Mile High Agile 2012 program:

Note: Open Space will be held in Colorado E/F (the main ballroom) during sessions 1, 2 and 3.

8:00 – 9:00 Registration, breakfast & meet the sponsors

9:00 – 10:00 Keynote Address by Jeff Patton

10:00 – 10:20 Break. Meet the Sponsors!

10:20 – 11:50 Session 1

11:50 – 1:00 Lunch. People with common interests may gather for “Birds of a Feather” discussions at lunch time.

1:00 – 2:00 Session 2

2:00 – 2:10 Break. Meet the sponsors!

2:10 – 3:40 Session 3

3:40 – 4:10 Break. Meet the sponsors!

4:10 – 5:10 Session 4

5:10 – 5:20 Break. Meet the sponsors!

5:20 – 6:00 Prize raffle and closing remarks.

Download a 1-page summary of the schedule, or the full program.

Speaker Lineup

Track (room)	Session 1 10:20 – 11:50	Session 2 1:00 – 2:00	Session 3 2:10 – 3:40	Session 4 4:10 – 5:10
Agile Technical Practices (Colorado A/B)	Thom Vaught & Tim Davis, Baking In Testability	Mark Waite, Jenkins Live – Install and Configure Continuous Integration	Paul Rayner, Domain-Driven Design (DDD) Workshop	James Hood, Practice to Learn: Using Code Katas to Explore Software Development
Agile Quality Practices (Colorado C/D)	Jon Hagar, Exploring Agile Exploratory Testing	Edward Monical-Vuysteke, How to Not Lie about Providing Value	Jeff “Cheezy” Morgan & Richard Lawrence: Teach Your Cucumber Scenarios to Speak ‘Business’ h	Anna Royzman, Refocusing Testing Strategy Within the Context of Product Maturity
Executive & Leadership (Colorado G/H)	Pete Behrens, The Culture of Agility	Richard Hensley, Sustainable Software Quality – at warp speed	Colin O’Neill, Scaling Agile Across the Enterprise	Yvette Francino, Distributed Teams – Trust Over Physical Presence
Agile Coaching (Denver III)	Michael Spayd & Lyssa Adkins: Preventing Problems Before They Happen: Advanced Startup Techniques for Agile Teams	Lee Henson: Identifying, Managing, & Eliminating Technical Debt	Skip Angel: Journey to Agility: Coaching a transformation	Erin Beierwaltes: Building a Team from Values to Principles: A Step by Step Approach
Product Management  (Denver IV)	Zach Nies: Become 2-4x more productive by combining Agile & Lean Startup practice	Brad Swanson & Manny Segarra: Ten Teams, One Product, One Successful Release Plan	Bob Hartman: I’m A Product Owner. Uh Oh, What Do I Do Now?	Jason Tanner: Agile Product Management 2012
Agile Boot Camp (Denver I/II)	Steve Rogalsky: Agile 101: Small Batches	Jan Beaver: Great Teams Keep it Simple: Building Team Maturity with Simple Tools	Michele Sliger: Facilitation & Communication in Agile Teams	Charles Bradley: Acceptance & Story Test Patterns
Agile Outside the Box (Denver V/VI)	Bruce Powel Douglass: Agile Model-Driven Development for Embedded Systems	Eric Minick: From Continuous Integration to DevOps: The co-evolution of Agile and Automation	Michael Hamman & George Schlitz: Organizational Agility: An Idea Whose Time Has Come	Daniel Vacanti: Kanbanomics: Using Kanban to get more done with less
Sponsor Talks (Colorado I/J)	(10:20-11:00) Steve Ropa: A Conversation on Code Craftsmanship (11:10-11:50) Richard Knaster: Disciplined Agile Delivery: The Foundation for Agility@Scale h	Michael Spayd & Lyssa Adkins: The Future of Agile and Professional Coaching: A Roundtable Discussion	Catherine Connor: Elevating Agility to the Strategic Level	(4:10-4:35) Matt Van Vleet: Value Driven: Using Value to Drive Agile (4:40-5:20) Charles Beardsley: Agile Development in the Transformation of Residential Home Energy Management

Lightning talks, 10 minutes each, will be held during session 4 (4:10 – 5:10 pm):

Lightning Talks (Colorado E/F)

Richard Dolman: Agile ERP and COTS – Can it be done? (4:10-4:25)

Steve Rogalsky: 10 minutes to FitNesse (4:25-4:40)

Eric Minick: DevOps – We can’t hug our way to adoption (4:40-4:55)

Sarah E. Welch: Agile is a Libertarian (4:55-5:10)

Keynote

Jeff Patton

Title: Us, them, and the problem with common agile practice

Abstract: Today’s common agile practice unintentionally reinforces the gap between us, and them. Just like software processes that came before, “us,” the people who make software rely on “them” to give us requirements. We rely on them to understand and tell us what’s of value. It hasn’t worked for the last 30 years, and still doesn’t now.

In this talk Jeff explores where value really comes from and gives you a vocabulary for describing it. You’ll learn why each small piece of software we deliver is valuable, but not always for the reasons you think. You’ll learn about the concepts and practices that bring us and them together as co-makers who together take responsibility for creating real value.

Bio: Jeff Patton makes use of over 15 years experience with a wide variety of products from on-line aircraft parts ordering to electronic medical records to help organizations improve the way they work. Where many development processes focus on delivery speed and efficiency, Jeff balances those concerns with the need for building products that deliver exceptional value and marketplace success.

Jeff currently works as the founder and principle consultant for Comakers Inc. He’s an agile process coach, product design coach, and instructor. Current articles, essays, and presentations can be found at http://www.AgileProductDesign.com. His writing appears in StickyMinds.com, Better Software Magazine, IEEE Software, Alistair Cockburn’s Book Crystal Clear, and his forthcoming book User Story Mapping from O’Reilly press. Jeff’s a Certified Scrum Trainer, and winner of the Agile Alliance’s 2007 Gordon Pask Award for contributions to Agile Development.

