While first generation agile methods have a solid track record at the team level, many agile transformations get stuck trying to expand throughout the organization. With a set of principles that can help improve software development quality and productivity, lean thinking provides a method for escaping the trap of local optimization. While agile teams can use lean principles to improve their practices, larger organizations can embrace lean to solve problems that commonly plague company-wide agile endeavors. Alan Shalloway explores the lean principles of mapping value streams, creating visibility, managing work levels, and more. Together, these lean principles and practices can help your organization dramatically reduce the amount of waste in the work that teams perform. He introduces kanban, an agile method that is a strong implementation of lean principles. Alan closes with agile adoption case studies that illustrate how lean thinking can extend Scrum practices.
Because transitioning to agile can be difficult—and often wrenching—for teams, many organizations are turning to kanban practices. Kanban, which involves just-in-time software delivery, offers a more gradual evolution to agile and is adaptable to many company cultures and environments. With kanban, developers pull work from a queue—taking care not to exceed a threshold for simultaneous tasks—while making progress visible to all. Alan Shalloway shares eight steps to adopt kanban in your team and organization. He begins with a value stream map of existing processes to establish an initial kanban board, providing transparency into the state of the current workflow. Another step is to establish explicit policies to define workflow changes and engender project visibility. Because kanban can easily be expanded to cover many parts of development, another step is to increase stakeholder involvement in the process. Join this interactive session to practice these key steps with hands-on exercises. By the end, you will have an initial plan for implementing kanban in your organization.
2021 marks the 20 anniversary of the Agile Manifesto. Yet many organizations are still struggling to clearly improve value delivery for their customers. In this talk Scott Ambler and Mark Lines explain why agile has struggled in the past and what we can do about it. Go beyond agile rhetoric, agile methods and frameworks and learn how to optimize agility for your situation, not others. We can do better, and it is not difficult. Disciplined Agile can help. The journey starts with an investment in learning, optimizing for your situation, and then removing obstacles to accelerate delivery and delight your customers.
AgileLIVE – Accelerate Enterprise Agile with the Scaled Agile Framework®: Part IVersionOne
Interested in finding out how to scale agile faster, easier and smarter using the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe)? If so, make sure you watch this two-part webinar series!
Scrum, XP, Kanban and related methods have been proven to provide step changes in productivity and quality for software teams. However, these methods do not have the native constructs necessary to scale across the enterprise. What the industry desperately needs is a solution that moves from a set of simplistic, disparate, development-centric methods, to a scalable, unified approach that addresses the complex constructs and additional stakeholders in the organization – and accelerates the realization of enterprise-class product or service initiatives via aligned and cooperative solution development.
Part I: Join Dean Leffingwell, software industry veteran and Lean Systems Society Fellow, for an overview of SAFe, a publicly–accessible knowledge base of proven lean and agile practices for enterprise-class software development.
Dean Leffingwell, software industry veteran and Lean Systems Society Fellow, has spent his career helping software teams achieve their goals. A renowned methodologist, author, coach, entrepreneur and executive, Dean's most recent project is the Scaled Agile Framework (scaledagileframework.com), a public-facing website which describes a comprehensive system for scaling lean and agile practices to the largest software enterprises.
Andy Powell is Product Evangelist for VersionOne and Scaled Agile Framework Program Consultant. During his 12-year career in the software development industry, Andy has assisted in numerous 500+ person agile tool rollouts with companies such as Siemens, Adobe, EMC and Sabre, giving him considerable experience in leading major projects. Andy received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame and graduated magna cum laude.
Lee Cunningham is an Enterprise Agile Coach for VersionOne focused on agile program and portfolio management. Lee has trained and consulted with hundreds of teams in organizations of all sizes in the US, Canada and the UK. Lee served in the United States Air Force and earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of North Florida.
Building upon well established Scrum, XP, and lean software development methods, agile scaling frameworks such as Dean Leffingwell's Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and Scott Ambler's Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) address large, complex software delivery initiatives through their full delivery lifecycle from project initiation to production. These frameworks have received significant interest in both federal government and private industries, recognizing the need for continued team-based iterative and incremental adaptive approaches to software development, balanced with scaling processes and factors at the Program and Portfolio levels and organizational governance models and guidance for large enterprise engagements. This session will provide a brief overview of these two agile scaling models, address the benefits of what both are trying to accomplish, and compare and contrast specific similarities and differences.
Because transitioning to agile can be difficult—and often wrenching—for teams, many organizations are turning to kanban practices. Kanban, which involves just-in-time software delivery, offers a more gradual evolution to agile and is adaptable to many company cultures and environments. With kanban, developers pull work from a queue—taking care not to exceed a threshold for simultaneous tasks—while making progress visible to all. Alan Shalloway shares eight steps to adopt kanban in your team and organization. He begins with a value stream map of existing processes to establish an initial kanban board, providing transparency into the state of the current workflow. Another step is to establish explicit policies to define workflow changes and engender project visibility. Because kanban can easily be expanded to cover many parts of development, another step is to increase stakeholder involvement in the process. Join this interactive session to practice these key steps with hands-on exercises. By the end, you will have an initial plan for implementing kanban in your organization.
2021 marks the 20 anniversary of the Agile Manifesto. Yet many organizations are still struggling to clearly improve value delivery for their customers. In this talk Scott Ambler and Mark Lines explain why agile has struggled in the past and what we can do about it. Go beyond agile rhetoric, agile methods and frameworks and learn how to optimize agility for your situation, not others. We can do better, and it is not difficult. Disciplined Agile can help. The journey starts with an investment in learning, optimizing for your situation, and then removing obstacles to accelerate delivery and delight your customers.
AgileLIVE – Accelerate Enterprise Agile with the Scaled Agile Framework®: Part IVersionOne
Interested in finding out how to scale agile faster, easier and smarter using the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe)? If so, make sure you watch this two-part webinar series!
Scrum, XP, Kanban and related methods have been proven to provide step changes in productivity and quality for software teams. However, these methods do not have the native constructs necessary to scale across the enterprise. What the industry desperately needs is a solution that moves from a set of simplistic, disparate, development-centric methods, to a scalable, unified approach that addresses the complex constructs and additional stakeholders in the organization – and accelerates the realization of enterprise-class product or service initiatives via aligned and cooperative solution development.
Part I: Join Dean Leffingwell, software industry veteran and Lean Systems Society Fellow, for an overview of SAFe, a publicly–accessible knowledge base of proven lean and agile practices for enterprise-class software development.
Dean Leffingwell, software industry veteran and Lean Systems Society Fellow, has spent his career helping software teams achieve their goals. A renowned methodologist, author, coach, entrepreneur and executive, Dean's most recent project is the Scaled Agile Framework (scaledagileframework.com), a public-facing website which describes a comprehensive system for scaling lean and agile practices to the largest software enterprises.
Andy Powell is Product Evangelist for VersionOne and Scaled Agile Framework Program Consultant. During his 12-year career in the software development industry, Andy has assisted in numerous 500+ person agile tool rollouts with companies such as Siemens, Adobe, EMC and Sabre, giving him considerable experience in leading major projects. Andy received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame and graduated magna cum laude.
Lee Cunningham is an Enterprise Agile Coach for VersionOne focused on agile program and portfolio management. Lee has trained and consulted with hundreds of teams in organizations of all sizes in the US, Canada and the UK. Lee served in the United States Air Force and earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of North Florida.
Building upon well established Scrum, XP, and lean software development methods, agile scaling frameworks such as Dean Leffingwell's Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and Scott Ambler's Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) address large, complex software delivery initiatives through their full delivery lifecycle from project initiation to production. These frameworks have received significant interest in both federal government and private industries, recognizing the need for continued team-based iterative and incremental adaptive approaches to software development, balanced with scaling processes and factors at the Program and Portfolio levels and organizational governance models and guidance for large enterprise engagements. This session will provide a brief overview of these two agile scaling models, address the benefits of what both are trying to accomplish, and compare and contrast specific similarities and differences.
