February 22nd Workshop – Sprint/Interation Planning

Sprint/Iteration Planning
Iteration planning (aka sprint planning) is a key aspect of Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP). In a good iteration planning meeting, teams develop a clear understanding of the iteration’s goals and their implications. This can significantly jump start the iteration and
unify the team. Done poorly, iteration planning can waste a lot of time without improving clarity.
In this workshop, we’ll explore how to optimize your planning sessions so that your team gets the most out of them. We’ll talk about the pre-planning, running the planning meeting and implications for the iteration. We’ll also touch on coordinating with other teams and how
iteration planning relates to release planning.
This session will be valuable to both those new to agile as well as those with more exposure. Throughout, we’ll share experiences and
perform exercises to generate some new ones.
Speaker Bio:
Walter Bodwell is the founder of Planigle, a company which provides consulting, training and tools to help teams get the most out of agile development. While at Planigle, Walter has worked with companies from start ups to large enterprises to assist them in their software practices. He has also developed an agile project management tool to help teams manage their backlogs, their iterations and their releases.

Prior to that Walter was a senior director at BMC Software where he led engineering of the Service Impact and Event Management and Performance Management product lines (scaling agile to groups of up to 150 engineers across multiple continents).

Walter is also the current Vice President of Agile Austin.

For more information and to reserve a seat: http://agileaustinfebruaryworkshop.eventbrite.com/

Workshop location:
8310 N Capital of Texas Hwy
Building 2, Suite #100
Austin, TX 78731

January 10th Workshop – Release Planning and Estimation

Goals:
Introduce you to a technique for Agile Estimating
Give you hands on experience conducting Release Planning
Show you techniques to provide visibility into the progress of a release
We will work through a hands on exercise covering the following topics:
Release Planning
Story Points
Planning Poker
Metrics and Reporting

For more information and to reserve a seat: http://agileaustinjanuaryworkshop.eventbrite.com/

Date: 1/10/2012
Time: 6:30 PM

Directions:

From North, take 183 to 360. Take 360 south. Turn right at the 2nd stop light onto Bluffstone Drive. The entrance to the building will be on the left at the top of the hill. It will be the building with “Micro Focus” on the side of it.

From South, take 360 north. Turn left at the Bluffstone Drive. The entrance to the building will be on the left at the top of the hill. It will be the building with “Micro Focus” on the side of it.

Speaker Bio:
David Hawks is a software development optimizer at Agile Velocity and thoroughly enjoys maximizing team potential. Prior to founding Agile Velocity, Mr. Hawks was the Sr. Director of Engineering at RenewData where he was responsible for all software development activities. He has over 15 years in senior technical management positions at RealVue Simulation Technologies, Exterprise (acquired by Commerce One) and Fireman’s Fund Insurance.
He received a Bachelor of Business Administration in Management Information Systems from the University of Texas at Austin. He’s a Certified ScrumMaster and Certified Scrum Professional. When not helping teams turn into high performers, he can be found tailgating at UT games, gaming or watching his kids play sports.

Upcoming Agile Austin Workshops

Here is a list of upcoming Agile Austin Workshops:

12/8/11: David Merryweather, Test Automation Tools for ATDD (More information)
1/10/12: David Hawks, Release Planning and Estimation (More info to come)
2/22/12: Walter Bodwell, Sprint/Iteration Planning (More info to come)
3/14/12: Lee Fox, Agile Communication Techniques (More info to come)

Please email workshops@agileaustin.org for more information or to request another subject for a workshop.

December 8th Workshop: Test Automation Tools with Acceptance Test Driven Development

Date: December 8, 2011

Time: 6:30 – 9:00 PM

Location: National Instruments, 11500 N Mopac Expy, Austin, TX 78759

Test Automation Tools with Acceptance Test Driven Development

Acceptance Test-driven development (ATDD) involves writing executable acceptance test before the solution code. This brings together stakeholders, product owner, developers, and testers at the beginning of each sprint to discuss and clarify on the iteration goals and requirements, by speaking a common example-driven and relatively unambiguous language.

The outcome of this exercise with the requirements (stories and acceptance criteria), is a set of executable tests written in the Behavior Driven Development (BDD) style using the “Given…When…Then” grammatical structure. It is the concept of tests-as-requirements and requirements-as-tests that is central to the reason ATDD is so effective.

You will first be given a gentle introduction of the ATDD & BDD concepts. With a good understanding of ATDD and BDD, you will be lead through the mechanics of converting executable tests written in BDD to an automated test suite using Robot Framework. Robot framework is a keyword/data driven python based open source testing framework for authoring, managing, running and reporting on tests. Examples of both executable application and web based testing will be discussed.