Technical Agile Practices

Hey, listen up “technical minded” recruits! If you’re a developer working day to day in the software development trenches where your nimble coding and testing go head to head with the hard truths that challenge your success with agile practices, or if you’re a manager or you know a manager who wants (or needs) to re-connect and dust-off some with technical agile practices on the front lines and shop floor, the MHA2012 “Technical Agile Practices Track” is for you. Active participation is the goal here, so suit-up and roll-up your sleeves, bring your laptop or pair up with a fellow team member, and be ready to fire up a code editor, and get some solid advice and hands-on practice. Check out the sessions we have lined up, and get ready to code ‘em if you got ‘em!

Thom Vaught and Tim Davis

Title: Baking in Testability

Abstract: Agile practices have transformed the development process within our organizations. They make transparency a priority between the project team and the rest of the business. What happens when we apply those techniques to the way we design and construct software? Learn to use proven tools and techniques to make your software more testable and maintainable. Using these approaches, you will empower all members of your team in contributing to software quality.

Bio: Thom Vaught is a software developer with over 20 years of experience delivering technical solutions. His experience includes the areas of geographic information systems, data warehousing, and finance. He has been with Oppenheimer Funds for over ten years leading many efforts to adopt, mature, and support technologies within the organization. In recent years, he has championed the adoption of Agile processes to provide increased focus on value, better collaboration between team members and the customer, and a sustainable pace. In adopting Agile practices, he is making the transition from a software developer to a team member providing value where needed.

Tim Davis has been testing software in the financial services industry for over 10 years. Over the past 3 years, he has been a part of Oppenheimer Funds’ transition to Agile project delivery. In a QA role, he has worked to increase testability of applications with the end goal being a more informative and visible feedback loop to the team in a shorter amount of time. Focusing on basic UI test utilities and proven mid-tier test strategies (i.e. RESTful service testing via FitNesse), he has been able to provide more detailed and focused feedback about the state of the team’s application. He has also been able to prove to most of his Development peers the value of providing testability hooks into the code. He is currently working on convincing the others.

Mark Waite

Title: Jenkins Live – Install and Configure Continuous Integration

Abstract: Jenkins is the leading open source continuous integration server. It will monitor your source control system, build your source code, and run your tests whenever your source code changes. We’ll have experienced Jenkins users ready to assist you as you experiment with installed Jenkins continuous integration servers on Windows and Linux. We’ll also help you install and configure Jenkins on your computer.

Biography: Mark Waite manages the Windchill build team for Parametric Technology Corporation. Windchill is an enterprise product lifecycle management solution used by product development companies throughout the world. Mark has been involved with continuous integration and software testing since his team switched to Extreme Programming in 2003. He can be contacted at “mwaite at ptc.com” or at “MarkWaite at yahoo.com”.

Paul Rayner

Title: Domain-Driven Design (DDD) Workshop

Abstract: DDD is about hands-on modeling. It’s about fostering a creative collaboration between technical experts and domain experts as they develop innovative and deeply expressive domain models. Come prepared to do some group-work in understanding and extending a domain model, and learn about model exploration in the process. There is no coding in this session, so no laptop is required.

Bio: Paul Rayner is a Denver-based, independent consultant with more than twenty years of software development and consulting experience. He combines a strong emphasis on agile and lean software development techniques and software architecture with a deep background in custom .NET application development. If you need coaching in agile and Lean software development for your business or team, or custom application development with an experienced developer, Paul can help.

Being a strong advocate for Lean-Agile software development, good design and open source development in .NET, Paul is passionate about software craftsmanship and lean software architecture – teaching others through public courses, coaching, speaking and writing. Visit his website at virtual-genius.com.

James Hood

Title: Practice to Learn: Using Code Katas to Explore Software Development

Abstract: Code Katas help develop habits, but they can also be a familiar solution applied to an unfamiliar toolset. In this sixty-minute hands-on session participants will have an opportunity to dissect a well-known code kata and then use that kata to “test drive” a number of different languages. Through this experience we expect the participants to gain a better understanding of each of the languages and what it would take to begin work in each — including how to start writing tests in the language. The class is a fast-paced ride through many languages focusing on fast feedback and learning through the use of a common, repeatable problem domain.

Bio: James has been developing software for fifteen years and is keenly focused on developing quality software through craftmanship. As a consultant with Pillar Technology James helps teams develop their agile and eXtreme Programming skills to realize greater speed to value. Follow @hoodja on Twitter or email jhood at pillartechnology.com.

Agile Quality Practices

The Agile Quality Practices track is designed for testers, quality assurance professionals, and all team members who have a stake in producing high quality products. Sessions will focus on practical techniques for “building quality in” to your product.

Jon Hagar

Title: Exploring Agile Exploratory Testing

Abstract: In Agile, automated testing is often thought of first for TDD and ATDD, but there is another key test technique to consider, that being manual or minimally automated exploratory testing. All testers should develop their exploration muscles. This fun and interactive session will develop the Agile tester’s skill in testing exploration. It will consider: Can you test without stories? What are some keys in exploratory thinking? Can you plan, design, create, and run a test in under 10 minutes? What skills does an Agile Exploratory tester need? Hands on testing will be done. Minimal charts will be used. A fast definition of one man’s view of exploratory testing will be presented.

Bio: Jon Hagar is a systems-software engineer and tester consultant supporting software product integrity, verification, and validation with a specialization in embedded/mobile software systems. Jon has worked in software engineering, particularly testing for over thirty years. Embedded projects he has supported include: control system (avionics and auto), spacecraft, mobile-smart devices, and ground systems (IT) as well as working attack testing of the new smart phones (class/book in work). He has managed and built embedded test lab with test automation. He teaches classes at the professional and college level. Jon publishes regularly with over 50 presentations and parts of 3 book in software testing, verification, validation, Agile, product integrity and assessment, system engineering, and quality assurance. Jon is lead editor/author on ISO 29119 software testing standard, model based test standard, and IEEE 1012 V&V plans. Visit him at swtesting.com.

Edward Monical-Vuysteke

Title: How to Not Lie about Providing Value

Abstract: The only value code provides is in its utility to the clients. So, how do you prove that you are providing value? How do you facilitate making the right decisions about the software you build and the promises you make? How can you create engagement, enthusiasm and understanding between business users/clients, testers and developers?