Hybrid Development Workshop Presentation (San Francisco)Brian Dawson
Brian Dawson, Manager of Enterprise Transformation at CollabNet, leads a workshop on Bi-Modal or Hybrid Development within the enterprise. Bring together an organizations people, process and tools.
Keynote dean-leffingwell-keynote-be-agile-scale-up-stay-lean
Safe
Why SAFe
Pillars of SAfe
Value
Respect for People
Product development
Kaizen
Leadership
Agile manifesto
Leveraging Cloud data to optimize your product decisions and Agile processes ...AgileSparks
In this session we will share innovative directions in which the Hewlett Packard Agile Manager development team, leverages big data analytics to optimize its agile processes and align with customer feedback.
We will focus on
- What are challenges of developing a an Enterprise product in continuous delivery
- Personas involved in the process and their related challenges
- Importance of Customer feedback and incorporating it in the development process
We will discuss how production data is utilized to support decision making, prioritization and continuous improvement in development ,quality and product usability.
Opportunities for Project Managers in the Lean-Agile Enterprise with SAFeRichard Knaster
The shift towards Lean-Agile approaches for software and systems development continues to grow at an accelerated rate. As a result, the opportunities for Project Managers in the midst of this transition have never been greater. Over 70% of the Fortune 100 are using the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) to implement Lean-Agile practices. In this webinar, SAFe Fellow Richard Knaster (PMP, PMI-ACP) and SAFe Senior Program Consultant Trainer Dr. Steve Mayner (PMP, PMI-ACP) will outline the opportunities for Project Managers within the context of SAFe, as well as how SAFe addresses core PMI knowledge areas such as: - Scope management - Time management - Cost management - Quality management - Risk management There will be an opportunity for Q&A at the end of the presentation.
Introduction to Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) : Presented by Dr. Sanjay Sa...oGuild .
Introduction to Disciplined Agile (DA): Learn about the four delivery lifecycles supported by DA; how DA is a hybrid that shows how proven practices from a range of sources fits together; how to take a flexible, non-prescriptive approach to agile development; the importance of being enterprise aware.
Disciplined Agile roles: Team Lead (ScrumMaster), Product Owner, Architecture Owner, Team Member, Stakeholder + five more optional scaling roles.
Inception Phase: Covers key activities for initiating a DA team, including initial requirements modelling, initial architecture modelling, initial release planning, strategies for your physical and virtual work environments, initial risk identification, and driving to a shared vision with your stakeholders.
Construction Phase: Describes many technical strategies for building consumable increments of your solution, including test-driven development (TDD), acceptance TDD, how to initiate an iteration/sprint, look-ahead modelling and planning, spikes, regular coordination meetings, continuous integration, continuous deployment, whole-team testing, parallel independent testing, information radiators, Kanban boards, burn up charts, and many more. In this module we also look at agile construction from a traditional point of view, showing how activities such as architecture, analysis, design, testing, management, and user experience (UX) are addressed all the way through the lifecycle.
Transition Phase: Overviews strategies for releasing the solution to your stakeholders.
Introduction to the International Consortium for Agile (ICAgile)Ahmed Sidky
The International Consortium for Agile (ICAgile) accredits training organizations, corporations, academic institutes and government entities, thereby providing their members with over 20 knowledge-based and competency-based certifications to pursue, based on the ICAgile Learning Roadmap created by experts from around the world.
ICAgile is the only certification and accreditation body to offer knowledge-based and competency-based certifications in every discipline needed to sustain agility in an organization. ICAgile has engaged over 40 International Agile gurus and experts to create the most comprehensive agile learning roadmap.
The roadmap is intentionally designed to focus on the education of agile not on any particular flavor or methodology of agile to ensure that every organization, can utilize the educational roadmap as it matures and customizes it agile processes and practices. ICAgile’s Learning Roadmap includes over 20 different certifications covering the disciplines of Agile Executive Leadership, Agile Coaching and Facilitation, Agile Enterprise Coaching, Agile Project Management and Governance, Agile Value Management and Business Analysis, Agile Software Design and Programming, and Agile Testing.
What are the Agile Metrics That Matter Most? Are they at the team-level? project/project? What about the people-side of agile (the "soft stuff"). What are common pitfalls to avoid? We categorize agile metrics into those about Value, Flow, Quality & Culture, and identify the most frequently used (and misused) in each of those areas.
These slides--based on the webinar featuring leading IT analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) and IBM--reveal the challenges of managing today’s complex IT environments and the benefits associated with moving to a true hybrid IT management approach.
AIPMM Webcast: Project/Product Views of High Performing Product TeamsAIPMM Administration
A cross-functional discussion of each of the five key factors from the perspective of the study authors who represent the perspectives of product management and project management.
AIPMM Membership benefits include the national Product Management Educational Conference, regional conferences, the Career Center, peer Forums, tools, templates, publications and eligibility to enroll in the Certification Programs. The Agile Certified Product Manager® (ACPM), Certified Product Manager® (CPM), Certified Product Marketing Manager® (CPMM), Certified Brand Manager® (CBM), and Certified Innovation Leader (CIL) programs allow individual members to demonstrate their level of expertise and provide corporate members an assurance that their product professionals are operating at peak performance.
http://www.AIPMM.com
Subscribe: http://www.aipmm.com/subscribe
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/aipmm
Membership: http://www.aipmm.com/join.php
Certification: http://aipmm.com/html/certification
Webinar Series: http://aipmm.com/aipmm_webinars/
Articles: http://www.aipmm.com/html/newsletter/article.php
Moderated by Cindy F. Solomon, CPM, CPMM
Founder, Global Product Management Talk @ProdMgmtTalk
http://www.prodmgmttalk.com
http://bit.ly/nbw9Yr
Agile for Embedded & System Software Development : Presented by Priyank KS oGuild .
Priyank shared the experience of challenges in being Agile in Embedded/System software development. The effective approaches to handling such challenges were discussed. The importance of eXtreme Programming practices in solving the challenges was highlighted.
Scrum is a popular and proven project management framework for rapidly changing development projects, especially those with significant technology uncertainty or evolving requirements. Since its inception fifteen years ago, Scrum has grown to be the leading agile methodology, boasting nearly 100,000 Certified ScrumMasters. In this highly interactive (no slides) introductory session, Mitch Lacey serves up the tools you need to get started with Scrum. Using Scrum to manage the session, you will learn the value of prioritization and how to do it, why timeboxing works, and how to determine a release plan using team velocity and more. As you are learning these techniques, Mitch answers your questions to help ensure your successful Scrum and agile adoption. Mitch also describes the roles and responsibilities of the ScrumMaster, the product owner, and each member of the Scrum team. This experiential workshop gets you started on the path to success.
In today’s business environment, organizations cannot afford to resist change and move slowly. They have to move quickly, adapt frequently, and turn on a dime when conditions demand it. This is not always easy to do. Organizations of all shapes and sizes can become rooted in habits and processes that get in the way of efficiency and productivity. Adopting lean and agile practices is a great way to break free from those impediments. However, if leaders want their teams to be transparent and agile, the leaders must first embrace those practices themselves and lead by example. Based on his experience as CEO of LeanDog, Jon Stahl shares how he and his leadership team apply agile and lean techniques not only to delivering software but also to running the company. Explore practices including Fist of Five, Six Thinking Hats, Collaboration 8, and building Big Visual Rooms complete with Program Alignment Walls, Key Performance Indicators, and “Delight” walls.
Hybrid Development Workshop Presentation (San Francisco)Brian Dawson
Brian Dawson, Manager of Enterprise Transformation at CollabNet, leads a workshop on Bi-Modal or Hybrid Development within the enterprise. Bring together an organizations people, process and tools.
Keynote dean-leffingwell-keynote-be-agile-scale-up-stay-lean
Safe
Why SAFe
Pillars of SAfe
Value
Respect for People
Product development
Kaizen
Leadership
Agile manifesto
Leveraging Cloud data to optimize your product decisions and Agile processes ...AgileSparks
In this session we will share innovative directions in which the Hewlett Packard Agile Manager development team, leverages big data analytics to optimize its agile processes and align with customer feedback.
