program selection system

This experience report outlines technical lessons learned over a several year period across several projects within an organisation which aggressively applied most of the agile practices with much success. The success, however, was not been achieved without challenges and lessons learned along the way. This paper outlines the interesting observations we made while trying to turn the agile dials to eleven. Our starting assumption when we began this journey several years ago was that productivity and quality were opposing forces; you had to trade one off against the other. However, after turning the dials to eleven, we now believe that you can much more of both than we previously thought possible. In fact, we believe that applying the practices outlined in this experience report allow both much higher quality and higher productivity than traditional development.

After 7 years of traditional IT delivery, Gap Inc. Direct decided to adopt Agile. This experience report discusses three key factors that contributed to our successful (and ongoing) Agile transformation: 1. Ambitious Pilot Project 2. Massive Investment in Continuous Integration 3. Rethinking our Assets

There’s no shortage of sessions at this conference to show us how to do various agile practices right. What is sorely lacking is the opportunity to learn how to do the practices wrong. After all, in most environments that is the way work is usually done. Many organizations have carefully crafted software development standards based on that principle. How can we be expected to bring agile into an organization successfully without mastery of that key skill?

Audience: Agile developers who already practice test-driven development.

What makes pairing work? How do you learn to pair effectively? When problems arise during a pairing session, how do you deal with them?

Of all the practices generally associated with Agile software development, pair programming is likely the least-used. Sometimes pairing just happens, but most times people need to approach it more mindfully.

We will explore and experience ways to pair effectively to give those unfamiliar with pairing some safe and thoughtful exposure, and to give those with difficulties some insights into how their pairing can be more effective.