sponsors in Grapevine ABCD!

 


Wednesday August 15, 2012 12:30pm - 3:30pm CDT
Grapevine ABCD

1:30pm CDT

Combining Kanban and Scrum - lessons from the team of sysadmins: Kate Terlecka
Kanban is becoming a fashonable term in the Agile world. Is it really an answer to all of our problems? Join me in discovering how a team of sysadmins dragged the best of it, added a chunk of Scrum and came up with a clear and sustainable process for support teams. Then, let’s take a look at another team that successfully followed their example.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Agile2012 2.0.pdf

Speakers

Wednesday August 15, 2012 1:30pm - 2:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7

1:30pm CDT

Patterns for Agile Adoption and Transformation: Mike Cottmeyer
Introducing agile into an organization is more than just running people through a few days of training and hoping for the best. Training is part of the equation but only addresses one part of the adoption and transformation cycle. The problem with a training-only approach is that we can learn new ways of working, but if the structure and culture of the organization don't support those new ways of working, the training won't stick. The trick is to create an organizational structure and culture that is congruent with training in agile practices. We need a structure and culture where Agile practices can flourish and grow and produce the business outcomes we all hope for. This talk will start by exploring the main differences between agile adoption and agile transformation and how to distinguish between structural transformation and cultural transformation. Next we'll explore criteria for how to assess your organization and create an adoption and transformation roadmap to help you pragmatically and safely introduce agile methods to your enterprise. Finally we'll explore three primary dimensions of adoption and transformation: competency, frequency, and scale that will assist in guiding your adoption and transformation roadmap and change management strategy. After establishing the theoretical underpinning of a successful adoption and transformation strategy, we'll consider several case studies where these ideas have been applied and what has worked, and more importantly, what hasn't. The case studies will consider 3-5 companies of varying sizes where these ideas have been applied in the past 18 months.

Speakers
avatar for Mike Cottmeyer

Mike Cottmeyer

CEO and Founder, LeadingAgile



Wednesday August 15, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Texas D

1:30pm CDT

Values of the Fittest - Taking Cash and Staking Claims: Allen Hurst, Chris Weldon
Are you willing to put everything on the line to squeeze every last dollar from your customers? Will you sacrifice quality to get that killer feature out the door? Will you ride the next trend in social media or focus more on premium features to grab those elite customers? What will your competition do? Values of the Fittest is a game that will challenge you and your stakeholders to take decisive actions to build software by maximizing value, minimizing risk, and minimizing cost. Time is of the essence. You have limited funds and need to deliver a product quickly to stay afloat. Opponents are capitalizing while your team wages civil war. Can your team find a common direction to deliver a better product in less time?

Speakers
avatar for Chris Weldon

Chris Weldon

Manager, Software Development, Wolters Kluwer
Chris Weldon is a passionate software craftsman, technical manager, and coach. As a manager and coach, it is his mission to understand each team members' career aspirations and help them reach their full potential. Chris works across the organization to build strong relationships... Read More →



Wednesday August 15, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 5-6

1:30pm CDT

Agile Game Incubator: Don McGreal, Michael McCullough
Ever wanted to create a game but not sure how or where to start? Do you prefer learning-by-doing? Do you use games as a learning tool but haven't found the right game for a topic? Learn to create your own unique games for communicating complex topics and injecting some fun back into work. Come prepared with your own topics and ideas or join in on others'. Don and Mike will kick things off by sharing their approach, guidelines, and experience. They will then facilitate the formation of teams around problem topics and guide them through the creation of the ultimate Agile game!

Speakers
MM

Michael McCullough

Executive Technical Director, Quadrus
Michael is Executive Technical Director with Quadrus - Improving Enterprises Calgary. Michael leads the training and advisory services for Quadrus Agile Scrum and Kanban services.Michael has been working with business and product companies helping to improve product innovation and... Read More →


Wednesday August 15, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 3-4

1:30pm CDT

Building a Team Through Feedback: Lisamarie Babik, Johanna Rothman
In traditional team cultures, feedback has been the sole responsibility of the manager. In Agile teams it’s more important for feedback to be peer-to-peer because the manager doesn’t know the minute-by-minute details of what’s going on within the team. What if managers were not solely responsible for providing guidance for an individuals growth, but rather the team itself? Building feedback into the culture creates a team with a stronger sense of responsibility for one another. They will self-correct interpersonal issues and work-quality issues better and faster than a traditional team.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/BuildingaTeamThroughFeedback.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Johanna Rothman

Johanna Rothman

President, Rothman Consulting
Johanna Rothman, known as the "Pragmatic Manager," provides frank advice for your tough problems. She helps leaders and teams see problems and resolve risks and manage their product development. Johanna was the Agile 2009 conference chair. Johanna is the author of several books... Read More →


Wednesday August 15, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
San Antonio 4-6

1:30pm CDT

Remote Pair Programming: A Guide for Distributed Teams: Joe Moore
*Remote pair programming* is surprisingly simple and inexpensive to implement, but it's not just about bleeding-edge technology -- a good attitude is just as important as good technology. Joe will walk you through how your distributed team can successfully implement remote pair programming, allowing you to realize the same benefits as in-person pairing and address some of the challenges of distributed development. Joe will discuss the important personal and interpersonal skills needed for remote pairing as well as the technology. Distributed agile teams need not forgo the valuable discipline of pair programming. Thanks to ubiquitous high speed internet service, major advances in online collaboration technologies, and the need to source talent wherever they might be, remote pair programming is becoming more common.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Remote Pair Programming - Conference 2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Joseph Moore

Joseph Moore

Principal Software Engineer, Manager, Pivotal
An XP purist since the year 2000, Joe has pair programmed almost 34,000 hours. Joe has been developing and advocating for distributed agile methodologies since going fully remote in 2010, such as remote pair programming, "everyone's remote" distributed team philosophies, and even... Read More →


Wednesday August 15, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Texas 2
  Distributed Agile

1:30pm CDT

Integrating agile with other Enterprise disciplines: Six Sigma, BPM & CM: Jason Tice
As Enterprise-level organizations look to maximize the effectiveness of Information Technology and Software Development activities through adoption of agile techniques, it is common that agile development practices may interact or be impacted by other disciplines already entrenched within the Enterprise. This talk will explore three specific Enterprise disciplines that commonly interact with agile / lean software development: * Enterprise-level Process Improvement Activities driven through Six Sigma Methodologies (DMAIC, DMADV, Kaizen) * Business Process Management (BPM) * Enterprise Configuration Management (CM) For each discipline, recommended integration patterns will be presented to describe how agile development activities can improve the effectiveness of these common Enterprise disciplines. Discussion will also outline recommended services that staff supporting each Enterprise discipline (Six Sigma, BPM & CM) should provide to optimize the software delivery and innovation that can be achieved using agile and lean development techniques. The presentation will also focus on the unique knowledge, skills, abilities, and perspectives that Six Sigma, BPM & CM practitioners have and how often they can integrate with agile development efforts to help teams mitigate specific challenges. Discussion will highlight specific messaging strategies and patterns to ensure effective collaboration between core agile development staff and staff supporting other Enterprise disciplines. Lastly, the presentation will provide messaging strategies to deconflict the core activities of agile development from the core activities of Six Sigma, Business Process Management, and Enterprise Configuration Management. All materials shared during this presentation have been compiled during a 4+ year Enterprise-level change management effort embarked on by a large United Stated Department of Defense organization to adopt agile software development within an Enterprise that was proficient at Six Sigma, BPM and Configuration Management prior to adopting agile.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/IntegratingAgileDevSixSigmaBPMandCM-Presented.pdf

Speakers

Wednesday August 15, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Texas 3
  Enterprise Agile

1:30pm CDT

Story Maps as Test Plans and Other Cross Cutting Guides: David Hussman
Test plans are often secondary to story tests (aka acceptance tests) for an individual story.While this helps focus on finding the value of a story, it often missing the mark in an enterprise setting where real value comes from delivering a collection of stories. Large scale (enterprise ) agility often goes beyond a single story and spans stories and teams. Story maps are an excellent tool for visualizing cross cutting needs like testing across stories and other challenges that cut across teams. Story maps are a simple and excellent tool that foster cross cutting thinking and learning. Along with connecting testers who care about testing that spans stories, story maps are also excellent tools for connecting other cross cutting perspectives: architecture, user experience, sub teams and end user documentation. This session will teach participants to use story maps to address the many challenges that face large scale (enterprise) agility. Participants will work in groups to utilize story maps as tools for situational challenges and realities faced by multi-team and distributed team agile usage.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/StoryMapsTestPlansAndOtherCrossCutting.pdf

Speakers
avatar for David Hussman

David Hussman

Founder, DevJam
David teaches and coaches continuous learning thru product discovery and iterative delivery. 20+ years of coaching product learning into eco-systems of all sizes and shapes around the world has shaped David’s non-dogmatic and pragmatic style. David spends most of his time working... Read More →



Wednesday August 15, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Austin 1-3
  Enterprise Agile

1:30pm CDT

Adaptive Leadership: Accelerating Enterprise Agility: Jim Highsmith
Adaptive leadership embraces: Why Agile? Being Agile. Doing Agile. It explores why responsiveness is critical to success—from business strategy to portfolio management implications. It explores activities that an agile leader or executive must “do,” starting with four key levers for change: “Do Less,” “Speed-to-Value,” “Quality,” and “Capability.” Next the focus will be on how to “Be” agile by—embracing Adapting, Riding Paradox, Exploring, and Engaging leadership. This session will explore how Adaptive leadership is critical to transforming IT organizations.

Speakers

Wednesday August 15, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Austin 4-6
  Leadership

1:30pm CDT

Influencing Teams with Psychology: Charles Suscheck
Self directed agile teams often don't have hierarchical management. This session is about using psychological tools to influence team members who don't report to you. If you need to influence others, this workshop will give you the tools. Through examples, exercises, and practice targeted to selling agile concepts, you will apply Cialdini's psychological tools (reciprocity, scarcity, commitment consistency, authority, liking, and social proof) to craft persuasive positions.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Handout.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Chuck Suscheck

Chuck Suscheck

Professional Trainer, scrum.org
Dr. Charles Suscheck specializes in agile software development methodologies, and project management. He is one the few people in the world certified to teach the entire scrum.org curriculum. He has over 25 years of professional experience in information technology, beginning his... Read More →



Wednesday August 15, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 1-2
  Leadership

1:30pm CDT

Agile2012 Program Review & Feedback - A Panel Discussion: Mitch Lacey
This is your opportunity to meet with, hear from, and ask questions of the Agile 2012 Program Chairs: Michele Sliger, Peter Provost and Pete Behrens along with the Agile 2012 Conference Chair Mitch Lacey. The program chairs, under the guidance of the Agile 2012 Conference Chair, spent almost a full year building the Agile 2012 program from defining the stages and the program schedule, seeding the stage review teams, developing the submission schedule, overseeing the submission process, aligning the stages and sessions to the conference facilities, and pulling together the final program. We would like an opportunity to share our approach in building the program and hear your feedback on your experience through that review process and the results of the program. This session is for you if any of the following apply: 1. You would like to know more about how the program and stage review process works and how submissions were selected for Agile 2012 2. You are interested in getting more involved in the program or stage review process in the future 3. You would like to meet with and/or get to know better those involved in putting together the Agile 2012 Program Added something else

Speakers
avatar for Mitch Lacey

Mitch Lacey

Mitch Lacey & Associates
Mitch Lacey is an agile practitioner and trainer. He is the author of "The Scrum Field Guide", a book targeting teams adopting Agile and Scrum practices. Mitch has been managing projects for over 18 years & is credited with many plan-driven & agile projects. Mitch honed his agile... Read More →


Wednesday August 15, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Texas C
  No Bull Know How

1:30pm CDT

Craftsmanship or 'The only way to go fast is to go well': Robert Martin
Isnʼt agile all about delivering faster? What does craftsmanship have to do with architecture and design? Why should I invest in strengthening my programming skills, and where do I start? Whatʼs the definition of “clean code”? No one else cares about code quality where I work, why should I?

Speakers

Wednesday August 15, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Dallas 6-7
  No Bull Know How

1:30pm CDT

Better Unit Testing with ApprovalTests, an open source library: Lynn Langit, Woody Zuill
Whether you are a developer, tester or manager, you'll gain insight and actionable information on how to more effectively test both new and legacy code using the open source ApprovalTest library. Through both demos and explanation of theory, the presenters will show you how using ApprovalTests make testing many types of objects (from simple types to complex objects such as GUIs, arrays, database query results and more) more manageable. The library is available in many programming languages, including C#, Java, Ruby, PHP and more. Most demos will be presented in C#.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/ApprovalTests_Agile_Aug_2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Lynn Langit

Lynn Langit

BigData and Cloud Architect, Lynn Langit Consulting
Cloud Architect-- 12 years as a Big Data and Cloud architect, analyst, speaker, author and trainer-- Lead Architect for AWS,GCP IoT and Bioinformatics Data Pipeline Optimization projects-- Community technical education partner awards from AWS, Google and MicrosoftK-12 Education Non-Profit... Read More →
avatar for Woody Zuill

Woody Zuill

Independent Agile Guide, Independent Agile Guide
I've been a software developer for 36+ years, and I'm an Agile enthusiast. I work as an Independent Agile Guide. I worked with the original "Mob Programming" team at Hunter Industries, and have been instrumental highlighting "No Estimates" concepts. I've enjoy sharing my Agile experiences... Read More →


Wednesday August 15, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Dallas 3-4

1:30pm CDT

Hold the Sprinkles! Cupcakes, layers, and Agile UX design requirements: Carissa Demetris
Are you a business analyst working in an Agile environment? Ever feel like you’re missing the big picture, focusing on iterations of details? Agile teams can often get caught up in a single product feature, iterating on that one feature to its most complete state. While this approach gives the user fully-fleshed functionality in one area, often the larger workflow is forgotten. We know that a complete and meaningful user experience is important for product success, but prioritizing requirements across the entire user workflow can be challenging. Using the concepts from Jeff Patton's story mapping exercise, this presentation will show how you can use a layered design approach to create the most valuable end-to-end user experience. Applied at this level, story mapping helps to identify the basic set of requirements for the workflow, and illustrates options for layering enhancements and embellishments. This technique builds on traditional use cases and workflows and adds a visual map to create a complete user experience with the right level of functionality. Participants will hear examples of how this method has been applied at ProQuest, LLC and learn how to use this simple, effective method to start designing the end-to-end user experience in an Agile way. They will also take away tips for thinking agilely when designing their next project, and they will take away cupcakes.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Agile2012 UXD Design Mapping.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Carissa Demetris

Carissa Demetris

Avid people-watcher, teacher and do-er.


