Agile-Carolinas group

 

People in NC/SC interested in Lean, Agile, Scrum, etc.

 

Introduction

 

We welcome people new to Agile.  To see some introductory stuff, including pages you may be interested in, go here: Introduction 

 

 

Upcoming Meetings

 

 

Wednesday, January 20, 2016     6-8 PM

 

Registration: see here

 

Topic:   Finding Lean in Agile: Discussion of what they can learn from each other on the journey to success

 

Synopsis:
Explore the connections between Lean and Agile. What is shared? What's similar? What can each learn from the other? Discuss why highly performing teams from both philosophies demonstrate similar traits; including but not limited to:
a) clearly defined and followed standards and processes,
b) actively monitoring of those standards and processes,
c) introducing improvements or countermeasures,
... and likely many more topics

 

SPEAKER: Adam Parker, presenting:
Bio:
Adam started his Lean journey two years ago in his 5th year at Ingersoll Rand. Beginning his career in the 90s at various internet startups and then spent 4 years as a software engineer at AOL. Over the last 20 years, Adam has performed in a variety of roles including consultant, developer, project manager and product owner. Introduced to Agile and Design Thinking during his 2006 MBA internship at Red Hat, Adam finally became a Certified Scrum Master in June 2015 after multiple adventures into Agile/Scrum environments. Adam is an advocate of "asking why" and daydreams in Excel, sticky notes and whiteboards. He is always looking for simple tools that make work more like play.

Venue: 

The Cornwell Center
Myers Park Baptist Church

 

 

 

Wednesday, December  09, 2015 6:00 - 8:00 pm 

 

Registration: see  

Topic:   "Doubling the productivity of your Team in 1 year or less"

 

How do we do this in Agile or Scrum?
If we think of it either as doubling the velocity or doubling the Business Value, how do we do it?

    

 

This will be a discussion by the group.  We hope everyone will ask questions or provide solutions.
We expect solutions to have two flavors: (a) things that can be done properly or added to 'standard agile',
or (b) ways to get the change to happen :(tools and techniques).

 

Joe Little will lead the discussion and we hope everyone has something to contribute.

Venue: 

TEKsystems
200 South College Street Suite, 1900
Charlotte, NC 28202

Upcoming Meetings

 

 

Tuesday, November 17, 2015 6:00 - 8:00 pm 

 

Registration: 

 

Topic:  "Scaled Agile: How does it work?"

 

 

     What is scaled agile?
     Scaled agile why?
     PMUWS experience
     Project goal
     Teams structure
     Scaling process
     Lessons learned
     Next steps

Discussion Leader:   Inez Eldewek, Agile Capability Manager, TOG, IS-PMO Central Support Services Team

 

Inez has held business, project management and technology roles in her 20 year career, 11 of which are in the agile field.   In her current role as an agile capability manager in the Information Services PMO, Wells Fargo Bank, her focus is on enabling effective agile practices that support teams in meeting rapidly changing customer and business needs.  She is a strong advocate for emerging ideas and better ways of managing agile projects, provides coaching, assessment and transitions services for major change initiatives and actively serves on and supports the agile community of practices operational teams.

 

  

This Agile Carolinas meeting will be an open discussion of scaling. We will try to take one or two specific examples and discuss the scaling patterns that can be used to attack the biggest problems occurring in a situation. Then we focus, on how to implement new patterns.  We expect to hear problems and we anticipate experts to appear to help solve the problems.

                                  

The 'scaling' means: putting two or more Scrum teams together to deliver one release ('one product') or set of releases. Also, the product has to integrate well, within itself. A 'product' might span two or more 'systems.'

 

Come join us for lively conversation about simple concepts that will energize your Agile transformation.

 

 

Venue: 

Pactera

6100 Fairview Road # 560

Charlotte, NC 28210

Upcoming Meetings

 

 

Wednesday, October 28, 2015, 6:00PM-8:00pm

 

Registration:

 

Topic: Scaling: Problems, Patterns and Implementation

 

Discussion Leader: Joe Little is the facilitator only, for this meeting. His role is to listen as the solutions appear.        

