Thursday, June 6, 2013, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  Getting Started with Scrum

 

This will be a group discussion. We will start with a general case of a new firm, new department getting started with Scrum.  Probably will assume about 20-30 people to 'go Scrum'.  From the beginning.

 

Then we will ask the experienced people to share their favorite ideas about how to get started.  What to do, what not to do.  Questions and answers, discussion.  If we can, we may break into small groups.

 

We may also consider more specific cases. 'But my firm is X, Y, and Z....what do I do then?'

 

We will also discuss WHY you want to start with Scrum.

 

Note: This meeting idea was generated by a few conversations at the last meeting.

 

Advice: This is a good meeting to bring a manager to.

 

Venue:

Queens University

Room 322, Sykes Building

 

Speaker: Everyone

 

Tuesday, May 21, 2013, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  Large Scale Agile Program and Portfolio Management Using Scrum

 

More than 10 years after the signing of the Agile Manifesto, agile is now officially mainstream. The PMI is offering an agile certification and you can’t hardly find an IT job description that doesn’t ask for some sort of Agile experience. As a community, we’ve become pretty good at setting up agile teams and delivering agile projects. The next frontier for agile methods is tackling the enterprise, and one of the toughest nuts to crack will be the traditional PMO.

In larger more complex environments, it isn’t sufficient to pair a single product owner with a single team and expect that the work of the business is going to get done. We are dealing with larger, more diverse groups of stakeholders, stakeholders whose needs often compete for the attention of the team. Furthermore, the teams have to work together in more complex ways that require tighter integration across teams to deliver larger, more complex feature sets.

This talk will explore patterns for dealing with more complex organizations, managing interdependencies between teams, and balancing tradeoffs to optimize the project delivery organization. The key question to answer is ‘when will we be done, and what will we get for our time and money’. We want to give the PMO a way to answer this question without having to resort to traditional plan-driven approaches. This talk will lay out just such an approach.

Learning Outcomes

•     How is program and portfolio management different from project management
•     How is agile program and portfolio management different from traditional program and portfolio management
•     Foundations of building stable, predictable Agile teams
•     Patterns for organizing teams in the enterprise
•     Patterns for integrating the work of many teams to create complex, interdependent deliverables
•     How to prevent teams from getting out of sync
•     How to manage dependencies and conflicts when multiple programs compete for shared delivery teams
•     How to establish budgets and constraints rather than focusing on estimates
•     How to leverage Agile, Lean, and Kanban to create a scalable program and portfolio management infrastructure

 

Venue:

CPCC Central High Building, Room 305

1141 Elizabeth Ave

Charlotte NC 28204

(At the corner of Elizabeth Avenue and Kings Drive.  Parking is behind the building, entering from Elizabeth Avenue or Kings Drive)

 

Speaker: Mike Cottmeyer

 

Mike Cottmeyer is a PMP Project Manager, an Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), and a Certified ScrumMaster. Mike's company, LeadingAgile provides mixed-methodology Agile Training, Agile Coaching, and Enterprise Agile Transformation Services designed to help pragmatically, incrementally, and safely introduce Agile methods into any sized organization.

 

Meeting Sponsor:  ettain group

 

Thursday, April 18, 2013, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  Effective Retrospectives

 

Has your team ever gotten into a rut and found retrospectives to be ineffective? Do you avoid conducting these look-backs every iteration because you don't find it valuable? Let's get together and figure out how to solve these and other retrospective dilemmas! To keep our humor about us, we will take guesses at the beginning of the session on how many times we use the word "retrospective" and of course, the winner gets a prize....

