TOPICS: Day one - Wednesday 15 June 2011
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WED | 8.30AM | Grand Ballroom A&B
» Dr Alistair Cockburn, Co-author of the Agile Manifesto Going beyond 'just' Agile, Dr Alistair Cockburn lays out three foundations for effective software development in the next century: Craft; Cooperative games; and Lean processes. These three not only explain the success of effective teams, they provide good advice to busy project teams, and they create a sound basis for educating our next generations of developers. |
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WED | 9.45AM | Grand Ballroom A&B
» Rob Thomsett - Director, The Thomsett Company As the Agile revolution gathers pace, the size of the cultural, structural and procedural challenge that Agile brings is too often underestimated by Agile enthusiasts and adopters. Agile can be seen either as a new development paradigm or alternatively, a broader and organisational paradigm. Restricting Agile to the common Agile development elements such Scrum, stand-ups, sprints and burn-down charts clearly has many benefits but inevitably deploying Agile development only raises the risk of Agile being like a 'bubble' within the broader organisation. Sooner or later this Agile 'bubble' will have to face the non-Agile areas of the organisation such as business areas, finance, procurement, governance, strategy, human resources, project management groups and risk. It is when the Agile and non-Agile areas of the organisation clash that Agile faces possible failure. Some leading organisations have taken the more challenging approach of evolving and positioning the Agile principles and models as a business or organisational paradigm. These organisations have taken a top-down and outside-in approach to deploying Agile. By starting the Agile journey with business and executives first and emphasising the cultural elements of Agile first, the fundamental simplicity and transparency of the Agile models have a greater chance of becoming embedded and sustainable. In this keynote based on real world experience and success, Rob will overview how the broader approach to Agile becomes a business paradigm and prepares the business to adopt Agile. Agile development becomes Agile business. |
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WED | 10.40AM | Grand Ballroom A&B
» Jeff Smith - Chief Executive Officer, Suncorp Business Services, Suncorp » Daniel Oertli - Chief Information Officer, REA Group » Steve Coles - Chief Information Officer, Allianz » John Sullivan - Head of Technology New Business Development, Jetstar » Beverley Head - Freelance Journalist (moderator) In traditional waterfall systems development the CIO traditionally plays the role of composer, creating a work which can then be executed by the IT team. In Agile development, the CIO takes on the role of conductor - bringing together his or her team, the business, and a range stakeholders to work together to deliver the best possible performance on the night. » What fresh skills does the CIO need for this role? » Does a traditional IT department hierarchy work with Agile? » Can every CIO make the transition? » How do you effectively measure the contribution of the CIO in an Agile environment? » How do you effectively compensate and incentivise a CIO in an Agile environment? |
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WED | 11.45AM | Grand Ballroom A
» Daniel Oertli - Chief Information Officer, REA Group A billion dollar company using the same technology it was founded on over a decade earlier, realestate.com.au had to make sweeping changes to its organisation to unlock innovation and productivity. In one year, realestate.com.au achieved a full transition from waterfall to Agile whilst rebuilding and launching realestate.com.au atop a brand new technology platform. Today, their focus is on extending Agile process into the enterprise and evolving a distributed Agile delivery model across international teams. Attendees will: » Understand how to successfully make a rapid Agile transformation » Avoid (some!) of the nasty mistakes along the way » Learn more about the extensibility of Agile into the enterprise and across international borders |
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WED | 11.45AM | Grand Ballroom B
» Nigel Dalton - Deputy Director, Digital, Lonely Planet Agile software development promises to make it fool proof to deliver timely software based products in the modern market - but some of the most basic Agile and Lean principles are regularly ignored by product people. Nigel Dalton, Agile evangelist at Lonely Planet provides five case studies of Lonely Planet's digital product development within an Agile ecosystem, that each present a lesson that can be applied to improve your daily work life. Warning: Some viewers may find certain scenes disturbing, or a little too close to home to see the humour of it. |
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WED | 11.45AM | State Room