We will focus on
- What are challenges of developing a an Enterprise product in continuous delivery
- Personas involved in the process and their related challenges
- Importance of Customer feedback and incorporating it in the development process
We will discuss how production data is utilized to support decision making, prioritization and continuous improvement in development ,quality and product usability.
Opportunities for Project Managers in the Lean-Agile Enterprise with SAFeRichard Knaster
The shift towards Lean-Agile approaches for software and systems development continues to grow at an accelerated rate. As a result, the opportunities for Project Managers in the midst of this transition have never been greater. Over 70% of the Fortune 100 are using the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) to implement Lean-Agile practices. In this webinar, SAFe Fellow Richard Knaster (PMP, PMI-ACP) and SAFe Senior Program Consultant Trainer Dr. Steve Mayner (PMP, PMI-ACP) will outline the opportunities for Project Managers within the context of SAFe, as well as how SAFe addresses core PMI knowledge areas such as: - Scope management - Time management - Cost management - Quality management - Risk management There will be an opportunity for Q&A at the end of the presentation.
Introduction to Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) : Presented by Dr. Sanjay Sa...oGuild .
Introduction to Disciplined Agile (DA): Learn about the four delivery lifecycles supported by DA; how DA is a hybrid that shows how proven practices from a range of sources fits together; how to take a flexible, non-prescriptive approach to agile development; the importance of being enterprise aware.
Disciplined Agile roles: Team Lead (ScrumMaster), Product Owner, Architecture Owner, Team Member, Stakeholder + five more optional scaling roles.
Inception Phase: Covers key activities for initiating a DA team, including initial requirements modelling, initial architecture modelling, initial release planning, strategies for your physical and virtual work environments, initial risk identification, and driving to a shared vision with your stakeholders.
Construction Phase: Describes many technical strategies for building consumable increments of your solution, including test-driven development (TDD), acceptance TDD, how to initiate an iteration/sprint, look-ahead modelling and planning, spikes, regular coordination meetings, continuous integration, continuous deployment, whole-team testing, parallel independent testing, information radiators, Kanban boards, burn up charts, and many more. In this module we also look at agile construction from a traditional point of view, showing how activities such as architecture, analysis, design, testing, management, and user experience (UX) are addressed all the way through the lifecycle.
Transition Phase: Overviews strategies for releasing the solution to your stakeholders.
Introduction to the International Consortium for Agile (ICAgile)Ahmed Sidky
The International Consortium for Agile (ICAgile) accredits training organizations, corporations, academic institutes and government entities, thereby providing their members with over 20 knowledge-based and competency-based certifications to pursue, based on the ICAgile Learning Roadmap created by experts from around the world.
ICAgile is the only certification and accreditation body to offer knowledge-based and competency-based certifications in every discipline needed to sustain agility in an organization. ICAgile has engaged over 40 International Agile gurus and experts to create the most comprehensive agile learning roadmap.
The roadmap is intentionally designed to focus on the education of agile not on any particular flavor or methodology of agile to ensure that every organization, can utilize the educational roadmap as it matures and customizes it agile processes and practices. ICAgile’s Learning Roadmap includes over 20 different certifications covering the disciplines of Agile Executive Leadership, Agile Coaching and Facilitation, Agile Enterprise Coaching, Agile Project Management and Governance, Agile Value Management and Business Analysis, Agile Software Design and Programming, and Agile Testing.
What are the Agile Metrics That Matter Most? Are they at the team-level? project/project? What about the people-side of agile (the "soft stuff"). What are common pitfalls to avoid? We categorize agile metrics into those about Value, Flow, Quality & Culture, and identify the most frequently used (and misused) in each of those areas.
These slides--based on the webinar featuring leading IT analyst firm Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) and IBM--reveal the challenges of managing today’s complex IT environments and the benefits associated with moving to a true hybrid IT management approach.
AIPMM Webcast: Project/Product Views of High Performing Product TeamsAIPMM Administration
A cross-functional discussion of each of the five key factors from the perspective of the study authors who represent the perspectives of product management and project management.
AIPMM Membership benefits include the national Product Management Educational Conference, regional conferences, the Career Center, peer Forums, tools, templates, publications and eligibility to enroll in the Certification Programs. The Agile Certified Product Manager® (ACPM), Certified Product Manager® (CPM), Certified Product Marketing Manager® (CPMM), Certified Brand Manager® (CBM), and Certified Innovation Leader (CIL) programs allow individual members to demonstrate their level of expertise and provide corporate members an assurance that their product professionals are operating at peak performance.
http://www.AIPMM.com
Subscribe: http://www.aipmm.com/subscribe
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/aipmm
Membership: http://www.aipmm.com/join.php
Certification: http://aipmm.com/html/certification
Webinar Series: http://aipmm.com/aipmm_webinars/
Articles: http://www.aipmm.com/html/newsletter/article.php
Moderated by Cindy F. Solomon, CPM, CPMM
Founder, Global Product Management Talk @ProdMgmtTalk
http://www.prodmgmttalk.com
http://bit.ly/nbw9Yr
Agile for Embedded & System Software Development : Presented by Priyank KS oGuild .
Priyank shared the experience of challenges in being Agile in Embedded/System software development. The effective approaches to handling such challenges were discussed. The importance of eXtreme Programming practices in solving the challenges was highlighted.
Scrum is a popular and proven project management framework for rapidly changing development projects, especially those with significant technology uncertainty or evolving requirements. Since its inception fifteen years ago, Scrum has grown to be the leading agile methodology, boasting nearly 100,000 Certified ScrumMasters. In this highly interactive (no slides) introductory session, Mitch Lacey serves up the tools you need to get started with Scrum. Using Scrum to manage the session, you will learn the value of prioritization and how to do it, why timeboxing works, and how to determine a release plan using team velocity and more. As you are learning these techniques, Mitch answers your questions to help ensure your successful Scrum and agile adoption. Mitch also describes the roles and responsibilities of the ScrumMaster, the product owner, and each member of the Scrum team. This experiential workshop gets you started on the path to success.
In today’s business environment, organizations cannot afford to resist change and move slowly. They have to move quickly, adapt frequently, and turn on a dime when conditions demand it. This is not always easy to do. Organizations of all shapes and sizes can become rooted in habits and processes that get in the way of efficiency and productivity. Adopting lean and agile practices is a great way to break free from those impediments. However, if leaders want their teams to be transparent and agile, the leaders must first embrace those practices themselves and lead by example. Based on his experience as CEO of LeanDog, Jon Stahl shares how he and his leadership team apply agile and lean techniques not only to delivering software but also to running the company. Explore practices including Fist of Five, Six Thinking Hats, Collaboration 8, and building Big Visual Rooms complete with Program Alignment Walls, Key Performance Indicators, and “Delight” walls.
The Challenges of BIG Testing: Automation, Virtualization, Outsourcing, and MoreTechWell
Large-scale testing projects can severely stress many of the testing practices we have gotten used to over the year. This can result in less than optimal outcomes. A number of innovative ideas and concepts have emerged to support industrial-strength testing of large and complex projects. Hans Buwalda shares his experiences and the strategies he's developed and used for large testing on large projects. Learn how to design tests specifically for automation and how to successfully incorporate keyword testing. The automation discussion will include virtualization and cloud options, how to deal with numerous versions and configurations common to large projects, and how to handle the complexity added by mobile devices. Hans also outlines the possibilities and pitfalls of outsourcing test automation. The information presented is based on his nineteen years of worldwide experience with testing and test automation involving large projects with test cases executing continuously for many weeks on multiple machines.
Going Agile at Scale: A Mindset Transformation of Global ProportionsTechWell
How do you successfully transform 700 people working on one product? The answer: Give them ownership. Value people over process. This requires that leaders learn how and when to step back—and when to step up. In the past eight years, the Veritas NetBackup organization had tried three agile transformations: two unsuccessful and one showing promise. The key difference has been the transformation of the leaders, helping teams take ownership rather than focusing only on artifacts and ceremonies. What did the leaders learn—and how? Julie Urban and Jeff Byron describe NetBackup’s transformation story, and discuss concepts and techniques that made the difference. They describe learning to lead a leader, how to ask questions and not give answers, and other tools. Julie and Jeff share what they would do differently and where current challenges lie. Appreciate a culture of empowerment, ownership, and trust, created by people at all levels of the organization.