Bio: Edward Monical-Vuylsteke hasn’t really had a lot of experience with presenting. What he has had is a down and dirty experience with taking a team that did not believe in Test Driven Development and convinced them of the value of automated integration testing, driving that into acceptance test driven development and using that to drive value and quality into a massive legacy mainframe messaging project.

Jeff “Cheezy” Morgan and Richard Lawrence

Title: Teach Your Cucumber Scenarios to Speak “Business”

Abstract: Cucumber can be a powerful tool to build a common, or ubiquitous, language between product people, developers, and testers. A common language leads to common understanding and, ultimately, more valuable software. Unfortunately, too many teams write Cucumber scenarios that use technical language and miss out on this benefit. In this interactive session, you’ll learn how to use Cucumber to grow a ubiquitous language and how to refactor your existing scenarios to speak “business.” (While the focus is on Cucumber, users of other tools will surely see ways to apply the lessons to their own tools.)

Bio: Jeff “Cheezy” Morgan is Chief Technology Officer and a cofounder of LeanDog. He has been coaching teams on Agile and Lean techniques since 2004 with a focus on the Engineering practices. For the past three years he has experienced great success and recognition for his work focusing on helping teams adopt Acceptance Test Driven Development using Cucumber. He is the author of several popular Ruby gems used by software testers throughout the world. He regularly teaches Cucumber classes and workshops and is the author of the soon-to-be-released book titled “Cucumber & Cheese – A Testers Workshop”. Visit him at leandog.com.

Richard Lawrence is the creator of Cuke4Nuke, the .NET support for Cucumber. Since adopting agile in 2001, Richard has led and coached numerous teams to successfully deliver software projects using an agile approach. He is passionate about and effective at building wildly productive, humanizing software teams. One of only a few dozen Certified Scrum Coaches, Richard regularly speaks at user groups and conferences. He is currently writing a book on ATDD with Cucumber for Addison-Wesley. You can read his blog at richardlawrence.info.

Anna Royzman

Title: Refocusing Testing Strategy Within the Context of Product Maturity

Abstract: Same as the “complete preplanning ahead” is not the Agile way of delivering software, the testing strategy within the agile project needs to fine-tune to the various stages of product development and maturity. While the team and product leads want to be confident about software quality, testing tasks and activities need to be lean enough to avoid unnecessary time/maintenance hurdles or bottlenecks. We will review testing methods and styles which fit best at different stages of product maturity (hint: the definition of “quality” may adjust for each stage).

Highlights of the session include:

• Strategic ways to use automation, and when manual exploratory testing is a better choice
• Testing the usability and business assumptions
• Leveraging exploratory testing as a team activity (when and how)
• Getting ready for live pilot’s and sales demos of the real product
• Testing coverage refinement from the customer feedback
• Risk-based testing
• Test automation: one tool doesn’t ‘fit all’
• Designing production “safety net” suite of automated tests

Bio: Anna Royzman is the test lead in a cross-functional Product Development team. Her team is developing game-changing software in the financial industry, where the quality is as important as the “time to market”. The session context is based on her experiences, observations and lessons learned. Over the past 10 years, Anna served as a QA manager, test lead or senior tester on highly successful projects.

Executive & Leadership

The Executive Track of the Mile High Agile Conference examines challenges unique to Senior Management when implementing and guiding an Agile program.  Creative solutions will be shared by experienced speakers addressing:

• Agile implications for HR
• Budgeting for an Agile program
• Organizational impact
• Understanding value as the new currency
• Leadership in an Agile organization
• Lessons learned at the top

Bring your questions and your own experiences with you and hear how other business leaders have made Agile work for them.

Pete Behrens

Title: The Culture of Agility

Abstract: Agility as a process is well understood today in feedback generating Scrum sprints or as a Kanban flow. Agility as a structure is becoming better understood through cross-functional teams working collaboratively. However, Agility as a culture has very little exposure – yet culture impacts every attempt at agility.

This session provides a language and visualization for organizational culture, its impact on agility, and examples where exposing culture has aided adoption. We will explore cultures within single organizations, sub-cultures across boundaries within larger organizations, and cultures bridging corporate mergers.

Bio: Pete Behrens, one of America’s foremost leadership and organizational agility coaches, guides senior executives in integrating their organizations to foster growth, adaptability and resiliency to drive positive results.

He is the only coach who drives organizational agility from the inside out – starting with the culture of the organization, building supportive agile systems and finally through implementing agile practices – in building effective and sustainable agile organizations who approach change as an opportunity rather than a threat.

Pete founded the Certified Scrum Coaching (CSC) Program for the Scrum Alliance and leads it today as one of the preeminent agile organizational transformation coaching communities in the world.

Richard Hensley

Title:Sustainable Software Quality – at warp speed

Abstract: Businesses demand high levels of product quality, development productivity, planning reliability, employee satisfaction, and customer loyalty. And yet, people and organizations often ignore all those goals and focus on building systems with as many features as possible delivered by a specific due date. When the work is complete, retrospectives surface the dissatisfaction concerning missed dates, poor quality, technical debt, and more. Richard Hensley describes his last three years at McKesson, where they have delivered 103 production releases with no significant defects, fulfilled sixteen multi-million dollar contracts, maintained high employee morale, and trained 5,000 users. Employing the Kanban approach for change management, McKesson implemented new tools selected from RUP, XP, Scrum, and lean—daily focused planning, stand-up meetings, retrospectives, TDD, information radiators, user stories, etc. They automated anything they could and measured everything possible. Most importantly, though, they developed a culture that puts quality and continuous improvement at the forefront. Richard outlines the ideas behind McKesson’s cultural and delivery success and describes how their approaches can work in your business.

Bio: At McKesson Health Solutions, Richard Hensley leads the lean business and product development transformation, establishing the vision for development for the next decade. Richard is working with business and product development leaders to “pull the quality lever” in a meaningful way. Their goal is to transform the development organization responsible for products supporting four major lines of business that contribute significantly to the financial success of McKesson. Richard is a twenty-five year product development veteran in the healthcare technology industry and has built systems supporting pharmacies, prescription insurance claims, clinical laboratories, and many more. In these products, Richard has worked as software engineer, quality engineer, system architect, change agent, process lead, and technology lead.

