Agile Development Practices Conference - SQE.com

concurrent classesthursDAY, november 12, 12:45 p.m.T6 TransitioningOrganizational Values: A Key to AgileSuccessMichele Sliger, Sliger ConsultingAgile adoptions can only be successful if corporate valuesmatch the key values outlined in the Agile Manifesto and inagile frameworks such as XP and Scrum. Michele Sliger explainsthe agile values that play a key role in driving individual andteam behavior. Learn the real meaning behind the often heardphrase “agile is value-driven, not plan-driven”. Discover howto determine your company’s values and how to compareand contrast them to agile values—and what to do if they aredifferent. Practice visioning exercises that you can conduct onyour own and with your team to better understand what youand your team members personally value and what you cando to better align your present values with agile values. Findout how to define values at the team level—a must to ensureeffective working relationships. Take away a framework to applywhat you’ve learned in your own company and team.T7 Agile ImplementationSixteen Essential Patterns of MatureAgile TeamsRobert Galen, Independent ConsultantMany teams have a relatively easy time adopting the tacticalaspects of the agile methodologies. Usually a few classes, sometool introduction, and a bit of practice can lead you towarda somewhat efficient and effective adoption. However, suchteams quite often are simply going through the motions—neither maximizing their agile performance nor delivering asmuch value as they could. Borrowing from his experiencesand lean software development methods, Bob Galen exploresessential patterns—the ”thinking models” of mature agileteams—including large-scale emergent architecture, relentlessrefactoring, quality on all fronts, pervasive product owners,lean work queues, stretching above and beyond, providingtotal transparency, saying “no”, and many more. Bob exploresthe leadership dilemma of self-directed teams and why thereis still the need for active and vocal leadership in defending,motivating, and holding agile teams accountable.T8 Testing & QualityPeer Code Review: An Agile ProcessGregg Sporar, Smart Bear SoftwarePeer code review is one of the most effective ways to finddefects—but is it agile? Because agile teams loathe heavyprocess, code review practices can easily fail. However,lightweight peer code review aligns well with the centraltenets of agile—keeping feedback close to the point ofcreation, increasing team velocity by finding defects faster,and improving collective code ownership through frequentcollaboration. Gregg Sporar shares recent research oncode review practices and describes an agile code reviewapproach—how much time to spend, which code to review,how much code to review at a time, how to set goals, thevalue of annotation, and more. After comparing four styles ofcode review—pair programming, over-the-shoulder, email, andtool-assisted—Gregg gives specific advice for creating reviewchecklists and dealing with the social effects of code review inan agile environment.T9 Agile TechniquesStoryotypes: The Patterns Within theStoriesDan Rawsthorne, Danube Technologies, Inc.Have you noticed that similar stories appear over and overagain as you develop a system? According to Dan Rawsthorne,stories—those small chunks of work that make up yourbacklog and provide demonstrable value to the project—canbe categorized by purpose as: Production, Analysis, Cleanup,Infrastructure/Environment, Business Support, or Other. Withineach of these categories are different “storyotypes”—patternsthat define the commonalities among the stories themselves.Dan defines and describes some of the most prevalentstoryotypes, explains why they are useful, and demonstratesthe concept with examples. These examples include “AlternatePath” and “Clean-Up Interface” for the production category,“Talk to Stakeholders” and “Exploratory Testing” for the analysiscategory, among others. For each storyotype, Dan providessample tasks and canonical “doneness” criteria that makeplanning and backlog grooming easier and more consistent. Byemploying storyotypes in developing your stories, your teamwill produce more consistent, higher quality requirements thatare easier to work with.T10 Lean ThinkingKanban: A True Integration of Lean andAgileAlan Shalloway, Net ObjectivesIf XP and Scrum are the first generation of agile methods,Kanban software development is the next generation. Kanbanintegrates lean and agile principles to create better softwarefaster and at less cost. Kanban does this by defining explicitmethods to manage work flow, paying particular attention tothe number of things being worked on simultaneously, and howthe available resources are allocated. Alan Shalloway reviewsthe basic Lean Principles of “fast, flexible, and flow” along withthe systemic nature of errors Kanban addresses. Alan describesthe differences between time-boxed software methods suchas Scrum and flow-based methods such as Kanban—and whenyou would want to use Kanban instead of Scrum. Learn howto implement Kanban by defining a workflow, managing yourwork in progress, and establishing a Kanban board to make theworkflow and progress visible. Learn what to expect—both thegood and the bad—if you undertake using Kanban.“I captured new and helpful informationfrom these sessions. Our company has beendeveloping applications in agile for about 1½years now. It feels good to know that we’reapplying practices that the speakers haveindicated, and at the same time I’ve heard newthings that will help us improve our process.”— Agile Development Practices Delegate22Call 888.268.8770 or 904.278.0524 to register • WWW.SQE.COM/ADPREG