Doing Agile in a Waterfall World? Without Breaking Your NeckTechWell
Although many of us want to use only agile practices, we often work alongside teams with strong waterfall traditions. If you’ve had trouble finding ways for your agile ideas to co-exist peacefully with traditional lifecycles, this session is for you. Jared Richardson describes key integration points between waterfall and agile teams, and demonstrates the best ways to work together-or to perform clean hand-offs, if necessary. He shows how to use adaptive planning while still providing accurate progress status to traditional PMO counterparts. Jared reviews popular agile practices and discusses how they best function in a hybrid environment. Together, you and Jared will build a common vocabulary, examine two project models-one traditional and one agile, and then combine them in a hybrid that keeps the best of both worlds. Leave knowing how to link a traditional project's large, coarse-grained goals to an individual story in a short iteration-without breaking your neck on waterfall!
Have you ever needed a way to measure your leadership IQ? Or been in a performance review where the majority of time was spent discussing your need to improve as a leader? If you have ever wondered what your core leadership competencies are and how to build on and improve them, Jennifer Bonine shares a toolkit to help you do just that. This toolkit includes a personal assessment of your leadership competencies, explores a set of eight dimensions of successful leaders, provides suggestions on how you can improve competencies that are not in your core set of strengths, and describes techniques for leveraging and building on your strengths. These tools can help you become a more effective and valued leader in your organization. Exercises help you gain an understanding of yourself and strive for balanced leadership through recognition of both your strengths and your “development opportunities.”
In this interactive session, Scott Ambler explores a vitally important, nitty-gritty, down-in-the-weeds aspect of agile—how to take an agile model-driven development (AMDD) approach to enhance and scale your software delivery capabilities. Correctly applied, AMDD enhances your modeling and documentation efforts, streamlines agile development, and reduces false starts and rework. Scott addresses critical modeling issues that pertain to all agile projects—how to successfully model the complexities of modern-day software without getting bogged-down in mountains of paperwork, how to document systems in an agile manner, how to scale agile development methods with an agile approach to modeling and documentation, how to take an evolutionary approach to user interface and database design, and how modeling extends and supports test-driven development to address the full exploration of requirements, architecture, and design. Join Scott to dig into this vital—yet often ignored—aspect of agile development.
As organizations try to meet faster delivery schedules and improve collaboration between development and operations, DevOps has become a hot topic. So, where does testing fit into a DevOps strategy? By narrowly focusing on just Dev and Ops, the term DevOps itself ends up missing testing. Nikhil Kaul gives an overview of recent trends in DevOps, specifically changes that have taken place in the testing industry in the past year. Nikhil explores why testing is becoming more important than ever before. With Apple, Google, and Microsoft making it easier for Dev and Ops to build and deploy cross-platform apps, there is more to test—and less time in which to test. Testing can become a bottleneck to the entire DevOps process, especially when automated UI-based test suites start failing due to a layout or a backend change. Nikhil explores how testing can facilitate the transformation to DevOps, ways to build a scalable testing framework, and important reusability practices that can be applied—from development and test to operations—to reduce post-deployment debugging time.
Ready and Fit: Adopting Agile in Highly Regulated EnvironmentsTechWell
If you live and work in a highly regulated environment (HRE)-medical devices, DoD and its contractors, nuclear energy, or other life-critical systems-this session is for you. For the past three years, the SEI has been researching agile and lean adoptions in the US Department of Defense. Suzanne Miller presents the organizational and cultural factors they identified as most important for development organizations to demonstrate when embarking on an agile adoption program. In the SEI's technology transition research, Suzanne and her team found that the more closely an organization meets the readiness and fit criteria, the more likely it is that the adoption will succeed. Suzanne discusses the risks and challenges that agile adoption presents to HREs, and presents ways to mitigate risks and overcome challenges. Find out about agile readiness assessments you can conduct before proceeding and then use as a check along the way to your organization's agile adoption.
Scaling Scrum with Scrum™ (SSwS): A Universal FrameworkTechWell
Scrum is a simple framework allowing a single team, working from a single backlog, to maximize the value it delivers to its stakeholders. Unfortunately, your organization probably has more than one team and more than one backlog—but you still need to maximize the value to your stakeholders. You need Scrum, but how do you scale it for your organization? Dan Rawsthorne proposes Scale Scrum with Scrum™; tie your organization’s development scrum teams together with Leadership Teams and Coordination Teams. These are scrum teams that assure that each development team has a backlog, that the backlogs as a whole maximize value to the stakeholders, and that cross-cutting issues are dealt with quickly and appropriately. Simply put, these two-team patterns make sure that the right people are having the right conversations at the right time. People keep rediscovering these patterns in many different situations. Most common scaling frameworks use them—either knowingly or unknowingly—and lock them into particular configurations while adding unnecessary process baggage.
History repeats itself as people once again become addicted to process. Today’s difficult problems call for a renaissance of agility, drawing on past success as we invent the future. Real value lies in intentional and contextual selection of agile tools instead of the noise associated with calls to practice “pure agile.” It is time to replace process-based thinking with outcome-based thinking. It is time to stop talking about process adherence and start focusing on product delivery. David Hussman calls on us to heed the audacious Frank Zappa’s challenge to “Shut Up ‘n Play Yer Guitar.” David speaks to selecting tools that foster measurable outcomes like product sales or market change. Topics covered range from product thinking to regression deficit to building teams and connecting programs to portfolios. Warning: If you are looking for an agile love-in, steer clear of this session. If you are looking to be challenged, show up ready to play yer guitar (metaphorically speaking, of course).
Continuous Integration as a Development Team’s Way of LifeTechWell
Continuous integration (CI) is a buzzword in software development today. We know it means “run lots of builds,” but having a continuous integration pipeline opens up opportunities well beyond making sure your team's code compiles. What if this pipeline could improve everything from the quality of code reviews to how often and safely you deploy to production and how you monitor your product in the wild? What if CI could provide insights into how automated tests are performing and how to improve them? Melissa Benua describes how to set up a basic CI infrastructure and then transform it into a way of life for development and test teams. Using free or nearly free tools, Melissa walks through a practical approach to making sure your code works—all the time and at every stage of the release train. Come away with practical advice for creating builds and running automation on the fly without spending hundreds of hours or thousands of dollars.
Agile Metrics: Measuring Outcomes and ResultsTechWell
When organizations move to agile approaches, two very common metric anti-patterns surface: (1) The organization doesn’t change its metrics at all and simply continues to measure as they always have; or (2) The organization throws out every metric and just focuses on velocity and trying to increase it. Both of these anti-patterns lead to metrics dysfunction and disastrous results. Bob Galen explains that agile organizations should be developing their measurement strategies early. He explores unhealthy metrics (for example, velocity) and the drives behind measuring them. Then he describes alternative metrics that produce the same insights but are more outcome and results oriented. Bob examines the outcome approach of other potentially healthier measures, including defect escapes, team health, sprint escapes, team agitation, sprint success rates, and impediment handling. This approach focuses on customer outcomes and business results rather than simply measuring something in order to manage it. Finally, Bob discusses trending over single measures and how to make that visible and actionable within your organization.
Addressing the Challenges of Mobile Test AutomationTechWell
As technology continues to disrupt every industry, mobile applications are increasingly becoming a primary way to interact with customers. Mobile application test automation tools and frameworks are far from being as mature as web test automation tools. The mobile test automation space is much more complex than web because of the number of devices that follow different standards. Simulators and emulators partially address this mobile diversity, however, to feel confident releasing an application to market, a deep understanding of what libraries, tools, and frameworks are available and how to best apply them is required. Join Pradeep as he presents information on how to tackle mobile test automation using tools such as appium and calabash, what to consider between Android and Iphone, how to select the right testing framework, the pro’s and con’s of open source vs. commercial mobile testing tools and the considerations for image based identification vs. object based identification approaches.