     

Venue:

Community Room at the Junior League Building

1332 Maryland Ave

Charlotte NC 28209

 

Speaker: Christy Clement

 

Christy Clement has been managing software projects since 2003 and implementing Agile with companies since 2008. Christy is currently a trainer and a coach for Davisbase Consulting, where she has trained over 1500 students in Agile methodologies and coached 13 teams in their transition. Christy has seen the positive impact Agile can have and derives much satisfaction from helping teams embrace this approach. She believes fully in the empowerment of the team, the visibility obtained, the quality of work resulting and the trust that is gained by implementing Agile. Christy has trained thousands of people and shares that passion with all of her students. She is a natural teacher and her enjoyment and laughter is contagious in any environment. Christy is a Certified Scrum Professional, PMI-ACP and a GE Six Sigma Blackbelt. She holds degrees in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from Case Western Reserve.

 

          Meeting Sponsor:  Davisbase Consulting 

 

Wednesday, March 13, 2013, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  The People Side of Agile

 

Communication and successful interactions are key contributors to success. The agile manifesto centers on keep moving forward to provide working software in an ever changing environment. This is done with individuals collaborating and constantly interacting to respond to change and validating done. The Virginia Satir communication model provides a good soft skill mantra to pair with agile. It takes people successfully communicating and collaborating to build that working software that we all so love. We will discuss some Satir essentials and similar outlooks towards true team engagement.

         

Venue:

UNCC Charlotte City Center

320 E 9th St

Charlotte NC 28202

 

Speaker: Troy Bitter

 

Troy Bitter is an Agile leader and advocate with 18 years of IT experience spanning several industries, including check & paper remittance processing, manufacturing & distribution, and financial services. Since 2008, he has focused on Agile/iterative project delivery where “one size doesn’t fit all.” Adapting Agile for organizations is his focus and passion.

Troy is the Director of Agile Services at Cohesion. Cohesion is a consulting firm based in Cincinnati, OH with locations in Ohio and North Carolina.

Meeting Sponsor:   Cohesion http://www.cohesion.com/

 

Slide Deck:  People Side of Agile - Agile Carolina.pdf

 

 

Tuesday, February 12, 2013, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  Building Highly Effective Teams, Agile Style

 

This talk will look at the process of:

1) READY – What roles do we need?
2) SET – Find the team members
3) GO – Positive ways coach, encourage and inspire your teams to be “high performing teams”.         

 

Venue:

Queens University - McColl School of Business

Sykes Building (faces Selwyn Avenue)

Room 322

 

Speaker: Teri Kirkpatrick

 

Teri has been doing IT projects as a Developer, DBA, Deployment Manager, Project Manager and most recently as a ScrumMaster for 15+ years.  The Agile framework IS what has worked for several development efforts in the past 4 years, and one of the top reasons for this is the development, coaching and support for the Agile team. 

 

Thursday, January 24, 2013, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  Panel Discussion:  Kanban vs. ScrumBan

 

The discussion will have 4 parts:

1. Basics of Kanban and Lean
2. Typical implementations of the 'Kanban' method
3. ScrumBan defined
4. Discussion of pros and cons

One point-of-view (there will be others…):

A. Love Lean and it's ideas.
B. Strongly support experienced teams moving to ScrumBan.
C. Would only advocate the Kanban 'method' temporarily, when nothing else would work for now.
D. Key issue is probably maintaining a strong link to the business side.

 

Venue:

 

Genesis 10

212 South Tryon

Suite 650

Charlotte, NC 28281

 

Wednesday, December 5, 2012, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  Enterprise Agility: a walk in the park?

 

The implementation of Agile in the Enterprise is much more complex than implementing Scrum. There are many other implications. Is your team part of a larger development organization? Are you implementing SOA? Are there other teams not following Agile? High complexity? Distributed teams? We will discuss how to scale Agile and maximize the business value for the organization by using multiple Agile techniques from Lean, Kanban and Scrum and avoid most common pitfalls.

