June 5, 2009 by Kay Johansen
Dr. Alistair Cockburn, Project Witchdoctor, Humans and Technology, Salt Lake City, UT
Alistair Cockburn, one of the authors of the agile manifesto, will recap the roots of the agile movement, what ideas have entered since the manifesto was written, and what upcoming ideas are making their mark. This march will incorporate lean development, the cooperative game model, kanban, and general laziness.
About Alistair
Dr. Alistair Cockburn is a world-renowned expert in Agile development, having co-founded the Agile movement and co-authored the Agile Manifesto. Dr. Cockburn is the author of the Jolt award-winning books Writing Effective Use Cases and Agile Software Development. He has more than 30 years of experience leading projects around the world, in hardware and software, research and industry, in companies of all sizes and specialties. Much of his material is available online.
June 5, 2009 by Kay Johansen
Brian Marick, Owner, Exampler Consulting, Champaign, IL
View the video of Brian’s session
A problem with the word “Agile” is that everyone already thinks they understand it at a gut level. Worse, everyone already thinks they’re agile in spirit. (After all, the thesaurus tells us the alternative is to be clumsy, stiff, slow, and dull.) So it’s too easy for people to feel free to launch into “doing Agile” without ever having a serious conversation about what that actually means.
This problem is easily fixed. We’ll just stop talking about “Agile” and start speaking of “artisanal retro-futurism crossed with team-scale anarcho-syndicalism.” There is, I think, no danger that anyone will reflexively say, “Yes! That’s just what I’ve been wanting to do all along!”
The new name does more than just encourage conversation. It encourages conversation about those very properties of Agile that have become obscure as Agile has been commodified. In this session, I’ll unpack the meanings of the new phrase and encourage you to rediscover what’s been lost.
About Brian
Brian Marick (marick@exampler.com, www.exampler.com, twitter.com/marick) was a programmer, tester, and team lead in the 80′s, a testing consultant in the 90′s, and is an Agile consultant this decade. Brian is one of the authors of the Agile Manifesto, a past chair of the Agile Alliance, and the author of three books: The Craft of Software Testing, Everyday Scripting with Ruby, and Programming Cocoa With Ruby.
Sue McKinney, VP of Business Transformation at IBM, Somers, NY
Transitioning 25,000 developers to agile development processes is a challenge on its own—and making the transition during a global recession is even more ambitious. Join Sue McKinney as she discusses her experiences leading the move to agile at IBM, how their agile teams often struggled, and ways leaders provided support and understanding at many levels. Learn specific leadership approaches you need to support distributed teams as they adopt and deliver using agile methods. Discover the tools you can use to inspire and motivate change in a large organization steeped in tradition or a small one stuck in its ways. Find out the new leadership skills that teams must encourage and nurture to build a successful agile enterprise.
About Sue
Currently responsible for development transformational activities with IBM’s software development group, Sue McKinney’s major emphasis is driving adoption of agile and lean principles into the mainstream of software development. Prior to this assignment, Sue was a Vice President of Development for the Lotus Division where she led worldwide development for Lotus Domino, IBM Sametime, and WebSphere Portal. In addition to driving transformational activities within IBM, Sue works with large clients to share IBM’s experience and help them scope opportunities for their own transformational activities.
Dr. Israel Gat, Founder and CEO at The Agile Executive, Austin, TX
The principles articulated in the Agile Manifesto make a lot of sense to the software craftsman who dreams in code. They can, however, be quite puzzling to executives who consider Agile software in the context of their company’s established norms and patterns. Assumptions embedded in a business design with respect to customer relationship, competitive differentiation and value capture are not necessarily aligned with the principles advocated in the manifesto. Moreover, the core culture of a corporation might not be hospitable to Agile principles. Corporate culture basically specifies “how we do things around here in order to succeed.” Agile Principles challenge these norms.
The path an Agile roll-out should follow depends on the core culture of the corporation: control, competence, collaboration or cultivation. Irrespective of the specific culture, the Agile roll-out invariably tests cultural integration, wholeness and balance. In particular, it exposes inconsistencies between approach with customers versus approach toward other constituents of the corporation such as partners and employees. Consequently, corporate reactions to Agile often express the disappointment of an organization when it is forced to take a good look in the mirror.
Grass roots Agile initiatives can propel a company a long way. However, the creation and capture of long-term value is invariably linked to successful business design and coherent corporate culture. To succeed on a large scale, bottom-up Agile initiative must be complemented by top-down commitment to learn, change and keep a living company. It is the combination of the two, the willingness to apply Agile practices in an indivisible manner that will fulfill the premise of the manifesto.
About Israel
Dr. Israel Gat is a Senior Consultant with Cutter Consortium’s Agile Product & Project Management practice. He is recognized as the architect of the Agile transformation at BMC Software. Under his leadership, BMC Software development increased Scrum users from zero to 1,000 in four years. Dr. Gat’s executive career spans top technology companies, including IBM, Microsoft, Digital and EMC. He has led the development of products such as BMC Performance Manager and Microsoft Operations Manager, enabling the two companies to move toward next-generation system management technology.
June 5, 2009 by Kay Johansen
Niel Nickolaisen, CIO, Headwaters, Inc., Salt Lake City, UT
Let’s face it, we have all suffered from the tyranny of meaningless metrics. Metrics that are imposed on us as a means to ensure that we are being productive and busy. In this “whiteboard” presentation, Niel Nickolaisen describes a pragmatic approach for finding and using meaningful metrics – metrics that promote accomplishment over activity – as an alternative to meaningless metrics. Niel gives examples as he describes the characteristics of meaningful metrics and then asks the audience to apply these characteristics to their roles so that they can walk away with at least one meaningful metric they can use in their jobs and for their projects.
About Niel
Niel Nickolaisen is the CIO and Director of Strategic Planning at Headwaters, Inc. He has held technology executive and operations executive positions; typically in turnaround roles. He has developed a strategic and tactical alignment model that significantly improves returns on technology and business initiatives (by both improving the benefits and reducing the costs and risks). He writes the “Practical CIO” column for the CIO Leadership Network and a “how to” column for Search CIO. He is the author of an Addison Wesley book on Leadership scheduled for release in 2009. CRN Magazine named Niel one of the top 25 IT Executives of 2008. Niel is also one of the founders of Accelinnova, a think tank focused on improving organizational and IT agility.