Better Together: Group Exploratory TestingTechWell
Jeff Abshoff faced a most difficult challenge in 2015. His team size tripled, with testers of varying skill levels spread across six sites worldwide. The product was moving to a more frequent release cycle, was of poor quality, and had multiple key stakeholders. Features were incomplete, defects were not discovered until late in the cycle, and downstream stability and feature integration problems were common. Join Jeff as he shares his experience with Group Exploratory Testing, and discusses the positive impact this approach has had on his team and the ANSYS product. Jeff gives practical details on the tools used (web collaboration and a virtual lab approach) and the people involved (developers, product managers, writers, and testers). Jeff explains the many benefits that Group Exploratory Testing offers—improved collaboration, cross-team training, earlier and faster feedback, and better product quality.
Test Metrics in Agile: A Powerful Tool to Demonstrate ValueTechWell
Most understand that an agile development and testing approach improves quality and reduces risks in our projects. In some companies and culture however, there are skeptics. Is the move to agile—and therefore agile testing—really beneficial? Join Iuliia Zavertailo for a closer look at a Scandinavian insurance company that started with one manual tester and within three years moved toward opening a large test center in the Baltic. Behind this story were many small steps of demonstrating testing's value to the client through a well-defined set of agile metrics which quantitatively supported the importance and value of testing. Iullia gives examples of key performance indicators—test coverage, defect open and close rates, issues reported by customers, and regression test suite duration—and provides a roadmap for building a test metrics framework. She then discusses tools that support the agile test framework, provides guidance on how to analyze test statistics, and offers ways to present the facts that interest clients most.
Performance Testing in Agile and DevOps EnvironmentsTechWell
As organizations embrace agile and DevOps delivery models, non-functional performance testing becomes a challenge. While functional validation continues to mature in Agile, many organizations are either struggling to integrate application performance into the delivery model or are addressing performance through an end of sprint hardening approach. Join Syed Hossain as he explores the challenges of performance testing in agile and DevOps environments. Learn proven approaches to performance testing—staggered sprints, incremental testing, and targeted sprints. Discover how to apply existing or new performance testing tools— StormRunner Load, Neotys, SOASTA, HP Mobile Center, Perfecto Mobile—that reduce the need for heavy scripting and dramatically cut down on test preparation time. This allows you to focus on the most important tasks at hand—validating, measuring, and optimizing application performance. Leave with new ideas and proven approaches for completing performance testing in agile and DevOps environments.
Lean Development Practices for Enterprise AgileTechWell
Enterprise agile initiatives require strategic, portfolio, product, and team perspectives at all levels. Alan Shalloway has found that lean software development principles help integrate all of these perspectives into a cohesive, actionable whole. With a combination of lean science, lean management, lean team, and lean learning methods, Alan shows how your organization can prepare for enterprise agility. Lean science focuses on the “laws” present in all software development projects. Lean management empowers executives to contribute to the context within which teams can flourish. Lean team methods are actualized in Kanban approaches. Lean learning empowers everyone in the organization to improve his skills and practices. Alan shows how you can make these four perspectives work together so that enterprise software development teams build the right software in the right way and continue to improve their practices along the way.
Agile Project Failures: Root Causes and Corrective ActionsTechWell
Agile initiatives always begin with the best of intentions—accelerate delivery, better meet customer needs, or improve software quality. Unfortunately, some agile projects do not deliver on these expectations. If you want help to ensure the success of your agile project or get an agile project back on track, this session is for you. Jeff Payne discusses the most common causes of agile project failure and how you can avoid these issues—or mitigate their damaging effects. Poor project management, ineffective requirements development, failed communications, software development problems, and (non)agile testing can all contribute to project failure. Learn practical tips and techniques for identifying early warning signs that your agile project might be in trouble and how you can best get your project back on track. Gain the knowledge you need to guide your organization toward agile project implementations that serve the business and the stakeholders.
The Agile Method and AGILE ISD; how to use each to improve your training programChristopher King
The term "agile" is being used readily to express the desire organizations have to be responsive and flexible to change in their organization. The Agile development method is designed to quickly and efficiently produce software products. Recently its application has expanded to other areas including training products. AGILE ISD is a new way of thinking about education where performance is the metric that drives the development and delivery decisions in an organization’s training program. It recognizes the long tail of learning and the five moments of learning need. AGILE ISD provides strategies for creating a culture of learning at your organization.
While these two agile methods are for different purposes, they are not mutually exclusive. This session will explain how your organization can use both methods to your advantage and success. We clarify some of the different uses of the term agile within the learning and development community. In this session we will cover:
• Agile (software) movement - its history, its main tenets, different types of agile frameworks and how to incorporated into the ADDIE training methodology
• AGILE ISD – is a methodology developed by Dr. Conrad Gottfredson that aims to supplement ADDIE by expanding its scope to include informal learning design. We cover its history, its main tenants, principles of agile education, and incorporating AGILE ISD into the ADDIE training methodology
• How the two approaches can both be successfully applied in your L&D organization
Keynote: Know the Way, Show the Way, Go the Way: Scaling Agile DevelopmentTechWell
Tired of the claims that Scrum, XP, and kanban don’t scale beyond a few teams? Overwhelmed by management’s resistance to the organizational changes needed to really follow agile principles? Concerned with the lack of proven practices required to scale agile methods to the next level? Exploring the Scaled Agile Framework™, Dean Leffingwell dispels these claims and answers these questions—and more. A publicly available set of practices for agile teams, projects, architectures, programs, and portfolios, this framework helps organizations scale lean and agile development from several small teams to hundreds—and even thousands—of practitioners. Working at companies including BMC Corporation and John Deere, Dean has discovered what works and what doesn’t work. He focuses on the critical role software development managers, leaders, and executives play in implementing and supporting the framework to achieve the full business benefits of enterprise agility.
Rich Mironov's keynote for one-day agile workshop. Intro to agile development and agile organizations, tools, impact on whole organization, product management and product planning. Co-sponsored by AccuRev, Coverity, Electric Cloud, Enthiosys, Rally and Agile Journal.
Foundations of the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe® ) 4.5netmind
El Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) es una base de conocimientos para adoptar métodos de trabajo ágiles en grandes organizaciones. SAFe presenta de forma gráfica un modelo de gestión para escalar la aplicación de las prácticas ágiles de un equipo a la gestión de programas, y de la gestión de programas al conjunto de la organización.
Este modelo para la adopción y transformación ágil de las organizaciones fué diseñado por Dean Leffingwell, a partir de sus libros “Agile Software Requeriments: Lean Requeriments for Teams Programs and the Enterprise” y “Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprise”, y se ha implementado con éxito en grandes organizaciones de todo el mundo. 60 de las 100 compañías más grandes de Estados Unidos están utilizando SAFe como guía de referencia para la adopción de Agile.
El modelo de gestión propuesto por SAFe cubre el conjunto de la organización, desde los equipos, hasta los niveles de mayor responsabilidad. El modelo estructura en tres niveles: Equipo, Programa y Portfolio, aunque en la última versión, SAFe 4.0, introduce un 4º nivel opcional para soluciones de extremadamente grandes y complejas. Para cada uno de estos niveles SAFe define los roles, estructuras, actividades, artefactos, prácticas y técnicas adecuadas.
Do you have highly functional scrum teams but are wondering how to get them to work in sync with each other, or wondering how get "start-up" efficiency in a large enterprise? Or maybe you just heard that the Scaled Agile Framework for the Enterprise (SAFe®) is gaining traction and you want to find out more about it. Before the year is out, we want to give you a primer on SAFe, so you can decide if it should be on your list of resolutions for the new year!