You will leave with the practical knowledge required to do Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) and a general understanding of the BDD test development process. You will additionally have a good understanding of how the development and test engineers convert these executable tests into a robust test suite of automated acceptance tests.

Speaker Bio:

David Merryweather is the Director of Software Development with Customer Care, Inc. David leads several teams working with AT&T Wi-Fi Services (AWS) in Austin, TX. David has over 20 years of experience in the software industry as an accomplished Agile Leader, Architect and Software Designer. David holds a BS degree in Software Engineering with post-grad work at Harvard in the same area of study.

David has been refining his Agile craft since 2004 when he accidentally picked up and fell in love with a copy of “Agile Software Development with Scrum”. David’s current love affair is with the Continuous Deployment movement and the engineering practices required to make that pattern a reality in “real world” software development.

For more information, email workshops@agileaustin.org. Please reserve your seat at: http://agileaustindecemberworkshop.eventbrite.com/

November 16 Workshop – Retrospectives

Date:  November 16, 2011

Time:  6:30 – 9:00 PM

The November Agile Austin Workshop will cover the topic of agile retrospectives.  Please join us as Earl Everett presents Agile/Scrum Retrospective Tips, Tricks, and Traps.

Every iteration should deliver 4 things:

1.       Customer value

2.       Working software

3.       Better individuals

4.       A stronger Team

While good feedback loops alone won’t guarantee Agile success, poor and/or nonexistent feedback loops guarantee failure.  The Product Demo at the end of the iteration provides feedback on the product’s current state and its future improvements. The Retrospective is the primary feedback loop for the Team to change and improve.  Would you agree that better Teams deliver better products?  Are your Retrospectives helping develop your Team(s) into all that they can be?

As Christopher Avery says, “The Retrospective is a chance for the team to act like a team, hearing every voice, integrating their perspective and reaching consensus on how to move forward in the next iteration.”  You’ll leave this workshop with some specific Retrospective activities you can use immediately, and some of the good (and bad) patterns Earl has observed over the years that help (or hinder, or prevent) a Team in building the skills and knowledge to improve themselves, their Team, and their organization.

Speaker Bio:

Earl Everett is the Engineering Lead for the DX Storage product at Dell in Austin, TX.  He has been a developer, tester, and manager for over 30 years.  His first agile experience was in 1974, when after he began playing rugby, a game which provides an immersive experience of solid cross-functional teams utilizing ‘inspect and adapt’.  He has successfully introduced and nurtured Agile and XP development and delivery in several companies, and is a CSM, CSPO, and CSP.

For more information, email workshops@agileaustin.org.  Please reserve your seat at:  http://agileaustinnovemberworkshop.eventbrite.com/

Oct 1st, 2011 – Backlog Management Workshop

RSVP via Eventbrite to reserve your seat

Product Owners bear a heavy burden in agile teams. They have the responsibility of creating and maintaining the backlog. Each of these efforts presents a significant set of challenges.

In this workshop we will explore two essential Product Owner skills vis-à-vis the backlog.

1) Getting Started. This portion of the workshop explores techniques for approaching the creation of a backlog. Hands on exercises explore the process of moving from visioning to theme development and then to Minimal Marketable Features.

2) Epic Decomposition. Product Owners struggle mightily with breaking stories down into chunks that are easy to develop within an iteration. This portion of the workshop presents over a dozen ways to break stories down and then follows with situational practice and discussion.

This is an advanced workshop that assumes attendees are versed in the role of a backlog in agile projects.
Speaker Bio:
Scott Killen is a founder of Agile Austin and the Agile Practice Leader for PayPal. Scott is also the current Education Chair for Agile Austin. He is a Certified ScrumMaster and Certified Scrum Practitioner through the Scrum Alliance and a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP) through the Project Management Institute. He is co-instructor for an IT Project Management class as well as an Agile Project Leadership class at Austin Community College. He is a past President of the Austin Software Process Improvement Network, past Chair of the Austin PMI Technical Local Interest Group, and and in 1997 he was awarded a CSQE from the American Society for Quality.
When not thinking about how to build better software, faster, he tells stories to children and adults of all ages. Recognized by the Texas Commission for the Arts, you may have listened to one of his tales at the Texas History Museum, O.Henry Museum, French Legation, Zilker Hillside Theater or another public venue. He’s even taken second place in two Liar’s contests!
In addition, Scott is an active Toastmaster. He is a Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM), is V.P of Education for the West Austin II Toastmasters club, and is a past Area K53 Governor.

For more information, please email workshops@agileaustin.org.