 

This Agile Carolinas meeting will be an open discussion of scaling. We will try to take one or two specific examples and discuss the scaling patterns that can be used to attack the biggest problems occurring in a situation. Then we focus, on how to implement new patterns.

We expect to hear problems and we anticipate experts to appear to help solve the problems.  

                                 

The 'scaling' means: putting two or more Scrum teams together to deliver one release ('one product') or set of releases. Also, the product has to integrate well, within itself. A 'product' might span two or more 'systems.'

 

Come join us for lively conversation about simple concepts that will energize your Agile transformation.

 

 

Venue: 

Tek Systems

 BB&T Building

 200 South College St. #1900

 Charlotte, NC 28202

 

Wednesday, September 23, 2015, 6:00PM-8:00pm

 

Registration:  

 

Topic: Invitation, Agility, and Open Space 

 

Discussion Leader: Mark Sheffield

 

Come join us for lively conversation about simple concepts that will energize your Agile transformation.

                                    

The open discussion will include:

 • Increasing engagement with invitations

 • Improving morale by aligning with Agile principles

 • Energizing and sustaining your transformation with Open Space

 

We will discuss the issues and offer some suggestions.

Be prepared to be Surprised!

 

Bio:

Mark Sheffield is an Agile team coach and Open Space Technology facilitator. He increases engagement in agile adoptions by focusing on creating environments with clear goals, clear rules, visible feedback, and opt-in participation. Instead of concentrating on a particular framework he invites teams to experiment with Agile practices while abiding by the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto. He is a co-author of "The OpenSpace Agility Handbook."

 

 Mark has over five years of Agile experience, in addition to holding Scrum Master and Product Owner certifications from Scrum Alliance. He also has over 20 years of IT experience including software development, firewall management, and Electronic Data Interchange.

 

 Mark is based in High Point, North Carolina.

 

Meeting Notes

*At the beginning of each session, we will enable people on both sides of the employment table to meet each other. 

 

 

Venue:  Queen Associates

 The South Tryon Square Building

 201 S. Tryon Street

 5th Floor Conference Room

 Charlotte, NC 28202

Thursday, June 18, 2015, 6:00PM-8:00pm

 

Registration: FrontPage

 

Topic: 

          Making Change Happen with Agile 

          It may be getting impediments fixed. It may be the culture. It may be getting the group or the firm to agree on basic changes. 

          Getting these changes to happen is key to success with Agile. Can you "make it happen?"  You can influence the change.

          In this session we want to discuss a few different situations and a few possible 'solutions' to getting change to happen.  

          Your comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome. 

 

Venue:

          TEK Systems

          200 South College Street Suite 1900 Charlotte NC, 28202

 

Speaker:

Group discussion

 

Sponsor:

TEKsystems

 

Monday, May 11, 2015, 8:30am-5:00pm

 

Registration:  

 

Topic:  Lean Agile Open

 

 How to get better? Better in execution and better in Agile adoption.

 

                     Share your ideas, and learn from others. This is a one-day Open Space event. Open Space leads to the best conversations and learning.

                     This is a one-day Open Space event. It is like an old fashioned Scrum Gathering, except broadly inclusive of all Lean-Agile Flavors.

Venue:

          Crowne Plaza, 5700 WestPark Dr. Charlotte NC 28217

 

Speaker:

Group discussion

 

Sponsor:

Agile Carolinas

Monday, March 30, 2015, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Registration:  

 

Topic:  Scaling:  Discussing real problems addressed by scaling patterns

 

This will be a group discussion, although we might divide into 2 or 3 or 4 small groups, depending on how many people we have. A bit simplified; my definition of 'scaling' is 3 or more teams working together on one product, and some people would include other things within 'scaling' -- which is fine.

 

In any case, bring your problems, your experiences and your solutions, and we will have a fair conversation with all.