Wednesday August 15, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Dallas 1-2
  User Experience

1:30pm CDT

Hands on keyboards! Coding with Corey Haines (Part 2): Corey Haines
Bring your laptop to this session with your favorite development environment(s) set up and ready to write some code. This session will be hands-on. Come and practice what you're learning at the Agile Conference. Each half-day workshop (morning and afternoon) consists of 3 hands-on, focused exercises around the practices and techniques involved in successful agile software development. Each session helps you level up in skills, such as test-driven development, pair-programming and emergent design. This special day of practice consists of 2 half-day workshops. By joining for both morning and afternoon, you'll get a wide range of experience that you can take back to your work.

Speakers

Wednesday August 15, 2012 1:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Dallas 5

2:00pm CDT

There and back again - from iterative to flow... and back to iterative!: Cecilia Fernandes
Come and hear the story of a team that started with Scrum, transformed their process in a lean-like approach and then were back to iterative. It had a promising start and, just when it feels like the perfect story, things collapsed and the team was taken by a great doom. Fortunately, difficult times and strongly willed people work well together and peace was restored. The team has started with Scrum, which worked well for a long time. Then, due to context particularities and using retrospectives, the team began to deconstruct Scrum, not by chance but through well thought decisions, and ended up in a single piece continuous flow process. The turning point was when, carried away by the success of removing Scrum practices and ceremonies, the team decided they didn't need a regular retrospective. Then the team experienced the effects of relying mostly on discipline and how hard it is to revert that situation without their main continuous improvement tool. Fortunately a call to action saved their moral and put things (and people) together again. Join us for this fast paced talk where you will get to know which particularities motivated changes, the advantages of those changes and how this team surpassed that great difficulty.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/there-and-back-again-med-res.pdf



Wednesday August 15, 2012 2:00pm - 2:30pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7

2:30pm CDT

Task Board Evolution: Nayan Hajratwala
As a coach, you're often asked to either help design or give opinions on task boards. This session will be a quick tour through the designs of task boards at several of my clients and how they evolved during the engagement. We'll examine the motivations behind each change and what the outcomes were.

Speakers
avatar for Nayan Hajratwala

Nayan Hajratwala

Chikli Consulting


Wednesday August 15, 2012 2:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7

3:30pm CDT

Agile Portfolio Management at NYSE : Gabino Roche, Jr.
Sharing my experience in the financial industry as a Managing Director at NYSE Euronext, as well at other finance companies, in managing a business program by leveraging Agile. - **Introduction/Context** * My background and the world of finance & technologies - **Real examples of managing a portfolio by prioritizing against real business value** * Competing priorities * Revenue objectives and cost constraints * Planning a roadmap and managing opportunity costs * Prioritization against real business value whether internal business programs or client-facing deliverables * Road mapping and continuous re-planning * Validating annual stakeholder objectives - **Define the Product Owner role/team between the business and IT** * Product Owner roles between the business and IT * Typical corporate Agile evolution & adoption pains * Defining release visions and goals * Stakeholder engagement model * Adoption & Power-Users
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Agile Portfolio Management at NYSE.pdf


Wednesday August 15, 2012 3:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7

3:30pm CDT

The Tester’s Role in Improving Developers' Testing Skills: Andrew Prentice
The benefits of making quality the responsibility of both developers and testers are increasingly recognized by Agile teams. Such an approach improves accountability, eliminates bottlenecks and allows testers to focus on the most complex and difficult testing issues. However, getting developers engaged in non-code facing testing is often a challenge. This presentation will detail two techniques - blitz testing and mentored testing, that we've developed at Atlassian that have been highly effective at not only engaging developers to undertake such testing, but also to gain the knowledge and skills they need to improve the quality of the software that they write. Blitz testing, widens test coverage, and involves regularly assembling an internal “SWAT” team to perform focused testing as a group for short periods. The roles within the group and the structure of the sessions are adapted to suit the various goals of the testing. Mentored testing, deepens test coverage, and involves a tester working directly with a developer to help guide the testing that developers perform, as well as a combination of paired and simultaneous test execution to help developers identify where and how to improve their testing. Together, these practices result in developers who spend less time fixing their code and testers who are able to focus on complex testing challenges, enabling the team to improve quality without sacrifice.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/TestersRole_Agile2012.pdf

Speakers


Wednesday August 15, 2012 3:30pm - 4:30pm CDT
Dallas 3-4

3:30pm CDT

Agile FDA Mini- Plays, Mosh Pit Style: Brian Shoemaker, Nancy Van Schooenderwoert
In the FDA-regulated world, resistance to using Agile methods is still strong. We’ve turned several of the typical objections from quality and regulatory managers in the FDA-regulated industry into role-play sessions, both to explain the reason for the objection and to describe how well-managed Agile teams can answer it. By modeling the conversations you may need to have, we help you understand not just the FDA rules, but the thinking behind those rules. Our role play won’t be a “closed shop” – you can jump in too, and get your questions addressed!
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Shoemaker_VanSchooenderwoert_Agile_FDA_MiniPlays.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Nancy Van Schooenderwoert

Nancy Van Schooenderwoert

President, Lean-Agile Partners, Inc.
Nancy was among the first to apply Agile methods to embedded systems development, as an engineer, manager, and consultant. She has led Agile change initiatives beyond software development in safety-critical, highly regulated industries, and teaches modern Agile approaches like Mob... Read More →
avatar for Brian Shoemaker

Brian Shoemaker

Principal Consultant, ShoeBar Associates
Brian Shoemaker consults for healthcare products companies in computer system validation, software quality assurance, and electronic records and signatures. He has conducted validation both on product software and on internal software, developed software quality systems, audited software... Read More →


Wednesday August 15, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Texas 3

3:30pm CDT

Down the Pub: How did that transition you were working on go?: Andrea Tomasini, Hendrik Esser
Imagine a reunion in the pub between you, an agile coach, and some Ericsson managers. You met some years before and the seed of an idea was planted. Over a long evening you discussed what the world would look like after completing a large-scale agile transformation. Three years later, you catch up, and learn that the transformation has been a roaring success. Through the evening you share the ups and downs, the lessons learned, and the critical success factors that made the success. Three years ago Ericsson started on a long journey to agility - over 1000 people adopting an agile mindset after over 30 years of entrenched control gate processes. Back then, there was fear and uncertainty, a will to control and preserve what made the organization successful. Today there is a completely different culture. A culture that allows the organization to sustain and keep on evolving, that allows them to achieve significant results long after you, as the coach, left. Obviously, you want to learn what worked so well? Was it your coaching ability (of course!)? Was it the uniqueness of the organization (well, they are special, but unique? No!)? What made this such a persistent and sustainably successful transformation? This is an exciting tale. In just three short years, Ericsson has made monumental changes, including: - Significantly improved predictability, in particular in relation to customers and the business department. The product pipeline is solid and reliable, and managed through business value, not release content. - Significantly improved quality, allowing Ericsson to exceed expectations even of the most demanding customers, releasing newly developed functionality ahead of schedule and skipping previously critical integration and verification gates in the process. Though many organizations achieve this while being coached, Ericsson has built up an internal capability able to continually learn and improve. Reflecting on what went well, we have identified five keys to sustainable change. The first two, People and Practices, are well-understood. The last three, Perseverance, Protection and Patience, are more cultural characteristics. You will learn how these were introduced and encouraged, and how Ericsson was able to bring about widespread adoption of such deep skills in a very short time. If you are interested in knowing how an organization with a couple of thousand employees was able to learn how to continuously improve, and make that transformation to agility a successful long lasting journey, you can't miss this fly-on-the-wall view of the pub reunion. Join us, Andrea Tomasini, the executive agile coach, and Hendrik Esser, VP Portfolio Management, share their story in a relaxed atmosphere.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Ericsson_Success_Story_agile2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Hendrik Esser

Hendrik Esser

Growing up in the 1980s I was a passionate computer game developer during my school and study times. After getting my diploma in Electrical engineering I started at Ericsson in 1994 as aSW developer. From 1996 I worked in project management roles. Since 2000 I am working as a manager... Read More →



Wednesday August 15, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Texas D

3:30pm CDT

How to Brainstorm : Lessons from Design Thinking: Jeremy Lightsmith
Do you know how to come up with the next great idea? How about just a good idea? Turns out there is quite a lot of knowledge out there about just that. In this workshop, we'll take you from where you are today, to visit (and use!) several effective techniques for coming up with a plethora of ideas (which by the way, is how you do it). We'll finish by introducing the most important part of brainstorming, the inspiration you gather before you start.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/How to Brainstorm.pdf

Speakers
JL

Jeremy Lightsmith

Agile Coach / Facilitator, Lightsmith Consulting LLC



Wednesday August 15, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 5-6

3:30pm CDT

Coaching is More than Telling People What to Do: David Hussman
A wise Greek coach said “We have two ears and one mouth so we listen twice as much as we speak. Sadly, many coaches fail to listen before starting to train people around “how to do agile.” This session will challenge you to pragmatically map context (people, product, technologies) to a subset of agile practices and principles. Going beyond simply teaching process we will create outcome based coaching plans that introduce tools that augment existing strengths and address contextual challenges.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/CoachingIsMoreThanTelling.pdf

Speakers
avatar for David Hussman

David Hussman

Founder, DevJam
David teaches and coaches continuous learning thru product discovery and iterative delivery. 20+ years of coaching product learning into eco-systems of all sizes and shapes around the world has shaped David’s non-dogmatic and pragmatic style. David spends most of his time working... Read More →


Wednesday August 15, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Texas C

3:30pm CDT

Evolve Your Agile Coaching Dashboard: David Parker
As Agile Coaches, we know the importance of helping teams make their work visible and transparent. This concept extends to our own practice as well. Over the course of a year coaching more than a dozen Scrum teams, I created several iterations of a coaching dashboard - each of them a big visible chart on the wall - to help me be systematic and in tune with the changes taking place in the organization. Come find out why the "using Scrum to teach Scrum" dashboard didn't work, and see which dashboard the CIO called "the simplest, most intuitive bit of reporting that I have in my organization.” Also hear about how the Scrum Adoption Team became a team of coaches and used a Kanban(ish) dashboard to systematize their workflow. Participants in this workshop will come away with ideas for creating and evolving their own Agile coaching dashboards.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Evolve Your Agile Coaching Dashboard ver 2.pdf

Speakers
avatar for David D. Parker

David D. Parker

Agile Coach and Trainer, Agile Learning Labs
Building a better world one agile organization at a time



Wednesday August 15, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 3-4

3:30pm CDT

The Contracting Two Step: Patterns for Successful Collaborations: Mary Gorman
Do your agile team members make optimum use of each other’s skills and capabilities? Do they share their personal development needs? Do they trust each other? If not, consider the “contracting two step” - a metaphor for simple yet powerful ways to identify and monitor mutual working agreements. Like a dance, contracting partners take mutual responsibility to reach shared goals. While not legally binding, the contract represents public, explicit commitments essential for successful collaborations. You will learn 3 techniques to implement the Contracting Two Step on your agile team.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/agile 2012-Contracting 2 Step.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Mary Gorman

Mary Gorman

VP Quality and Delivery, EBG Consulting
Mary coaches teams and facilitates agile product discovery workshops. She trains business, customer and technology stakeholders in collaborative practices essential for defining high value products. Mary speaks at industry conferences and writes for the Agile, business analysis and... Read More →



Wednesday August 15, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
San Antonio 4-6

3:30pm CDT

The Need for (Build) Speed: Lasse Koskela
One of the pillars for an agile process is the ability to inspect and adapt - see where you are and steer accordingly. As our products and projects – and their code base – grow bigger we face an increasing challenge to our ability as developers to see where we are. In particular, our suite of automated tests grows bigger and bigger and soon we are running thousands of tests. That's where the challenge lies: a *slow* build. Join this session to discuss ways of keeping those tests fast and see live demonstrations of techniques that help you keep your Ant or Maven build running quickly!
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/NeedForBuildSpeed-Agile2012.pdf

Speakers


Wednesday August 15, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
San Antonio 1-3

3:30pm CDT

An Agile Accounting Model to Accelerate Enterprise Agility: Walt Wyckoff, Pat Reed
Before Agile can scale as the primary mode of developing software, an Agile accounting standard needs to be developed to enable CFO’s to understand and leverage one of the most quantifiable and compelling benefits of Agile software development. In this hands-on tutorial, we will walkthrough the problem, map current accounting standards to an Agile project accounting model and walk through a practical and defensible solution that participants can customize and implement.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Agile2012_Agile Accounting Presentation(1).pdf

Speakers
WW

Walt Wyckoff

Consultant, iHoriz Inc.
Agile practitioner and educator. I like to sail, am working on additional solar PV power for my house, will be one of the first owners of a Tesla Model S. I am also a scale modeler.



