Welcome to Agile Austin

Agile Austin U – Agile Foundations Course – Class 8: Agile Technical Practices

The Agile Austin U Foundations Course is an 8 week night course that is free to our community. The intent is to introduce the core concepts of agile, Scrum, Lean Software and Kanban. There will be two volunteer instructors for each class and dinner will be provided. Proof of Attendance will be provided for those interested in claiming PDU’s. The full schedule can be found at http://www.agileaustin.org/training/.

So far our journey in learning about agile has focused on communication, collaboration, planning, and people to effectively build products. We have highlighted the importance of feedback loops, learning, and improvement. We will now turn our attention to the technical practices that allow us to both embrace and minimize the cost of change.

In this final session we will look at the fundamental practices technical teams use to avoid hitting the wall. We will cover Test-Driven Development (TDD), Refactoring, Continuous Integration/Delivery, Emergent Design, Technical Debt, and Collective Ownership and what everyone involved in product delivery should understand about these practices.

Speaker: Rick Grashel and Eric Stewart

Date/Time: 6/11/13 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Venue: St. Edward’s University–North Austin, 9420 Research Boulevard, Echelon III, Suite 100, Austin, TX 78759

To Register (and for more info): http://www.eventbrite.com/event/6793458417.

Agile Austin U – Agile Foundations Course – Class 7: Kanban and Lean SW Overview

The Agile Austin U Foundations Course is an 8 week night course that is free to our community. The intent is to introduce the core concepts of agile, Scrum, Lean Software and Kanban. There will be two volunteer instructors for each class and dinner will be provided. Proof of Attendance will be provided for those interested in claiming PDU’s. The full schedule can be found at http://www.agileaustin.org/training/.

Does your team live a life of constant redirection, possibly at the mercy of operational or sales needs that change more quickly than traditional iterations can handle?

Rooted in Lean manufacturing, Kanban is a signaling system that can be effectively applied to software development, DevOps, IT Operations, and many other processes, and a great way to create frequent, stable, predictable delivery. Kanban takes an organization’s current development process and provides greater visibility into the status of the work. As a catalyst for change, Kanban offers continuous, data-driven improvements to the development process. To optimize flow, teams begin at the right of their working board, pulling from the left only when they have available capacity.

This class teaches the unique advantages Kanban brings to managing product development and how to get started. Participants will gain an understanding of value-stream analysis, WIP limits, classes of service, cycle time and metrics.

Speaker: Colin Turner and Ned Horvath

Date/Time: 6/4/13 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Venue: St. Edward’s University–North Austin, 9420 Research Boulevard, Echelon III, Suite 100, Austin, TX 78759

To Register (and for more info): http://www.eventbrite.com/event/6768483717.

QA SIG North – Who Put the “B” in BDD?

Are you new to BDD? Interested in learning how Behavior Driven Development works? Join us as Dena explains what BDD is, the benefits of the approach, and where it fits in to your development process. This discussion will interest Developers, Product Owners, as well as Testers, so encourage your co-workers to sign up! If there is time, we will show a demo of a BDD tool in action.

Speaker: Dena Laterza

Date/Time: 6/19/13 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm

Venue: Planview, 8300 N Mopac Expy, Austin, TX 78759

To Register (and for more info): http://www.eventbrite.com/event/6758596143.

Monthly Meeting – Ignoring Your Customers. Why Your Product Failed.

There are uncountable reasons why products fail in the market. Many of those reasons are variations of ignoring your customers. This presentation explores the different ways teams ignore their customers and things you can do to make sure you don’t.

Speaker: Scott Sehlhorst

Date/Time: 6/6/13 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Venue: BancVue, 4516 Seton Center Pkwy, Suite 300, Austin, TX 78759

To Register (and for more info): http://www.eventbrite.com/event/6716046877.

Board Meeting – May Meeting

Join the board in discussing how things are going with Agile Austin.

See https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GD_Sjo7DbXYQWb6XWxLFxdFhLMQ0IOEf1FzhnwY45W0/edit for the current agenda / notes (it will be updated during the meeting). To add to it, send an email to board@agileaustin.org.

The first thing we do in board meetings is ask for additional topics / prioritize the topics at hand. As a result, the agenda will change. The best way to encourage discussion of a particular topic is to attend.

Note: the front door locks around 6:30. If you arrive late, call Matt on his cell phone at (512) 656-6948.

Date/Time: 5/20/13 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm

Venue: CA Technologies, 5001 Plaza on the Lake, Third floor, Austin, TX 78746

To Register (and for more info): http://www.eventbrite.com/event/6482317787.

Conference Planning – Keep Austin Agile 2014

Topic: Keep Austin Agile 2014 Conference Planning Meeting

Join us in helping to plan the next “Keep Austin Agile” conference. Meeting notes from planning sessions are kept at:

https://sites.google.com/a/agileaustin.org/keep-austin-agile-2014

Food will be provided for the planning session. Hope to see you there.

Conference Planning Info:

Food and Drink will be provided courtesy of Agile Austin.

Seating is limited!

Please make sure that you are able to attend this session. Seating is limited and on a first-come, first-served basis. We want to give everyone the opportunity to attend, so please only sign up if you are committed to attending.