 

Venue:

TEK Systems

BB&T Building

200 S. College Street #1900

Charlotte, NC 28202

 

Speaker:

Group discussion

Monday, February 23, 2015, 6:00pm-8:00pm

(Postponed from February 16 due to inclement weather)

 

Topic:  Agile Powered By Afterburner

 

Summary: Give your Scrum Team Afterburners to accelerate sprint velocity using Leadership Pattern Libraries from the Fighter Pilot Debrief.

 

Outline: 

1. Overview of fighter pilot debrief ceremony.

2. Origins of Scrum from Dr. Sutherland’s as a fighter pilot in Vietnam.

3. John Boyd and OODA, Observe, Orient Decide Act.  The predecessor of Deming Plan do Check act.

4. What are Pattern Libraries

5. What is a Leadership Pattern Library.

6. Examples of leadership pattern libraries.

a. Stealth Debrief.

   i.     A framework for effective Scrum Ceremonies

   ii.     How to identify root causes

b. Red teaming etiquette

   i.     How to provide effective feedback

   ii.     How to receive feedback in a constructive manner

c. Nameless Rankles why?

   i.     Tearing down walls of position and authority

   ii.     Mentoring of junior team members

   iii.     Feedback to senior team members

7. 3 Minute Blue Angles Debrief Video showing how these techniques work.

8. How to use leadership pattern Libraries on your Scrum Teams.

 

Learning Objectives: 

1. Learn about the origin of Scrum from the Fighter Pilot Dogfight.

2. Understand that Plan Do Check Act = Observe, Orient, Decide, Act

3. Establish a foundational understanding of pattern libraries.

4. Explain ways to apply pattern libraries to scrum teams.

5. Three examples of Leadership Pattern Libraries from the fighter Pilot Debrief.

6. Emphasize how Mastery through experience provides implicit guidance and control.

 

Session History:

 

The Afterburner Leadership Pattern Libraries that will be presented in this lecture are a sub set of dozens from the Afterburner Inc. Flawless Execution University leadership methodology.

 

This presentation is a variant of the keynote that has been given for over 10 years by Afterburner Inc.  The core presentation is presented over 300 times a year globally. This version is specifically targeted at the optimization of Scrum teams.  It is relatively new and has been presented several times at Agile Meet up groups on the East and west coast to refine the content and flow.

 

Afterburner is an Executive Management Consulting Company that has provided leadership and executive coaching to hundreds of fortune 500 companies over the last 14 years.

 

Venue:

TEK Systems

BB&T Building

200 S. College Street #1900

Charlotte, NC 28202

 

Speaker:

Tom Friend

 

Tom Friend is an accomplished and experienced Agile Consultant, PMI-ACP, CSP, PSM, CSM, AHT, FLEX Coach and Project Manager with 20 + years’ experience leading teams and projects in various industries to include Banking, Cable, Telecommunications, and Energy. He has 10 years hands on Agile / XP / Scrum software development experience. He is also experienced in the Federal market and is a graduate of The Army Logistic Management College in federal contracting. He has served as a Federal Acquisition Program Manager and acceptance test pilot at a US Military aircraft manufacturing facility.  He has an extensive background in all phases of project management, SDLC application programming, and information systems design & implementation. He currently is a member of the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute Agile in Government Advisory board and serves as an Executive management leadership consultant for Afterburner Inc.  

 

 

Sponsor:

 

 

 

Friday, January 16, 2015, 8:30AM-5:00PM

 

Lean-Agile Open

 

Tuesday, December 16, 2014, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  Software Craftsmanship:  Agile is Not Enough

 

Some people seem to think that following an Agile process will get you good software.  But, the reality is that Software Craftsmanship is found in the work produced, not in the process followed.  The Agile Manifesto hints at this, but many have missed it.  How do you get that quality up there, consistently keep it there, and keep raising the bar?  Through a combination of some discussion on the nature of Skills Acquisition, and an analysis of common practices in software development (from Tests to Pull Requests to Pair Programming), we’ll paint a picture of how to become a true expert that you can’t get from “Agile alone”.