Colin O’Neill

Title: Scaling Agile Across the Enterprise

Abstract: Fundamentally changing how an organization develops software is no small endeavor. Scaling Agile across an enterprise requires knowledge, preparation, and a fundamental understanding of how change initiatives should be undertaken to maximize their potential for success.

This presentation will:

• Provide tips and tricks to overcome resistance to enterprise Agile adoption from traditional departments such as marketing, finance and accounting, human resources, training, legal, PMO, governance bodies, and others
• Present and discuss the Scaled Agile Framework™ developed by the world’s leading Scaled Agile practitioner, Dean Leffingwell
• Describe the OPTiC Adoption Model that uniquely combines Process, Training, Coaching, and Organizational Change Management (OCM) to achieve successful Scaled Agile transformation

Bio: Colin O’Neill, CSM, CSP, is the CEO of Scaled Agile, Inc., providing full-service Agile transformations to the Global 1000. Over 30 years leadership and organizational change experience. Partnered with Dean Leffingwell, creator of the Scaled Agile Framework. Certified ScrumMaster, Certified Scrum Professional, and conference speaker. Annapolis graduate and U.S. Marine Corps officer. Lives in Boulder, CO.

Yvette Francino

Title: Distributed Teams – Trust over physical presence

Abstract: One of the 12 Agile principles states: “the most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.”
However, given the changes that have taken place in the past 10 years is this principle outdated?

Agile development promotes co-location, but that principle conflicts with such trends as outsourcing, work-from-anywhere, and global teams. Distributed teams are so prevalent in today’s business world, that those who don’t know how to operate and communicate effectively regardless of physical location are at a disadvantage. This interactive session will show how dispersed teams can thrive, and even be stronger than co-located teams, given the proper leadership and technology.

Bio: Yvette Francino is the Site Editor for SearchSoftwareQuality.com and has written hundreds of articles about software development, QA and management. She has over 20 years of experience in all phases of the software development lifecycle, including 11 years at IBM and 10.5 years at Sun Microsystems. She has held management positions in software development, quality assurance and customer operations, managing diverse workgroups from various geographies and cultures. She has a Masters of Science in Management/Project Management degree from Regis University, and a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of CA, Davis. Yvette also enjoys writing, blogging and social networking. When she’s not on her computer, she can usually be found spending time with her family, running or hiking on the beautiful trails of Boulder, Colorado.

Agile Coaching

This track will explore the principles and techniques of coaching teams and organizations not just to “do” agile, but to “be” agile.

Michael Spayd & Lyssa Adkins

Title: Preventing Problems Before They Happen: Advanced Startup Techniques for Agile Teams

Abstract: The right team startup process can help prevent a range of problems later, from destructive conflict, to lack of individual motivation, to low team ownership. This session walks you step-by-step through an advanced team startup–the designed partnership alliance–developed by CRRGlobal and adapted for Agile teams by Michael & Lyssa at the Agile Coaching Institute. The session will cover:intentionally creating a team culture, conflict protocols, behavioral agreements, co-responsibility, team stakeholders, and core vs. extended team definition. The session focuses on seeing the team as a human system striving towards high performance. We will not address detailed logistical issues in team startup (e.g., setting up the team room or technical environment, etc.).

Bio: In a word, Michael Spayd‘s professional work is about transformation. He seems to be wired to help people, and systems, change. Michael is drawn to cutting edge ‘technologies’ for coaching and organization development. He has been an organizational change coach and consultant for 20 years, working with Fortune 500, small businesses and non-profits. For 10 years he has specialized in technology-oriented teams and associated enterprise transformation efforts, working with over 50 teams in that time and training and mentoring several hundred agile coaches. Michael was trained as a Team and Organizational Coach and holds a Master’s degree in psychology, and he is trained in Co-Active leadership, executive coaching, and organizational behavior. He is also a Certified Organization and Relationship Systems Coach (ORSCC), a Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF), and a Certified Scrum Master (CSM).

Since 2004, Lyssa Adkins has taught Scrum to hundreds of students, coached many agile teams, and served as master coach to many apprentice coaches. In both one-on-one settings and small groups, Lyssa enjoys a front-row seat as remarkable agile coaches emerge and go on to entice the very best from the teams they coach. Prior to agile, she had more than fifteen years of expertise leading project teams and groups of project managers (I was even a PMO Director — twice!), yet nothing prepared her for the power of agile done simply and well.

Lyssa holds an alphabet soup of certifications: Certified Scrum Coach (CSC), Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), Project Management Professional (PMP), Six Sigma Green Belt (SSGB) and she is also a trained Co-Active Coach and Leader. In 2010, she authored “Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition”.

V. Lee Henson

Title: Identifying, Managing, & Eliminating Technical Debt

Abstract: As the need for more sophisticated product offerings continues to grow, organizations are building VERY strong feature sets atop a crumbling architectural foundation. This is your chance to learn what technical debt is, and steps you can take to eliminate it! See Firsthand what the very obstacles are that we are trying to avoid. Learn what your role is in helping to make certain we never pitfall into this environment again. Learn the Seven sins of Technical Debt and learn how to get rid of them and never see them return.

Bio: Best known as AgileDad and Chief Agile Enthusiast at Davisbase.com, Lee Henson has held technical roles and responsibilities including GUI web developer, quality assurance analyst, automated test engineer, QA Manager, agile coach, consultant, and more. He has worked with hundreds of teams to assist their successful implementation and transformation from traditional to Agile practices. Lee’s client list includes many Fortune 100 companies, government organizations, small and large software production facilities, and large scale e-commerce implementations. His unique blend of real-world experience combined with the ability to drive home highly technical concepts in an easy to understand manner make him a valuable resource for any team.

Skip Angel

Title: Journey to Agility: Coaching a transformation

Abstract: How far can you take Agile within an organization? Is it enough to just focus on Agile team practices like Scrum and XP or is something more needed? Agile is much more than a selection of an SDLC methodology for your teams. It can become a larger organizational change for more agility beyond just product development. The speaker will provide you an example of leading one company’s journey from no knowledge of Agile to an organization with high agility. We will explore many of your questions around transformation that could help your own company in its journey. Where is the best place to start successfully to get things going in the right direction? What are the conditions needed for a company to be ready to accept significant organizational change? What are some of the major activities and events that happen during the transformation process? How does it change the company in who they are and what they are capable of achieving?