 

Speaker:  Eddy Eckmann

 

Consulting Architect and Agile Evangelist Eddy Eckmann has over 22 years of experience in software architecture and development within the Financial, Banking and Insurance industries. Roles have included business analyst, developer, technical lead, systems engineer, project manager, development manager, product manager and consulting architect. Eddy worked 16 years at IBM and since 2003 he has worked as an independent consultant. He started doing Agile development before it was called Agile. His vast and diverse experience in the field gives him a unique opportunity to help teams and organizations embrace Agile in the most efficient manner, allowing them to obtain higher levels of business value and quality.

Venue:

 

ettain group
127 W Worthington Ave #100
Charlotte, NC 28203

 

 

 

Tuesday, November 13, 2012, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  Business Value - How to Increase It

 

At Southern Fried Agile I was told, and so it seemed, that business value is a big topic. And well it should be.

 

This talk will be about practical, simple things we can do to get more business value in the releases.  We will list lots of them. Some of them you are surely doing, and others you surely will not be doing.  And this is not just for product owners.

 

We will also talk about how to implement some of them, your impediments to implementing some of them, and why they are so useful.

 

I will mention briefly the 3 things I talked about at SFA (BV Engineering, Priority Poker, Pareto Idea).  But this will be a totally different talk than at SFA. And, I hope, more of a multi-part discussion.

 

Speaker:  Joe Little

 

Joe Little is an Agile Coach and Trainer at LeanAgileTraining.com.  He is a Certified Scrum Trainer, and has an MBA.

Joe has 20+ years in consulting and new product development in New York, London, Charlotte and elsewhere.  Clients have ranged from Northrop Grumman to JP Morgan Chase, to small software firms in Winston-Salem and Rochester.  He is a strong advocate of Lean (see Taiichi Ohno and the Poppendiecks).

The key results he wants: a better life for each team member, for the team, and for the customers.

Joe has twice spoken at Agile20xx, several times at Agile Tour events, and has spoken publicly at many other places (eg, Southern Fried Agile).  He works regularly with Jeff Sutherland and other great coaches.

 

Venue:

 

Piedmont Natural Gas, Auditorium D

4720 Piedmont Row Dr.

Charlotte, NC 28210

 

Friday, October 12, 2012, 8:00am-5:00pm

 

          Southern Fried Agile

          SFA 2012 Presentations

 

Tuesday, September 25, 2012, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  Uncomfortable with Agile

 

It’s been ten years since we coined the term agile. Are you finally comfortable with being agile? If you are comfortable, then that’s too bad, because it means you’re doing it wrong. Join Andy Hunt, one of the 17 authors of the Agile Manifesto for an important look back at what it means to be agile, and how to progress from simply following agile practices to becoming a true self-directed, self-correcting agile practitioner.

 

Speaker:  Andy Hunt

 

Andy Hunt is a programmer turned consultant, author and publisher.  He authored the best-selling book "The Pragmatic Programmer" and six others, was one of the 17 founders of the Agile Alliance, and co-founded the Pragmatic Bookshelf, publishing award-winning and critically acclaimed books for software developers.

 

Venue:

 

CapTech

201 South College Street (Charlotte Plaza Building)

Suite 1450

Charlotte NC 28244

 

Wednesday, August 22, 2012, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  Connecting Agile to the Business

 

Agile, from its beginnings in software development, has evolved into a powerful methodology applied broadly across innovative enterprises. Agile helps deliver customer value by connecting development priorities with strategy; aligning teams across the business with the most important needs; capturing customer feedback to ensure roadmaps reflect priorities.

 

So how do organizations benefit from Agile practices systematically?  How is this success measured, and when?  How do Agile teams act in high-performing organizations and how do business stakeholders use these methods differently?  These are key questions to address in making Agile work across the enterprise.  In this one-hour session, join Todd Olson, Rally Software’s Vice-President of Products, to find out how to connect Agile to the business.

 

Speaker:  Todd Olson, Vice President of Products at Rally Software.

