Agile 2008 Proposals for Review
Agile 2008 is happening in Toronto from August 4-8 this year. Right now, we’re in the middle of the proposal review process. The neat thing about this is that you can be part of this by registering , reviewing and voting on proposals.
Whilst a short format submission of mine seems to have been given the flick, my colleague Mark Summers and I still have a session on teamwork in contention. Please have a look and vote on it… especially if you have a positive comment!
On other news, this week certainly was a crazy one in London. On April Fool’s day it was announced that my employer, Conchango, is being acquired by EMC to become the hub of its European consulting business. Don’t believe the Microsoft-only flavour of The Register article – I am currently ScrumMaster on a project on which we’re using open source Java technology on RedHat Linux. Conchango does however offer the Scrum for Team Systems add-in for Visual Studio Team System.
Today I woke up to find London covered in a thick blanket of snow and had the Olympic torch go right past my partner and I outside St. Paul’s without seeing a thing admidst the mayhem.
London Calling
I thought that I should let you know that I am about to leave these shores for London where I will be joining the agile coaching team at Conchango. You may know of them as the company that offers the Scrum template for TFS. A number of Conchango people blog here.
I intend to keep in touch through this blog. Hopefully I can offer some insights into how Scrum is progressing in Europe. With the JAOO conferences coming to Oz May-June, 2008 is looking like an exciting year in Australia too.
Merry Christmas!
Big Dave Thomas presenting in Sydney and Canberra
‘Big’ Dave Thomas is in the country to promote the JAOO Conferences on Agile being planned for mid next year. See:
Dave is speaking on Lean and Agile in Sydney on Thursday this week and on Thursday next week he is speaking in the shiny new NICTA building in Canberra (PDF). I know Dave Thomas as the man responsible for the development platform (VisualAge Smalltalk and ENVY/Developer) that we have been using for over 10 years at Wizard.
I think that this is one worth making an effort for.
Lean and Agile In the Large – Principles, Practices and Experiences for Large Scale Software Development
Date: Thu December 06, 2007
Time: 15:00
Location: CB10.02.470
Presenter: Dave Thomas
Chair: plbogg@it.uts.edu.au
ABSTRACT
Topics: Lean High Performance Teams, Envisioning, Definition, Estimation, Development, Release Management, Measurement, Process Compliance and Peopleware Practices for Large Scale Product and Application Development
Audience: The presentation is aimed at a general audience who are interested in or faced with the challenges of building large software products or applications involving many teams who are often geographically dispersed. It is particularly relevant to those involved in transitioning, managing and coaching and developing in large product development organizations. Benefits: Attendees will gain an understanding of practices and experiences using lean and agile techniques for large scale software product development.
Content Outline: Lean and Agile practices have made a major positive impact on productivity and quality of life for individuals and development teams. In this presentation we focus on the challenges and practices of using Lean and Agile in large development organizations. We introduce practices in Envisioning, Definition, Planning and Release Management and Measurement which compliment the Agile practices used for Development. These practices allow business to gain agility while addressing their needs for governance and quality. They
integrate Lean and Agile software with best practice Lean Product Engineering practices while respecting and encouraging the wide adoption of empowering agile practices. The practices provide proven practical techniques for large scale Agile challenges such as Voice of The Customer: Tangible Requirements and Acceptance Testing; Role of Architecture, Models and Components, Management of Features.
Components: Planning, Estimating and Resource Allocation: Dependency Management and Release Management; Scrum of Scrums and Communities of Practice, Enterprise Development Dashboards and compliance with CMM, SOX, and Six Sigma/TQM.
BIOGRAPHY
Dave Thomas is a Managing Director of Object Mentor, and Founder and Chairman of Bedarra Research Labs, a company specializing in emerging software technologies and applications. Dave is best known as the founder and past CEO of Object Technology International Inc. (formerly OTI, now IBM OTI Labs) and led the commercial introduction of object and component technology. Dave was the principal visionary and architect for IBM VisualAge Smalltalk and Java tools and virtual machines including the popular open source multi-language Eclipse.org IDE. OTI pioneered the use of virtual machines in embedded systems with Tektronix shipping the first commercial products in 1988. He was instrumental in the establishment of IBM’s Pervasive computing efforts and in particular, the Java tooling and virtual machines. Dave is an adjunct research professor at Carleton University and the University Of Queensland, and is widely published in the software engineering literature. Dave remains active in various roles within the technical community including ECOOP, AOSD, JAOO,Agile Development Conference, OOPSLA Onward and Dynamic Language Symposium. He is a founding director of the Agile Alliance, an ACM Distinguished Engineer, President of AITO and an advisor for IEEE Software. He also writes an expert column in the Journal Of Object Technology.
SEMINAR LOCATION
The Faculty is located in Building 10 (the Fairfax Building) in Jones
Street off Broadway. Maps are available at:
here or here
Video Summary of the Scrum Gathering
Since my time is very limited and no-one has responded to my offer to report on specific sessions of the Fall Scrum Gathering, here’s the next best thing… a video of the event with a kickass soundtrack. Enjoy!
Fall Scrum Gathering Report #1
The Fall Scrum Gathering last week was fantastic – lots of great sessions and top-notch people to talk to. I don’t have enough time to go into detail about it right now as I am preparing to fly out of London this evening. In the meantime though, here is a list of sessions that I attended that I’m happy to report on in more detail – just comment to let me know which ones are of most interest.
- Scrum in A Dispersed Environment – Tele Atlas keynote
- Sharing More than Deodorant for Scrum Smells – My own session
- Why Scrum Projects Fail – Joseph Pelrine and Jiri Jundak
- Succeeding with Agile: A Guide to Transitioning – Mike Cohn
- F-Secure Transition to Agile – F-Secure keynote
- Scaling Scrum – Rachel Davies and Colin Bird
- Agile Planning – Kenny Rubin
- Scrum@BT – BT keynote
- Scrum Update – Ken Schwaber
- Open Space: Successful Interventions Models – facilitated by myself
- Open Space: PRINCE2 and Agile – facilitated by Scott Wakefield (an Aussie expat)
Kane Mar was also there and may be able to report on some of the other sessions.