Wednesday August 15, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Austin 1-3
  Enterprise Agile

3:30pm CDT

Meet Scrum’s Big Brother, Dynamic Governance. Effectively Delivering Large Programs: Dan LeFebvre, John Buck
Scrum works great with small, focused teams on small projects. What happens when you need to deliver a medium to large sized program that require more people? Scrum gives no guidance on scaling. There are books and ideas out there (“Scrum of Scrums”, Integration Scrum teams) but none have delivered reliable results. These techniques often reduce the sense of collaboration and agility as the programs get larger. Decisions feel more autocratic, teams have a lower sense of control and happiness. Dynamic Governance (see http://www.governancealive.com/dynamic-governance/) may provide the answer. Called by some “Scrum’s big brother”, Dynamic Governance is an organizational method that uniquely combines best business practices with the principles of cybernetics and systems thinking to deliver a decision-making mechanism that works at scale. Developed in The Netherlands, it has been used successfully in organizations for over 40 years. This workshop will demonstrate how Scrum is a Dynamic Governance system for 1 team. It suggests some improvements, particularly for retrospective meetings. However, the workshop will focus primarily on applying Agile philosophy and the 3 principles of Dynamic Governance to design organizations at different levels of scale, including top management and organizational units that are not directly involved in the production of software. Decisions are made quickly, are biased toward action, and stick.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Meet Scrum’s Big Brother, Dynamic Governance v3.pdf

Speakers
avatar for John Buck

John Buck

President, GovernanceAlive LLC
John Buck is the coauthor of the very recently published book Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy, see http://www.agilebossanova.com/ and #agilebossanova. The second edition of his earlier book was also recently released We the People: Consenting to... Read More →
DL

Dan LeFebvre

Kronos Incorporated


Wednesday August 15, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 1-2
  Enterprise Agile

3:30pm CDT

Servant Leadership: Greg Hutchings
This session is designed to help executive, senior and mid-level management learn how to become more effective, better appreciated and happier in their changing roles in agile organizations. It is also intended to help you as a servant leader, management coach or sponsor to help managers who you know (or may even work for) to become more agile and better to work with. The workshop setting will explore servant leader patterns and anti-patterns based on the participants' own experience, to be shared and put into place. The format will be intensive small group interaction and large group sharing using a merge/diverge/merge facilitation facilitation style.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Servant Leader Greg Hutchings Agile 2012sm.pdf

Speakers


Wednesday August 15, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Texas 2
  Leadership

3:30pm CDT

Winning the Agile Race: Stop Watching The Runner And Pay Attention To The Baton! : Jay Packlick, Erik Meade
Everyone knows that Agile is about ‘Individuals and Interactions’ but... what the heck does that really mean for a leader? How do you make that an actionable goal? By treating key decisions as fundamental units of work in an Agile environment, a clearer and more concise set of goals emerges. Focusing on decisions and how they're made reveals opportunities to dramatically improve interactions and increase agility not just within development but across the entire enterprise. In this tutorial we'll explore; why decisions are the real 'batons' (units of work) in the Agile race, how to visualize decision flows and bottlenecks that cripple teams, common decisions that can dramatically improve project outcomes (and how to improve them), critical questions you should be asking (but probably aren't), the diagnosis and treatment of decision maladies that diminish performance and, how to apply Bain Consulting's RAPID™ decision making model within your organization to improve the outcome of any decision.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Winning The Agile Race - Stop Watching The Runner And Pay Attention To The The Baton.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Jay Packlick

Jay Packlick

Principal / Enterprise Agile Coach, Sabre
Jay spent the first twenty years of his career getting software done in a variety of roles. Excited by how much better everything was using Extreme Programming in 2001, he’s dedicated the last twelve years of his career to learning and helping others implement better ways of getting... Read More →



Wednesday August 15, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Austin 4-6
  Leadership

3:30pm CDT

The Nature of Software Development: Getting twenty pounds of fantasy into a five pound bag: Ron Jeffries, Chet Hendrickson
Are you saying we shouldn’t estimate? When do fantasy and reality most often collide on software projects? What’s this got to do with agile? Isn’t agile software development about delivering what the customer wants, no matter what? What are the secrets of good estimating?

Speakers
avatar for Chet Hendrickson

Chet Hendrickson

Supreme and Ultimate Hyper-Chairman Emeritus, HendricksonXP
RJ

Ron Jeffries

RonJeffries.com


Wednesday August 15, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Dallas 6-7
  No Bull Know How

3:30pm CDT

Using Rapid Prototyping for Design Iteration: Hugh Beyer
In theory, Agile projects can iterate their design with users through the regular sprint process. In practice, few projects can afford to revisit completed stories repeatedly until they are right. It’s critical that stories define user needs correctly from the start. Paper prototyping is a key technique for iterating a design with users before development work on a story starts. In this session, we show how to build effective prototypes and how to use them in field interviews to get the most reliable feedback.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Using_Rapid_Prototying_for_Design_Iteration.pdf

Speakers

Wednesday August 15, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Dallas 1-2
  User Experience

4:00pm CDT

Scaling Product Ownership at the US Air Force - A Story of Epic Proportions!: Peter Saddington
What happens when the DoD, Air Force, Government Contractors, all decide to "Go Agile?" How do you scale Product Ownership with a bunch of Lt. Colonels, Majors, Program Managers, and multiple teams? This experience report will reveal how we looked holistically at the situation, managed tough personalities, and applied Product Ownership at scale for a multi-million dollar portal project. Come, sit down and listen to a story and be encouraged. No need to fear. Even our government can apply Agile well!
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/IEEE-Psaddington-Agile2012-V2.pdf


Wednesday August 15, 2012 4:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7

4:30pm CDT

Overcoming Traditional Project Release Reporting with an Agile Approach Focused on Change: Hans Samios
Overcoming Traditional Project Release Reporting with an Agile Approach Focused on Change ========================================================================================= Introduction ============ We are a 30 year old product development shop with more than 450 technical people. For years we have been using a traditional approach to the reporting of progress on releases using traditional stage-gate and project management approaches. The project management approach had been automated to a significant degree and was well entrenched within the organization. A lot of the standard discussion on release reporting fails to address the legitimate concerns of executive management for this large a development group as it focuses on team rather than the organization needs. If not addressed this creates resistance to the adoption of Scrum / Agile which, given all the other cultural issues that need to be addressed could seriously distract and even jeopardize the implementation. What is required is an approach which maintains the integrity of the Scrum team approach while still providing data to the business that allows them to make decisions. When I say "traditional" reporting, what am I talking about? I am talking about weekly schedules meetings to determine whether we are all on track, Microsoft Project based schedules with standard stage gates for approvals, pages and pages of documentation on current status, data held privately to the development shop and so on. When I say "maintains the integrity of Scrum team approach" what am I talking about? I am talking about team based estimates using points, simple encoding on user stories to allow categorization of data, roll-up reporting to generate release and portfolio views from team views and a set of 5 simple reports that really do provide everything that everyone needs. Principles of Reporting ======================= The session explores the following general principles of release reporting and provides specific examples of use. * Make everything (I really mean this) available to everyone in the organization. * Make sure that reporting can be done simply, with no additional work required by the teams, and using simple approaches to categorize data. * Base release reporting on changes that we are seeing in the progress of the release project as opposed to reporting on the plan so that everyone can understand the current state of the plan. * Ensure that reports are the same at all levels (team, product release, portfolio), based on the same information (team based estimates and velocity) and producing the same results so that everyone is looking at their view of the same data. * Ensure that you interview "C" levels in your organization to understand their areas of interest in the reporting so that, again, everyone is looking at the same data and making their decisions by the same criteria. * Ensure there is a continuum of reporting that not only helps with business but more importantly helps the teams so that the data required by the business are a natural by-product of normal team work. Questions ========= How did you uniquely scale, blend, adapt or evolve agile practices? ------------------------------------------------------------------- Starting with the basic "release burn-up" chart sourced from team data (story point estimates and velocity), we developed and sold internally the notion that five simple reports would give us everything we need to run the business: * Release burn-up, with trend-lines: "I, as a Scrum Product Owner who is trying to optimize the delivery of a product release in terms of date, scope, and cost need a way to show what the current scope in the release and progress we are making toward it so that we can make well-informed trade-offs and commitments based on the reality of our company's capabilities." * Scope change report: "I, as a Scrum Product Owner who wants to communicate with the stakeholders need a way to show how the work for a release has changed from the original baseline to the current status so that everyone is really informed about the current status of the plan." * Epic progress report: "I, as a Scrum Product Owner who wants to understand the status of the release need a way to show how work is progressing against the major epics of the release so that I can make adjustments in the plan based on completion of these epics." * Investment allocation report: "I, as a Scrum Product Owner who wants to make good investment decisions need a way to show how work is split in terms of the basic investment categories management report against so that I can make predictions for future plans based on history and make adjustments during execution of a release when these assumptions do not work out." * Project allocation report: "I, as a Scrum Product Owner who wants to make good investment decisions need a way to show how work is split in terms of the next release and existing fielded releases the Scrum Team is working on so that I can make predictions for future plans based on history and make adjustments during execution of a release when these assumptions do not work out." The only adjustments required to produce the reports were some simple attribution on the user stories which the Product Owners were glad to do since it gave them the information that they could use. What mistakes did you make? What insights have you gained that others need to know about? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The biggest mistake I made was underestimating the amount of inertia associated with the traditional reporting model. What I should have done was simply tackle this issue much earlier. If I had done this I suspect that there would have been less managerial resistance to the adoption of agile. A second mistake I made was not supplying better templates to produce the information required. This lead to confusing when amongst the people that wanted to do this reporting since they virtually had to learn how to do it themselves. What was it like integrating agile development into to the rest of your organization? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The issue of release reporting became an impediment. I used to think "those management people just do not understand the whole 'agile' concept." I thought they wanted project reporting against "the plan." I found out they did have legitimate concerns that we were not addressing. What they actually wanted was standardize reporting that answered key questions about "where are we", "are we heading in the right direction", "when do we expect something", "what decisions need to be made today" and so on. While I am sure they would have liked to have a predictable plan, it was my understanding that they were asking for traditional reporting. Nothing could be further from the truth. By taking the time to understand the requirements (capturing them as user stories) I could take the issue off the table which meant that we ended up with a smoother transition. How successful were you in overcoming challenges? What challenges remain? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The main challenge that remains is moving to this work to a tool so that we can automate the process. We have sold the concepts, are producing the reports manually but it is taking time when it should be easy to automate. If you’ve been doing agile development for some time, how have your values or ways of working changed? What are you doing now and why? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lesson learned - don't let your assumptions about others lead you to thinking that you understand everything. As an agile coach you can easily fall into the trap of hubris.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Overcoming Traditional Project Release Reporting with an Agile Approach Focused on Change v04.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Hans Samios

Hans Samios

Agile Coach / Scrum Master, Intergraph
Working with people to improve the overall system of delivery.


Wednesday August 15, 2012 4:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7

5:30pm CDT

Agile Alliance Members Meeting

The annual Agile Alliance Member's Meeting will be held at the Agile2012 conference. Members are invited to meet, hear about, and discuss Alliance business with the Agile Alliance board of directors.

Drinks and snacks will be served.

 


Wednesday August 15, 2012 5:30pm - 6:30pm CDT
Texas C

6:30pm CDT

Agile 2012 Rodeo Circuit Event

Saddle up on Wednesday evening and join the Agile2012 Rodeo Circuit!

The sponsors have played a large role in making this year's conference a great success. So come out and visit their booths, find out the latest and greatest in agile development, collect stamps, enjoy appetizers and drink, and enter for your chance to win great prizes!

 

 


Wednesday August 15, 2012 6:30pm - 8:30pm CDT
Grapevine ABCD

6:30pm CDT

Exhibits Area - Rodeo Circuit

Come visit the Agile2012 Sponsors in Grapevine ABCD!

 


Wednesday August 15, 2012 6:30pm - 8:30pm CDT
Grapevine ABCD
 
Thursday, August 16
 

9:00am CDT

Can Marketing Go Agile?: Randall DeFauw
Perforce adopted Agile processes several years ago for Engineering. A mix of Scrum and Kanban techniques are in use and are widely seen as having delivered real improvements. Several managers at Perforce saw this success and wanted to reap some of the same benefits in other departments. In 2011 Perforce extended Agile processes to Marketing. Coaches were brought in and a Scrum pattern was quickly established. A year into the experiment, Marketing has seen visible improvements in transparency and collaboration. As might be expected, much work remains to be done. The eventual goal is similar to DevOps: Agile teams and processes in each department with cross-department collaboration. As we get closer to that goal, all the parts of the company will be more closely aligned and pulling in the same direction to help the business. This presentation will describe the initial transition to Agile, including all the pitfalls and growing pains. Just adopting the basic structure of Scrum (e.g. daily standup meetings) helped improve team communication and made management more aware of the work being done. But Marketing is a truly cross-functional team with schedules heavily driven by external events and other departments, with remote workers and a partner team in the UK. Some of the questions we encountered early on were: * What really constitutes a team? We all report to the same manager, but technical marketing, corporate marketing, and outreach all have very different tasks and goals. * Our sprints are heavily schedule driven: Engineering schedules and conference dates dominate our planning. That feels a lot like waterfall project management. * The whiteboard is now project management system #5. What works well inside the office doesn't work well for the folks in London or working remotely. How do we manage our communication? The current state of Agile in Marketing will come next, followed by our vision for 2012. Ideally, Marketing becomes more closely aligned with Engineering. We're looking at the right way to handle that, including options like 'scrum of scrums' or aligning scrum teams around projects instead of departments, while being aware of the dangers of rocking the boat too much. We’d like to share our experiences to help others avoid some of the challenges we faced, and hopefully learn from the community about how to drive forward. We haven't solved all the challenges yet, but we've made progress. This brief presentation will be relevant to development team leads, product managers, technical marketers, marketing managers, IT: those interested in implementing Agile practices in non-Engineering departments for intra- and inter- department productivity gains.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Can Marketing Go Agile.pdf

Speakers


Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am - 9:30am CDT
Ft. Worth 7

9:00am CDT

De-Mystifying Kanban: Understanding Its Many Faces: Alan Shalloway
There is a lot of confusion about what Kanban is. Some of this is due to the fact that many people who have never used Kanban have been deriding it – saying it is a mechanistic team management method that doesn’t respect people. The fact that Kanban is quickly growing and gaining a reputation for success where other Agile methods have had challenges belies that categorization. But what is Kanban? Even when listening to Kanban thought leaders one will hear different answers. 1) it’s a power agile management system based on lean-flow. 2) it’s a transition management method to assist teams to achieve continuous learning. 3) It’s a way to create visibility for executives to improve their product portfolio management. I can almost here Gilda Radner and Dan Aykroyd on Saturday Night Live describing New Shimmer! This talk discusses how Kanban actually is a multi-faceted method that assists process, transition and collaboration. Kanban is not a mere tool, or even a set of practices. It’s a mindset that attends to people, their culture, and the systems they find themselves working in. The talk presents a few of the basics of Lean-Flow and theory of constraints that it is based on as well as some of the psychological aspects of people adopting new methods. While this talk is intended for those considering adopting Kanban, those currently using Scrum will find it helpful as many of the principles and practices of Kanban fit well into the Scrum framework.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/IntroToKanban_Agile2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Al Shalloway

Al Shalloway

CEO, Net Objectives
Founder and CEO of Net Objectives.Co-founder of Lean-Kanban University (no longer affiliated). SPC Trainer. Co-author of 4 books on Lean, Scrum, Design Patterns and Agile Design. Happy to talk to anyone who wants a free consult. Also, are looking for folks who'd like to work with... Read More →



Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Texas C

9:00am CDT

Giving Agile Teams the Roots to Grow and Wings to Fly: Dave Sharrock
We introduce useful and proven practices that increase the sticking power of new agile teams, allowing them to stay agile long into the future. To create sustainable change, agile teams have to overcome organizational gravity that pulls them back into the old, comfortable ways of working. New agile teams are especially at risk of falling back after the coaches leave or the agile transition is declared 'over'. By helping the team set expectations early, the +15 practices provide support just when the team is most vulnerable, and increases the chance of creating lasting change. We introduce two concepts, the +15 Team and the +15 Flightplan, that support teams not just at the beginning of a transformation, when management attention and resources are focused on the effort, but much later on as the teams begin unlocking some of the more challenging engineering practices, such as continuous integration or continual refactoring which take time and repeated practice to achieve. You will learn how to work with a new team to apply these concepts, and how the team can use these to guide growth over time. Successful Agile transformations are built on successful Agile teams; achieving *sustainable* success depends on helping those teams grow and evolve over time. But in order to be self-organized and self-directed, newly formed agile teams need an example to follow; they need to have a glimpse of where a team can get to after 3, 6 or 12 months of continual retrospection, learning and improvement. Unfortunately, in many cases, there are few examples of such success around them. In a large organization, the inertia of existing cultural norms is likely to weigh down on any visions of excellent execution, diluting the vision and ultimately limiting the success of the teams and the transition. The +15 Team is a simple exercise to focus the team on developing good agile behaviors that provide the roots from which a team can grow. The +15 Flightplan is a workshop or game that delivers a long-term plan for agile maturity created by the team that allows the team to soar over time. Participants will be introduced to this technique as a way to better guide the team’s development over time as well as learn how and when to respond. Spending just minutes at every retrospective using these artifacts can make the difference between a team returning to old habits and performance levels or striding forward to become self-directed, high-performing agile teams.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Giving Teams the Roots to Grow and Wings to Fly.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Dave Sharrock

Dave Sharrock

Agile Coach, agile42
Dad, internet veteran, husband, entrepreneur, occasional seismologist. British and almost Canadian. Agile coach and change agent. Only Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC), Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and Certified Agile Leader (CAL) in Canada.



Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Texas 2

9:00am CDT

The Dirty Dozen - 12 Practices That Can Kill Your Agile Transformation: Angela Druckman
Are you struggling to gain the value you expected from your transition to Agile practices? Did your move to Agile seem to create as many problems as it solved? If so, this is the session for you. Sometimes organizations get themselves into trouble when they try to "run before they can walk". They want to scale Agile across 20 teams but, at the same, time, can’t even hold an effective planning meeting. The discussion and exercises in this session will suggest an “order of operations” in addressing these impediments. The goal of this session is to help participants move from thinking “We have a million problems” to “We have a million problems but Problem X and Y are where we should focus first and here is how we will do that.”
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/The Dirty Dozen - Session Pictures Agile 2012.pdf

Speakers


Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Texas D

9:00am CDT

Product Owner Snow and the Seven Angry Dwarfs: V. Lee Henson
Has darkness fallen over the Enchanted Forest? Do you feel like you are constantly trapped, being asked to do more and more with no means for escape? Is the Queen out to get your heart for not meeting expectations or being 100% predictable? If so, this workshop is for you! One of the greatest pitfalls in the Agile world is coming to the table at sprint or iteration planning meeting without having stories prepared with the correct level of detail. Proper story preparation & release planning can help fix this situation. In addition, one of the most dreaded parts of great planning is effective estimation. This hands-on session/workshop will allow participants to learn the steps needed to prepare story cards with just enough information and the process of rapid release planning allowing them to give it a shot in a mock planning simulation. LEARN TO PLAN FOR ESTIMATE AND VALIDATE OVER 300 STORIES IN UNDER SIXTY MINUTES WITH TRIPLE VALIDATION ON THE ESTIMATES! This Session has been practiced and recorded a number of times. Come see for yourself how using Rapid Estimation Techniques Enables teams to move Much Much Faster and with Greater Accuracy.

Speakers


Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Ft. Worth 1-2

9:00am CDT

The Perils of Prioritisation : Simon Bennett
Many factors affect our ability to prioritise. Not the least of these is Decision Fatigue. Simply put, the more decisions you make, the less able you are to make good decisions in the future. This opens us up to the possibility that by forcing their Product Owners to groom the backlog, well meaning ScrumMasters and Agile Coaches may actually be making their backlogs worse! In this session we'll delve into the science behind how we make decisions, and the toll they take on us every single day. We'll then relate that knowledge to the challenges that "Product Owner" shaped individuals face during the life cycle of a typical Agile Project; as they come to terms with keeping their Stakeholders happy, their Backlog's Prioritised and of course their organisation's value maximised.

Speakers
SB

Simon Bennett

Managing Principle, LASTing Benefits
Simon is currently Managing Principal for LASTing Benefits (UK / Australia). LASTing Benefits is a boutique consultancy specialising in augmenting Lean and Agile adoptions with cognitive complexity and systems thinking techniques to create self sustaining organisational change... Read More →


Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Ft. Worth 5-6

9:00am CDT

Can laughing at our problems actually help us solve them?: Paul Goddard
This session is inspired by a blog post I read explaining how laughter can simulate both sides of the brain to help improve problem-solving capacity. If the ability to laugh at ourselves, our teammates and our work is scientifically proven to increase creative-thinking, can this be a useful tool for an agile coach? Through simple improvisation exercises and role play, this session will provide some useful techniques for coaches to stimulate teams into new ways of thinking by using humour and making each other laugh.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Can laughing at our problems actually help us solve them_.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Paul Goddard



Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Ft. Worth 3-4

9:00am CDT

Using the Competing Values Framework & Five Dysfunctions to Improve Collaboration: Clement 'James' Goebel, Lisamarie Babik
It is not enough to tell the members of your team to be more collaborative. Telling them to "try harder" is not a recipe for success. Instead, improved results come from helping your team see the world in a different light, giving them new tools to use, and the opportunity to practice and fail before expecting mastery. In our organization, and in many others that we have coached, there are two frameworks that have had the greatest impact. The first is the Competing Values Framework. The second is the framework taught by Patrick Lencioni in the "Five Dysfunctions of a Team". In this session we will experience these tools, and explore how we have used them in the past, and how you might use them in the future.

Speakers
avatar for Clement James Goebel III

Clement James Goebel III

Partner / Chief Architect, Menlo Innovations
James Goebel is a founding partner of Menlo Innovations. Menlo uses highly collaborative project teams to design and implement innovative products for clients that place high value on user adoption. The team he helped build at Menlo Innovations has successfully blended an Extreme... Read More →


Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
San Antonio 4-6

9:00am CDT

Deliberate Practice - becoming a better programmer: Alex Aitken
Have you ever wondered how to improve your programming skills and learn new techniques? Work doesn’t always provide a great environment for stretching your abilities to do better work. Learn some ways to practice, and the difference between programming and deliberately practicing programming. Hear stories of applying deliberate practice to teams, and how little time you need to gain benefits from deliberate practice. Learn how developers at all skill levels can greatly benefit from practice. Experience deliberate practice hands-on in the session. Leave the session with all the tools needed to start your journey.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Deliberate_Practice_agile2012_Alex_Aitken.pdf



Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
San Antonio 1-3

9:00am CDT

Understanding Agile Program and Portfolio Management: Mike Cottmeyer
More than 10 years after the signing of the Agile Manifesto, agile is now officially mainstream. PMI is offering an agile certification and you can't hardly find an IT job description that doesn't ask for some sort of Agile experience. As a community, we've become pretty good at setting up agile teams and delivering agile projects. The next frontier for agile methods is tackling the enterprise and one of the toughest nuts to crack will the the traditional PMO. In larger more complex environments, it isn't sufficient to pair a single product owner with a single team and expect that the work of the business is going to get done. We are dealing with larger, more diverse groups of stakeholders, stakeholders who's needs often compete for the attention of the team. Furthermore, the teams have to work together in more complex ways that require tighter integration across teams to deliver larger, more complex feature sets. This talk will explore patterns for dealing with more complex organizations, managing interdependencies between teams, and balancing tradeoffs to optimize the project delivery organization. The key question to answer is 'when will we be done, and what will we get for our time and money'. We want to give the PMO a way to answer this question without having to resort to traditional plan-driven approaches. This talk will lay out just such an approach.

Speakers
avatar for Mike Cottmeyer

Mike Cottmeyer

CEO and Founder, LeadingAgile


Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Austin 1-3
  Enterprise Agile

9:00am CDT

Agile Values, Innovation and 
the Shortage of Women Software Developers: Ken Judy
Women are opting out of software development and leaving established software careers in disproportionate numbers. This is a material burden to the software industry and contributes to software that under-serves women as end users. Agile principles motivate practitioners to drive change into their organizations that support a humane, collaborative, empowered way of working. Organizations embracing these principles have potential to better attract and retain women (and men). As Agile practitioners should we and can we advocate for this outcome? Women represent 46% of the workplace and only 25% of software developers. Over two decades the percentage of women developers has steadily declined. 41% of women professionals leave established careers in high technology. Half leaving the sector completely. The number of women earning Computer Science bachelor’s degrees dropped 55% from 1986 to 1995 despite growing percentages of women graduating from four year colleges. And young women are significantly less interested in studying hard tech then men. Their absence costs the software industry and is an impediment to addressing a market where women are online in equal numbers to men; directly or indirectly influence 61% of consumer electronics purchases; generate 58% of online dollars; and represent 42% of active gamers. Women avoid careers in software development due to hostile environments, unsustainable pace, diminished purpose, disadvantages in pay, advancement, peers and mentors. Agile values steel practitioners for the hard work of confronting impediments, incrementally nudging an organization towards a more collegial, sustainable, creative and productive workplace so that the organization can repeatedly create software of value to stakeholders and of real use to people. These principles and the emergent properties they instill in organizations fight many of the dysfunctions research indicates contribute to women's flight from and avoidance of software careers. Through iterative cycles of knowledge creation and sharing within companies, across enterprises, into academic institutions and out to the media success within development teams can shift the larger culture. Agile adoption itself is an example of this. The result could be more human workplaces and a more social and engaged view of the software developer that will encourage girls to pursue computer science and help the industry recruit and retain larger numbers of talented women. The presenter is developer, manager and executive who has practiced Agile methods for nine years and eleven years working in Women run businesses in the Media industry in New York City.

Speakers

Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Austin 4-6
  Leadership

9:00am CDT

Fixing Broke(n) Governments Through Serious Games: Luke Hohmann
It’s no secret. We’re broke. Local, state and federal governments around the world are all facing budget shortfalls, spending cuts and reduced services. All of us — ordinary citizens, elected officials, civic and community leaders — know that we must make dramatic changes to solve these crises, and yet governments remain gridlocked. How do we move beyond this impasse? How do we create an approach to budgeting that is both participatory and scalable? The answer lies in the serious games pioneered by the Agile Community. In this interactive lecture, participants will learn to conduct in-person and online games built specifically for resolving multi-dimensional budget problems. These games are based on games that have been played for years in the Agile Community. In this session, however, we'll demonstrate that by challenging our own definitions of leadership, we can demonstrate that practices common in many Agile teams can have a massive impact. We will detail the Budget Games played in San Jose, CA, on Jan. 29, 2011 and Jan 21, 2011. In both sessions more than 100 community leaders collaboratively re-crafted the city’s proposed budget. Because the games, which were graciously facilitated pro-bono by many members of the Agile Community, generated actionable consensus, San Jose officials were able to act on the game’s results with more confidence than traditional polling. In the workshop, participants will learn how to run a budget game in their own community and help refine both the in-person and online game prototypes. Brief overview of our process and results from January 2011 (the Jan 2012 games have not been completed): 1. The San Jose Mayor’s office created a list of 18 funding proposals that community leaders could purchase using the basic game structure of the Innovation Game® _Buy a Feature_. The total cost of these items was $14,000,000. The list of items that we used in this game can be found here: [funding proposals](http://innovationgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/fundingproposals.pdf). 2. Community leaders organized into groups of between 7 and 9 players, with 8 players / game as the most common configuration. Each player was given $200,000 to purchase items they wanted. This was a very constrained game, and Community leaders quickly determined that they couldn’t buy much. 3. The Mayor’s office created a second list of budget cuts that the Community leaders could select through unanimous agreement to get more money. This list of potential budget cuts we used in this game can be found here: [reduction proposals](http://innovationgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/reductionproposals.pdf). 4. The pricing and structure of items on either list cannot be adjusted (this is a standard rule for _Buy a Feature_ games). 5. One Innovation Games® Trained Facilitator and One Innovation Games® Trained Observer managed each group to minimize researcher bias and record key aspects of the negotiations. 6. The game was played for 90 minutes. 7. There was no requirement that any items were purchased or cut. The community leaders were in complete control of their virtual money. 8. We prepared a [final report}(http://innovationgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/BidsOnly-Raw-Game-Data.pdf) that allowed City leaders to take action. An even more thorough review of the event results can be found [here](http://innovationgames.com/2011/02/san-jose-ca-community-leaders-budget-games-results/).
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Agile-2012-Presentation-Hohmann.pdf

Speakers


Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Texas 3
  Leadership

9:00am CDT

Cultivating Innovation for the 21st Century Workplace: Derek Neighbors
What role does innovation play in agile software development? Why does the 21st Century workplace need to be any different than the 20th century workplace? What is a collaborative workspace and why does it matter? I work in an IT department of a large organization, why should I care about innovation? What are the hallmarks of a new economy and how does it affect team members or managers?

Speakers
avatar for Derek  Neighbors

Derek Neighbors

CTO, Tanga
I hate filling out this shit.


Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Dallas 6-7
  No Bull Know How

9:00am CDT

Acceptance Tests: Writing with the Future in Mind: Jeff Morgan
Acceptance Test Driven Development is a very popular topic these days. Everybody’s excited about the idea of writing tests prior to development. And yet many teams run into difficulties as they attempt to implement this practice. It is all too easy to fall into the trap of writing acceptance tests that specify every keystroke and button click. Acceptance tests that are tightly coupled to the system under tests are the norm. Most software changes over time and our tests need to be able to adapt to that change. Join Cheezy as he shares the experience and insight he has gained while working with numerous teams implementing ATDD. Cheezy will take us on a journey of discovery where he demonstrates techniques to write Acceptance Tests that describe the essence of what they are specifying while hiding unnecessary details that obfuscate their meaning. Cheezy will also demonstrate how to structure and layer your test code to reduce brittleness and fragility so they will retain their usefulness well into the future.

