Author: danmezick

MEETING VENUE: MICROSOFT offices in WALTHAM. REGISTER NOW for this meeting

DIRECTIONS TO MICROSOFT WALTHAM.

WEDNESDAY February 25 2009, 630PM to 830PM

KEN SCHWABER ON SCRUM

Ken Schwaber is a celebrated pioneer and developer of the Agile frontier. He is the co-creator of the Scrum framework, and the author of numerous books on the subject. He pioneered the worldwide evangelization of Scrum (via Certified Scrum Trainers) and taught thousands of trainers how to effectively convey the plain truth of Scrum’s practices and essential core values.

Presentation: KEN SCHWABER ON SCRUM

KEN SCHWABER presents his positions, guidance and insight on Scrum. Ken has the floor for the entire meeting. Register early to secure your seating. This meeting has limited seating and Ken Schwaber needs no introduction. RSVP as soon as possible to secure you seat.

During this presentation, Ken plans to sketch the essentials of Agile and Scrum practice, and then dive into ONE HOUR of questions and answers. Bring your hardest, thorniest, hardest-to-solve, real-world Scrum questions to this meeting. Ken provides the answers in an empirical Q&A format.

Feedback from you regarding the recent Jeff Sutherland meeting indicates that the opportunity to ask questions and get answers from an authoritative speaker is VERY highly valued by you.

In response we are asking authoritative speakers to engage in longer, active Q&A. In this meeting, Ken graciously answers your hardest Scrum questions ON THE FLY.

Ken’s web site is www.controlchaos.com.

NOTE: The presentation and questions are sequenced and moderated by Dan Mezick. We are aiming at the broadest possible range of questions for Ken to answer. No one attendee is allowed to monopolize the presentation. Arrive with your question, ask it politely, and enjoy the rest of the presentation.

02-25-2009 MEETING AGENDA:

6:30 PM: AGILE ORIENTATION: Scrum as described by Ken Schwaber

7:00 PM: Food and networking time

7:15 PM: MAIN EVENT: Q&A with Ken Schwaber, co-creator of the Scrum framework

8:25 PM: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION OF MEETING

MEETING VENUE: MICROSOFT WALTHAM. REGISTER HERE for this meeting

NOTE: Plan to show up if you register. If you register but are a no-show, that fact will be written to your attendance record. Please do not register casually. If you register, make a commitment to attend. Those who register AND subsequently attend will get priority seating at big meetings like this one. If you register but are a no-show, we know who you are, and you will not get early seating next time.

DO NOT register casually for this meeting, as you do us a big disservice to usm by distorting the actual count for the seating and food. Registration is an explicit commitment to attend.

DIRECTIONS TO MICROSOFT WALTHAM.

MEETING VENUE: MICROSOFT offices in WALTHAM. REGISTER NOW for this meeting

DIRECTIONS TO MICROSOFT WALTHAM.

WEDNESDAY January 28, 2009; 630PM to 830PM

Presentation: Deploying Your Agile Toolbox Gradually, with Examples

It’s not ‘all or nothing’. The reality is that you can start introducing the agile practices into your current projects gradually, without breaking any existing processes. Over time, you bring in the Agile mindset. They never see it coming. You can take an incremental approach.

During this presentation, we are covering the basics of the Agile Projects and Lean development as well as the corresponding tools that will help you with Test Driven Development, Continuous Integration, Unit Testing, Mocking, IOC (Inversion-of-Control), Dependency Injection and more. We’re are setting up an Agile software project and will taking it step-by-step to its first release while proving that all of the above is not as hard and intimidating as it sounds.

Igor Moochnick is a Principal Software Engineer for Messaging Security Division at Symantec and Principal of IgorShare Consulting company (www.igorshare.com). He has more than 18 years experience in development of cross-platform and cross-technology (.Net, Java) service-oriented Enterprise Systems for companies like Intel, AOL/ICQ and Symantec.

A specialist in cloud computing technologies like Amazon AWS and Azure, he is passionate about helping development teams improve development processes and produce better quality software. He speaks at community events, Code Camps, conferences and user groups. Igor is a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist in ADO.Net, Asp.Net, WPF and WF.

You can read the blog posts he writes when he finds time between all these activities at http://www.igorshare.com/blog.

MEETING VENUE: MICROSOFT WALTHAM. REGISTER HERE for this meeting

DIRECTIONS TO MICROSOFT WALTHAM.