Bio: Skip Angel is a Principal Agile Coach and Certified Scrum Coach for BigVisible Solutions, a coaching and enablement consultancy. Skip has 25 years of experience in software development in a variety of roles including Chief Technology Officer. He provides thought leadership, training, and coaching to new and experienced teams interested in agile practices including Lean, Scrum, and Extreme Programming (XP). As an external coach and trainer, Skip has provided public and private courses to all sizes of product development and IT organizations. He has also been an embedded coach for pilot teams and enterprise transformation efforts across multiple local and distributed teams across US and India. You can reach him at “sangel at bigvisible.com”.

Erin Beierwaltes

Title: Building a Team from Values to Principles: A Step by Step Approach

Abstract: Building a high efficiency team can often be elusive and challenging, especially with no clear path. This session offers a multi part approach to guide a team through building values, building agile principles and acknowledging benefits with a multi-part, multi-week visual technique that you will get to experience in an hour.

Bio: Erin Beierwaltes has coached growing start-ups to global enterprise companies with emphasis on improving the collaboration of teams and enhancing business development. As a Project Management Professional (PMP) and Certified Scrum Practitioner (CSP) she has seen the positive effect Agile approaches can play through out a company. In an effort to improve the next generation of developers and business leaders and fulfill a passion for teaching, Erin routinely provides donation-based workshops and guest lectures for schools and interest groups.

Product Management and Design

This track will provide content targeted at Product Owners/Managers, Business Analysts, and User Experience designers.

Zach Nies

Title: Become 2-4x more productive by combining Agile & Lean Startup practice

Abstract: This talk will highlight how experienced Agile teams can be 4 times more productive than non-Agile teams. But how much of this increased productivity is wasted on building the wrong things? By using concepts from The Lean Startup you can dramatically improve your ability to build functionality that users want, will pay to have, and use. This talk will introduce the key ideas of The Lean Startup and how you can use these concepts in you business, even if you aren’t at a startup.

Bio: Zach is the CTO of Rally Software. Zach has 25 years of engineering and product development experience. Prior to joining Rally, Zach served as Principal Architect and Director of Systems Architecture for Level 3 Communications where he focused on new technology and process adoption for their 550-person development organization. Prior to Level 3, Zach was co-founder of a startup that used web technologies to change how creative professionals managed projects. His company was acquired by publicly traded Creo, Inc. now a division of Kodak. He also served as Chief Software Architect at Quark, where he provided the overarching technological vision for the company. Zach’s product vision has won numerous industry awards, including Jolt Product Excellence awards, Seybold HotPicks and the prized MacWorld Best of Show. Zach has served on standards bodies such as the W3C’s HTML working group.

At the age of 13, Zach began commercially publishing software and, at age 16, started a successful consulting business. A Boettcher Scholar, Zach received his BS with distinction in Computer Science Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He spends his spare time tuning his golf swing and spending time with his family.

Brad Swanson & Manny Segarra

Title: Ten Teams, One Product, One Successful Release Plan
Abstract: How do you create an Agile release plan for a complex product developed by hundreds of people? In this session we’ll show how a major cable TV company structured its teams using Leffingwell’s “Scaled Agile Framework”, prepared a product backlog, and then facilitated a collaborative, one-day release planning session involving 10 teams developing many critical new features. We’ll discuss the preparation process, how to facilitate a highly effective large-scale meeting, and lessons learned along the way.

Bio: Brad Swanson is a Certified Scrum Coach and Principal Consultant at Propero Solutions. He started his software career at age ten on the Apple IIe, and is now a Certified Scrum Coach (CSC), Certified Scrum Practitioner (CSP), and Certified Scrum Master (CSM) with 17 years of experience in management, project and program leadership, product management, and software development in both start-ups and large companies. Brad has led the adoption and implementation of agile and scrum methodology at many organizations, leading successful agile projects with teams in the US, Europe, and Asia. He has deep experience with agile software development, starting with eXtreme Programming (XP) in 1999, and also Scrum, Lean and Kanban methods. He is active in the Agile and Scrum communities as a Director of Agile Denver and speaker at international conferences such as Agile2011 and the Shanghai Scrum Gathering 2010.

Manny Segarra: Courageous, Passionate Lean/Agile coach committed to Kaizen and Success for his teams. In the Service of Others, his mission statement. 10+ years of IT experience in coding, testing and coaching. Certified Scrum Master, Master’s degree in Information Technology makes him a well-educated novice. His Enlightened Warrior leadership style, coupled with his skills of influence, persuasion and inspiration are assets to most teams. Avid reader, second tier leader, consummate teammate, assertive in accountability and execution are my foundation. Excuses are non-starters; ‘Normal, Standard, Average and Good enough’ are curse words.

Bob Hartman

Title: I’m A Product Owner. Uh Oh, What Do I Do Now?

Abstract: Have you ever had that sinking feeling that you are in over your head? If so, take that and multiply by ten when you are a Product Owner. Product Owners (Scrum specific term, but the role exists in every agile methodology) universally have a problem: they are a key to creating a great product. They have to herd cats (stakeholders) to create a product backlog. Then they fight the wolves (developers, testers and others) to turn the backlog into a great product. Product Owners need to have a toolbox that includes herding and fighting skills. This session will concentrate on a variety of different agile herding and fighting techniques Bob has seen work at many of his clients.

Bio: Bob Hartman (Agile Bob), is a Certified Scrum Coach and Certified Scrum Trainer. This mixture of skills and knowledge allows him to understand the theory behind Agile/Scrum, but to augment that with pragmatic results obtained by real teams. Bob is passionate about making agile a reality – with actual success, not just words! Bob founded Agile For All and the Agile Cooperative (both Mile High Agile sponsors) because he believes too many organizations concentrate only on the word “agile” and not enough on the success agile should generate. Results speak louder than words – so Bob says, “Let’s make this successful!”

Jason Tanner

Title: Agile Product Management 2012

Abstract: What is the role of product management in an Agile environment? Is the role of product owner something different? Developers often see product managers as technical resources. Agile seems to have made this orientation worse, with product managers getting pulled into deeper, tactical activities. But spending so much time with internal teams means less time spent in the market as a resource for strategy and business thinking at the product level. After ten years, this discussion engages the audience to explore progress in the area of Agile Product Management and where we need to go next.