 

 

Venue:

TEK Systems

BB&T Building

200 S. College Street #1900

Charlotte, NC 28202

 

Speaker:

Ken Auer

 

Ken Auer is the founder and master craftsman of RoleModel Software.  He is the author of Extreme Programming Applied and a variety of early software patterns works.  Ken learned Smalltalk and Objective-C in the mid-80s and was introduced as “the father of Software Craftsmanship” as the opening keynote speaker at the first Software Craftsmanship North America conference.  Though he occasionally speaks in various venues, he is most at home in his custom designed facility outside of Holly Springs, NC (designed and built using Christopher Alexander’s architectural design patterns ).  There he focuses on working with his agile, high-performance, multi-disciplinary team to turn others’ innovative ideas into well-crafted software and raising up generations of software craftsmen through the SoftwareCraftsmanship Academy and RoleModel Software.  

 

You can occasionally find him on twitter (@kauerrolemodel), or read about his quest for an integrated life at http://kenauer.com.

 

 

 

Sponsor:

 

Monday, November 24, 2014, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  Scaling with Patterns

 

It will be a group discussion, and we may break into small groups.

We want to take a couple of real situations and talk about those specific problems (ie, the issues being faced with scaling).

 

Venue:

Matrix

200 South Tryon, 5th floor Conference Room

Charlotte, NC 28202

 

Look for a sign in the lobby.

Map

 

 

Sponsor:

 

 

 

 

Thursday, October 23, 2014, All Day

 

Southern Fried Agile

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, September 16, 2014, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  Building Successful Agile Teams in a Global Environment

 

Many organizations have made the decision to leverage teams across the world in order to continue to develop and deliver valuable business applications.  We will discuss some of the successes and failures we have had on building and supporting both onshore and offshore teams in order to continue to deliver value and scale as an agile program.  We also want to hear from you- what is working for your organization, in retrospect- what would you do differently?

 

Highlights:

• What does a strong agile team look like?

• Team models-the good, the bad, and the ugly

• Supporting teams for sustainability

• Success and war stories

• Open discussion

 

Venue:

TEK Systems

BB&T Building

200 S. College Street #1900

Charlotte, NC 28202

 

Speakers:

Oscar Rodriquez

 

Oscar Rodriquez is the Application Owner for Research, Resolution & Reconcilement (R3) which is the future platform for handling all item (check) processing exceptions at Bank of America.  He comes from an engineering background with a S.B in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from MIT and a M.S. in Information Technology from UNC Charlotte.  He started his career in the San Francisco start-up world as a software engineer and has since moved through the roles of architect, consultant, and manager.  He has also worked in various domains such as manufacturing, enterprise consulting, billing, health care, and finance.

 

Betsy Kauffman

 

Betsy Kauffman is the Agile Coach for Shared Operations and Technology at Bank of America.  She joined the bank in 2013 as a Scrum Master and worked with several teams in order to effectively scale the R3 program.  She then transitioned into an Agile Coach and currently works with other teams to transform or improve as they continue their agile journey. She has over 15 years working in IT in various sectors (health care, retail and financial institutions) as both a Project and Program Manager and then made the leap into agile as a Scrum Master approximately 4 years ago.

 

Sponsor:

 

Wednesday, August 27, 2014, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  A Blend of Presentation and Discussion on "The 'Expanded' ScrumMaster" -- The additional roles expected by a large, "Agile Mature" Healthcare Organization on their ScrumMasters.

 

Venue:

Pactera

6100 Fairview Road, Suite 205 (2nd floor, north side of the building)

Charlotte NC 28210

 

Speakers:

Ike Eichorn – A West Point educated, PMP and ScrumMaster certified, Information Technology professional with over 30 years of diverse IT leadership in the Energy and Utility, Healthcare, Financial and Retail industries.  A strong reputation for tenacity in the pursuit of assigned objectives, creativity, integrity, excellent interpersonal skills, and a 100% success factor on all Project Management engagements. Capabilities include management and leadership of small to large staffs, large project management, structured applications development, “rock-solid” systems management and in-depth experience of all areas associated with Information Technology.