MEETING VENUE: MICROSOFT offices in WALTHAM. REGISTER NOW for the sure-to-fill, JEFF SUTHERLAND session at the Nov 25 Meeting

**NOTE**: Location is MICROSOFT WALTHAM, **not** a restaurant in Waltham.

DIRECTIONS TO MICROSOFT WALTHAM.

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 25 630PM to 830PM

Dr. Jeff Sutherland is the co-creator of the Scrum methodology. His pioneering work is well documented throughout the world.

Jeff Sutherland travels the world consulting to executives, managers and development teams. He is a prolific author and one of (if not THE) foremost authority on the Scrum methodology.

See his Wikipedia entry here. There are links to his blog here.

See his Agile2008 sessions here.

See bio of Dr. Jeff Sutherland here.

Click here for a quick Google search on Dr. Sutherland.

Speaker: Dr. Jeff Sutherland, the Scrum pioneer and CO CREATOR of the Scrum methodology, presents:

Presentation: SELF ORGANIZATION IN SCRUM: HOW IT WORKS AND WHEN IT DOESN’T

Scrum was designed for hyper-performing teams that operate at 5-10 times the velocity and quality of waterfall teams. It is linearly scalable across geographies to any size.

High performance depends on the self-organizing capability of teams. Understanding how this works, and how to avoid destroying self-organization, is a challenge.

Attend this session to learn about how Scrum teams can best self-organize, and how to enable that process such that the hyperproductive state can be achieved.

Presentation Topics Include:

– Shock therapy

– Choice Uncertainty Principle

– Punctuated Equilibrium

Not to be missed !!

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NOTE: Seats for this event are limited. Therefore, those who attend the September and October meetings of Agile Boston get priority for the November meeting seats.

If you want a seat at this meeting, it is recommended that you register for and attend one of these prior meetings of Agile Boston. See the Meeting Schedule here.

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Register EARLY.

MEETING VENUE: MICROSOFT WALTHAM. REGISTER NOW for the sure-to-fill, JEFF SUTHERLAND session at the Nov 25 Meeting

**NOTE**:Location is MICROSOFT WALTHAM, **not** a restaurant in Waltham.

DIRECTIONS TO MICROSOFT WALTHAM.

Agile Adoption: The Experience Report. Presenter: Ray Scott, Director of QA and Agile practices, Litle & Co (www.litle.com)

Ray shares the joyous and painful trials, and tribulations, of spearheading Agile adoptions in larger and smaller corporations. His experience spans the past 36 months working within some of the most recognized corporations in the region.

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Where:

MICROSOFT New England
201 Jones Rd., Sixth Floor
Waltham, MA 02451 ………………………..get Agile Boston driving directions here.

When:

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 22 630PM to 830PM

Meeting Agenda:

6:30 PM: PART01: Quick Intro to Agile and Scrum for those new to the process.

7:00 PM: PIZZA NETWORKING: Have some food. Bring business cards.

7:20 PM: MAIN PRESENTATION: Ray Scot (Director of QA and Agile Practices, Litle & Co) on Agile Adoptions

8:30 PM: CONCLUSION OF MEETING

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PRESENTER: Ray Scott, Director of QA and Agile Practices, Litle & Co

Details

Currently leading the Agile and QA efforts at Litle & Co, Ray has 20 years of IT experience development and QA with about 3 years of experience in leading Agile adoption at large companies.

At Litle & Co, Ray works towards the integrity of ongoing Agile development and test processes. At his previous position at Fidelity, Ray spent 2 years developing and implementing Agile adoption strategies at Fidelity for Scrum, XP, Crystal and FDD (feature driven development).

He subsequently led the training program for Agile practices. He later led a high profile, customer-facing Agile project at Fidelity in Boston.

Ray’s current firm is experiencing hyper-growth, which is often a direct consequence of effective Agile practice. Litle & Co was presented the coveted 2006 Inc. 500 highest 3-year growth award for a private Financial company with growth of 5,629.1 percent.

(reference: Inc Magazine article on Litle & Co hyper-growth.)

Attend this session to learn how to make Agile adoptions work, and gain valuable insight from Ray’s deep experience in driving successful Agile adoptions and practices.

Presentation Outline

The Challenges of Agile adoption: big and small companies
· How to identify impediments to product delivery
· How to measure and manage progress in adoption.
· Staying Effective: Keep your friends’ close and your Enemies closer!
· In Deep: Fixing QA vs. fixing Development
· What worked, what didn’t? Best practices in Agile adoption and execution.

