Agile Development Practices Conference - SQE.com

concurrent classeswednesday, november 11, 10:00 a.m.W1 Agile ManagementPrincipled Agility: The Principles Behindthe PracticesMitch Lacey, Independent ConsultantIn Scrum, the product owner manages the product backlog—seems simple enough. But what principles are required to makeseemingly straightforward agile practices really work? MitchLacey suggests courage, trust, commitment, and simplicity arethose principles. Courage: Do I have the courage to say no tothis stakeholder for the overall benefit of the product? Trust:Can I trust the team to sustain their velocity? Commitment: Areall team members working everyday to improve? Simplicity:Are we doing only the things that bring value to the product?These are real-life questions that agile team members facedaily. It’s not enough to just say you’re agile because youwork in iterations. Truly being agile weaves these principlesinto the fabric of our projects. Join Mitch to learn how he hasapplied these principles in his projects and the failures thathave occurred when the principles were misaligned or absentall together. True agility emerges only when principles andpractices align; learn how to build and maintain that alignment.W2 Agile ImplementationThe Scrum Product Owner DemystifiedJeff Patton, Independent ConsultantA Scrum product owner’s job is challenging, to say the least.Unfortunately, the specific concepts and techniques requiredto succeed often aren’t spelled out in books and trainingclasses. And being referred to—in Scrum jargon—as “the singlewringable neck” is enough to discourage anyone from signingup for the job. While there’s no silver bullet, Jeff Patton helps fillyour Scrum tool-kit with valuable approaches that help productowners succeed: the basics of collaborative discovery sessionsto identify business and user goals; how to create effective userstories for better planning; how to split and thin user storiesto support iterative/incremental development; approaches forreducing the risk of late delivery; and techniques for keepingusers, stakeholders, and the team involved from inceptionthrough delivery. Jeff knits all of this into a useful productowner’s practice map for you to take back for yourself or forthe product owner in your life.W3 Testing & QualitySeven Key Factors for Agile TestingSuccessLisa Crispin, Ultimate SoftwareAgile development presents unique challenges for testersand test teams. Working in short iterations, often withlimited written requirements, agile development teams canleave traditional testers behind. Common testing-relatedactivities—such as user acceptance testing, testing interproductrelationships, and installation testing—require differentapproaches to work within agile projects. Lisa Crispin presentsseven key factors for testing success within agile projects—using a whole team approach, adopting an agile mindset,automating regression testing, collaborating with customers,providing and obtaining feedback, looking at the big picture,and building a foundation of core agile practices. Learn how toovercome cultural and organizational obstacles to successfultesting and discover the critical factors for delivering maximumvalue to your business.W4 Agile TechniquesUser Stories for Agile RequirementsMike Cohn, Mountain Goat SoftwareExpressing requirements as user stories is one of the mostbroadly applicable techniques introduced by the agileprocesses. User stories are an effective approach on all timeconstrained projects and are a great way to introduce a bit ofagility to any project. Mike Cohn describes the six attributesof good stories—independent, negotiable, valuable, estimable,sized appropriately, and testable. Explore how user storieshelp a team shift from more documents to more discussion,encouraging the right mix of both. Learn practical, proventechniques for gathering user stories. Discuss how much workshould be done on a user story in advance and by whom andsee why a just-in-time, just-enough approach aids a teamin becoming agile. Discover the relationship between userstories, epics, themes, and conditions of satisfaction. Leavewith a project-proven template for writing user stories and beprepared to put this powerful technique to use immediately.W5 Special TopicsDebug Your MindAndy Hunt, The Pragmatic ProgrammersEvery day, we make important decisions and try to solve criticalproblems in our work. Unfortunately, our decision-making andproblem-solving processes often are based on a faulty memoryand our emotional state at the time. We tend to ignore crucialfacts and fixate on irrelevant details because of where and whenthey occur, or whether they are brightly colored—especially ifthey are brightly colored. Join Andy Hunt as he shares conceptsfrom his popular book Pragmatic Thinking and Learning andexplores the common cognitive biases that can dramaticallyaffect your decision-making and problem-solving skills. Learnwhy most predictions are wrong from the start and how youcan guard against false assumptions. Discover aspects ofcontext which can subtly affect you, including generationalaffinity and personality tendencies. Find out why your ownbrain’s legacy hardware can work against you, and learn how torecognize and stop that when it happens.“I’ve attended some other types ofconferences and this has been by farthe best. The speakers were great,the food, the accommodations, thetutorials, and the set-up. Can’t waituntil next year to attend!”— Chasity Johnson, Product Manager/Project Manager,MAP Software18Call 888.268.8770 or 904.278.0524 to register • WWW.SQE.COM/ADPREG