For more information/questions, please send email to: conferenceteam@agileaustin.org.

Date/Time: 6/5/13 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm

Venue: BancVue, 4516 Seton Center Pkwy, Suite 300, Austin, TX 78759

To Register (and for more info): http://www.eventbrite.com/event/6687700091.

DevOps SIG – May Meeting – Meet the neighbors

March Topic: Meet the neighbors

It’s time for the May meeting of the Agile Austin DevOps SIG. From the April meeting, folks are interested in getting to meet each other and learn what we all do with our day job. It has been a while since we did anything like this and our group is growing. In the interest of time, please come prepared to tell the group:

Who are you and what can you tell us about your work?

Please describe the tools and environment as well as you are able. (details about implementation, data flow, etc.)

What does your team measure; and what do you want to measure?

What do those measurements mean to your business?

Did you attend DevOps Days Austin?

What was your biggest takeaway from the event?

Would you be willing to do a short presentation for the group if people were curious about what you do?

We can do it Open Spaces style if it makes sense to break the group up into interest areas (e.g. monitoring, metrics, provisioning, config management, whatever).

Speaker: Open Spaces

Date/Time: 5/29/13 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm

Venue: Bazaarvoice, 3900 N. Capital of TX Hwy., Austin, TX 78746

To Register (and for more info): http://www.eventbrite.com/event/6687144429.

Agile Austin U – Agile Foundations Course – Class 6: Scrum Simulation

The Agile Austin U Foundations Course is an 8 week night course that is free to our community. The intent is to introduce the core concepts of agile, Scrum, Lean Software and Kanban. There will be two volunteer instructors for each class and dinner will be provided. Proof of Attendance will be provided for those interested in claiming PDU’s. The full schedule can be found at http://www.agileaustin.org/training/.

Scrum is a way for teams to work together to develop a product. It’s a set of rules that create just enough structure for teams to be able to focus their innovation to solve what might otherwise be an insurmountable challenge.

Week 6 of our 8-week journey through the fundamentals of agile brings us to a discussion of Scrum and how it can effectively be used to produce features and/or product(s). You’ll participate in a Scrum simulation and develop a product of your choice. Sprints will include sprint and release planning, development activity, the review and product/feature demonstration, and conclude with a team retrospective. Along the way, the Scrum environment will simulate some of the challenges teams face in their organizations regarding Scrum teams.

Speaker: Jason Morillo and Connie Montgomery

Date/Time: 5/28/13 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Venue: St. Edward’s University–North Austin, 9420 Research Boulevard, Echelon III, Suite 100, Austin, TX 78759

To Register (and for more info): http://www.eventbrite.com/event/6643016441.

Monthly Meeting – Innovation and Finishing

This month we’ll split time between two talks:

Problems Maintaining Innovation in an Agile/Lean World

One of the benefits that many product development teams are able to realize when they switch to an iterative or limited WIP process for developing software is (finally!) a ranking of work items on which the team can focus. Over time, this allows a good deal predictability for the stakeholders of the project, especially when work items have corresponding “done” criteria that are adhered to. Some organizations are so enamored with the results of this shift that they begin to assemble all members of team into these types of structures, including team members that were previously dedicated to research or advanced product development efforts. While this is not necessarily a bad decision for these organizations, some face issues with maintaining a level of innovation in the product efforts as there may be a perception that there is neither time nor the people to work on important innovation efforts. Further, some of these team members may be doing work that is neither challenging to them as individuals nor is bringing the appropriate value to the company.

In this discussion, Matt will help shine a light on this issue that can be especially challenging for a product development company that seeks to maximize the velocity of a product team working against the near-term roadmap but may lose sight of competitive challenges that may change the very nature of the playing field. He will describe the challenges faced by teams he has worked with both in the past and currently and share what he has learned. A healthy discussion is expected to follow!

Stop Starting, Start Finishing

Many organizations are drowning in a sea of opportunity and instead of focusing on getting the highest value items done we are crippled by trying to do too much at one time. In this session we will explore why this is the case and some techniques for resolving the problems. Our objective is to help you:

- Increase productivity and deliver more

- Get your customers more engaged – Have agility to adjust when changes occur

- Lower your cycle times

- Limit the costs of delay

Speaker: Matt Roberts and David Hawks

Date/Time: 5/14/13 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Venue: BancVue, 4516 Seton Center Pkwy, Suite 300, Austin, TX 78759

To Register (and for more info): http://www.eventbrite.com/event/6595947657.

QA SIG Downtown – How Do You Hire?

Note that we have a new home for the Downtown QA SIG at HomeAway (please see the Eventbrite link for the address)! Free parking is available in the garage directly adjoining the office (just park in the spaces labeled “HomeAway Vistor Parking”). You can then check in with the receptionist on the third floor. Hope to see folks there!

Description:

Hiring good testers has always been a challenge, and with a hot job market, it’s even more difficult. What qualities do you look for in a tester? What does your interview process look like? We’ll have an open discussion, sharing tips and tricks on what methods we use to ensure the quality of our new hires.

Date/Time: 5/8/13 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm

Venue: HomeAway, 1011 W. Fifth Street, Austin, TX 78703

To Register (and for more info): http://www.eventbrite.com/event/6563931897.