Bio: Jason joined Enthiosys as a Senior Consultant in 2008 and has over 20 years of professional experience with software companies, a telecommunications company and the Marine Corps. His expertise spans Agile software product management, product marketing, business planning, partner management, project management and leadership. Jason currently coaches organizations transitioning to Agile with a focus on product managers and their practices.

Agile Boot Camp

Are you new to Agile? Looking to learn the basics and begin your Agile journey? This is the track for you.

Steve Rogalsky

Title: Agile 101: Small Batches

Abstract: In this session Steve will review and discuss the basic agile practices in the context of two games. The first game will illustrate why small batches are important and how they can help you address project risks sooner. The second game will illustrate how small batches can help give you better information about your project sooner and will demonstrate some of the basic agile practices at work like iterations, continuous flow, manage to done, velocity, retrospectives, etc.

Bio: “Steve Rogalsky first started experimenting with agile and lean techniques as a child. He learned the importance of ‘test first’ and the folly of ‘test last’ after starting a snow ball fight with the older kids in the neighborhood. While playing the popular lego game of ‘zoom your vehicle towards your brother’s vehicle and see which one breaks first’, he honed his simple design and iterative development skills.

Steve is a process hacker, accomplished agilist, and co-founder of the Winnipeg Agile User Group. Passionate about his family, working with people, solving problems, coaching, agile, lean, and continuous improvement. Blogs at http://winnipegagilist.blogspot.com”

Jan Beaver

Title: Great Teams Keep it Simple: Building Team Maturity with Simple Tools

Abstract: “Simplicity-the art of maximizing the amount of work not done-is essential.”
- Agile Manifesto Principles

Teams new – and not so new – to agile tend to over think or fall back on old habits. The result is often excessively complex work management structures, from multifaceted, multilayer backlogs to task boards that reflect many process states and degrees of “doneness.” Such complexity locks teams into accustomed functional silos and non-collaborative work patterns. In this session, we will dial back the complexity and explore the meaning of this key agile principle in action as it applies to building mature, high-performing teams. Participants will design simple artifacts and collaborate on team working agreements that are practical expressions of the agile principle.

Bio: Jan Beaver is a Ph.D. educator with over 25 years of experience in the software industry. His experience covers the gamut of functional management, development using many different languages and environments, QA, technical writing, and beyond. Jan has helped numerous organizations make the difficult transition to agile with a focus on practices backed by solid understanding of values and principles. Jan’s current focus is on enterprise transformation and the unique challenges of changing the culture of large organizations using Scrum, XP, Kanban, and agile values and principles as agents of change.

Michele Sliger

Title: Facilitation & Communication in Agile Teams

Abstract: While traditional projects expect most communication to take the forms of email and manager-led meetings, agile projects expect teams to self-organize, collaborate and participate in decision-making. But what is self-organization? How does it work? This 90-minute tutorial will focus on what it means to self-organize, how it occurs and how to help it along, and the hurdles that must be cleared in the process. See how the proper use of facilitation in agile meetings can be a key driver in the development of high-performing self-organizing teams. Attendees will leave with a handout that will serve as the beginning of their own “discussion toolkit.”

Bio: Michele Sliger has extensive experience in agile software development, having worked in both XP and Scrum teams before becoming a consultant. As a self-described “bridge builder,” her passion lies in helping those in traditional software development environments cross the bridge to agility. Along with co-author Stacia Viscardi, their book “The Software Project Manager’s Bridge to Agility” focuses on that topic, helping PMI-trained project managers make the transition. Michele is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and a certified Project Management Professional (PMP®). If you have a question or would like help with your agile adoption, Michele can be reached at “michele at sligerconsulting.com”

Charles Bradley

Title: Acceptance & Story Test Patterns

Abstract: Acceptance Testing, also known as Story Testing, is vital to achieve the Agile vision of “working software over comprehensive documentation.” It’s very important that acceptance tests are easily automated, resulting in a phenomenon you may have heard of, called the “Agile Specification.” In this presentation, we’ll discuss eight different patterns of expressing acceptance tests so that they are easy to execute and automate. We’ll talk about popular patterns like Given/When/Then and Specification by Example, as well some other patterns you’ve probably never seen. Attendees will participate in an interactive exercise that will allow them to apply the most frequently used Acceptance Testing patterns.

Bio: Charles Bradley is the author of the “Scrum Crazy” blog and website at http://www.scrumcrazy.com. He is an experienced Scrum Coach, Certified ScrumMaster, and Certified Professional ScrumMaster I. Mr. Bradley has coached several teams on Scrum and User Stories, including full scale transitions to Scrum and User Stories. In addition to his Scrum credentials, he is also a highly capable, full lifecycle experienced, software development team lead that prefers XP for good engineering practices. Mr. Bradley has 14 years of consulting experience in J2EE application development across all tiers and in many different roles.  He lives in Denver, Colorado and is easily found on LinkedIn.

Agile Outside the Box

It’s not possible to catch the full breadth of Agile & Lean topics in a handful of narrow tracks, so “Outside the Box” is a home for intriguing, innovative, and maybe even controversial topics that don’t fit the narrow confines of our other tracks.

Bruce Powel Douglass

Title: Agile Model-Driven Development for Embedded Systems

Abstract: Both agile methods and model-based development can provide significant improvement in both time-to-market and quality for real-time and embedded system development. These approaches provide synergistic benefits for developers. Based on a core set of agile principles, the Harmony/ESW (Embedded Software) process guides the developers through a highly effective set of practices and workflows. The process has been successfully applied to many real-time, embedded, and safety-critical projects. Presented by the author of “Real-Time UML Workshop for Embedded Systems” and “Real-Time Agility.”

Bio: Bruce Powel Douglass, who has a doctorate in neurocybernetics from the USD Medical School, has over 30 years experience designing safety-critical real-time applications in a variety of hard real-time environments. He has designed and taught courses in agile methods, object-orientation, MDA, real-time systems, and safety-critical systems development, and is the author of over 5000 book pages from a number of technical books including “Real-Time UML”, “Real-Time UML Workshop for Embedded Systems”, “Real-Time Design Patterns”, “Doing Hard Time”, “Real-Time Agility”, and “Design Patterns for Embedded Systems in C”. He is the Chief Evangelist at IBM Rational, where he is a thought leader in the systems space, consulting with and mentoring IBM customers all over the world, represents IBM at many different conferences, and authors tools and processes for the embedded real-time industry. He can be followed on Twitter: “@BruceDouglass”.