Speakers
avatar for Jeffrey "Cheezy" Morgan

Jeffrey "Cheezy" Morgan

Continuous Delivery Coach, Tango
Jeff been helping companies improve the way they build software since the early days of Agile. His emphasis on Continuous Delivery has fostered new technical and collaborative techniques that help teams deliver high quality software every day. He is driven by Lean values and principles... Read More →


Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Dallas 3-4

9:00am CDT

Making an Impact: Agile UX Team of One: Virginia Cagwin
Frustrated? Overwhelmed? Wondering if you’re making an impact with your team or company? Being an Agile UX team of one can be very lonely and exhausting, but it doesn’t have to be. You have a whole team of people at your disposal to help you create the best user experience for your customers. With this new team behind you, you'll be sure to make an impact. In this session, you will gain knowledge on how to educate and collaborate with your team to build an Agile UX practice, tools to keep documentation to a minimum, incorporating design methods into the Agile process to help move a project forward, and ways to share with executives how your new UX practice is making an impact. Most importantly, the presenter will share secrets on how to keep you energized throughout a project.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/MakingAnImpact.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Virginia Cagwin

Virginia Cagwin

UX Consultant, Slalom Consulting
Virginia Cagwin is a UX Consultant for Slalom Consulting that practices Lean UX methods to help teams gain shared understanding, focus, and communication. Virginia started her design career has a graphic artist working on brands such as McDonalds, Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robbins... Read More →


Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Dallas 1-2
  User Experience

9:00am CDT

Agile Alliance Lounge

Take a break from Agile2012 action and relax in the Agile Alliance Lounge. Check out the activities of the organization, meet board members, enjoy a refreshing beverage, and pick up Agile Alliance swag. While you are there, inquire about ways you and your company can become more involved in the Agile community, take a look at the updated Agile Alliance roadmap, and see a new graphic banner highlighting historical events in the organization’s history. You are a member - this is your professional organization - be a part of it!

 


Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am - 5:00pm CDT
Grapevine Foyer

9:00am CDT

Agile Philanthropy Dev Lab

The Agile Philanthropy Coding Lab allows attendees to participate in a real agile project for a Not for Profit. Our lab will be staffed with experienced mentors to help you maximize your ability to contribute and learn in the lab. We are dedicated to creating a unique lab experience that uses real projects with real deliverables.

Participate:

• Donate Time by participating for 10 minutes or a Day

• Observe an Agile Project in Action

• Donate money to help the cause

By marrying the efforts of dedicated professionals experiencing Agile Development techniques with communities that need high quality software we hope to be a small part of a positive change. Code developed during the course will be deployed in the final product.

 


Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am - 5:00pm CDT
Center Foyer

9:00am CDT

Coaches Clinic

Want some help with specific challenges you have encountered on your way to a more Agile way of working? Come to the Coaches Clinic in the Open Jam area where you can speak one-on-one with an experienced Agile Coach. We can help you find the right coach to discuss technical practices, organizational change, Scrum, Kanban, Agile Coaching as a career and many other topics. The Coaches Clinic will offer appointments as well as walk-in service.

Look for the schedule board in the Open Jam area.

 


Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am - 5:00pm CDT
Center Foyer

9:00am CDT

Open Jam

Anyone at the conference can convene a session at the Open Jam stage. We encourage interactive sessions providing opportunities to explore Agile ideas and techniques. Sessions don’t need to be formal, like the ones on the program -- it’s more fun if they are not!

Like bees around a jam pot, Open Jam is a buzzing place for thought leaders to hang out, it’s where juicy conversations about edgy and groundbreaking topics happen. Come along to discuss your sticky issues and burning questions. Pick up valuable new insights into topics that are relevant to you today. Sessions run throughout the day and late into the evening. Drop in anytime and join in!

All you need to lead a session is passion and commitment. Come along to our daily huddle at 8:30AM in the Center Foyer space, to grab a timeslot and announce your session to fellow conference participants. You’re also welcome to post your session later in the day -- if you can find an open slot!

We want to keep things fresh so a new Open Jam schedule is created each day and posted up on a big board in the Center Foyer area to give everyone a view of what’s coming up. Take a look in your Badge Holder, you will find (4) nifty Z-Cards featuring the session timetable for each day, Monday – Thursday as well as floor plans and special event information for that specific day.

Follow @Open_Jam on Twitter for updates of what’s happening at Open Jam stage. Be open, join our jam!

 


Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am - 5:00pm CDT
Center Foyer

9:30am CDT

Lean UX from UX Veterans: Lessons Learned in Creating & Launching a Complex Consumer App: beverly may
This session provides and overview and lessons learned from senior UX, product, and software development consultants' experiences in switching from consulting to actually conceiving, designing, developing and ultimately launching a complex consumer application in dating called MinIDates.com. It turns out that our extensive industry experience and past successes couldn't have prepared us for all that we encountered and learned when trying to develop and launch our own consumer startup. We'd like to share what we learned for future teams to benefit! Oxford Technology Ventures, LLC is a boutique user experience and product strategy consulting firm in New York whose members are seasoned veterans in UX, Internet, and software development. Our clients range from large Fortune 100's to small startups, and we've worked on and helped successfully launch or overhaul hundreds of products and services over the years. Like many in the consulting/ agency/ services business, we were feeling "startup envy" and wanted go develop and launch our own service. MinIDates.com was initially conceived as a showcase company case study in superior UX, cutting edge mobile tech, and Lean and Agile development processes where we wouldn't be constrained by our clients' preferences, implementation methods, and product direction revisions. We embarked on developing MiniDates.com in January 2011 after several months of conceiving the product, and ultimately launched it in beta 14 months later- when we had originally thought it would take us only 3-4 months to MVP! This session describes the process we went through - what we tried that worked and didn't, what we should have done that we didn't, and what we encountered that we couldn't have foreseen- in the belief that we can help other UX and product-focused startups and Agile teams be more effective practitioners.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/minidates-otv-agile2012-finalHR.pdf

Speakers


Thursday August 16, 2012 9:30am - 10:00am CDT
Ft. Worth 7

10:00am CDT

A Starting Point for Negotiations - Delivering with a Heterogeneous Team: Alfred Lorber
Sure, working with a fully cross-functional team where all member's time is 100% on the project is ideal, but we must deliver in the real world of specialization and matrixed personnel. In this presentation I will describe a methodology that we have developed that allows our Scrum team to consistently predict our capacity and deliver what we promise sprint after sprint, even though our developer's time is fragmented and specialization is to the point where team members have Ph.Ds in various needed disciplines. The key to this system is to, before each planning meeting, even though it appears blasphemes at first glance: * Map individual team member's capacity to story points. * Estimating the potential sprint backlog's user stories in story points. * Map developers to user stories. The reason this approach works, even though it appears to go against the lean principle of self-empowered teams, as well as many others, is a simple phrase we use over and over, "A starting point for negotiations." I am Scrum Master for a development team at Sandia National Laboratories, one of the three national nuclear weapons Laboratories operated by the United States Government. Our development team provides computer programs written in C++ that use numerical simulation of physical phenomena (i.e. they solve the mathematical equations that govern natural occurrences such as heat conduction, air flow, and fires) to model the physical environment encountered by nuclear weapon delivery systems. Our charter is to provide tools which allow designers to deliver safe and functional systems to the nation's stockpile. Our development team is made up almost entirely of engineer's with Ph.Ds in various disciplines such as Aerospace, Chemical and Mechanical Engineering as well as Physics and Mathematics. The outline of the presentation is as follows: * Introduction * A description of our business space. * A description of our development team's educational background, time demands, how they measure success, how their success is measured. * Our methodology, including our reliance on the the philosophy of "A starting point for negotiations." * A critical look at our methodology. * Criteria for success. * The tools we use. * Metrics demonstrating success. * Concluding Remarks

Speakers
avatar for Alfred Lorber

Alfred Lorber

Agile SME, Sandia National Laboratories
I am currently an Agile SME in the Corporate PMO (Project Management Office) at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM as well as the co-lead of the Agile Community of Practice and PMO Agile Working Group. In the PMO I conduct training, coach individuals and teams, sponsor... Read More →


Thursday August 16, 2012 10:00am - 10:30am CDT
Ft. Worth 7

10:00am CDT

Exhibits Area

Come visit the Agile2012 Sponsors in Grapevine ABCD!

 


Thursday August 16, 2012 10:00am - 2:00pm CDT
Grapevine ABCD

11:00am CDT

Inside-out: Leading Change from the Middle using Lean Tools and Principles: Ed Kraay
When large organizations adopt Agile, they often are described as transforming either top down or bottom up. Left out of this picture is the key role of middle management to help reinvent the company. This interactive workshop explores the how the middle manager can apply lean thinking and tools to lead change efforts and how executives and change agents can help support them through the transition. Audience: For those who manage while reporting to someone above them; for those who lead middle managers; for those who are change agents in large scale Agile adoption. About the workshop facilitator: Ed Kraay is an Agile coach, trainer and software development consultant at Yahoo! In the last 6 years Ed has mentored software teams and leaders from several top 20 global companies, in addition to smaller Bay Area firms. Not only a coach, Ed has experience in the last 3 years leading large programs in mobile, embedded software and gaming. Ed enjoys working in and across teams to eliminate wasteful processes, deliver more value and have more fun in the process. He lives in San Francisco and is still recovering from the deathmarch project that was his son's first year. Ed is a member of the Bay Agile Leadership Network (Bay ALN), and has been a presenter at Agile Development Practices, SDWest, Agile Open Northwest and Agile Open California.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Agile 2012 Inside Out-Leading Change from the Middle.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Ed Kraay

Ed Kraay

Technical Project/Program Mgr, Yahoo!
Ed has been at Yahoo for 3 years. His first job was a coach moving 1000 people all-in to modern software methods. He then worked to spread agile methods across Yahoo as a whole. He now works as a Program Lead for a large strategic project. Prior to Yahoo Ed was an coach for ThoughtWorks... Read More →



Thursday August 16, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Austin 4-6

11:00am CDT

Organizational Agility: The Hidden Goal (And Missed Opportunity) of Agile Transformation: Michael Hamman
Despite over a decade of formal attempts at agile transformation, there are very few real examples of large scale transformation success, and many examples of reversion and failures to scale. The most common pattern we see is that teams transform while everything else remains the same. This leads to increased organizational incongruence, disarray, and ultimately failure. What is needed is a notion of organizational agility that does for the broader organization what software agility does for software delivery teams. In this session we help participants make the case for such a notion, describe the paradigm shift which such a notion calls for, and provide participants with initial steps to influencing organizational agility in their workplace.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/agile2012 -- Organizational Agility FINAL.pptx.pdf

Speakers


Thursday August 16, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Texas D

11:00am CDT

Traversing the Canyon of Anarchy: From Agile Adoption to Agile Transformation: Tamara Sulaiman Runyon
Have you ever begun an Agile adoption, only to watch in dismay and puzzlement as the change fizzles out like a wet firecracker? Have you generated excitement for these new ideas, seen them seem to take root and grow, only to find a year later that people have fallen back into their old ways of doing things? Or, are they now cherry picking Agile practices, perhaps using Agile terms, but ignoring the Agile values? If so, you are not alone. In this talk, Tamara Sulaiman Runyon discusses some reasons why simple practice adoption is not enough; and why transformation is so difficult to make stick in many organizations. Topics include: the nature of change and complex systems models – where do we fit? The key role that vision and leadership play in instigating and supporting transformation; the potential iceberg of organizational culture as a change blocker, as well as people aspects – the levels of discomfort caused by any change; and measuring the growth of competence as Agile practices and values are assimilated.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/TCA_Agile2012_Final.pdf



Thursday August 16, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Austin 1-3

11:00am CDT

Connecting Product Vision to Everyday Agile Work : Kelly Looney
Agile development helps make us more responsive and flexible in building products, but how do we make sure we are building the right product? Unfortunately, simply asking the customer and getting them involved in the effort is usually not enough. Great products surprise customers by addressing needs that customers often cannot articulate. For Product Owners and Agile/Lean team members that want to infuse their projects with a unique product vision capable of disrupting markets and delighting customers. Prioritization becomes clear when the vision is a tool rather than a generic platitude.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/VisionTool.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Kelly Looney

Kelly Looney

30 year software veteran who has been everything from a developer to CEO. Part of the Smalltalk community prior to the Agile community. Worked with Adele Goldberg, Dick Gabriel,and Kent Beck while at ParcPlace Systems. Kelly has introduced Agile ideas to many organizations moving... Read More →



Thursday August 16, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Texas 3

11:00am CDT

How Much Will This Project Cost?: Johanna Rothman
It doesn’t matter if your project is agile or not. Someone wants to know the answer to this question before you’ve started. And, the larger the project or program, the more they want to know. It’s reasonable for people to want to know. And, it can be very difficult or impossible to provide an answer to this question. An iteration zero, no matter how long it is, will not provide you an answer. You can lead the organization by using the transparency that agile provides, and learning how to iterate and how to better the answer as you proceed.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/How Much Will This Project.Cost.r1.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Johanna Rothman

Johanna Rothman

President, Rothman Consulting
Johanna Rothman, known as the "Pragmatic Manager," provides frank advice for your tough problems. She helps leaders and teams see problems and resolve risks and manage their product development. Johanna was the Agile 2009 conference chair. Johanna is the author of several books... Read More →


Thursday August 16, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 5-6

11:00am CDT

How to Mentor Software Apprentices: Doug Bradbury
Everyone is looking for seasoned programmer to add to their organization. There is another option: Grow your own. Come learn about how to start an apprenticeship program within your organization. By` drawing on centuries of learning in craft and trade, we'll explore how you can build a program to teach programers in one of the oldest and best proven methods of education.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/agile 2012 mentorship.pdf

Speakers


Thursday August 16, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 3-4
  Coaching & Mentoring

11:00am CDT

Moving from cooperation to collaboration: Angela Harms
In the workplace cooperation is a given. What sets agile apart is *collaboration*. Where cooperation involves everyone doing their part, a collaborative solution is more than the sum of those parts. Where cooperation helps us choose among ideas, collaboration lets us create new ones. In this workshop, you'll learn specific ways to enhance your teams' ability to fully collaborate, discover solutions only collaboration can create, and experience real collaboration first-hand.