We continue to see that Agile and Scrum deliver value and are catching the eyes of leadership individuals. But how does a large enterprise thrive with a Scrum framework that was made for 5-9 individuals? SAFe has garnered a lot of attention as a potential framework for enterprises with large product teams (5 or more scrum teams on a product line). It calls for the overall alignment throughout the organization so that the Scrum teams making up a large product development team can deliver valuable, high quality product increments with transparency and technical excellence. The program execution is achieved by leveraging the existing Scrum Team practices and interfacing with the higher Program and Portfolio layers in the organization.
cPrime SAFe coach, Sri will provide an overview of the SAFe framework and show why it appeals not only to the engineers and architects, but also to the product management, customer support and the executive team.
Agile Project Failures: Root Causes and Corrective ActionsTechWell
Agile initiatives always begin with the best of intentions—accelerate delivery, better meet customer needs, or improve software quality. Unfortunately, some agile projects do not deliver on these expectations. If you want help to ensure the success of your agile project or get an agile project back on track, this session is for you. Jeff Payne discusses the most common causes of agile project failure and how you can avoid these issues—or mitigate their damaging effects. Poor project management, ineffective requirements development, failed communications, software development problems, and (non)agile testing can all contribute to a failing project. Learn practical tips and techniques for identifying early warning signs that your agile project might be in trouble and how you can best get your project back on track. Gain the knowledge you need to guide your organization toward agile project implementations that serve the business and the stakeholders.
Presentation slides from the SureSkills Agile - Making it Work breakfast briefing which was held on the 27th of November in the DoubleTree by Hilton on Burlington Road, Dublin 4.
Slides Overview:
SureSkills Introduction to Agile by Bill Heffernan,
Agile – Making it work in a real environment by Cameron O Connor, SQS/SureSkills
Working on a Scrum team, Colm O'hEocha, AgileInnovation
Real word case study - Rolling out Agile in Paddy Power
Paul Hayes, Paddy Power
What is scaling and how can it help to improve your organisation? What is the right mix of scaling principles and practices for your culture and teams? I will compare some agile approaches on scaling like Scaled Agile Framework aka SAFe, Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) both based on principles of Lean Product Development and Scaling Agile @ Spotify.
Do you ever feel you have lost confidence in your own abilities? Why does this happen? Isabel Evans spends a lot of time painting. Someone once commented, “Why are you doing this, when you are not very good at it?” And gradually she stopped drawing and painting, after being intimidated by a conventional vision of what good art should look like. At the same time, she experienced a parallel loss of confidence in her professional abilities. Attempting creative pursuits like drawing and painting is essential to cognitive, emotional, creative abilities and she began to understand the correlation between her creative activities and her confidence. Making errors, being wrong, failing – that is a generous gift we receive when we practice outside our skill level. By staying in a comfort zone and repeating successes, we stagnate. As Isabel started to create again she thought “I don’t feel good at it, I do feel good doing it” The difference was that she was learning, having ideas and the act of re-engaging with failure, together with the comradeship of friends and colleagues, including at Women Who Test, Isabel has regained her confidence in her professional abilities, and been able to reboot her career and joy. Join Isabel to share a journey from self-perceived failure, to recovery and renewed learning.
Instill a DevOps Testing Culture in Your Team and Organization TechWell
The DevOps movement is here. Companies across many industries are breaking down siloed IT departments and federating them into product development teams. Testing and its practices are at the heart of these changes. Traditionally, IT organizations have been staffed with mostly manual testers and a limited number of automation and performance engineers. To keep pace with development in the new “you build it, you own it” environment, testing teams and individuals must develop new technical skills and even embrace coding to stay relevant and add greater value to the business. DevOps really starts with testing. Join Adam Auerbach as he explains what DevOps is and how it relates to testing. He describes how testing must change from top to bottom and how to access your own environment to identify improvement opportunities. Adam dives into practices like service virtualization, test data management, and continuous testing so you can understand where you are now and identify steps needed to instill a DevOps testing culture in your team and organization.
Test Design for Fully Automated Build ArchitectureTechWell
Imagine this … As soon as any developed functionality is submitted into the code repository, it is automatically subjected to the appropriate battery of tests and then released straight into production. Setting up the pipeline capable of doing just that is becoming more and more common and something you need to know about. But most organizations hit the same stumbling block—just what IS the appropriate battery of tests? Automated build architectures don't always lend themselves well to the traditional stages of testing. In this hands-on tutorial, Melissa Benua introduces you to key test design principles—applicable to organizations both large and small—that allow you to take full advantage of the pipeline's capabilities without introducing unnecessary bottlenecks. Learn how to make highly reliable tests that run fast and preserve just enough information to let testers and developers determine exactly what went wrong and how to reproduce the error locally. Explore ways to reduce overlap while still maintaining adequate test coverage. Take back ideas about which test areas could benefit from being combined into a single suite and which areas could benefit most from being broken out altogether.
System-Level Test Automation: Ensuring a Good StartTechWell
Many organizations invest a lot of effort in test automation at the system level but then have serious problems later on. As a leader, how can you ensure that your new automation efforts will get off to a good start? What can you do to ensure that your automation work provides continuing value? This tutorial covers both “theory” and “practice”. Dot Graham explains the critical issues for getting a good start, and Chris Loder describes his experiences in getting good automation started at a number of companies. The tutorial covers the most important management issues you must address for test automation success, particularly when you are new to automation, and how to choose the best approaches for your organization—no matter which automation tools you use. Focusing on system level testing, Dot and Chris explain how automation affects staffing, who should be responsible for which automation tasks, how managers can best support automation efforts to promote success, what you can realistically expect in benefits and how to report them. They explain—for non-techies—the key technical issues that can make or break your automation effort. Come away with your own clarified automation objectives, and a draft test automation strategy to use to plan your own system-level test automation.
Build Your Mobile App Quality and Test StrategyTechWell
Let’s build a mobile app quality and testing strategy together. Whether you have a web, hybrid, or native app, building a quality and testing strategy means (1) knowing what data and tools you have available to make agile decisions, (2) understanding your customers and your competitors, and (3) testing your app under real-world conditions. Jason Arbon guides you through the latest techniques, data, and tools to ensure the awesomeness of your mobile app quality and testing strategy. Leave this interactive session with a strategy for your very own app—or one you pretend to own. The information Jason shares is based on data from Appdiff’s next-gen mobile app testing platform, lessons from Applause/uTest’s crowd, text mining hundreds of millions of app store reviews, and in-depth discussions with top mobile app development teams.
Testing Transformation: The Art and Science for SuccessTechWell
Technologies, testing processes, and the role of the tester have evolved significantly in the past few years with the advent of agile, DevOps, and other new technologies. It is critical that we testing professionals evaluate ourselves and continue to add tangible value to our organizations. In your work, are you focused on the trivial or on real game changers? Jennifer Bonine describes critical elements that help you artfully blend people, process, and technology to create a synergistic relationship that adds value. Jennifer shares ideas on mastering politics, maneuvering core vs. context, and innovating your technology strategies and processes. She explores how new processes can be introduced in an organization, what the role of organizational culture is in determining the success of a project, and how you can know what tools will add value vs. simply adding overhead and complexity. Jennifer reviews critically needed tester skills and discusses a continual learning model to evolve your skills and stay relevant. This discussion can lead you to technologies, processes, and skills you can stake your career on.
We’ve all been there. We work incredibly hard to develop a feature and design tests based on written requirements. We build a detailed test plan that aligns the tests with the software and the documented business needs. And when we put the tests to the software, it all falls apart because the requirements were changed without informing everyone. Mary Thorn says help is at hand. Enter behavior-driven development (BDD), and Cucumber and SpecFlow, tools for running automated acceptance tests and facilitating BDD. Mary explores the nuances of Cucumber and SpecFlow, and shows you how to implement BDD and agile acceptance testing. By fostering collaboration for implementing active requirements via a common language and format, Cucumber and SpecFlow bridge the communication gap between business stakeholders and implementation teams. In this workshop, practice writing feature files with the best practices Mary has discovered over numerous implementations. If you experience developers not coding to requirements, testers not getting requirements updates, or customers who feel out of the loop and don’t get what they ask for, Mary has answers for you.