Eric Minick

Title: From Continuous Integration to DevOps: The co-evolution of Agile and Automation

Abstract: A decade after the Agile Manifesto, Agile methodologies have become mainstream. But the Agile of today is not the same as the Agile of 2001. Agile has expanded from small teams to large-scale distributed development. This move into the mainstream has changed both the attitudes and practices of Agile.

As quickly as Agile has grown, it has been paced by the development of Continuous Integration. Starting from a developer-centric Agile practice, Continuous Integration has evolved to include the new stakeholders: QA, Project Managers, and Operations and new concepts like Continuous Delivery and DevOps. As Agile and Automation have succeeded, their scope has broadened. Join Eric for a look at how process and automation have interacted, and what’s next.

Bio: Eric Minick is a lead consultant and technical evangelist for Urbancode Software with a background in development and testing. Over the past decade, he has been at the forefront of the continuous integration and delivery space. Today, Eric works closely with IT organizations that are trying to improve their build, deployment and release processes by providing both technical expertise and process design guidance. Eric earned his BS from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Michael Hamman & George Schlitz

Title: Organizational Agility: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

Abstract: Despite over a decade of formal attempts at agile transformation, there are very few real examples of large scale transformation success, and many examples of reversion and failures to scale. The most common pattern we see is that teams transform while everything else remains the same. This leads to increased organizational incongruence, disarray, and ultimately failure. What is needed is a notion of organizational agility that does for the broader organization what software agility does for software delivery teams. In this session we help participants make the case for such a notion, describe the paradigm shift which such a notion calls for, and provide participants with initial steps to influencing organizational agility in their workplace.

Bio: Michael Hamman is dedicated to the possibility that the workplace be a site for personal, organizational, and social transformation. Toward this end, Michael helps clients design learning environments in which people find themselves able to move beyond personal and institutional limitations, and create for themselves deep, transformative learning and change. His 15 years’ leading and coaching high performing teams, plus his nine+ years’ experience in coaching agile teams and management in large organizational settings has established a deep appreciation for the holistic nature of organizational transformation and agility. Michael is currently a Principal Agile Consultant at Big Visible Solutions.

Co-founder of BigVisible Solutions, George Schlitz has extensive experience consulting for large organizations across many different industries. His passion is helping organizations and individuals through difficult change. By bringing an awareness of complexity, systems thinking, and improvement approaches like agile, lean, and ToC to people and teams, and working closely with them to improve their collaboration and leadership skills, George believes that large-scale change can be a part of our every day lives.
George is a member of many Agile-related groups, PMI chapters, and other professional organizations. You might run into him as a speaker at industry events or conferences.

Daniel Vacanti

Title: Kanbanomics: Using Kanban to get more done with less

Abstract: In this session, you will learn about the 5 core practices of Kanban by looking at them from a simple “economics” perspective. This new approach can be useful as most introductions to Kanban focus on arcane manufacturing theory and the use of obscure Japanese words. By drawing analogies to everyday, well-understood economic concepts like the law of supply and demand (amongst others), you’ll discover how the practices of Kanban can help you be more successful at your job.

Bio: Daniel Vacanti is a 17-year software industry veteran. In 2007, he helped to create the Kanban Method for software development with David Anderson. He managed the world’s first project implementation of Kanban that year, and has been conducting Kanban training, coaching, and consulting ever since. He counts several Fortune 100 companies as some of his current and past clients. In 2011 he founded Corporate Kanban, Inc., which provides world-class training and consulting to companies all over the globe. Daniel holds a Masters in Business Administration and regularly teaches a class on lean principles for software management at the University of California Berkeley.

Lightning Talks

Lightning Talks are 10-minute talks designed to quickly share nuggets of knowledge and/or raise thought-provoking questions. The track is designed to pack a lot of knowledge into a short amount of time.

Richard Dolman

Title: Agile ERP and COTS – Can it be done?

Bio: Richard Dolman is an Agile Coach and Certified Scrum Professional (CSP) with Business and IT consulting and management expertise, in the areas of Agile Adoption and Transformation, Software Implementations, Project and Program Management, Business Process Management, Analysis and Strategic Planning. Richard’s professional passion is helping companies solve critical business and technology challenges, and empowering and enabling collaborative, high-performing teams.

Steve Rogalsky

Title: 10 minutes to FitNesse

Bio: see above

Eric Minick

Title: DevOps – We can’t hug our way to adoption

Abstract: DevOps is applying many of the principals of Agile to operations. The philosophy has a great deal of merit. We should see better development-operations cooperation and better management of infrastructure. However, DevOps won’t reach the mainstream just on its merits. In this short talk, we’ll look at what Agile did well to cross the adoption chasm and what that means for DevOps.

Bio: see above

Sarah E. Welch

Title: Agile is a Libertarian

Bio: Sarah Welch is a scrum master & agile coach at Exelis Visual Information Solutions in Boulder, after starting her career as a developer. Sarah is passionate about making work fun and productive. She has led teams of two to over one hundred. In 2006, her work was featured in CIO Magazine’s CIO 100 Innovation for Growth list. Sarah is a two time speaker at Ignite Boulder, “How to Run Meetings That Don’t Suck” and “How to Make Work Awesome.” Last year, she spoke on agile coaching at Southern Fried Agile 2011 in Charlotte, NC.

Sponsor Talks

Sponsor talks provide a way for event sponsors to share why they are passionate about agile.

Rally — Catherine Connor

Title: Elevating Agility to the Strategic Level

Abstract: As more and more organizations are successfully scaling Agile across a large number of development teams, this success is highlighting new challenges for their business. And these challenges are calling for Agile principles to get resolved. Now is the time for departments outside of development to get their share of the Agile pie. It’s time for businesses to reap similar benefits Agile is providing to development groups.

This presentation will address how Agile principles can be applied to the strategic level and how strategic planners can start their journey to Enterprise Agility.