Speakers

Thursday August 16, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
San Antonio 4-6

11:00am CDT

Easily Mocking Dependencies in C++: Bill Hanlon
There’s an often-repeated myth that C++ is not well-suited to doing TDD. This is completely untrue. With a single, simple technique, based on C++ templates, **any** dependency in C++ can be mocked up with very little effort, a technique I call **"Test Base Class Injection"**. It works on automatic variables, parameters, return types, and “C” APIs. The same technique can be applied to legacy code, and even in kernel-mode or straight C.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/EasilyMockingDependenciesInC++.pdf

Speakers
BH

Bill Hanlon

developer, Microsoft


Thursday August 16, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
San Antonio 1-3

11:00am CDT

Distributed Agile in the Enterprise and Virtual Spaces: Melinda Stelzer, Bill Opsal
Good remote collaboration tools and practices can increase the effectiveness and productivity of distributed teams. Using “Virtual rooms”, scrum teams can make eye contact and move themselves around relative to each other and to objects in a virtual space. They can play team building games similar to a collocated scrum team. We will show you how to implement, and share videos of our teams. We also provide advice on remote collaboration gained from industry literature and experience with over 30 highly distributed scrum teams.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Distributed Agile in the Enterprise and Virtual Spaces-2012-08-16.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Bill Opsal

Bill Opsal

Scrum Coach, Ellie Mae



Thursday August 16, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Texas 2
  Distributed Agile

11:00am CDT

Case Study: Being Agile in an Embedded, Product-Line Environment: Harry Koehnemann
Many have discussed agile success stories in the IT domain. But little has been published on agility for embedded, product line systems. This talk presents a case study of one embedded product organization’s adoption of agile practices across multiple product lines. We discuss how the hardware, software, and project management teams collaborate in an embedded agile environment, and their adoption of agile techniques. While successful, there were several challenges faced by these teams. We discuss what practice and tool changes helped overcome some of the challenges and conclude with the existing challenges the teams still face. While the primary audience is embedded systems development, agile practitioners that support multiple product variants would also find this presentation beneficial.

Speakers

Thursday August 16, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Dallas 1-2

11:00am CDT

The evils of multi-tasking and how personal Kanban can help you: Sandy Mamoli
We know for a fact that multi-tasking slows us down both physically and mentally. Agile, Lean, Scrum and Kanban limit work in progress (WIP) on a team and organisational level but what about the personal space? What practices can we use as individuals to avoid multi-tasking and achieve flow? This session will explain the research on and theory behind why multi-tasking is bad at every level and through telling the story of Snapper, a company based in New Zealand, I will show how an entire organisation organically adapted Agile practices to extend from the organisational and team level to the personal and individual space. I will demonstrate how personal Kanban works and how my colleagues and I are using it. I will talk about how Agile on a team level has helped us adopt Agile and Lean practices in our daily work lives and will describe how everyone at Snapper and the organisation as a whole have benefitted from the use of personal Kanban. I will also show the personal Kanban boards that have popped up everywhere around the office. Come along and learn how personal Kanban can help you!
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/kanban41.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Sandy Mamoli

Sandy Mamoli

Me, Nomad8
I'm a former Olympian, a geek, a gadget junkie, international speaker and author of "Creating Great Teams - How Self-Selection Lets People Excel". I have a masters degree in artificial intelligence and I know quite a lot about Agile.


Thursday August 16, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 1-2

11:00am CDT

Demanding Technical Excellence and Professionalism: Robert Martin
The vast majority of software developers have yet to learn the practices and disciplines that constitute professional behavior. That's because those practices have only just recently been defined. The software industry is barely fifty years old. It has taken nearly that long to figure out what software professionalism is. It is only in the last few years that a set of generally accepted software practices have been defined. But now they are here, and it's time for management to demand that professional behavior. In this talk, Robert C. Martin will describe these disciplines, and practices, and will discuss how to raise the professionalism bar in your projects and teams.

Speakers
avatar for Robert Martin

Robert Martin

CleanCoders
Robert Martin (Uncle Bob) (@unclebobmartin) has been a programmer since 1970. He is the Master Craftsman at 8th Light inc, co-founder of the on-line video training company: cleancoders.com , and founder of Uncle Bob Consulting LLC.  He is an acclaimed speaker at conferences worldwide... Read More →


Thursday August 16, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Texas C
  Leadership

11:00am CDT

Selenium Users Anonymous: Dave Haeffner
Hi, my name is Dave, and I'm a recovering Selenium user. I was like you once -- new to Selenium, using the IDE for a quick fix. Oh sure, "Just this once. I'll have plenty of time to change it later." is what you'd say. But before you knew it -- BAM! -- you're in so deep you don't know how to get out. Trying to debug a large suite of brittle tests that constantly break only to find false positives after slow run times along with a nice helping of poor cross-browser coverage. I've seen it a thousand times, and I'm here to tell you, it doesn't have to be this way. Here at Selenium Users Anonymous, we offer practical advice from those that have gone before you -- showing you how to evolve your current Selenium nightmare into a bright automated testing future with our universal 12 step program.

Speakers

Thursday August 16, 2012 11:00am - 12:00pm CDT
Dallas 3-4

11:30am CDT

Leveraging Global Talent for Effective Product Agility: Todd Little
Outsourcing is a reality in many organizations. If is very easy to make outsourcing fail. If teams are willing to put in the effort to make it work, they can discover a world of global talent that is available to help improve their product. This case study from Halliburton shows how together with two outsourcing partners they developed a comprehensive test automation strategy for their agile teams that effectively leveraged both in house and outsourced activities. This approach resulted in a significant quality improvement (90% reduction in exposed defects) from prior releases. Attendees should get the following take aways from this experience report: -outsourcing can work when used judiciously. -test automation can be outsourced -test automation is critical to maintaining development velocity -use global talent effectively and maximize value of all talent
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/GlobalAgilityAgile2012.pdf

Speakers


Thursday August 16, 2012 11:30am - 12:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7

1:30pm CDT

Agile in the bathtub: Gaetano Mazzanti
How does a company produce bathtubs in an agile way? After significant downsizing, a traditional top-down org started to apply agile/lean to their product development. Starting there with Kanban, even Marketing, Operations and Sales started to adopt Agile/Lean principles: all in a non-software context! The talk will show how the Agile/Lean approach has been applied, which have been the main issues and obstacles, which lessons can be learned that can be applied back in the software realm and entertain you big time.


Thursday August 16, 2012 1:30pm - 2:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7

1:30pm CDT

Cars.com’s Agility Transformation Journey (Case Study): Si Alhir (Sinan Si Alhir), Len Lagestee
Cars.com is the leading destination for online car shoppers, visited by more than 13 million people each month. To further fuel its success, Cars.com ventured into an enterprise transformation focused on greater organizational health and agility. The enterprise transformation involved product & project management, product engineering, user experience, enterprise architecture, operations, infrastructure, and leadership. We'll showcase the transformation journey from these perspectives and offer a roadmap with specific actionable lessons learned that you can leverage in your own transformation.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Cars Agile Transformation - Agile 2012 - FINAL.pdf


Thursday August 16, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Texas 2

1:30pm CDT

Essential Patterns of Mature Agile Teams: Bob Galen
Too many agile teams have hit the wall in their performance. Often they think that a few classes, a tools’ purchase, and perhaps a certification or two were all they needed to achieve maturity and high performance. However, it remains elusive to them and often they regress in performance over time. It often helps to understand what "high performance" looks like. In this workshop, we'll explore patterns that capture the essence of agile maturity—those that will help you recognize, guide, and achieve your own breakthroughs and improvements in performance & maturity.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Mature Agile Teams - Essential Patterns v4 - Half day Workshop.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Bob Galen

Bob Galen

Principal Agile Coach, Agile Moose
Bob Galen is an Agile Practitioner, Trainer & Coach based in Cary, NC. In this role he helps guide companies and teams in their pragmatic adoption and organizational shift towards agile methods of working. Bob has been doing that since the late 1990s, so he’s deeply experienced... Read More →



Thursday August 16, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 1-2

1:30pm CDT

Journey to Agility: Coaching a Transformation: Skip Angel
How far can you take Agile within an organization? Is it enough to just focus on Agile team practices like Scrum and XP or is something more needed? Agile is much more than a selection of an SDLC methodology for your teams. It can become a larger organizational change for more agility beyond just product development. The speaker will provide you with an approach that has worked with larger transformations with real life examples of how he has taken companies with little or no knowledge of Agile to an organization with high agility.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/BigVisible - Journey to Agility Agile 2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Skip Angel

Skip Angel

Chief Pathfinder, CA Technologies
I have over 25 years of experience in software development in a variety of roles such as Developer, Project Manager, Consultant and Chief Technology Officer. Over the last 7 years, I have provided thought leadership, training and coaching to new and experienced teams interested in... Read More →



Thursday August 16, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Texas 3

1:30pm CDT

Keeping the Dream Alive: Keys to Agile Sustainability: Susan DiFabio, Dan Neumann
Don't let "we are agile" become "we were agile." Starting a transition to agile is one thing. Making the transition a lasting transformation is something else entirely. Attend this session to gain useful insights into: - Three important aspects of Agile adoption: corporate culture, the managers’ role, and agile metrics - Keys to sustainability - Pitfalls to avoid - Warning signs of backsliding You will leave this session with specific actions you can take to help ensure that your dream of Agility does not become a nightmare of backsliding.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Agile Sustainability - Agile 2012 - DiFabio-Neumann.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Susan DiFabio

Susan DiFabio

Agile Coach, Susan DiFabio Consulting
I am an independent Agile coach focused on helping teams and organizations find success applying Agile principles. I spent many years on project teams performing roles ranging from developer to designer to project manager to product manager. During that time I witnessed first-hand... Read More →
avatar for Dan Neumann

Dan Neumann

Agile Coach, AgileThought
Dan Neumann is an experienced agile coach and enthusiast with expertise in both traditional development methodologies and Agile development using Scrum and XP practices. Dan has a record of working in environments that require experience from a range of disciplines and requires coordination... Read More →


Thursday August 16, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Texas D

1:30pm CDT

1000 Words - Illustrating Project Challenges with Visuals: Chirag Doshi, Tarang Baxi
A project can face varied challenges through its life, foreseen and otherwise - runaway scope, high defect volumes, depressed velocity, and many more. Addressing many of these first requires recognition of the problem and then action from one or more sets of project stakeholders. Telling the story with simple visuals can be a very powerful way to articulate a challenge (the what), the potential root causes (the why) and the options available to fix it (the now-what). In this workshop, participants will use role-play to go through such a project scenarios and try to tell their stories to other project stakeholders through visuals.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/1000Words.pdf

Speakers


Thursday August 16, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 5-6

1:30pm CDT

ScrumMaster: The Coach Approach: Alida Cheung, Derek Hawkes
After introducing and teaching agile to a team or an organization, many of us encounter the challenge of acceptance and making the practice stick. Equally important is the fostering of sustainability and continual induction of newcomers to the culture. A change in behavior / culture is essential; but it is subtle and tricky. Behavioral change comes about with the shifting of belief as well as being. As ScrumMasters, we play a central, powerful, and influential role in this transformation. We are “in the trenches” with our teams day in and day out. We are the embedded Agile coaches. Our being and doing are instrumental to building highly effective, collaborative, and self-organizing Scrum teams. How do we inspire our Scrum teams to embrace the mechanics and treasure the Agile values without pushing, driving, or enforcing? How do we support them in their process adaptation while keeping the principles, and eventually enjoy the flow and joy of collaboration? While this session is tailored for the ScrumMaster, the concepts and the techniques can be applied by anyone in the organization.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/ScrumMaster-TheCoachApproach-Agile2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Alida Cheung

Alida Cheung

Alida is a Senior Program Manager and ScrumMaster at Salesforce.com, and was one of the first ScrumMasters and a key member of the Salesforce.com Agile Rollout Team during the R&D organizations enterprise-wide “big bang” transformation to agile. Since then she has worked with... Read More →


Thursday August 16, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 3-4

1:30pm CDT

Extreme Interviewing—Scale your Team, Preserve your Culture, Feel the Joy: Gregory Haskins, Benjamin Root
A quick way to wreck your organizational culture is to hire someone with a great resume and no kindergarten skills. How can teams grow without sacrificing their communication, trust, and values? Menlo Innovations uses a peer-driven hiring process called Extreme Interviewing to help our team answer the question "Does this candidate belong on our team?" In this workshop, we will show you how we interview dozens of candidates in a single evening by observing them as they work together instead of asking them questions. And you will see why candidates brought on as a result are a better fit for the culture of our team, which is a joyful thing indeed.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/extreme_interviewing_slides.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Gregory Haskins

Gregory Haskins

Developer/High-Tech Anthropologist® for Menlo Innovations in Ann Arbor, MI. We do custom design and development for a wide variety of clients, leveraging Agile and Lean practices to make sure they capitalize on the Business Value of Joy. I joined the team in 2011 and have gone from... Read More →
avatar for BENJAMIN ROOT

BENJAMIN ROOT

Online Education, UNLV



Thursday August 16, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
San Antonio 4-6

1:30pm CDT

Three Pair Programming Games: Zachary Shaw, Moss Collum
Pair programming is one of the fundamental technical practices of Agile, but even experienced developers can find it hard to master. In this hands-on session, we’ll demonstrate three games you can use to structure and improve your pairing sessions. You’ll learn ways to develop your pairing skills, to make pairing sessions more engaging and effective, and to apply pairing in difficult situations such as reading legacy code. Come prepared to do some programming! If you can, please bring a laptop with a working development & testing environment. The choice of language is up to you. NOTE: Because it’s possible that two people will be working in a language & env that they’re not familiar with, please have either an easy to use IDE, that’s kind of point and clicky or a vanilla text editor (no vim or emacs) and an easy way to run the tests.