 

Brad Ball – Brad has spent the past 20+ years designing, developing and delivering big data analytical solutions that are transforming our nation’s hospitals and healthcare systems to coordinated, high-quality, cost-effective care.  His most recent experience was with managing several teams that developed and maintained the nation’s deepest and most comprehensive clinical, financial and outcomes database with information on 1 in every 4 patient discharges, 2.5 million real-time clinical transactions daily and nearly $43 billion in annual purchasing data.  Brad has a passion for Agile software development moving several teams from a waterfall Software Delivery to and Agile methodology over the past 6 years.

 

Sponsor:  Pactera

 

 

Wednesday, July 9, 2014, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  "Beyond the basic patterns in Scaling"

 

Venue:

The Cornwell Center

The Lounge

2001 Selwyn Avenue

Charlotte NC 28207

 

Format:  Open Space

 

We will self-organize as a group regarding a specific agenda on this topic.  Some of you are used to Open Space, so you will be excited to see us using it again. To those not used to it, it may sound odd from a distance, but you will enjoy it. It almost always leads to fun, spirited conversations.  We hope and expect that some 'moderators' will step forward, and identify more specific topics.  Maybe 6 or 8. Then groups will form to discuss each topic. So, 3 or 4 conversations for 1 hour, and then another 3-4 conversations for the next hour.  If you don't like one conversation, you can join another conversation.  We expect to have an interesting mix of real practitioners and consultants.  From experienced to fairly new at Scrum and Agile and scaling. It should be an interesting set of conversations on this theme.

  

 

 

Thursday, May 29, 2014, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  "Blending Lean UX and Agile"

 

This presentation gets the ball rolling related to actualizing innovative ideas. Lean UX and Agile “Scrum” are both proven methodologies for taking an idea and quickly and iteratively producing outcomes that provide business value. With Lean UX we collaborate as a team to understand the idea in greater detail. 

 

Lean UX Workshop: Outcomes

• Personas
• Outcomes
• Features
• Measurement
• Hypothesis
• High Level Estimation
• Scenario’s
• Style Guide

 

Agile “Scrum” Framework is a proven methodology to create software applications that are highly usable and provide great value to the business quickly. After completing the Lean UX workshop a foundation has been completed and is ready for Agile Release Planning to start the building process. 

 

Agile Release Planning: Outcomes

• User Story Creation
• Backlog Creation
• Risks, dependencies, knowledge, other…
• Sprint 0 Backlog
• Sprint 1 Backlog
• Sprint 2 Backlog
• Sprint 3 Backlog
• Estimate Refactoring

 

Presentation Outcome: Usable tactics to actualize innovative ideas with solid usability and business value.

 

Venue:

Genesis 10

212 S. Tryon Street, Suite 650

Charlotte NC 28202

 

Speaker:  Roger Hutcheson

 

In 1989, Roger began a successful career installing turnkey networks from the ground up as a computer technician and IT specialist. Over the next 20+ years, Roger has gained valuable knowledge as a field manager, systems engineer, IT business analyst, project manager, consultant, and business development professional.

 

As technology grew, Roger’s skills also evolved. He now works in the custom application development space—where he connects clients and users with the proper software for their needs.

 

Specialties…

• Agile Product Owner - Business Analysis, Program/Product Management 
• Agile Scrum Master - Project Management, Team Spokes Person, Problem Solver
• User Experience - User Centered Design, Usability Research, Lean UX

 

Focus: Connecting the dots between IT and business. Roger enjoys the challenge of automating existing manual business processes through the use of technology

 

Sponsor:  Thank you to Genesis 10 for sponsoring the May meeting.

 

 

Wednesday, April 23, 2014, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  "What to tell the Executives"

 

This is a discussion on what to tell the executives. The goal typically is to get them involved and supportive and to give them enough information to not be in the way, and hopefully to be mostly helpful.