Develop WebDriver Automated Tests—and Keep Your SanityTechWell
Many teams go crazy because of brittle, high-maintenance automated test suites. Jim Holmes helps you understand how to create a flexible, maintainable, high-value suite of functional tests using Selenium WebDriver. Learn the basics of what to test, what not to test, and how to avoid overlapping with other types of testing. Jim includes both philosophical concepts and hands-on coding. Testers who haven't written code should not be intimidated! We'll pair you up to make sure you're successful. Learn to create practical tests dealing with advanced situations such as input validation, AJAX delays, and working with file downloads. Additionally, discover when you need to work together with developers to create a system that's more easily testable. This tutorial focuses primarily on automating web tests, but many of the same concepts can be applied to other UI environments. Demos and labs will be in C# and Java using WebDriver. Leave this tutorial having learned how to write high-value WebDriver tests—and stay sane while doing so.
DevOps is a cultural shift aimed at streamlining intergroup communication and improving operational efficiency for development and operations groups. Over time, inclusion of other IT groups under the DevOps umbrella has become the norm for many organizations. But even broadening the boundaries of DevOps, the conversation has been largely devoid of the business units’ place at the table. A common mistake organizations make while going through the DevOps transformation is drawing a line at the IT boundary. If that occurs, a larger, more inclusive silo within the organization is created, operating in an informational vacuum and causing operational inefficiency and goal misalignment. Sharing his experiences working on both sides of the fence, Leon Fayer describes the importance of including business units in order to align technology decisions with business goals. Leon discusses inclusion of business units in existing agile processes, benefits of cross-departmental monitoring, and a business-first approach to technology decisions.
Eliminate Cloud Waste with a Holistic DevOps StrategyTechWell
Chris Parlette maintains that renting infrastructure on demand is the most disruptive trend in IT in decades. In 2016, enterprises spent $23B on public cloud IaaS services. By 2020, that figure is expected to reach $65B. The public cloud is now used like a utility, and like any utility, there is waste. Who's responsible for optimizing the infrastructure and reducing wasted expenses? It’s DevOps. The excess expense, known as cloud waste, comprises several interrelated problems: services running when they don't need to be, improperly sized infrastructure, orphaned resources, and shadow IT. There are a few core tenets of DevOps—holistic thinking, no silos, rapid useful feedback, and automation—that can be applied to reducing your cloud waste. Join Chris to learn why you should include continuous cost optimization in your DevOps processes. Automate cost control, reduce your cloud expenses, and make your life easier.
Transform Test Organizations for the New World of DevOpsTechWell
With the recent emergence of DevOps across the industry, testing organizations are being challenged to transform themselves significantly within a short period of time to stay meaningful within their organizations. It’s not easy to plan and approach these changes considering the way testing organizations have remained structured for ages. These challenges start from foundational organizational structures and can cut across leadership influence, competencies, tools strategy, infrastructure, and other dimensions. Sumit Kumar shares his experience assisting various organizations to overcome these challenges using an organized DevOps enablement framework. The framework includes radical restructuring, turning the tools strategy upside down, a multidimensional workforce enablement supported by infrastructure changes, redeveloped collaborations models, and more. From his real world experiences Sumit shares tips for approaching this journey and explains the roadmap for testing organizations to transform themselves to lead the quality in DevOps.
The Fourth Constraint in Project Delivery—LeadershipTechWell
All too often, the triple constraints—time, cost, and quality—are bandied about as if they are the be-all, end-all. While they are important, leadership—the fourth and larger underpinning constraint—influences the first three. Statistics on project success and failure abound, and these measurements are usually taken against the triple constraints. According to the Project Management Institute, only 53 percent of projects are completed within budget, and only 49 percent are completed on time. If so many projects overrun budget and are late, we can’t really say, “Good, fast, or cheap—pick two.” Rob Burkett talks about leadership at every level of a team. He shares his insights and stories gleaned from his years of IT and project management experience. Rob speaks to some of the glaring difficulties in the workplace in general and some specifically related to IT delivery and project management. Leave with a clearer understanding of how to communicate with teams and team members, and gain a better understanding of how you can be a leader—up and down your organization.
Resolve the Contradiction of Specialists within Agile TeamsTechWell
As teams grow, organizations often draw a distinction between feature teams, which deliver the visible business value to the user, and component teams, which manage shared work. Steve Berczuk says that this distinction can help organizations be more productive and scale effectively, but he recognizes that not all shared work fits into this model. Some work is best handled by “specialists,” that is people with unique skills. Although teams composed entirely of T-shaped people is ideal, certain skills are hard to come by and are used irregularly across an organization. Since these specialists often need to work closely with teams, rather than working from their own backlog, they don’t fit into the component team model. The use of shared resources presents challenges to the agile planning model. Steve Berczuk shares how teams such as those providing infrastructure services and specialists can fit into a feature+component team model, and how variations such as embedding specialists in a scrum team can both present process challenges and add significant value to both the team and the larger organization.
Pin the Tail on the Metric: A Field-Tested Agile GameTechWell
Metrics don’t have to be a necessary evil. If done right, metrics can help guide us to make better forward-looking decisions, rather than being used for simply managing or monitoring. They can help us identify trade-offs between options for what to do next versus punitive or worse, purely managerial measures. Steve Martin won’t be giving the Top Ten List of field-tested metrics you should use. Instead, in this interactive mini-workshop, he leads you through the critical thinking necessary for you to determine what is right for you to measure. First, Steve explores why you want to measure something—whether it’s for a team, a portfolio, or even an agile transformation. Next, he provides multiple real-life metrics examples to help drive home concepts behind characteristics of good and bad metrics. Finally, Steve shows how to run his field-tested agile game—Pin the Tail on the Metric. Take back this activity to help you guide metrics conversations at your organization.
Agile Performance Holarchy (APH)—A Model for Scaling Agile TeamsTechWell
A hierarchy is an organizational network that has a top and a bottom, and where position is determined by rank, importance, and value. A holarchy is a network that has no top or bottom and where each person’s value derives from his ability, rather than position. As more companies seek the benefits of agile, leaders need to build and sustain delivery capability while scaling agile without introducing unnecessary process and overhead. The Agile Performance Holarchy (APH) is an empirical model for scaling and sustaining agility while continuing to deliver great products. Jeff Dalton designed the APH by drawing from lessons learned observing and assessing hundreds of agile companies and teams. The APH helps implement a holarchy—a system composed of interacting organizational units called holons—centered on a series of performance circles that embody the behaviors of high performing agile organizations. Jeff describes how APH provides guidelines in the areas of leadership, values, teaming, visioning, governing, building, supporting, and engaging within an all-agile organization. Join Jeff to see what the APH is all about and how you can use it in your team and organization.
A Business-First Approach to DevOps ImplementationTechWell
DevOps is a cultural shift aimed at streamlining intergroup communication and improving operational efficiency for development and operations groups. Over time, inclusion of other IT groups under the DevOps umbrella has become the norm for many organizations. But even broadening the boundaries of DevOps, the conversation has been largely devoid of the business units’ place at the table. A common mistake organizations make while going through the DevOps transformation is drawing a line at the IT boundary. If that occurs, a larger, more inclusive silo within the organization is created, operating in an informational vacuum and causing operational inefficiency and goal misalignment. Sharing his experiences working on both sides of the fence, Leon Fayer describes the importance of including business units in order to align technology decisions with business goals. Leon discusses inclusion of business units in existing agile processes, benefits of cross-departmental monitoring, and a business-first approach to technology decisions.
Databases in a Continuous Integration/Delivery ProcessTechWell
DevOps is transforming software development with many organizations adopting lean development practices, implementing continuous integration (CI), and performing regular continuous deployment (CD) to their production environments. However, the database is largely ignored and often seen as a bottleneck in the DevOps process. Steve Jones discusses the challenges of database development and why many developers find the database to be an impediment to the CD process. Steve shares the techniques you can use to fit a database into the DevOps process. Learn how to store database code in a version control system, and the differences between that and application code. Steve demonstrates a CI process with SQL code and uses automated testing frameworks to check the code. Steve then shows how automated releases with manual gates can reduce the stress and risk of database deployments while ensuring consistent, reliable, repeatable releases to QA, UAT, and production.