Speakers
avatar for Zachary Shaw

Zachary Shaw

Engineering Manager, Brightcove


Thursday August 16, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
San Antonio 1-3

1:30pm CDT

Modeling, Simulation & Data Mining: Answering Tough Cost, Date & Staff Forecasts Questions: Troy Magennis
This presentation shows how to apply Monte-carlo simulation to Scrum and Kanban project models, and then use that model in a variety of ways for experimentation. The results can be used to build a date, staff and cost forecast for projects, and to find what development factors (defects, scope-creep, etc.) are causing the most impact. If you hate estimation, this session demonstrates how to mine data from an existing lifecycle management tools, and then model your process to determine what estimates will make the biggest difference in forecast, allowing you to eliminate other (un-necessary) estimation effort. Agile teams and Executive Management of larger enterprises are often at political odds when it comes to needing estimates, delivery forecasts and the impact of outsourcing. Through the use of modeling and simulating Agile projects as described in this session, you have techniques for quickly answering tough management questions without overburdening the development teams. Modeling and simulating potential project outcomes hundreds of times (using estimate ranges rather than single values) achieves a higher degree of outcome certainty leading to accurate forecasts, and well-informed management decisions. Finding insight from cycletime and other metrics that can be automatically extracted from lifecycle management tools makes modeling and simulation more accessible than ever before. During this session, the process to answer and solve the following questions will be explained - 1. How to reverse engineer and interpret historical data from lifecycle management tools. 2. Does it make economic sense to outsource development or testing? 3. What is the dollar cost of poor quality code (defect leakage)? 4. Do I manage the added-scope problem, or code quality problem first? 5. How do I get the staff I need? By the end of this session you will understand the basics of modeling and simulation, understand the types of problems simulation solves, how to communicate likelihood of outcomes with executive leadership, and be positioned to start applying these fundamentals on your own teams and projects.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Modeling, Simulation & Data Mining - Agile 2012 (Magennis & Maccherone).pdf

Speakers
avatar for Troy Magennis

Troy Magennis

President, Focused Objective
Troy is the founder and consultant for Focused Objective LLC the leading quantitative analysis and forecasting vendor for the software industry for the last five years. He regularly speaks at industry conferences and promotes the better use of historical data, metrics and quantitative techniques to anyone who listens. Troy has worked at all le... Read More →



Thursday August 16, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Austin 1-3
  Enterprise Agile

1:30pm CDT

Velocity is Killing Agility!: Jim Highsmith, Pat Reed
We know that we can only manage what we can measure – but how do we measure productivity, predictability, quality and value delivery of our agile projects and initiative? This interactive session was inspired by the response to Jim’s blog by the same title that drew over 8,000 hits in 4 days and will explore how we should (and shouldn’t) measure the success of agile projects and initiatives. As agile practices have spread widely during the last decade we still struggle with measuring progress in the same ways we did with traditional projects. Is velocity just another productivity measure that we shouldn’t be using? How is it helpful? What else should we measure – and how do we effectively measure value or cycle time? Jim Highsmith and Pat Reed will facilitate an exploration of these questions from both conceptual and very practical perspectives.


Thursday August 16, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Texas C
  Enterprise Agile

1:30pm CDT

5 Free Leadership Tools that Improve Agile Results: Pollyanna Pixton
Free? Free? What do you mean, free? What can you, as a leader, do in your organization to improve company performance without spending any money? From experience working with leaders inside organizations such as IBM, Headwaters, and Headstart as well as research into what drives organizational performance, we have uncovered five things leaders can do that will not cost them a penny and, when implemented effectively, will make a positive impact on their top and bottom lines. What are these ‘magic’ activities? Let's take a look. Start with creating a culture of trust. While we can't make people trust each other, leaders can create an environment that fosters trust building. Next, Agile is based on team ownership. However, many leaders struggle with how to help teams take ownership and often make the mistake by taking ownership back from teams.Leaders cannot change or "fix" people. People do what they are passionate about. Leaders who match passion and skills to roles on teams can see improved productivity. Finally, integrity is essential. These tools are all free.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/5 Free Things 15-Aug-12.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Pollyanna Pixton

Pollyanna Pixton

President, Accelinnova
Pollyanna Pixton's career focus has been to help develop great leaders who bring collaboration, trust and ownership into their organizations to improve the work environment and increase productivity and innovation.



Thursday August 16, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Austin 4-6
  Leadership

1:30pm CDT

It is the culture, stupid, but don't you dare touch it: Israel Gat
Why does organizational culture matter? Isn’t adopting agile all about changing the culture? What does culture have to do with technical debt or devops? How have your experiences as an executive made you think about culture change? When is the right time to think about culture? To elaborate a little, Peter Drucker's estimates that it takes 10 years to change a culture. In the Agile context, I never met anyone who had a 10 year charter. Hence, folks try to speed up the culture change and run into a lot of resistance (and more often than not fail). IMHO the way to do it is to induce behavioral changes through changing the environment. In a way you could think of it as behavioral psychology approach versus traditional Freudian theory mixed with a dash of complexity theory.

Speakers
IG

Israel Gat

Independent Software & IT Consultant, The Agile Executive
Dr. Israel Gat is an independent software and IT consultant specializing in large scale end-to-end engagements. He is recognized as the architect of the agile transformation at BMC Software where, under his leadership, Scrum users increased from zero to 1,000, resulting in nearly... Read More →


Thursday August 16, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Dallas 6-7
  No Bull Know How

1:30pm CDT

Big Data, Little Tests: John Heintz
This session is an easy introduction to writing small automated tests for very Big Data systems. If you're considering Hadoop, Cassandra, or Riak but don't know how you would begin with good developer testing practices, then this talk is for you. I'll be showing live test execution and debugging for some very Big systems: 1. The ant/maven config to enable testing 1. How to connect to a local or in-memory testing harness 1. Demonstrate execution and debugging in an IDE The code and configuration will be published on GitHub for all to repeat what's shown. The session agenda is: 1. Brief presentation introducing Big Data technologies. 1. An hour of code/test live demonstrations. 1. Discuss the hard questions: large test datasets and test execution performance. 1. Wrap up with Q&A.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/BigDataLittleTests-Heintz.pdf

Speakers
avatar for John Heintz

John Heintz

Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium
John Heintz is the president and principal technologist of Gist Labs. He is an experienced agile manager, particularly in lean and kanban. In 2008, John founded Gist Labs to further focus on the essential criteria for innovative success. John’s accomplishments include doubling the... Read More →



Thursday August 16, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Dallas 3-4

1:30pm CDT

Exploring UX techniques and practices - When should they be applied? Get some practice!: Ariadna Font
The need to incorporate UX practices and techniques into Agile is quickly becoming a no-brainer. But how do experts do it? Let's find out so that you can do it too!
In this highly collaborative workshop, we will start by reviewing unfamiliar UX practices and techniques suited for different stages of the product life cycle. Example UX techniques that we'll explore include Stakeholder maps, Personas, Story maps, UX maps, Storyboards, Contextual inquiry, Visual Project Board and Backlog, paper prototypes, Behavioral-Driven Development (BDD) and do-it-yourself (or guerrilla) Usability Testing.
Then, we'll put theory to practice and have a focused collaborative design session allowing teams to pick their technique of choice for each stage.
Come to this session to:
  • Find out the newest lean UX techniques
  • Put UX techniques to practice with a team and learn to effectively deliver an MVP fast
  • Enlighten us with your new favorite UX technique(s)
  • Experience collaborative and iterative design first hand
  • Build up the confidence to initiate collaborative creative thinking about ideas that have a business impact and that will wow your users

http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Exploring UX Practices 4 product development Agile2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Ariadna Font

Ariadna Font

UX Lead & Development Manager, IBM
I'm the UX Lead at Vivisimo, an IBM Company, building enterprise search software. I have been practicing, introducing and spearheading Agile and UX methods at Vivisimo with the ultimate goal to improve communication, gain shared understanding and increase happiness. I strive to... Read More →


Thursday August 16, 2012 1:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Dallas 1-2

2:00pm CDT

Adobe Premiere Pro: Agile Adoption success in a hyper-competitive landscape: Peter Green
Prior to adopting an agile approach, Premiere Pro suffered from brutal death marches that put people in the hospital and struggled to compete against other video production powerhouses (Apple,Avid). Since adopting scrum in 2008 and continuously improving its scrum approach and product ownership techniques the death marches are a thing of the past and Premiere Pro has taken a leadership position in the video production space. Our presentation walks you through the approach we took, the things we’ve learned, the success factors (both agile-related and not), and where we hope to go next.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/adobe_premiere_pro_scrum_adoption_peter_green.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Peter Green

Peter Green

Certified Scrum Trainer, Agile For All
Peter Green led a grass roots Agile transformation at Adobe from 2005 to 2015, starting with his own team, Adobe Audition. His influence includes the teams behind such software flagships as Photoshop, Acrobat, After Effects, Flash, Dreamweaver and Premiere Pro, as well as dozens of... Read More →


Thursday August 16, 2012 2:00pm - 2:30pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7

2:30pm CDT

Real World Agile: Going All-In with Agile at Performance Health Technology: Chad Casady
In 2009, PH Tech went "all-in" and began the adoption of agile methodologies throughout the software development process. In this session, you'll take a multi-year journey with a growing small business and experience the transition from the blissful ignorance of cowboy-coding through the misery and despair of a sinking, dysfunctional organization, and on to the satisfaction and exhilaration that comes with a high-functioning agile team. This session describes both the pain and the fulfillment that comes with developing software in a small business, before, during, and after agile.

Speakers

Thursday August 16, 2012 2:30pm - 3:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7

3:30pm CDT

Slow Down to Go Fast: Lessons Learned Shipping Bing Voice Search on Xbox : James Waletzky, Randy Santossio
Are you the tortoise or the hare? Many software teams today practice "rapid development" techniques, and while it is true that some practices and methods produce results more quickly than others, slowing down and (potentially) building less, leads to higher quality and efficiency gains in the long run. At Microsoft, "Slow down to go fast" was the mantra of the Xbox voice search team, taking on the persona of the "tortoise" to successfully deliver on our objectives with high quality. By adhering to the principles of Agile while being agile in our methodologies and practices, the team found a flexible but structured framework to work within. Paramount to this collaboration was the close partnership between developers and testers. Out of this collaboration grew a set of philosophies and best practices that lead to a successful product launch. Come hear a development lead and senior tester talk about went well and what they learned, with a focus on slowing down to go fast to early cycle - and ultimately shipping - quality. In this session, participants will learn the what and why of our best practices, including: - The "Buddy System" employed by development and test - Code reviews, buddy building and buddy testing - Interactive design and documentation using OneNote - Driving crisp and test-driven "done" definitions - The right level of unit testing and test automation with feedback from code coverage Target Audience - Software engineers, particularly developers and testers, with a basic knowledge of agile development principles - Agile development teams that tend to ship with lower quality and large volumes of technical debt (e.g. bugs and refactoring work that never gets done) - Agile development teams that have to work with several dependencies to ship one product
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Slow Down to Go Fast - Agile 2012 - Slides.pdf

Speakers
JW

James Waletzky

Director of Agile Development and QA Practices, Crosslake Technologies
Active. Pain in the ass. Fun (at least I try). Dedicated. Organized.



Thursday August 16, 2012 3:30pm - 4:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7

3:30pm CDT

Pragmatic, Not Dogmatic TDD: Rethinking How We Test: Joseph Yoder, Rebecca Wirfs-Brock
This presentation challenges the "norm" for TDD. Testing should be an integral part of your daily programming practice. But you don’t always need to derive your code via many test-code-revise-retest cycles to be test-driven. Some find it more natural to outline a related set of tests first, and use those test scenarios to guide them as they write code. Once they’ve completed a “good enough” implementation that supports the test scenarios, they then write those tests and incrementally fix any bugs as they go. As long as you don’t write hundreds of lines of code without any testing, there isn’t a single best way to be Test Driven. There’s a lot to becoming proficient at TDD. Developing automated test suites, refactoring and reworking tests to eliminate duplication, and testing for exceptional conditions, are just a few. Additionally, acceptance tests, smoke tests, integration, performance and load tests support incremental development as well. If all this testing sounds like too much work, well…let’s be practical. Testing shouldn’t be done just for testing’s sake. Instead, the tests you write should give you leverage to confidently change and evolve your code base and validate the requirements of the system. That’s why it is important to know what to test, what not to test, and when to stop testing.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/PragmaticNotDogmaticTDD - Agile2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Rebecca Wirfs-Brock

Rebecca Wirfs-Brock

Wirfs-Brock Associates
I'm best known as the "design geek" who invented Responsibility-Driven Design and the xDriven meme (think TDD, BDD, DDD..). I'm keen about team effectiveness, communicating complex requirements, software quality, agile QA, pragmatic TDD, and patterns and practices for architecting... Read More →
avatar for Joseph Yoder

Joseph Yoder

Agilist, Computer Scientist, Consultant, Object Oriented Developer, ..., The Refactory, Inc (www.refactory.com)
Joseph Yoder is a founder and principle of The Refactory, Inc., a company focused on software architecture, design, implementation, consulting and mentoring on all facets of software development. Joseph is an international speaker and pattern author, a long standing member of the... Read More →



Thursday August 16, 2012 3:30pm - 4:30pm CDT
Dallas 3-4

3:30pm CDT

Agile Antipatterns: The Agilist’s Guide to Traps, Tripwires, & Treachery: Adam Weisbart
Knowing the basics of being Agile is essential for any team member, but out in the trenches, a good Agilist must be ready to identify and deal with Agile Antipatterns on the fly to help his team and organization move forward.

 What's an Agile Antipattern? Something that at first blush may seem Agile and useful, but in practice is usually harmful to an agile initiative. It's important to be able to sniff these out since they can damage your organization, and are often slippery to catch. Once they're caught, what does one do with them? Don't worry, we'll come up with a plan together. Through this interactive workshop, participants will gather a wealth of Agile Antipattern knowledge that will act as a guide for remedying these troubling but common problems in the field. We’ll use data collected from The Agile Antipatterns Project (http://AgileAntipatterns.com), and the real-world Antipatterns participants bring to the table. If you're struggling with a problem in the field, there's a very good chance you'll leave with a game plan to address it.