 

Venue:

The Cornwell Center - The Lounge

Myers Park Baptist Church

2001 Selwyn Avenue

Charlotte NC 28207

 

Sponsor:  Thank you to TEKsystems for sponsoring the April meeting.

 

 

Wednesday, March 19, 2014, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  Maximizing ROI by Changing the Conversation

In traditional project management, the focus is “Are we on time and under budget?” We have established mechanisms for measuring time and budget. However, Agile focuses on delivering working software frequently and satisfying the customer. How can we communicate the value proposition inherent in the Agile methodologies? We would like to take you on our journey of understanding the Agile proposition, and how we are working on communicating value to our stakeholders.

 

Venue:

TEKsystems

BB&T Center

BB&T Building Suite 1900

200 S College Street

Charlotte 28202

 

Speakers:

Lee Patsel – Lee is the supervisor of the Business Intelligence Team at Eastman Chemical Company, a Fortune 500 Company. He is the primary mover and shaker that brought Agile to Eastman in 2011. Since then, he has seen it spread beyond the Business Intelligence group to other interested IT organizations. He has experienced the challenges of organizational change, and is now focused on making the value proposition of being Agile more visible to senior leadership.

 

Melissa Hill – Melissa is a Scrum Master for the Business Intelligence Team at Eastman Chemical Company. She joined the team in 2012 as a developer and was particularly attracted by the fact that the team worked in an Agile manner. She has since become a Scrum Master and an Agile Advocate who is helping to change the conversation around how Eastman IT views Agile and our delivery mechanisms in general.

 

Sponsor:  Thank you to TEKsystems for sponsoring the February meeting.

 

 

 

Tuesday, February 18, 2014, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  Taking Agile to the Next Level:  Open Space Meeting

We will do a mini open space event for 2 hours, starting at 6pm.  

 

We will gather, and start the open space at exactly 6pm. We will identify topics and choose groups, typically 5-10 people per specific topic. Each person will probably attend 2 topics.   Each session will be about 45 minutes. Anyone may propose a topic. 

 

There are probably several people who already have topics in mind.  We know Joe Little will propose two topics, one on Open Agile Adoption, and one on 'Joe's Agile Release Planning'.  Other people will lead different topics, either by posing a problem situation and asking for help, or by leading the discussion in a different way. Different 'conversation leadership styles' will be apparent, and are welcome. You may lead or join the conversation of your preference. 

 

 

Venue:

The Cornwell Center - The Lounge

Myers Park Baptist Church

2001 Selwyn Avenue

Charlotte NC 28207

 

Sponsor:  Thank you to TEKsystems for sponsoring the February meeting.

 

Wednesday, January 15, 2014, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  A Value Comparison Case Study of Agile vs Waterfall

Tom Friend will share empirical data from his latest project to demonstrate how Agile methods maximized the delivery of business value to his product owner. This presentation should be extremely useful for business units in the banks to understand the benefits that Agile projects can offer relative to a similarly conducted Waterfall project in organizations with very structured PMO processes.

 

Venue:

TEKsystems

BB&T Building Suite 1900

200 S College Street

Charlotte, NC  28202

 

Please bring a business card to register for our Agile Door Prize!  

 

Speaker:  Tom Friend

 

Tom Friend is a contractor working through TEKsystems as the Scrum Master for a green field J2EE Corporate Security Application.  He has 15 years of experience with various Agile methodologies. He has worked in the Banking, Broadband, Telecommunications, Mutual Fund, Energy, and Federal Sectors. He is a retired US Military Pilot and a veteran of both gulf wars.

 

Sponsor:  Thank you to TEKsystems, Robin Steller and Jason Waterman for your sponsorship of the January meeting.

 

 

Tuesday, December 17, 2013, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  Why Your Product Owner Keeps Ditching You

Last year, during Release Planning with 75 team members on eight teams, Kramer looked around the large open space. And saw no Product Owner. At the last minute, a knowledgeable BA stepped in to help. And while the teams successfully slotted the new features of a major product, it was clear they had all been ditched by not one, but two Product Owners. What’s the deal?