Attend the session, and bring back to your organization information on how to:

• Align your development efforts with your portfolio investments
• Apply development feedback loops to optimize your strategic plans
• Create realistic product roadmaps
• Deliver more value faster

Bio: Catherine Connor is a product manager at Rally Software. She focuses on agile software solutions for portfolio managers and product managers. Recently, she adopted customer development techniques to validate go-to-market strategies. Catherine has more than 20 years of experience in software development, helping customers get value in software solutions.

VersionOne – Steve Ropa

Title: A Conversation on Code Craftsmanship

Abstract: Over the past few years, many people have come to see Software Development as more than engineering and science, but more as a Craft. The juxtaposition of technical skills and ability to find beauty in what we create has come to truly resonate as Software Craftsmanship. In this talk, we will explore the disciplines and technical activities that lead us to higher Craftsmanship, and also the mind sets and philosophies that will serve to further the craft in the future.

Bio: Steve Ropa has been developing software for around twenty years. He has filled every job role that is generally considered part of software development from business analyst through delivery. His specialty through the years has been as a programmer and director of development. Steve has been conducting Agile transformations for teams for the past ten years. He has worked with small shrink-wrap software teams, large telecommunications firms, and various other teams, both IT and externally delivered. He has also successfully transformed multinational teams spanning as many as three continents. Steve’s area of expertise is bridging the communications and procedural gaps between the technical oriented teams and the business teams, from the programmer/testers through to the CEO. He has spoken at several conferences around the country including Agile 2011, and his blog can be found at http://blogs.versionone.com/agile_management/author/sropa/

IBM – Richard Knaster

Title: Disciplined Agile Delivery: The Foundation for Agility@Scale

Abstract: Many organizations have adopted, and then tailored, a combination of Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP) as they’ve adopted Agile strategies. But organizations successful adopting Agile have found that this isn’t enough, that they also must adopt strategies for all aspects of the delivery lifecycle from start to finish. Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) is a hybrid Agile process framework that addresses the full Agile delivery life cycle in a governed and enterprise-aware manner. In addition to showing the leadership and requirements management strategies of Scrum and the technical practices of XP, attendees will learn how to successfully initiate an Agile project, mitigate risk early in the Agile lifecycle, weave governance into the lifecycle, and the issues that Agile teams face transitioning their solutions into production.

Bio: Richard Knaster is the IBM Rational Worldwide Practice Manager for Agile and CCM. He helps customers all over the world implement Agile methods, practices and tools. Richard is a member of IBM’s QSE Agile Leadership team. He has over 20 years experience in software development from practitioner to executive. He is also a contributor to the PMI Portfolio and Program Management standards and is an Agile Planning and Portfolio Management expert. Richard also has expertise in Business Process Engineering, Measured Improvement and is a PMI PMP, a mix that proves valuable when helping organizations’ transition from traditional to modern development practices

Michael Spayd & Lyssa Adkins

Title: The Future of Agile and Professional Coaching: A Roundtable Discussion

Abstract: Lyssa and Michael, thought leaders in the world of Agile Coaching, want to invite you into an informal discussion on the future of Agile coaching and what the world of professional coaching has to offer us as an emerging profession. We will cover the major professional bodies involved in both Agile and professional coaching, plus how our offerings map to the ever expanding world of Agile coaching. Please bring your questions and curiosity.

Bio: see above

Tendril – Charles Beardsley

Title: Agile Development in the Transformation of Residential Home Energy Management

Agile development is playing a pivotal role in the transformation currently taking place in the energy industry. Learn how Tendril, a Boulder-based software company, is successfully using Agile to meet the growing and diverse needs of utilities, the makers of ‘smart’ products and services–like smart appliances, as well as consumers and application developers. This session will explore how Tendril is using Agile development for its cloud-based software platform as well as in the development of a host of applications including web applications, mobile applications and firmware. Learn what’s worked and what hasn’t. The session will also explore incorporating behavior driven development (BDD) and a Cucumber framework for automated and manual test cases.

Bio: Charles Beardsley has more than 15 years of experience in quality assurance, technical support and research and development. As Director of System Integration, he is responsible for the entire QA team and delivering quality solutions for Tendril.

Before joining Tendril, he spent several years working in the Smart Grid industry at Silver Spring Networks and Itron. Early in his career he spent more than 10 years at Cisco Systems as a Quality Assurance Manager.

Charles holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of Maryland.

Pillar Technology – Matt Van Vleet

Title: Value Driven: Using Value to Drive Agile

Abstract: “When organizations implement Agile they often struggle because Agile becomes the goal. Agile is a technique or better yet a philosophy not a goal. Creating Value (monetary or otherwise ) is what organizations strive to achieve. This presentation covers how to

• Model what is valuable to your organization
• Define opportunities and needs in terms of value
• Map your day to day work to value

With Value as your guide Agile will thrive…

Bio: Matt Van Vleet holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Management Information Systems from Ohio University. He joined Pillar in 2005 as Vice President of Fulfillment for the Ohio Valley Region after years of notable accomplishments. Matt has developed a testing practice focused on functional test automation and application performance management. He founded a company, Solstice Software, that wrote Automated Unit and Integration Testing Products and continues to push the envelope of what is possible with test automation. Within Pillar he is one of the key innovators around our approach, Speed To Value, focusing on the critical areas of project management practices, requirements management, and test driven development. Due to Matt’s skills and experience, he has developed Pillar’s Practice Management model that maximizes the impact of productivity by enforcing those proven concepts and training.

Open Space

In the spirit of agile, all Open Space Sessions will be self-organizing.  Attendees will have the opportunity to propose topics at the top of each session by adding 3 x 5 cards to the wall where they will be grouped into like areas by attendees. The topics will be numbered to correspond with breakout tables and flip charts where small groups can gather to discuss these topics.  There is no time limit or agenda for these discussions, in fact, hopping from table to table based on your interest is encouraged.  Use the “Law of two feet”: if you feel that you are not contributing or benefiting from a presentation, please feel free to move on to something else. The Fundamental Rules of these sessions are: whoever shows up is the right group; whatever happens is the only thing that could have; whenever it starts is the right time; and when it’s over, it’s over. It’s agility in action!