Speakers
avatar for Adam Weisbart

Adam Weisbart

Corporate Agilist, Weisbart Consulting, Inc
Adam Weisbart’s humorously irreverent approach to the serious work of organizational change helps teams and individuals break out of old patterns and discover new ways to improve. His belief that hard work need not be a somber affair infuses everything he does. Adam started his... Read More →


Thursday August 16, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Texas 2

3:30pm CDT

How to Change the World: Jurgen Appelo
“How do I make my managers more Agile?” “How can I convince developers to educate themselves?” “How can I make customers more cooperative?” “How do I start a European network of Agile and Lean practitioners?” When transforming organizations and other social systems people usually encounter obstacles. And these obstacles very often involve changing other people’s behaviors. Of course, we cannot really _make_ people behave in a different way. We also cannot really make people laugh, and we cannot really make people happy. But… we can certainly try! This session is about *Change Management 3.0*. It is a new change management “super model” which views organizations as complex adaptive systems and social networks. The Change Management 3.0 supermodel wraps various existing models (*PDCA*, *ADKAR*, *Adoption Curve* and *The 5 I's*). It lists a few dozen hard questions that can help people in their attempts to change the behaviors of other people in an organization and beyond. No matter whether you are a manager, Scrum Master, Product Owner, software developer or writer, anyone will find it useful to know how to change the world around them. For example, some of the questions that will be considered are... • What Are the Crucial Steps? • How Do You Get Feedback? • How Do You Make It Desirable? • What Makes It Sustainable? • Who Will Be the Innovators? • How Will You Deal With Skeptics? • What Is the Group Identity? • Can You Incentivize Good Behavior? • Etc...
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/How to Change the World v2.0 (USA).pdf

Speakers
avatar for Jurgen Appelo

Jurgen Appelo

CEO, Agility Scales
With my company Agility Scales, I am inventing the future of organizational agility. Why are we wasting our time learning how to manage companies, when very soon computers will navigate us through our work-lives and help us to lead and manage our teams?As a serial founder, successful... Read More →


Thursday August 16, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Texas D

3:30pm CDT

Play the Customer Development Game: A lean approach to business model discovery : Adrian Howard
Agile teams are great at building what you want—but how do you know what your customers need? In this game-based workshop you learn how Customer Development lets you discover the right product before you build the wrong business. Customer Development, a core element of Lean Startup, provides an alternative to creating a Big Business Plan Up Front. You will learn how to incrementally build a business model—using lightweight descriptions of business hypotheses that you can test against real customers.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/custdevgame-placeholder.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Adrian Howard

Adrian Howard

Quietstars
Adrian Howard is passionate about building effective teams and great products. He co-founded Quietstars to help organisations do that using Lean, Agile and User Experience practices. You'll find Adrian working with startup and product development teams — doing everything from... Read More →


Thursday August 16, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 5-6

3:30pm CDT

Wetware Craftsmanship: Better Coaching Through Improved Understanding of the Mind: Brian Bozzuto, Devin Hedge
Modern organizations have developed an excessive focus on human beings as logical and emotionless beings at work - seeing us as no different than the computers on our desks - to the detriment of understanding and improving the way that people actually think. It's time to commit ourselves to the craft of using our brain. Learn how developments in neuroscience have given us insights into the inner workings of the mind, some of those discoveries reinforce coaching concepts that have been around for over a century, while others have novel and exciting implications on how to best utilize your most important, and very finite resource: your mind. We’ll explore the limitations of the mind, as well as strategies to amplify its effectiveness and answer questions like why stand ups should be in the morning and why that member of the team is just so resistant to your helpful suggestions.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Wetware_Craftsmanship.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Devin B. Hedge

Devin B. Hedge

Business Agility, Product Discovery and Lean Experimentation.



Thursday August 16, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 3-4

3:30pm CDT

Motivated and Hyper-productive Agile Teams by Abolishing Performance Appraisals: Michael Mallete
Who among you have that uneasy feeling during each and every scheduled performance appraisal? Supervisors tend to dislike it, employees are repelled by it. And yet it is still practiced. We Agile practitioners do not lack the values and principles to drive ourselves to excellent performance. And yet get de-motivated by company policies and practices that operate under false assumptions. Performance appraisals try (and fail) to provide solutions to specific areas in the world of work. Worse, it risks driving a culture of disempowerment and direct towards individualism over collaboration. What do we do instead?
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/mmallete_workshop.pdf

Speakers
MM

Michael Mallete

Mike Mallete was one-fifth of the global Agile Coaching team for Sabre Airline Solutions — having trained, mentored and coached over 100 member teams across four continents, from senior management to junior developers. Aside from overseeing the consulting business of Orange and... Read More →



Thursday August 16, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Dallas 1-2

3:30pm CDT

Systems Thinking through Play: Patrick Kua
Ever wonder why people behave the way they do, and it doesn't make any sense? Systems Thinking helps explain the unusual behaviour that arises in organisations, teams and individuals. Learning to see what might be driving people's behaviour helps you improve your team and organisation's ability to collaborate more effectively. Fear not as this won't be lecture. It's hard to fully develop an appreciation of Systems Thinking (and often harder to explain it), so why not experience for yourself through a series of engaging activities. Each activity will explore a key concept of Systems Thinking and leave this workshop looking at the world from a different perspective.

Speakers
avatar for PATRICK KUA

PATRICK KUA

Chief Scientist, N26
Patrick Kua is the chief scientist of the mobile bank N26 (Berlin, Germany), where he is building the engineering group that will change modern retail banking for people like you and me. Formerly a Principal Technical Consultant at ThoughtWorks, he is the author of three books, The... Read More →


Thursday August 16, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
San Antonio 4-6

3:30pm CDT

What Does 'Self-Organizing Team' Really Mean?: Esther Derby
"Self-organizing team" may be the most over-used, mis-understood, vague, and mis-leading term of the decade. So what is a self-organizing team? How are self-organizing teams different from other teams? How can managers and team members get the self-organizing mojo going? What are the challenges that self-organizing teams face? In this workshop, we'll explore all these questions and get beyond the buzzword.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/SOAgileTeamsDerby2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Esther Derby

Esther Derby

Founder, esther derby associates, inc.
I draw on four decades of experience leading, observing, and living through organizational change. In 1997, I founded esther derby associates, inc. and work with a broad array of clients from Fortune 500 companies to start ups. My approach blends attention to humans and deep knowledge... Read More →


Thursday August 16, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Texas C

3:30pm CDT

'How am I doing?' - Personal Retrospectives on Developing One's Craft: Diana Larsen
Diana Larsen (co-author of "Agile Retrospectives" and "Liftoff") will lead a retrospective on the week with a focus on "How am I doing? Exploring my personal best" in a hands-on, highly interactive session in which participants develop an individualized plan for further professional development.

Speakers


Thursday August 16, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
San Antonio 1-3

3:30pm CDT

Adopting CMMI® into Your Scrum Methodology: Susan Strain, Lee McKinney
To some, the combination of Capability Maturity Model-Integration (CMMI®) and Scrum is akin to the mixture of oil and water. We will alleviate some of the concerns that participants may have when CMMI® is introduced into a Scrum environment. At a high level, attendees will be able to crosswalk their Agile/Scrum artifacts to satisfy evidentiary requirements for a Maturity Level 2 Standard CMMI® Appraisal Method for Process Improvement (SCAMPI A). Then they will learn how to tie up the loose ends with other standard project management artifacts. The end result will be a fully-populated Scrum/CMMI® alignment matrix.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Geocent Scrum CMMI (without animations).pdf


Thursday August 16, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Texas 3
  Enterprise Agile

3:30pm CDT

Dollars and Dates are Killing Agile: Brent Barton
Agile teams speak in points and iterations, but project and business managers think in terms of dollars and dates. This conceptual and language barrier makes strategic business planning, funding, and progress management a significant challenge for sustained large-scale Agile. This session will include multiple case studies from large-scale Agile adoptions that we were part of and have supported over the past 7 years and how Agile values/principles went beyond just the development organizational boundaries into strategic planning and management.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Dollars and Dates are Killing Agile final.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Brent Barton

Brent Barton

Founder, River Rock Endeavors
As Principal and Founder of River Rock Endeavors, Brent strives to bring agility into the business side of organizations so we can leverage what lean and agile methods offer. Previously, Brent was a Product Line Director at Rally Software. Rally Software acquired Agile Advantage... Read More →



Thursday August 16, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Austin 1-3
  Enterprise Agile

3:30pm CDT

Risk Management is Too Important for Project Managers: Mike Griffiths
This workshop introduces an integrated set of collaborative team games for the entire risk management process. It starts by explaining the significance of risk management on projects by reviewing research statistics on the billions of dollars wasted annually on projects that fail due to poor risk management. Having established the importance of risk management a set of 8 new team based tools for agile risk management are introduced. By deliberately moving risk management from a project management activity to a team activity we dramatically increase the collective knowledge, visibility and in-depth insights into the issues and solutions for project risks. Through collaborative games each of the 6 PMI Risk Management steps are recreated as highly visual, team based activities that then create risk avoidance and risk mitigation stories for the product backlog 1. **Plan Your Trip** – (Risk Management Planning) a. 4Cs - Consider the Context, Costs, Consequences and Choices b. Deposits and Bank Fees – understanding features and risks 2. **Find Friends and Foes** – (Risk and Opportunity Identification) a. Doomsday clock, b. Karma-day c. Other risk identification forms (risk profiles, project risk lists, retrospectives, user story analysis, Waltzing with Bears - Top 5-10 for software) 3. **Post Your Ad** – (Qualitative Risk Analysis) a. Investors and Help Wanted – classification and visualization of opps and risks b. Tug of War – project categorization 4. **Today’s Forecast** - (Quantitative Risk Analysis) a. Dragons Den – next best dollar spent b. Battle Bots - simulations 5. **Backlog Injector** – (Risk Response Planning) a. Junction Function – choose the risk response path b. Dollar Balance – Risk / Opp EVM to ROI comparison c. Report Card - Customer/Product owner engagement d. Inoculator – inject risk avoidance/mitigation and opportunity stories into backlog 6. **Risk Radar** – (Risk Monitoring and Control) a. Risk Burn Down Graphs - Tracking and monitoring b. Risk Retrospectives - Evaluating the effectiveness of the risk management plan c. Rinse and Repeat - Updating risk management artifacts, revisiting process These techniques overcome many of the correct-but-not-sufficient aspects of traditional risk management: * Poor engagement - dry, boring, academic, done by PM, does not drive enough change * Done once – typically near the start, when we know least about the project * Not revisited enough – often “parked” off to one side and not reviewed again * Not integrated into project lifecycle – poor tools for task integration * Not engaging, poor visibility – few stakeholders regularly review the project risks Why so visual? Visual representation helps engage the left and right hemi-spheres of the brain. They allow us to tap into our spatial awareness / memory to avoid forgetting about risks and are the reason today’s military use visual tokens to represented enemy forces, despite having access to sophisticated tools. The impacts of forgetting about them can be fatal. The same goes for project risks.

Speakers
MG

Mike Griffiths

Consultant, Leading Answers
Mike Griffiths is an experienced project manager and agile coach with a long history of contributions to the agile and project management community. He helped create the agile approach, DSDM, in 1994 and has been using agile approaches on his projects ever since. He served on the... Read More →


Thursday August 16, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Ft. Worth 1-2
  Enterprise Agile

3:30pm CDT

It's all about teamwork - getting a team to turn into a high-performing engine: Jeff Sutherland
Why aren’t all teams hyper productive? What’s fun got to do with work performance? What first three steps should a new team take to move toward high performance? My manager wants performance metrics, what team performance measures do you use? How can you tell when a team is becoming more productive? What’s the most high performing team you ever saw and how did you know?
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/ScrumMetricsAgile2012.pdf

Speakers
avatar for Jeff Sutherland

Jeff Sutherland

Founder and Chairman, Scrum, Inc.
CoCreator of Scrum



Thursday August 16, 2012 3:30pm - 5:00pm CDT
Dallas 6-7
  No Bull Know How

4:00pm CDT

Skiing and Boxing: Coaching Product and Enterprise Teams: Sergey Prokhorenko
Successful Agile transitions depend on a coaching approach as much as development of a good sports team. One is not going to assign the same exercising programs to pro skier and boxer and exactly the same applies to the development teams In our study we summarized experience from Agile transformation projects in different areas from travel website to investment bank risk management software. What makes the difference between B2C product developer and enterprise automation consultant? We are going to discuss common points and distinctive features in requirements management, innovations, customer collaboration and team motivation.
http://submit2012.agilealliance.org/files/session_pdfs/Agile 2012 - Skiing and Boxing final.pdf


Thursday August 16, 2012 4:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
Ft. Worth 7

7:00pm CDT

Conference Party

We reserved the final evening for this year's Agile2012 conference party. It will certainly be a party that you won’t want to miss! It will include scrumptious food, talented flair bartenders - entertainment rarely found at software conferences.

Make your way to the Glass Cactus Nightclub for the Agile2012 Conference Party. The grand finale to a fabulous week will be worth the short walk to the venue. Volunteers will be stationed at the Front Lobby entrance to escort guests to the Glass Cactus. Continuous shuttles will also be available to and from the event from 18:45 – 22:45.

The party kicks off with a laugh from comedian Todd Justice [and no, he is not related to Joe Justice]. Todd’s Texas-size humor and facial expressions will be entertaining for all. The party doesn’t end there! Popular local band Emerald City will play the night away with hits from Frank Sinatra to Earth, Wind & Fire to Top 40 hits of today! The dance floor will be as electrifying and infectious as music from Emerald City!

 


Thursday August 16, 2012 7:00pm - 11:00pm CDT
Glass Cactus Nightclub
 
Friday, August 17
 

9:00am CDT

Adventures of an Accidental Entrepreneur. A High Tech Teleradiology Venture from India: Dr. Sunita Maheshwari
This presentation traces the journey of a one man one room company in India started by a Doctor without a job, to its present status as the number 1 nationally ranked teleradiology company in the United States. Lessons learnt along the way of this unlikely journey are lessons for all entrepreneurs and employees. The convergence of technology and healthcare is brought alive in this session by a Yale trained Pediatric Cardiologist turned India based health care entrepreneur.


Friday August 17, 2012 9:00am - 10:30am CDT
Texas A-B
  Keynote

9:00am CDT

Agile Alliance Lounge

Take a break from Agile2012 action and relax in the Agile Alliance Lounge. Check out the activities of the organization, meet board members, enjoy a refreshing beverage, and pick up Agile Alliance swag. While you are there, inquire about ways you and your company can become more involved in the Agile community, take a look at the updated Agile Alliance roadmap, and see a new graphic banner highlighting historical events in the organization’s history. You are a member - this is your professional organization - be a part of it!

 


Friday August 17, 2012 9:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Grapevine Foyer

11:00am CDT

Managing a collaborative multi-national team in real time: Joe Justice
Team WIKISPEED entered a $10 Million competition to produce road legal 100+ mpg cars. They built the impossible in three months. Joe Justice will talk about Agile practices applied to enormously speed up physical manufacturing. Joe leads WIKISPEED, a team of 71 volunteers in 6 countries, and walks through how their 100 MPG road car was made possible through modular design, iterative development, and Agile project management. Joe takes a deep dive on exactly how Agile from software projects is applied to physical engineering and manufacture. Joe will use the example and of the design and development of their revolutionary 100 mpg, gasoline powered, four-seat car with a target price of $17,995. This ground breaking work expands the agile process to design and manufacturing of the car. The talk will provide tools and take-aways for engineers and executives, in manufacturing and software, looking to improve their processes. New professionals and students can see examples of the value found in pairing, prioritized backlog driven development, and extreme programming, as they see the methodology jump from software teams to research, manufacturing, and product engineering. For those who have participated in WIKISPEED talks before, this session will be the deepest dive into Agile, Kanban and Lean applied to conquer a highly regulated industry with large, distributed collaborative teams.

Speakers
JJ

Joe Justice

President Scrum Hardware, Scrum Inc.


Friday August 17, 2012 11:00am - 12:30pm CDT
Texas A-B
  Keynote
 
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