Conference Presentations

Test Automation on Large Agile Projects: It's Not a Cakewalk

Automating regression testing on large-scale agile projects with multiple independent Scrum teams is not a cake walk. Because there is no single "test team" that performs all the testing-each Scrum team develops and runs independent tests, gaps arise as different automation implementations spring up. One team adds a new function which breaks automated tests, setting back the progress of other teams. Scott Schnier reviews one organization's journey developing a "test community of practice" to coordinate test development and maintenance across Scrum teams. Scott shares the lessons they learned, particularly selecting tools compatible with other developer and tester needs. Learn how Scott extended the JUnit framework to support automated functional testing and how his teams keep the standard that a user story is not really done until all its tests are "green" in the continuous integration, regression test pipeline.

Scott Schnier, Agilex Technologies
Better Software Conference East 2012: Lean Development Practices for Enterprise Agile
Slideshow

Enterprise agile initiatives require strategic, portfolio, product, and team perspectives at all levels. Alan Shalloway has found that lean software development principles help integrate all of these perspectives into a cohesive, actionable whole. With a combination of lean science, lean management, lean team, and lean learning methods, Alan shows how your organization can prepare for enterprise agility. Lean science focuses on the “laws” present in all software development projects. Lean management empowers executives to contribute to the context within which teams can flourish. Lean team methods are actualized in Kanban approaches. Lean learning empowers everyone in the organization to improve his skills and practices.

Alan Shalloway, Net Objectives
IT Governance and Compliance in an Agile World
Slideshow

Establishing IT governance and compliance practices is essential for organizations that have regulatory or audit requirements. The good news is that you can be agile and still comply with Sarbanes-Oxley, CFR 21, HIPAA, and other regulatory imperatives. Done well, IT controls actually help you improve both productivity and quality. Bob Aiello describes how to implement IT controls in frameworks such as ISACA Cobit and ITIL v3 that many regulatory frameworks require-while maintaining agile practices. Bob's guidance includes specific examples of establishing IT controls: separation of duties, work-item to change-set traceability, physical and functional configuration audits, and more. Bob explains how these practices help government, defense, and corporations scale agile practices where audit and regulatory compliance is a must.

Bob Aiello, CM Best Practices Consulting
Massive Continuous Integration and Light-speed Iterations
Slideshow

Continuous integration (CI) has become a buzzword, with most engineering organizations claiming they've adopted the practice. However, the sad truth is that unreliable tests, long feedback loops, and poor configuration management block their efforts and minimize CI's potential benefits. Jesse Dowdle shares how AtTask radically redesigned its engineering pipeline and, through massive CI scaling, drove three days of testing to just minutes. Learn the pros and cons of different CI systems and how to integrate them with the cloud. Watch a live demo of AtTask's internal test and CI systems, which they’ve designed to make "Every commit a potential release candidate"-meaning that every commit is an iteration. Arm yourself with the talking points to sell massive CI to executives.

Jesse Dowdle, AtTask, Inc.
Adaptive Leadership: Accelerating Enterprise Agility
Slideshow

Agile practices have proven to help software teams develop better software products while shortening delivery cycles to weeks and even days. To respond to the new challenges of cloud computing, mobility, big data, social media, and more, organizations need to extend these agile practices and principles beyond software engineering departments and into the broader organization. Adaptive leadership principles offer managers and development professionals the tools they need to accelerate the move toward agility throughout IT and the enterprise. Jim Highsmith presents the three dimensions of adaptive leadership and offers an integrated approach for helping you spread agile practices across your wider organization. Jim introduces the “riding paradox” and explores the elements of an exploring, engaging, and adaptive leadership style.

Jim Highsmith, ThoughtWorks, Inc.
Making Agile Work for Government: Addressing the Challenges of Agile Adoption

Erich Knausenberger and Raj Shah examine the challenges of implementing earned value management and program management to implementing agile for government IT. Then, the authors propose a “blended-approach” by which government and other large entities can address these and other challenges.

Erich Knausenberger's picture Erich Knausenberger
Agile Architecture Practices for Large Scale Agile Development

Although “agile architecture” may sound like an oxymoron to you, the reality is that a simple, elegant architecture is a key enabler of any successful system, particularly large scale ones. Scott Ambler describes agile architecture practices-at both the project and enterprise level-that form a middle ground between the extremes of big architecture up-front and outright hacking. Scott discusses agile modeling practices-initial architecture envisioning, proving an architecture with working code, and just-in-time model storming-that enable agile teams to benefit from architectural modeling without suffering the drawbacks of detailed design documentation. Beyond architecture, Scott introduces agile design techniques-continuous integration (CI), test-driven development (TDD), and refactoring-that build on and provide feedback to an emergent architecture.

Theresa Quatrani, IBM Rational
Perceived Challenges to Agile Adoption Making Agile Work for Government: Perceived Challenges to Agile Adoption

Erich Knausenberger and Raj Shah examine three perceived challenges to agile adoption in the government space and explore how the "blended approach" to agile adoption offers an effective response to each.

Erich Knausenberger's picture Erich Knausenberger
Making Agile Work for Government: A Blended Approach Making Agile Work for Government: A Blended Approach

As technology development programs represent some of the biggest line items on agency budgets, there should be little surprise that agile development, with its promise of a fast, lightweight, and iterative approach to delivery of value, has caught the attention of officials from across the government space as they seek to improve their programs’ productivity and effectiveness.

Erich Knausenberger's picture Erich Knausenberger
For Programs, Short Is Beautiful

Johanna Rothman describes that for programs, since you have many teams, you want shorter iterations and small stories in order to make sure you have as many interconnection points with the rest of the feature teams as possible.

Johanna Rothman's picture Johanna Rothman

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