 

Todd Olson brings technology thought-leadership and a pioneering, entrepreneurial spirit to aligning Rally’s product strategy and execution efforts. Todd leads the evolution of Rally’s proven Agile ALM platform for enabling software and product-driven enterprises to deliver 50% faster to market. Todd joined Rally when it acquired his company, 6th Sense Analytics, where he served as Chief Technology Officer and led the fundraising of $7 million in seed capital. The acquisition boosted Rally’s capabilities for complete visibility and predictability across the Agile development lifecycle.

Prior to founding 6th Sense Analytics, Todd was Chief Scientist of the Together business unit at Borland Software after TogetherSoft was acquired in 2002. Prior to the acquisition, Todd was Vice President of Product Development at TogetherSoft, responsible for architecting and developing the award-winning Together design tool. Before joining TogetherSoft, Todd was co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Cerebellum Software where he is the original inventor and creator of the Cerebellum data integration product. Todd began his career at MBNA as a database designer and software architect. He has a Bachelors of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University and is a graduate of its Entrepreneurial Management program. Todd manages Rally’s largest remote office in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he lives with his family

 

Venue:

 

CapTech

201 South College Street (Charlotte Plaza Building)

Suite 1450

Charlotte NC 28244

 

Summary:  Summary of Todd Olson's Presentation

 

Wednesday, July 25, 2012, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  How an Agile Methodology Can Help Your Next IT Project

 

How TIAA-CREF is adopting agile methodologies and other best practices.

 

 

Speaker:  Andrew Kettering

 

Andrew Kettering is the Head of Delivery Quality at TIAA-CREF, responsible for streamlining and improving the processes that support its delivery engine. Andrew is responsible for the Development QA, IT Governance, Business Management and Platform Operating Metrics functions.

 

 

Venue:

 

TIAA-CREFF Auditorium

8500 Andrew Carnegie Blvd

Charlotte NC 28262

 

Tuesday, June 26, 2012, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  Sprint Reviews that Attract, Engage, & Enlighten

 

Are you suffering from organizational disinterest in what your agile teams are delivering? Are your Product Owners unavailable or distracted? Does everyone question the value and flow of what you teams are working on? Are your sprint reviews a ho-hum experience with varying and low attendance?

If you answered yes to any of the above, your agile teams are in trouble and you need to attend this session.

Join experienced agile coach Bob Galen to explore real-world patterns for how to increase the interest, energy, and value of your Sprint Reviews. First we’ll explain the importance of proper preparation, keys to dry runs, and role of a Master of Ceremonies. Then we’ll look at ways to orchestrate reviews to include the whole team and engage your audience, while always demonstrating “working software”. Next up is how to perform effective review follow-up gathering feedback towards high-impact improvements.

Finally, we’ll wrap-up the session by exploring how to make your reviews a centerpiece of your agile adoption and cross-organizational transformation.

 

Speaker:  Bob Galen

 

Bob Galen is an Agile Methodologist, Practitioner & Coach based in Cary, NC. In this role he helps guide companies and teams in their pragmatic adoption and organizational shift towards Scrum and other Agile methods and practices. He is currently President & Principal Consultant at RGCG, LLC. He is also Director of Agile Solutions for Zenergy Technologies where he applies his experience helping clients accelerate their agile adoption.

 

Bob regularly speaks at international conferences and professional groups on topics related to software development, project management, software testing and team leadership. He is a Certified Scrum Master Practicing (CSP) since 2004, Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), and an active member of the Agile Alliance & Scrum Alliance. In 2009 he published the book Scrum Product Ownership – Balancing Value from the Inside Out. The book addresses the gap in guidance towards effective agile product management. You can find the book here - http://goo.gl/mlYHF

 

Bob may be reached directly at – bob@rgalen.com or bob.galen@zenergytechnologies.com or http://www.linkedin.com/in/bobgalen.

