Businesse's always are trying to improve the way they work through better alignment to customers, improved efficiency, and faster time to market. An enterprise focus on agile enables a number of different approaches to improving business performance. Using Agile, Scrum, Lean, even CMMi in concert with agile are all proving to be effective mechanisms for business improvement.
Lean transformations are challenging – and sustaining a lean transformation over time is even more difficult. So how do you get started, and how do you keep on improving over time? This session will recommend a three-pronged approach to successful change: (1) Get developers personally involved in improving customer outcomes. (We'll cover product champions and Cost Center Disease.) (2) Create a script for improvement that generates immediate action. (We'll look at strategy deployment.) (3) Rethink the environment (including the governance system).
| Presenter(s): | Mary Poppendieck |
| Day and Time: | Monday, 09 August 2010, 09:00 - 12:30  |
| Location: | A-1 |
| Level: | Expert |
When Harvard Pilgrim started down the path to using Agile principles, their goal seemed so distant as to be unattainable. The plan called for simultaneously implementing a new process, replacing most of their core applications with systems, some entirely new to the market, and implementing a service oriented architecture. With so much to change at once, they began a series of incremental steps to achieve these outcomes. This experience report walks through several hard earned lessons regarding implementing Agile rapidly within a large organization.
| Presenter(s): | Brian Bozzuto , Susan Taylor |
| Day and Time: | Tuesday, 10 August 2010, 11:00 - 12:00 |
| Location: | Asia 2 |
| Level: | Introductory |
Agile leaders need to understand the critical role test automation plays in achieving agility. Do we really need automated unit tests? Why? And how about system / functional / story tests? What role do they play? Who should write them, and when? How do we earn back the cost of all this test automation? And how do we do it if we have a lot of legacy code? This tutorial answers these questions in terminology the typical non-coding manager, architect or tester can understand. It also lays out several test automation strategies and points out their strengths and weaknesses.
| Presenter(s): | Gerard Meszaros |
| Day and Time: | Tuesday, 10 August 2010, 13:30 - 15:00 |
| Location: | Asia 2 |
| Level: | Introductory |
| Presentation: | Download Slides |
The style of the presentation will be a Millionaire game show format guiding the audience through the history of Agile at RIM by answering progressively more challenging multi-choice questions for each milestone of the narrative. Each question will be introduced with a summary of the milestone context, and the audience will be asked to predict the next step. Wry humor will keep both novice and Agilista amused and engaged. The audience will wait with baited breath as with suspense and drama the answer is revealed, and the next stage of the ‘RIM Agile story’ is fleshed out with visuals.
| Presenter(s): | Mike Osmond , Ed Willis |
| Day and Time: | Wednesday, 11 August 2010, 09:00 - 10:30 |
| Location: | Asia 2 |
| Level: | Practicing |
There are many myths regarding agile software development, such as agile has been adopted by the majority of teams, that agile approaches are more effective, that agile teams don’t do up front modeling, that agile teams produce less documentation, that TDD is commonly practiced, and so on. Some of those myths are true, some false, and some we’re not so sure about yet. This talk summarizes the results of 4 years of industry surveys concerning the adoption and effectiveness of agile techniques. Let's cut through the dogma and instead focus on what agile practitioners are actually doing.
| Presenter(s): | Scott Ambler |
| Day and Time: | Wednesday, 11 August 2010, 11:00 - 12:00 |
| Location: | Southern Hemisphere II |
| Level: | Practicing |
| Presentation: | Download Slides |
An increasing number of organizations are transitioning to Agile, but designing a compelling transition plan to secure executive support can be intimidating. This interactive session will take participants through a fictional business case in which the purpose is to design a plan to transfer an organization from traditional Waterfall to Agile. The class will discuss the case and break into groups to analyze the situation. The case will then be ‘solved’ as a class, integrating each group’s findings to design a successful high-level transition plan.
| Presenter(s): | Jorgen Hesselberg |
| Day and Time: | Wednesday, 11 August 2010, 15:30 - 17:00 |
| Location: | Asia 2 |
| Level: | Introductory |
| Supporting Material: | Link to Case Study Download Presentation |
Join Mary Poppendieck for a Lean in a Nutshell – a fast-paced talk aimed at senior developers and team leads. The lecture and discussion will focus on framing the software development process; it will cover four key frames that really make a difference when you are developing software: (1) A systems view, (2) Essential technical capability, (3) What it takes to deliver reliably, and (4) How to improve.
| Presenter(s): | Mary Poppendieck |
| Day and Time: | Thursday, 12 August 2010, 09:00 - 10:30 |
| Location: | Southern Hemisphere II |
| Level: | Introductory |
Witness firsthand accounts from the front lines of a successful Agile transformation. In 2009, Gap Inc Direct, the online division of Gap, Inc. made a commitment to extend their Agile software delivery practices to their Columbus, Ohio development campus where teams provide solutions for online order fulfillment and call center operations. Learn the hidden truths, best practices, and lessons learned from “going Agile” as you join us on our journey in transitioning from a traditional waterfall approach to high performing Agile teams in a matter of months.
| Presenter(s): | Joe Astolfi , Gene Johnson |
| Day and Time: | Thursday, 12 August 2010, 11:00 - 12:00 |
| Location: | Asia 2 |
| Level: | Practicing |
Seeing constraints, pulling value and eliminating waste is the goal of practicing kanban. This session is for those who are not familiar with this practice. In addition to understanding how to implement kanban, we will also discuss cross team signals, team signals & retrospective boards. I will use physical boards to illustrate the concepts. Intended audience is for those who want to learn more about pull based practices, continuous flow and self organization. Maintaining flow is the goal, while allowing time to deliver AND allowing time for continuous improvement at a sustainable pace.
| Presenter(s): | Jon Stahl |
| Day and Time: | Thursday, 12 August 2010, 13:30 - 15:00 |
| Location: | Asia 2 |
| Level: | Practicing |
| Presentation: | Link to Presentation |
By any standard, the ongoing year-long, multi-team agile transformation at Gale is an enormous success. We have gone from average project durations of 18 months to average durations of 6 months. Production releases had hundreds of defects before we began, and now have handfuls. We are earning ROI on our software products far faster, while we garner awards for innovation and user value. Come hear how we did it: our challenges, our successes, our setbacks, our wins and losses. Come hear how Big Bang “Enterprise Agile Tranformation” is alive and kicking, fully backed now by our CEO.
| Presenter(s): | Gary Baker , Christopher Beale |
| Day and Time: | Thursday, 12 August 2010, 15:30 - 17:00 |
| Location: | Asia 2 |
| Level: | Practicing |
