Agile2018

Abstract:
What is this thing everyone calls Agile? If you have been doing software development a different way your whole career you may be wondering why should I change, what’s so different? In this introductory talk we will define why Agile is more than a process or methodology; it really involves changing your culture to improve your software development. To provide some additional context we’ll also:

• Look back at how the Agile methods and practices emerged
• Discuss the Agile Manifesto and 12 Principles and their resulting impact on the way that we do software development today
• Describe what it’s like to work on Agile Project
• Describe what you can do next Monday to get started

Learning Outcomes:

• * Learn common myths and misconceptions of agile
• * Understand the why behind what we do
• * Understand the importance of identifying your existing culture and how it impacts adopting agile

Abstract:
Some teams seem to have some mysterious chemistry from the beginning. Other teams wallow, bicker, and slog their way to uncertain results. What makes one team soar, and another stumble? It's not just chance.
In this session, you'll experience what it's like to work on a team that is set up for success--or one that starts with the deck stacked against them. We'll explore the essential ingredients that result in that mysterious "chemistry." For example, we’ll examine the prerequisites for cohesion, and factors that pull teams apart. We'll look at myths and realities of software teams.
You'll gain tools to assess your agile team, and insights on how to adapt the environment for growing great teams.

Learning Outcomes:

• Learning Outcomes:
• Identify the essential elements for great teams.
• Strategies to adapt the environment to improve the chance of team success.
• Identify common pitfalls for agile teams.

Abstract:
Is "product owner" just a role at software companies, or does every enterprise need them? What does this person actually "own"? How can you completely mess up the role and what does success look like? Product ownership is one of the most important pieces of a software team, and in this talk, we'll take a deep look at what it entails. Here, we'll talk about the job description, what makes a successful product owner, how to fail miserably (from personal experience!), and tips for creating the maximum impact in the role.

Learning Outcomes:

• * Role of the product owner
• * Best ways they can contribute to their teams

Attachments:

• product-ownership-explained.pdf

Abstract:
As a career software tester, I've heard rumors DevOps culture will put me out of a job, so I took a job testing for a DevOps team. I'm new to DevOps, but aren't we all? What matters most is our teams' intentional decisions to grow our DevOps practices along with our development community.
Join me as I share my experiences blending disciplines, companies, levels of experience, and differing expectations as a member of efficient and effective delivery teams. I'll describe common cultural and interpersonal problems I experienced while transforming a cross-functional agile team dogfooding a DevOps implementation.
Whether you're into development, operations, testing, customer support, or product ownership, you'll leave with concrete strategies for improving your DevOps working relationships to keep the technology running smoothly. People factors strongly affect your DevOps technical outcomes, so optimizing your flow includes improving your people practices.
Don't feel afraid to ask about DevOps anymore!

Learning Outcomes:

• The people factors that strongly affect your DevOps technical outcomes How to blend teams from different companies To sort through process and role differences Apply the Agile mindset in support of DevOps

Attachments:

• CMoss - Everything DevOps 2018.pdf
• CMoss - Everything DevOps Handout 2018.pdf

Abstract:
Agile isn’t about preventing mistakes, it’s about making mistakes cheaper.
Years ago I was on a project that seemed to make every mistake a project can make. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane and look at all the mistakes that could and did go wrong and which of the 6 agile development practices helps us not to prevent the mistake, but to make it so cheap as to not be worth remembering.
The 6 Development practices:
Onsite customer
Pair Programming
Refactoring
Continuous Integration
Test Driven Development
Iterative Development

Learning Outcomes:

• How to reduce the costs of mistake around:
• Doing what is asked but not wanted.
• Misestimating what % is done
• Bugs
• Misunderstanding requirements
• Employee turnover
• Hard to understand code

Abstract:
This will be a 75 minute interactive session that will explore the 5 phases of a retrospective by actively participating in one. Instead of learning how to do a retrospective through theory, workshop participants will learn by doing

Learning Outcomes:

• 1. To practically engage in the 5 phases of a retrospective
• 2. Understand the importance and value of retrospectives
• 3. Learn some different techniques to use

Attachments:

• Agile2018_Retro.pdf

Abstract:
Leading a large-scale agile transformation isn’t about adopting a new set of attitudes, processes, and behaviors at the team level… it’s about helping your company deliver faster to market, and developing the ability to respond to a rapidly-changing competitive landscape. First and foremost, it’s about achieving business agility. Business agility comes from people having clarity of purpose, a willingness to be held accountable, and the ability to achieve measurable outcomes. Unfortunately, almost everything in modern organizations gets in the way of teams acting with any sort of autonomy. In most companies, achieving business agility requires significant organizational change.
Agile transformation necessitates a fundamental rethinking of how your company organizes for delivery, how it delivers value to its customers, and how it plans and measures outcomes. Agile transformation is about building enabling structures, aligning the flow of work, and measuring for outcomes based progress. It's about breaking dependencies. The reality is that this kind of change can only be led from the top. This talk will explore how executives can define an idealized end-state for the transformation, build a fiscally responsible iterative and incremental plan to realize that end-state, as well as techniques for tracking progress and managing change.

Learning Outcomes:

• Participants will leave the session with an understanding of how to build an organizational business case for agile, how to craft a transformation strategy and roadmap, how to build consensus internally for the transformation, and how to support the transformation with meaningful metrics that reinforce and support the changes.
• Furthermore, we will go through how to structure the transformation, how to create an effective communication plan, and how to do all the necessary change management to make sure that everyone stays safe and supported through the transformation.