 

Venue:

 

Piedmont Natural Gas
4720 Piedmont Row Drive
Charlotte, NC 28210

 

Wednesday, May 30, 2012, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Speaker:  Brad Ball

 

Brad Ball has been developing software solutions for the healthcare industry for over 20 years.  He is currently a Senior Director of Solution Development at Premier where they develop applications to help hospitals improve their quality of care, identify performance gaps and improve processes.  In his time at Premier, they have grown from a handful of IT staff to hundreds – introducing testing, project management and other formal development processes along the way.  Brad was part of the team that originally implemented Agile at Premier nearly 5 years ago and they continue to evolve that process today.

 

Topic:  The Evolution of Agile at Premier

 

This is a report from the field. We will include a time perspective of agile-scrum at Premier over the last 5 years. How we first introduced it, and how agile has evolved. We will discuss things that were easy and things that were hard. And discuss our successes and what we learned along the way as well as new challenges we face as our business continues to grow.  This will of course include Q&A.

 

Venue:

 

Premier

13034 Ballantyne Corporate Place

Charlotte NC 28277

 

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Siraj Sirajuddin:  "The Influencer's Mantra"

theInfluencersMantra.pdf

 

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Group Discussion:

(a) Documentation, Agile & a Large Project. What to do?
(b) Best practices/techniques for Sprint Planning
(c) Kanban: How to do it in the context of Scrum?

 

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Andy Painter:  "Creating More Effective Teams through Paired Collaboration"

Paired Collaboration.pdf

 

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Joe Little (Discussion Leader):  "Driving Better Agile in Medium-to-Large Scrum Implementations"

 

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

 Brian Sobus:   "Functional Management:  There IS a place for it in Agile"

 

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

 Don Gray:  "Dealing with Rube Goldberg Software Development"

 

Friday, July 22, 2011

Southern Fried Agile

Slides: http://southernfriedagile.com/sfa-presentations/

 

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Laurie Williams:  "Best Practices in Agile Estimation through Planning Poker"

 

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Open Space

 

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Jason Sharpee:  "War Stories from the Trenches of Scrum"

 

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

AgileBill Krebs:  Tools for Distributed Teams

 

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Jason Tanner:  Roadmapping

 

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Marilyn Manns:  "Leading Fearless Change:  Making your ideas happen"

 

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Dawn Cannan: "Executable Specifications with FitNesse and Selenium"

 

Friday, July 23, 2010

Southern Fried Agile

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/event/southern-fried-agile-2010.

 

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Catherine Louis: "Leadership and K9 Training: Teaming and behavioral shaping methods used by GREAT vs. Terrible leaders"

 

Thursday, May 20, 2010

David Cate and Chris Mair: "Continuous Integration: Practices and Pitfalls"

Continuous Integration - Agile Carolinas - May 2010.pptx  

 

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Todd Olsen: "Agile Business Intelligence: Implementing a data warehouse using vertical slices"

 

Monday, October 19, 2009

James Collins: "The Fist of Agility"

 

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Ken Pugh on Acceptance Test Driven Development

 

Friday, August 14, 2009

AgilePalooza -- Jeff Sutherland, David Hussman, and others

 

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Open Space (http://www.openspaceworld.org/news/world-story/)

 

 

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June 23 with Jason Sharpee

June 23: 6:00 PM - 8 ish

 

Topic: War Stories from the Trenches

 

 

Location:

CPCC

3210 CPCC West Campus Dr. (off Billy Graham Pkwy.)

Charlotte, NC 28208 

Building H2

Room 2132 (Building is at the far left as you drive in.)

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May 21 with Ben Carey

May 21: 6:00 PM - 8 ish

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April 28th with Andy Hunt

April 28: 6:00 PM - 8 ish

 

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March 11th with Esther Derby

 

What's a Manager to Do?  How managers can reshape their roles with self-organizing agile teams

 

March 11th;  6:00 PM - 8 ish. 

 

Location: CPCC - 3210 CPCC West Campus Dr. (off Billy Graham Pkwy.),  Charlotte, NC 28208  -- Building H2 room 2101 (Building is at the far left as you drive in.)

