program selection system

User stories play a central role in Agile requirements, planning and implementation. However, experts have different formulas for crafting stories and teaching others how to do it.

In this session, Jennitta Andrea, Gil Broza, Mike Cohn and Ron Jefrries will share their unique, similar or different perspectives on such issues as:

• Format: Do stories have a typical format or does that just get in the way?
• Scope: What is / is not a User Story?
• Size: Does size matter?
• Splitting: What is it? Is it needed? If so, when?
• Authors: Who writes or changes User Stories?

Program Description:

Evidence is mounting that Agile adoption is finally mainstream, so what’s next?

This panel draws the discussion away from process and technology to focus on what we build, not just how we build it. Panelists discuss the important role of product innovation and debate philosophies about how to source innovation. The panel tackles questions like what role Agile plays in helping or hampering product innovation; should innovation come from designers, customers, or elsewhere; where does product design meet product innovation; and how do we deliver innovation?

This session is presented by a group of panelists – Esther Derby, Hubert Smits, Tamara Sulaiman, Samir Shah and Monica Yap. All of the panelists have experience working with successful distributed Agile teams, from offshore and onshore. They will share their experience and insights on how to face the common challenges arise from this environment. Topics such as how to start well, how to deal with time zones, will be discussed. During the session, the panelists will also answer specific questions from attendees.

Join Peter Alfvin, Esther Derby, Christophe Louvion, and Michael Spayd in this moderated panel session as they discuss topics including factors impacting individual and organizational growth after the introduction of Agile practices, how roles and behaviors might need to change, and how compensation models might be affected. Have a topic you would like to suggest for the panel? Email it to the moderator, Rachel Weston, at rweston@rallydev.com.

Sample questions (final list is still being determined):

• What factors have most impacted individual growth in your organization or organizations you have worked with since the introduction of Agile practices?

• How has the adoption of Agile practices affected functional leadership within organizations?

• How do managers’ behaviors change to support with Agile practices?

• How do compensation models need to change to support Agile practices?

If you have a question you would like to submit for consideration, please enter it in a review of this submission or email Rachel at rweston@rallydev.com.

Rachel Weston will moderate the session.

Panelists:

Peter Alfvin: For the last three years, Peter has been leading a rollout of Lean Software Development at Xerox, including a large scale Scrum deployment. One of the biggest challenges throughout this transition has been agreeing on the role of the manager and the responsibility for ongoing functional leadership.

Esther Derby: detail coming soon. Or go to http://www.estherderby.com.

Christophe Louvion: After almost killing a fast growing internet startup by formalizing something called waterfall, Christophe had a shower moment as he came across the Agile manifesto and realized his past success in the late 90s / early 00s were built around what is now called the Agile principles. He then fought back the culture he put in place: gates, control and command, blame, status quo, phased development. Step by step, team by team, he won back bottom up the whole organization and created a strong business driven company where efficiency is fueled by empowered teams. While Scrum is a headless process (besides the Scrum Masters), he has come to strongly believe in the idea of strong managers/leaders as defined by the Lean movement (Deming, Scholtes, Poppendieck). After 9 years at the same company, he has just joined a new company where he brings Agile/Lean principles and practices across the organization.

Michael Spayd: Michael has been intensively involved in large-scale Agile adoption efforts since 2001. Almost immediately, a big part of his focus became how to help Agile managers. The issue first arose when his coaching team ran immersions for development teams new to XP. His job as leader was to run education sessions for the middle managers involved to keep them “out of the hair” of the teams so they could develop software. Michael has continued to explore the role of middle manager in Agile adoptions ever since, coaching many teams and their management on Agile effectiveness. From this experience he has developed a set of eight competency areas or domains of the effective Agile manager. Michael believes strongly there is an important role for management in an Agile world, though it is quite different than the traditional role.

90 Words Abstract :

Agile adoption in the Open Source community ranges from some to none for most successful teams.

• Can these communities learn anything from each other?
• Are these two communities one in the same?
• Do Open Source projects and Agile projects succeed or fail for the same reasons?

The panelists, Dennis Byrne, Dirk Riehle, Christian Robottom Reis and Naresh Jain, will use their collective experience to answer these and many other questions. We’ll also have one empty chair for anyone from the audience to be a part of the panel temporarily.

This submission is to share the success of three successful Agile implementations that are both unique in their implementation while sharing many commonalities that have created high performance teams. Each presenter will give a fifteen minute overview of their Agile implementation then join a facilitated panel discussion and Q&A with the audience.

The growing trend of companies to widely adopt agile across their organizations has created change far beyond what happens at the level of the team. This panel examines issues surrounding enterprise agile adoption. We will explore topics such as agile transformation and initiation, leadership, culture change, hiring, incentives and technology. Experts from diverse large companies such as Google, Yahoo!, Salesforce.com, The Gap and Barclay’s Global Investors will discuss these issues, grounded by their experiences.