Agile Boston Meetings | New Technology Solutions

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.

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

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.

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!

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

Category: Agile Boston Meetings

October 22, 2008 Meeting: Ray Scott on Agile Adoption; The Experience Report.

September 22, 2008 Meeting: Experience Report from Agile2008/Toronto, plus: XPGAME TEAMS