 

Brief:  Sometimes I see teams that reject all direction and go their own way, declaring, “We are self-organizing.”  They are missing an important fact. When someone is paid by a company to be part of a team, that team exists within the organizational context. 

 

On the other hand, some managers hear the words “self-organizing” and believe the team is on its own—that they can go into semi-retirement.  But that’s not the case, either.

 

In fact,both are risky over-simplifications.  

 

When teams self-organize there's still plenty for managers to do, but their relationship with the team changes.  We'll explore principles to follow as the team takes on more responsibility for managing  their own work, making decisions, and managing team membership.

 

Speaker bio: Esther Derby works with individuals, teams, and organizations to improve their ability to deliver valuable software. Esther is recognized as one of the leaders in the human-side of software development, including management, organizational change, collaboration, building teams and retrospectives.  She’s been a programmer, systems manager, project manager, and internal consultant. She currently runs her own consulting firm, Esther Derby Associates, Inc., in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Esther has an MA in Organizational Leadership, is the author of over 100 articles and co-author of Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management..  She’s a founder of the AYE Conference and is a board member of the Agile Alliance. You can read Esther's articles and blog at http://www.estherderby.com or contact her at 612 724 8114 or derby@estherderby.com

 

We will have networking and food starting at 6:00pm. The talk will start at 6:30pm. And we will stop at 8:00pm.

 

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February 12th with Bob Galen.

 

Practices of a Great Product Owner.

 

Here is the deck Bob Galen used:  Scrum Product Ownership - From the Inside Out.pdf

 

Feb 12th;  6:00 PM - 8 ish. 

 

Location: CPCC - 3210 CPCC West Campus Dr. (off Billy Graham Pkwy.),  Charlotte, NC 28208  -- Building H2 room 2132

 

Brief: The Scrum Product Owner or XP Customer role is one of the least understood on agile teams. Teams complain that they don't get enough time from them,that they're preoccupied and disconnected from the team.

On the other hand, the depth and the breadth of their roles require them to be more than Backlog writers, feeding their teams User Stories and answering questions. The Product Owner needs to contend with the demands of the business. So the role has a lot of breadth, responsibility and tension. There is insufficient focus and definition for great Product Owners. In response to this gap, I've developed a related e-book. This talk will focus on some of the lessons from the book.

This will be an interactive session. I will ask the audience to share both good and bad experiences, which I plan to share with the wider community.

Speaker bio: Bob Galen is an Agile Methodologist, Practitioner & Coach based in Cary, NC. In this role he helps guide companies and teams in their pragmatic adoption and organizational shift towards Scrum and other Agile methods and practices. He is President and Principal Consultant for RGCG, LLC. Bob has held director, manager and contributor level positions in both software development and quality assurance organizations. He has over 25 years of experience working in a wide variety of domains at companies including Bayer, Bowe, Bell & Howell Mail Processing, ChannelAdvisor, EMC, Lucent, Unisys and Thomson. Bob regularly speaks at international conferences and professional groups on topics related to software development, project management, software testing and team leadership. He is a Certified Scrum Master Practicing (CSP) since 2004, Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), and an active member of the Agile Alliance & Scrum Alliance. In 2005 he published the book Software Endgames, Eliminating Defects, Controlling Change and the Countdown to On-Time Delivery with Dorset House. The book's focus is how to successfully finish your software projects. He regularly writes for industry leading sources. Bob may be reached directly at bob@rgalen.com and for more information: www.rgalen.com

We will have networking and food starting at 6:00pm. The talk will start at 6:30pm. And we will stop at 8:00pm.

 

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January 14th with Linda Cook. Kanban Process - an Emerging Agile Process.

 

 

Jan 14th;  6:00 PM - 8 ish. 

 

 

Topic: "Kanban Process - an Emerging Agile Process"

 

Location: CPCC - 3210 CPCC West Campus Dr. (off Billy Graham Pkwy.),  Charlotte, NC 28208  -- Building H2 room 2132

 

Brief:  Do you like speed?  Expect nano-second response time in all electronic transactions?  Tired of explaining why it takes as long as it does to get your project completed?  Why not try Kanban?