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Experience Report from Agile2008/Toronto, plus: XPGAME TEAMS

Where:

MICROSOFT New England
201 Jones Rd., Sixth Floor
Waltham, MA 02451 ………………………..get

When:

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 22 630PM to 830PM

Meeting Agenda:

6:30 PM: PART01: Quick Intro to Agile and Scrum for those new to the process.

6:45 PM: MAIN EVENT: Experience Report from Agile2008.

7:45 PM: XP GAME **TEAMS** COMPETITION

8:20 PM: RAFFLE and Conclusion. We raffle off the FULL PROCEEDING **including** all the printed papers in the published proceedings, **plus** the full conference CD with all the slides from ALL the presentations!

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Details

Executives, directors, managers, project leads and developers NEW to Agile and Scrum are especially welcome at each and every meeting. We welcome you by presenting a quick-start on Agile and Scrum practices and terms, so you are comfortable with the entire meeting’s content.

Each meeting features a brief intro to Agile, then the main session, and then a full-audience participation Agile game. There is something for everyone at all levels of Agile practice at our meetings.

RAFFLE: Agile2008 Printed Proceedings : You must be PRESENT to WIN…….

The genuine article! DOZENS of current, cutting-edge research papers on Agile

RAFFLE: AGILE2008 Conference CD: You must be PRESENT to WIN…….

The real thing! All the slides from almost ALL the sessions!

Meeting Agenda:

6:30 PM: PART01: Quick Intro to Agile and Scrum for those new to the process. We run down the concepts and facilities of Agile and Scrum VERY quickly, to familiarize those who are new to the group and Agile methods. (We do this presentation/Q&A at every meeting….if you are new, arrive promptly at 6:30 to get this presentation.)

Items we cover:

o Agile defined

o Scrum defined: 3 roles, 3 ceremonies, 3 artifacts, 3 best practices

o XP, Test-driven development, user stories, planning poker, task board defined

o The role of empiricism: empirical vs. dfined process control

o Summary

….if you know the Agile/Scrum basics, you can stroll in at 6:45 without missing the Main Event.

6:45 PM: MAIN EVENT: Experience Report from Agile2008. This conference is the annual Agile event where trends take shape and best practices are confirmed. Attendees come from Japan, Russia and other far-away places; Agile2008 had over 1600 attendees and 300 sessions!!

Dan Mezick attended and presented at Agile2008 in Toronto and reports on the new emerging ideas and trends shaping the Agile community. A COPY OF THE ACTUAL CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS (with CD) IS TO BE RAFFLED OFF AT THIS MEETING.

Topics include:

o A review and recap of the very best Agile2008 sessions;

o Distributed Agile: experience reports from the conference,

o Best practices in Scrum and XP worldwide,

o “Promiscuous Pairing”, an emerging XP best practice

o Anatomy of failed adoptions, as described by several presenters

o A rundown of oberved trends in the Agile community,

o News and tools from vendors of Agile toolsets…..

…..and more!!
7:30 PM: Break and Informal Networking (pizza time)
7:45 PM: XP GAME **TEAMS** COMPETITION—We had an enormously GOOD TIME playing the XP GAME at the last meeting. The XP GAME is a fantastic, experiential way to “get” Agile thinking figured out.

We are making some changes to the game format to enable teams to compete on business value as we play the game. We are modifying the game to create a really fun, team-level activity that is 100% Agile and allows everyone to have some fun and learn how to “think in Agile”.

We draft teams, which are always a mix of experienced and less-experienced players, making for a GOOD TIME. If you are new to Agile, you learn fast playing this game. If you are experienced, you mentor the newbies and help your team COMPETE to deliver the most business value during this fun, mock-Agile game. Everyone has a good time, gets to know each other and learns ALOT.

The object of the game is be on the team that delivers the most business value in three very shorts iterations.

Game Steps:

1. Draft the Teams. We pick 2 people who were at the last meeting to choose the teams. These people know who has experience with the game….and choose accordingly.

2. Play the game. New story cards are being prepared for this meeting…this means NO ONE knows the new stories. This levels the playing field and makes the game fair. We mix in these NEW stories with some of the EXISTING stories.

Background: The XP game is described here. We play a modified version that includes a draft. Believe when I tell you, this is a very FUN group-level Agile game.

8:20 PM: RAFFLE and Conclusion. We raffle off the FULL PROCEEDING **including** all the printed papers in the published proceedings, **plus** the full conference CD with all the slides from ALL the presentations!

Presenter: Dan Mezick

REGISTER for this Agile Boston Meeting