1 PDU per
Session
CONCURRENT S E S S I O N S
Wednesday, June 10, 2:45pm
AGILE DEVELOPMENT
AW7
AW8
SCALING AGILE
AGILE TECHNIQUES
Scaling Agile:
In Theory and
Practice
Be Fast on Your
Feet: Kick Back
and WATCH the
Board
Bob Payne, LitheSpeed
Heated debate
swirls around
agile methods
and how to scale
them. Most of this
energy is created by the
perception that there exists but
one true way to do agile.
Einstein once said, “In theory,
theory and practice are the
same. In practice they never
are.” And the topic of agile at
scale is the same. Bob Payne
pragmatically approaches the
discussion of how and when to
scale agile. Not surprisingly, the
theories about scaling agile
methods exhibit similar
properties and patterns despite
all the dogma. So, why do
certain patterns prevail, and
how do those patterns change
when confronted by the realities
of practice? Tradeoffs are
inevitable with the choice of
how to scale agile practices.
Explore the pros and cons of
interlinked planning, teams of
small teams, transparency, and
continuous cross team
integration. Let’s bust some
dogma and at the end of the
session discuss specific scaling
techniques.
24
Steve Dempsen,
Capital Group
Have limited time
monitoring
complex
projects? Need to
be fast on your
feet during your teams’
standups? It’s a daunting task
to keep track of the current
work in flight. Steve Dempsen
shares a mnemonic technique—
WATCH—to help you think of
and articulate critical questions
to ask on the fly. For story cards
remember W—Where is the
card? Where should it be? A—
What is the average time for a
story this size? Are we on
schedule? T—What is the status
of testing? Test coverage and
complexity? C—Is the story
complete? consistent? And H—
Is help needed? Who should we
turn to? With limited time and
complex subjects,
ScrumMasters can use each
letter in WATCH to quickly help
their teams remain aware of the
key aspects of development
and remain focused on
delivering effective solutions.
DEVOPS
AW9
IMPROVING THE
PROCESS
Comcast
XFINITY Home:
An Agile Case
Study
Mark Hashimoto,
Comcast
Today’s mobile
application
development is a
complex
endeavor made
more difficult by teams often
working at cross purposes.
Separation of roles and
responsibilities leads to
intricate technological and
personnel dependencies that
makes projects challenging.
Mark Hashimoto shares
personal insights and lessons
learned during the agile
development effort of Comcast
XFINITY Home iOS and
Android mobile apps. Mark
suggests that defining system
interfaces first allows client,
server, and test teams to
develop in parallel; limiting
mobile UX reviews to objective
matters rather than subjective
opinions builds trust and
respect; creating binary
acceptance criteria removes
sprint completion ambiguity;
and adhering to disciplined
meeting goals reduces wasted
time. However, not all lessons
learned were of a technical or
procedural nature. Mark
describes the human dynamics
involved and the most common
frustrations facing your team—
too many meetings, rework
caused by ambiguous mobile
requirements, missed
deadlines, and problems that
arise from a lack of time.
DW3
DEVOPS CASE STUDY
Agile DevOps:
The Long, Ugly
Story of How
We Got Better
Tommy Norman,
Holland Square Group
Come hear the
story of how a
$300 million
healthcare
automation
company used Agile and
DevOps to turn around a
s