 

Somewhere between the structure afforded by Scrum and the fluidity of Extreme Programming, Kanban can be seen as a very lean extension to Scrum and is gaining popularity due to it’s ability to rapidly change direction.  Kanban is much more than a series of work cards, it uses advanced lean techniques such as queue management, flow control and theory of constraints to optimize the workflow of a team by limiting work in progress.   Attendees will gain an insight in to what it means to use a Kanban system for software development and how to apply a pull based system.  Similarities and distinctions between Kanban and Scrum will be reviewed. The presenters will share their experiences using Kanban, particularly how it helped teams improve responsiveness, collaboration, and productivity.

 

Although Kanban can be productive, it is a controversial way of extending Scrum, so the presentation will include plenty time for Q & A and opposing viewpoints.

 

Speakers' BIO:

Linda M. Cook has over twenty years’ experience in the IT industry, she has held positions from developer, forms designer, data modeler, analyst, tester, to methodology lead. She is a certified 'Scrum Master' with the designation of ‘Practicing’, and is co-chair of the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN) Maryland Chapter. Ms. Cook has helped many companies implement SCRUM, Agile Project Management, Kanban, and several Lean-Agile techniques.

 

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December 10th with Joe Little. The Secret Sauce:  Year-end reflections on having fun and getting real productivity from an agile team

 

 

Dec 10th;  6:00 PM - 8 ish.  At CPCC Harris campus, off Billy Graham Pkwy.  Building H2, Room 2132.

 

Topic: "Year-end reflections on having fun and getting real productivity from an agile team"

 

LOCATION CHANGE: Hilton at Tyvola & I-77

***Location: CPCC - 3210 CPCC West Campus Dr.,  Charlotte, NC 28208  -- Building H2 room 2132***

Above is old location!!!!

 

Brief: This was a fun-serious session with some holiday cheer. We will survey the group on what they learned this year. And we will offer some reflections, what we learned. On the Nokia Test, on Business Value Engineering, on Scrum-Butt, fixing all the impediments, and on better engineering practices. And the secret sauce. Or at least what Jeff Sutherland thinks it is and what I think it is. (A little bit different.) And some ideas on how we all survive the current economic situation.

 

Speaker bio: Joe Little is an Agile Coach and Trainer. He has a CST, CSP, and CSM and an MBA.

 

 

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Past Meeting: November 12th Labro Dimitriou: Our Lean-Agile transformation . . . so far

 

 

Nov 12 6:00 PM - 8 ish

Topic: "Our Lean-Agile transformation ...so far".

Location: CPCC - 3210 CPCC West Camput Dr. Charlotte, NC 28208 Building H2 room 2132

 

Brief: More so than ever organizations are under tremendous pressure to compete in an ever-changing marketplace while optimizing operational efficiencies. Arguably organizational Agility has emerged as the de-facto pattern for the adaptive enterprise. And while the real-time service based enterprise is gaining momentum the organizational silos seem to present the biggest impediment for adoption. In this presentation will share how Wachovia Retirement Services is leveraging emergent and agile techniques to deliver business value better, faster, more efficiently.

 

 

Speaker bio: Labro Dimitriou is a senior technical executive with Wachovia Retirements Services. He has been in the field of distributed computing for over 24 years. Time equally devoted in Banking operations and development, top-tier consulting groups, and commercial software development organizations. He is a regular presenter and contributor to industry events and publications.