 

Vanishing Product Owners is a growing—and disturbing—trend for Agile teams. If we don’t get this critical role realigned with our efforts, Agile will be tough to evolve. Find out what’s causing your Product Owner to ditch you—then work through a couple of simple innovation tools to visualize solutions.

 

Venue:

The Conference Center at The Cornwell Center

Myers Park Baptist Church

2001 Selwyn Avenue

          Charlotte NC 28207

 

The Conference Center is a room located to the right of the large information desk in front of you as you enter the Cornwell Center building from the front door on the Selwyn Avenue side.

 

Speaker:  Elizabethe Kramer

 

Based in Columbus, Ohio, Elizabethe Kramer (just Kramer to her teams) is an Agile practitioner for clients such as Cintas, Pfizer, Samsung, Cisco, and ZTE Corporation (China). Currently, she coaches and teaches advanced Agile practices and artifacts to other Agile Coaches and Product Owners. She has been a Product Owner three times. Visit www.krameragile.com and watch her new video atwww.vimeo.com/80233184.

  

 

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

 

Topic:  Gaining Support for a Sustainable Agile Transformation

Command and control task level management is the norm in many organizations. In contrast, one of the key principles of Agile is around building projects around motivated individuals and trusting them to get the job done. Moving an organization to Agile can generate fear and uncertainty in the executives and management of organizations. That fear often manifests itself in an increase in the level of micro-management and the sense within teams that they aren't really trusted. These challenges can derail an Agile transformation.

This talk explores three key techniques for positioning teams and the transition as trustworthy, thereby earning the trust of the organization and gaining support from the PMO, managers, and executives to support, rather than derail, a transformation effort.

 

1. Tell executives what's in it for them:

• predictability,
• transparency,
• time to value, and
• quality

Show them how supporting the organizational design and management behaviors associated with Agile will increase their ability to achieve these goals. Big pictures, constant communications, and frequent interventions in conflict are required to deliver this. Use outcome-based metrics and show how executives expectations can help improve these outcomes.

 

2. Demonstrate engagement, progress, and control over the transformation efforts.
Use a competency model to present the number of teams engaged, the agile competency of the teams, and the progress of the teams in achieving agile competency. Use the competency approach to engage the management in specific approaches to improvement. Use this model to show the light at the end of the training, coaching, and transformation tunnel.

 

3. Use Lean tools like road-maps, Kanban boards and A3's to demonstrate specific efforts targeted at specific improvements aligned with improving the metrics and the level of engagement with the teams. This shows awareness of the needs of the organization and the intentional management of addressing these needs.

 

Venue:

Myers Park Baptist Church and The Cornwell Center

Education Building Room 250

1900 Queens Road

          Charlotte NC 28207

 

Room 250 is located in the MPBC Education Building which can be accessed by walking up the brick paved walkway between the Sanctuary building and the Education Building.  Through the doors of the Education building on your left is an elevator. Go to the 2nd floor. Room 250 is immediately on your right.

 

Speaker:

Dennis Stevens

 

Dennis Stevens has been helping organizations solve the challenges associated with product development in larger, more complex enterprises for over 25 years – leading major projects and Agile transformations in many global enterprises. He helped bring Agile to PMI: serving on the steering committee of the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner, as past leader of the PMI Global Community of Practice, and is currently the Vice Chair on the Software Extension to the PMBOK. He has been published in Harvard Business Review on Business Value driven SOA and on an incremental approach to large scale Agile in a Cutter Consortium Executive Report.