Mobile Testing: What—and What Not—to AutomateTechWell
Organizations are moving rapidly into mobile technology, which has significantly increased the demand for testing of mobile applications. David Dangs says testers naturally are turning to automation to help ease the workload, increase potential test coverage, and improve testing efficiency. But should you try to automate all things mobile? Unfortunately, the answer is not always clear. Mobile has its own set of complications, compounded by a wide variety of devices and OS platforms. Join David to learn what mobile testing activities are ripe for automation—and those items best left to manual efforts. He describes the various considerations for automating each type of mobile application: mobile web, native app, and hybrid applications. David also covers device-level testing, types of testing, available automation tools, and recommendations for automation effectiveness. Finally, based on his years of mobile testing experience, David provides some tips and tricks to approach mobile automation. Leave with a clear plan for automating your mobile applications.
Cultural Intelligence: A Key Skill for SuccessTechWell
Diversity is becoming the norm in everyday life. However, introducing global delivery models without a proper understanding of intercultural differences can lead to difficulty, frustration, and reduced productivity. Priyanka Sharma and Thena Barry say that in our diverse world, we need teams with people who can cross these boundaries, communicate effectively, and build the diverse networks necessary to avoid problems. We need to learn about cultural intelligence (CI) and cultural quotient (CQ). CI is the ability to relate and work effectively across cultures. CQ is the cognitive, motivational, and behavioral capacity to understand and respond to beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors of individuals and groups. Together, CI and CQ can help us build behavioral capacities that aid motivation, behavior, and productivity in teams as well as individuals. Priyanka and Thena show how to build a more culturally intelligent place with tools and techniques from Leading with Cultural Intelligence, as well as content from the Hofstede cultural model. In addition, they illustrate the model with real-life experiences and demonstrate how they adapted in similar circumstances.
Turn the Lights On: A Power Utility Company's Agile TransformationTechWell
Why would a century-old utility with no direct competitors take on the challenge of transforming its entire IT application organization to an agile methodology? In an increasingly interconnected world, the expectations of customers continue to evolve. From smart meters to smart phones, IoT is creating a crisis point for industries not accustomed to rapid change. Glen Morris explains that pizzas can be tracked by the minute and packages at every stop, and customers now expect this same customer service model should exist for all industries—including power. Glen examines how to create momentum and transform non-IT-focused industries to an agile model. If you are struggling with gaining traction in your pursuit of agile within your business, Glen gives you concrete, practical experiences to leverage in your pursuit. Finally, he communicates how to gain buy-in from business partners who have no idea or concern about agile or its methodologies. If your business partners look at you with amusement when you mention the need for a dedicated Product Owner, join Glen as he walks you through the approaches to overcoming agile skepticism.
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
Connector Corner: Automate dynamic content and events by pushing a buttonDianaGray10
Here is something new! In our next Connector Corner webinar, we will demonstrate how you can use a single workflow to:
Create a campaign using Mailchimp with merge tags/fields
Send an interactive Slack channel message (using buttons)
Have the message received by managers and peers along with a test email for review
But there’s more:
In a second workflow supporting the same use case, you’ll see:
Your campaign sent to target colleagues for approval
If the “Approve” button is clicked, a Jira/Zendesk ticket is created for the marketing design team
But—if the “Reject” button is pushed, colleagues will be alerted via Slack message
Join us to learn more about this new, human-in-the-loop capability, brought to you by Integration Service connectors.
And...
Speakers:
Akshay Agnihotri, Product Manager
Charlie Greenberg, Host
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
Generating a custom Ruby SDK for your web service or Rails API using Smithyg2nightmarescribd
Have you ever wanted a Ruby client API to communicate with your web service? Smithy is a protocol-agnostic language for defining services and SDKs. Smithy Ruby is an implementation of Smithy that generates a Ruby SDK using a Smithy model. In this talk, we will explore Smithy and Smithy Ruby to learn how to generate custom feature-rich SDKs that can communicate with any web service, such as a Rails JSON API.
Accelerate your Kubernetes clusters with Varnish CachingThijs Feryn
A presentation about the usage and availability of Varnish on Kubernetes. This talk explores the capabilities of Varnish caching and shows how to use the Varnish Helm chart to deploy it to Kubernetes.
This presentation was delivered at K8SUG Singapore. See https://feryn.eu/presentations/accelerate-your-kubernetes-clusters-with-varnish-caching-k8sug-singapore-28-2024 for more details.
Encryption in Microsoft 365 - ExpertsLive Netherlands 2024Albert Hoitingh
In this session I delve into the encryption technology used in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Purview. Including the concepts of Customer Key and Double Key Encryption.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 3DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 3. In this session, we will cover desktop automation along with UI automation.
Topics covered:
UI automation Introduction,
UI automation Sample
Desktop automation flow
Pradeep Chinnala, Senior Consultant Automation Developer @WonderBotz and UiPath MVP
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
LF Energy Webinar: Electrical Grid Modelling and Simulation Through PowSyBl -...DanBrown980551
Do you want to learn how to model and simulate an electrical network from scratch in under an hour?
Then welcome to this PowSyBl workshop, hosted by Rte, the French Transmission System Operator (TSO)!
During the webinar, you will discover the PowSyBl ecosystem as well as handle and study an electrical network through an interactive Python notebook.
PowSyBl is an open source project hosted by LF Energy, which offers a comprehensive set of features for electrical grid modelling and simulation. Among other advanced features, PowSyBl provides:
- A fully editable and extendable library for grid component modelling;
- Visualization tools to display your network;
- Grid simulation tools, such as power flows, security analyses (with or without remedial actions) and sensitivity analyses;
The framework is mostly written in Java, with a Python binding so that Python developers can access PowSyBl functionalities as well.
What you will learn during the webinar:
- For beginners: discover PowSyBl's functionalities through a quick general presentation and the notebook, without needing any expert coding skills;
- For advanced developers: master the skills to efficiently apply PowSyBl functionalities to your real-world scenarios.
JMeter webinar - integration with InfluxDB and GrafanaRTTS
Watch this recorded webinar about real-time monitoring of application performance. See how to integrate Apache JMeter, the open-source leader in performance testing, with InfluxDB, the open-source time-series database, and Grafana, the open-source analytics and visualization application.
In this webinar, we will review the benefits of leveraging InfluxDB and Grafana when executing load tests and demonstrate how these tools are used to visualize performance metrics.
Length: 30 minutes
Session Overview
-------------------------------------------
During this webinar, we will cover the following topics while demonstrating the integrations of JMeter, InfluxDB and Grafana:
- What out-of-the-box solutions are available for real-time monitoring JMeter tests?
- What are the benefits of integrating InfluxDB and Grafana into the load testing stack?
- Which features are provided by Grafana?
- Demonstration of InfluxDB and Grafana using a practice web application
To view the webinar recording, go to:
https://www.rttsweb.com/jmeter-integration-webinar
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024
Scaling Agile with the Lessons of Lean Product Development Flow
1.
MN
Half‐day Tutorial
6/3/2013 1:00 PM
"Scaling Agile with the Lessons of
Lean Product Development Flow"
Presented by:
Alan Shalloway
Net Objectives
Brought to you by:
340 Corporate Way, Suite 300, Orange Park, FL 32073
888‐268‐8770 ∙ 904‐278‐0524 ∙ sqeinfo@sqe.com ∙ www.sqe.com
2. Alan Shalloway
Net Objectives
With more than forty years of experience, the founder and CEO of Net Objectives Alan
Shalloway is an industry thought leader in lean, kanban, product portfolio management, Scrum,
and agile design. Alan helps companies transition enterprise-wide to lean and agile methods,
and teach courses in these areas. He is the primary author of Lean-Agile Software
Development: Achieving Enterprise Agility, Design Patterns Explained, Lean-Agile Pocket Guide
for Scrum Teams, and Essential Skills for the Agile Developer. Cofounder and board member
for the Lean Software and Systems Consortium, Alan is a popular speaker at prestigious
conferences worldwide.