 

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Past Meeting: September 22nd with Bud Phillips Of Valtech and Capital One

 

Bud spoke on Implementing Development Value Chain Agility,

An Assessment Framework with Real World Examples

 

Speaker bio: Bud Phillips leads the Transformation Services Group, where he is responsible forconsulting and training services that help Valtech customers introduce and build agility into their development value chains. These services include agile technical and management training, agility assessments and transformations, and software supply chain strategy development. Before Valtech, Bud was Vice President, Capital One Financial Services, leading the Response Services Group in Marketing Acquisitions. In this role, Bud pioneered using Lean and Agile process principles to radically improve the cycle time, productivity, associate engagement, and quality of Response Processing. For five years, he led, managed and lived the experience of transforming people and processes toward lean and agile value creation. Ultimately, Marketing Acquisitions was regarded as a Capital One beacon for building a lean agile management system and culture for development and production execution.

 

Bud has been a Partner at Deloitte Consulting and a Senior Strategist at Monitor Company. He has degrees from the College of William and Mary and Harvard Business School.

 

Location: CPCC 3210 BLDG H2 second floor room 2132 West Campus Drive, Charlotte, NC 28208

Time: 6pm - 8pm. Food and networking for the first 30 minutes.

 

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Past Meeting: August 28th with Jeff Schilling of S1 -note new location

 

Jeff talked about their Scrum implementation, some of the great things they are doing, and some of the lessons they have learned.

 

Jeff's BIO:

Jeff Schilling is Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of S1 Enterprise Products Division. Jeff joined S1 in June of 1996 and has held several executive level roles including Director of Software Development and Chief Architect. In these capacities he has been instrumental in the growth and evolution of both the S1 Enterprise product and the engineering organization. He has been a key technology contributor to the S1 Enterprise suite of products including leading development of J2EE-based financial services applications. Schilling has over twenty years of technology and management experience. Prior to joining S1 he worked in the variety of lead technology roles focusing on business management software.

 

Jeff received his undergraduate degree from Lycoming College and his MS in Computer Science from George Washington University.

 

Location: CPCC 3210 West Campus Drive, Charlotte, NC 28208

Time: 6pm - 8pm. Food and networking for the first 30 minutes.

 

 

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Past Meeting: July 14th with Dr. Jeff Sutherland, co-creator of Scrum

 

Jeff joined us on July 14th. He is always an interesting and informative speaker.

 

Dr. Jeff Sutherland is one of the inventors of the Scrum software development process. Together with Ken Schwaber, he created Scrum as a formal process at OOPSLA'95. They have extended and enhanced Scrum at many software companies and IT organizations.

 

Jeff is a Distinguished Graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, a Top Gun of his USAF RF-4C Aircraft Commander class and flew 100 missions over North Vietnam. Jeff has advanced degrees from Stanford University and Ph.D from University of Colorado School of Medicine. He is currently a Chief technical officer of PatientKeeper, Inc in Newton, MA.

 

 

Topic: Hyperproductive distributed Scrum teams

 

Here are the slides: Pretty Good Scrum v1.pdf

 

This is a hot topic with most companies - how do you deal with large distributed teams? What are the challenges with teams that are not co-located and how do you deal with it? How do you use scrum with multiple teams? What are the pitfalls to be on the lookout for and how do you get the best from your people?

 

This was a great chance to learn from the master himself, Jeff Sutherland. The meeting is free and open to anyone.

 

Location: Vanguard Group on Tyvola Road.

Vanguard is located off of Tyvola between Tryon and Yorkmont. The location is off N. Falls Drive just - turn west from Tyvola onto N. Falls and, at the end of N.Falls, go straight into the parking lot. Vanguard is the building on the left. Signs will direct once at the building.

 

Time: 6pm - 8pm. Food and networking for the first 30 minutes.

 

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Other Notes

 

Please see the Special Announcements page for information on other up-coming events.

 

Please see the Joining page if you wish to join us. It's free.

 

Please see the Your Action page for actions you can take to support Agile-Carolinas. Perhaps the most useful thing is to invite others.

 

Please help get the message out that this group is available to others. See Getting the Word Out

 

Our group is affiliated with the APLN (Agile Project Leadership Network; see APLN Background) and the Agile Alliance.