 

dennis@leadingagile.com

 

Thursday, September 19, 2013, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  Nothing But The Truth:  Agile Perspectives from the Trenches

Come for an evening of dialogue with Diana Larsen, doyenne and sojourner in the many various fields of Agile. There will be no prepared slides or lecture, just spontaneous dialogue with you and your colleagues about real challenges you face today. We'll focus on your specific, real-time questions, challenges, dilemmas and issues about agile, adoptions, teams, retrospectives, liftoffs, managing, leadership, complexity, learning, and more. Invite her to discuss whatever is top of your mind! Our moderator will collect and aggregate questions, sort them into topic areas, and invite the questioners to join Diana in a time-boxed conversation. We'll get through as many topic areas as possible between networking and close. Join us!

 

Venue:

CapTech, Charlotte Plaza, 14th Floor Conference Room

201 S. College Street

Charlotte NC 28244

 

Speaker:

Diana Larsen

 

Diana Larsen is a founding partner of FutureWorks Consulting. She is considered an international authority in the areas of Agile software development, team leadership, and Agile transitions. Deeply in tune with how work teams grow, adapt, and develop, she co-authored Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great; Liftoff: Launching Agile Teams and Projects; and most recently, “Your Path through Agile Fluency: A Brief Guide to Success with Agile” at www.agilefluency.com.

An active contributor to her professional community, Diana is a former chair and board member for Agile Alliance, and current board member of Organization Design Forum, Agile Open Northwest, and Language Hunters. She is also an Associate of the Human Systems Dynamics Institute. Follow her on Twitter (@DianaOfPortland) or contact FutureWorks directly at info@futureworksconsulting.com

 

Thursday, August 22, 2013, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  Overcoming Common Pitfalls to Agile Adoption

As Organizations and individual teams adopt Agile, there are commons road blocks encountered that impede them from realizing the full benefit of their Agile transformation. These key pitfalls may include things like:

•     Lack of Business participation
•     Working within a waterfall organization
•     Transitioning to Just In Time requirements
•     Regression Testing
•     Diluting the Agile principles and practices
•     Overcoming people's natural resistance to change regardless of the change

This session will cover these key pitfalls and provide proven techniques to help you overcome them.

 

Venue:

Community Room at the Junior League Building
1332 Maryland Ave
Charlotte, NC 28209

 

Speaker:

Tom Wessel - PMP, ACP, CSM, CSP, MCIS

 

Tom has over 20 years experience working in the software development field in the industries of banking, healthcare, cable and satellite and graphics. Tom's experience spans the entire end-to-end software development lifecycle with expertise in the areas of program and project management, quality assurance and control, configuration management, knowledge management, release management, development and technical support.

With over 7 years experience as a ScrumMaster, Agile Trainer and Agile Coach, Tom has worked with various sized organizations to plan, implement and train them on agile principles and evolve their agile discipline.

Tom's passion is working with people to transform how they deliver software so that they become an optimized enterprise that delivers greater value and quality to its customers. Tom is an accredited PMP and PMI-ACP from the Project Management Institute and a Certified ScrumMaster and Certified Scrum Professional from the Scrum Alliance.

 

Thursday, August 1, 2013, 6:00pm-8:00pm

 

Topic:  Starting to Scale with Scrum

 

We have a couple of firms who want advice on 'getting started with scaling'. They are not in huge situations. They are new to Scrum. So, how to get started?

We hope that a couple of these firms are represented at the meeting. And as a 'group' we will advise them.

So, this will be an open discussion. Slightly moderated.

 

It will not be one point-of-view. We expect a diversity of opinions.

 

The only assumptions are:
* new to Scrum (at least these new teams are, and probably this department)
* new to do some scaling (about 3 teams of about 7 people each, working together)
* Scrum (or something very Scrum-like) is the core
* partly includes expanding the Scrum adoption

 

The advice does not need to be consistent (and probably will not be anyway). Also, we expect to pick about 2 specific situations, and focus on the needs of those people (in attendance).

 

Venue:

Genesis 10 - 5/3 Bank Building Suite 650

212 S Tryon St.

Charlotte NC 28202

 

There is parking in the 3rd street Courtyard Marriott parking entrance.  Genesis 10 will validate some parking on a first come first serve basis for that parking garage.

 

Speaker: Everyone

 

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 8114612 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.