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.
June 5, 2009 by Kay Johansen
James Shore, Owner, Titanium I.T., Portland, OR
Short iterations (as in Scrum / XP) or even continuous flow (as in Lean / Kanban) are an essential part of Agile planning. And yet there’s rarely much discussion of how these short iterations can actually be accomplished. Teams struggle with finding time to understand requirements, finish testing, and perform adequate design. They often have trouble getting work to “done done” and ready to release as a result. This session reveals the secret sauce of Agile development: simultaneous phases. Come experience how simultaneous phases allow you to avoid hacks like “requirements iterations,” “testing iterations,” or “refactoring stories,” and make short iterations and continuous flow possible.
About James
James Shore is an XP/Agile consultant and practitioner who has been leading agile teams in success and failure since 1999. A long-time member of the agile community, he was one of the first ten people to sign the newly-released Agile Manifesto in 2001. In 2005, he was an inaugural recipient of the Gordon Pask Award for Contributions to Agile Practice, and in 2007 he coauthored The Art of Agile Development. James blogs at jamesshore.com.
June 5, 2009 by Kay Johansen
Zhon Johansen, Independent Consultant, Salt Lake City, UT
Jeff Grover, Senior Software Engineer, Raytheon Oakley Systems, Salt Lake City, UT
Richard Thomson, Lead Developer, DAZ 3D, Salt Lake City, UT
Success on an Agile project relies heavily on the people in the trenches. Developers, testers, and product managers focused together, can deliver astonishing accomplishments in a short amount of time. Extraordinary results require discipline, motivation and alignment. Test Driven Development (TDD) and Refactoring creates the momentum to help developers organically adapt to an endlessly changing world.
In this hands-on tutorial, you will see and try simple TDD and Refactoring exercises. After the session, we hope you will be inspired with the patience and discipline to start your own crawl/walk/run transformation into extraordinary accomplishments. Please, bring your insights, your design skills and a laptop loaded with the tools needed to code in your language of choice (don’t forget your unit testing framework or you will be coding in Javascript).
About Zhon
Zhon Johansen has degrees in computer science and psychology, where he discovered his twin aptitudes for playing with technology and with people’s heads. Practicing and teaching Extreme Programming since 1999, he founded xputah.org and has presented sessions on software development and customer interaction at numerous conferences.
About Jeff
Jeff Grover holds a degree in computer engineering and has worked in the software industry for fifteen years. Companies from small start-ups to large enterprises have hired him, and he works to develop great software and practices wherever he wanders.
About Richard
Richard has been writing software for over 30 years, mostly in the field of 3D computer graphics. He has received the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award every year since 2002 for his work in assisting other developers with Direct3D. He has been using agile development methods since 1998 and test driven development since 2007.
June 5, 2009 by Kay Johansen
Pollyanna Pixton, Principal, Accelinnova, Salt Lake City, UT
Leaders can stifle progress when they unnecessarily interfere with team processes. However, as a leader, you don’t want your project to go over the cliff and fail miserably or deliver the wrong results either. There are times when leaders should stand back and let the team work things out for themselves—and other times when leaders should step up and really lead. How do you know which is which? And what do you do to not stifle the team’s creativity, ownership, integrity, and problem solving ability? Come away with tools to both motivate and guide teams and organizations effectively—and learn to master the balancing act of leadership.
About Pollyanna
An international collaborative leadership expert, Pollyanna developed the models for collaboration and collaborative leadership through her thirty-five years of working inside and consulting with corporations and organizations. She helps companies create workplaces where talent and innovation are unleashed—making them more productive, efficient, and profitable. Pollyanna is a founding partner of Accelinnova, president of Evolutionary Systems, director of the Institute for Collaborative Leadership, and co-author of the book Stand Back and Deliver, Accelerating Business Agility. She co-founded the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN) and has chaired several Agile Leadership Summits across the country. Contact Pollyanna at ppixton@accelinnova.com.
June 5, 2009 by Kay Johansen
Jeff Patton, Consultant, AgileProductDesign.com, Salt Lake City, UT
Writing good user stories is one of the most misunderstood and challenging aspects of agile development. In this fast-paced hands on tutorial we’ll bust myths about user stories and leave you with a useful approach for writing and leveraging user stories. You’ll learn the essentials of user-centric story writing, and how to organize your stories into a map that makes sense of your entire backlog. You’ll learn tricks for planning usable and valuable incremental releases, and steering them to successful delivery.
About Jeff
Jeff Patton specializes in the application of user experience design practice to improve Agile requirements, planning, and products. Jeff discovered his agile roots in 2000 on his first XP project. They’ve been growing aggressively since then. Jeff is founder and list moderator of the agile-usability Yahoo discussion group, a columnist with StickyMinds.com and IEEE Software, and winner of the Agile Alliance’s 2007 Gordon Pask Award for contributions to Agile Development. He is the author of the blog www.AgileProductDesign.com and a forthcoming book on Agile product design to be released in Addison-Wesley’s Agile Development series.