» Neal Ford - Software Architect, ThoughtWorks The intersection of architecture and design in the Agile world is paralysingly large and complex. This talk cleaves apart these two issues, and discusses strategies to achieve evolutionary architecture and emergent design. Neal Ford will discuss the distinction between architecture and design, talk about building adaptable systems using REST and related technologies, how to insulate your architecture from disruptive change, and when to make decisions. On emergent design, Neal looks at two aspects: the Last Responsible Moment and harvesting existing design in code, along with examples of both. This talk provides nomenclature, examples, and principles to inform your continuing quest to reconcile agility with engineering responsibilities. |
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WED | 11.45AM | Function Rooms 3&4
» Nicholas Thorpe - Senior Agile Coach, Lonely Planet » Fiona Siseman - Agile Project Manager, Lonely Planet This hands-on, practical workshop is all about getting started with Agile. Participants will learn how to get started by doing just that - as we form teams and run a complete Agile iteration, including all the important process steps. Along the way, participants will receive real-world, practical advice from someone who has done this dozens of times with real teams. The workshop will include hands on experience with: » A 10 minute 'Agile in a nutshell' information session » Understanding initial scope » Story writing » Role setting » Agile panning » Agile Board layout » An Agile standup » A retro |
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WED | 12.30PM | Grand Ballroom A
» Michael Bromley - General Manager, Portals and Online Services, NBN Co In this case study, Michael Bromley will explore building an Agile team in a large and diverse start-up environment - looking at how to avoid dogma, religious wars, and other blockers that get in the way of delivering business value. Explore why Agile isn't the point, better is the point and how you get that message across without alienating the team. Attendees will learn: » Delivering business value is the only thing that matters » Becoming Agile is an organisational change that takes time and effort » You learn Agile best by doing Agile » If you deliver value nobody cares how you do it, but don't rub it in their faces! » Our updated version of the Manifesto |
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WED | 12.30PM | Grand Ballroom B
» Martin Kearns - Agile Practice Lead, SMS MT In this talk Martin Kearns will try to provide some context into the misinterpretations on how a set of values can create a large headache for any Agile team trying to form or when another person comes and looks at the project. Understanding how individuals react and behave in an Agile team is important to understand and appreciate, by everyone in the team. We need to embrace the diversity of thought to allow for creativity and learning to flourish when developing incremental working software. Martin will also look at the risks associated with a hybrid model approach. Finally, the talk will end with a discussion around the need for continuous learning cycles by the team (project), by an individual, their chosen development practices etc. Attend to learn about: » The need to be uncomfortable and reconsider your past conversations » Ability to think at a broader level about your Agile journey » Develop the discipline to redesign your 'sweet spot' |
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WED | 12.30PM | State Room
» Craig Langenfeld - Product Ambassador, Rally Software Does your business have a vision to improve time to market, productivity, quality, predictability and customer satisfaction? Our business and our customers do. In this session, learn about key metrics for Agile, how to measure them and why they are valuable. Craig Langenfeld will discuss metrics from several large organisations like Cisco, General Electric, Comcast, Intuit, Paypal and BMC Software as well as how Agile metrics are more objective and repeatable than traditional software development metrics. Once you understand these metrics and their value, you will be able to measure for your organisation. Learn about: » Time to market - How long does it take to get a feature from idea to production? Is this duration becoming longer or shorter? » Productivity - How many features are produced in a period of time? Is this amount increasing or decreasing? » Quality - What is the quality of the software? How much time is spent on defects versus features? Is the defect arrival and kill rate growing or shrinking? » Predictability - When will a feature or release get done? If you know the quantity and quality of features in a period of time, you can plan and predict future releases or projects. » Customer Satisfaction - Even if you decrease time to market and increase productivity, quality and predictability, does it matter if the customer is dissatisfied? Net Promoter Score and feedback let you know that you are delivering what the customer wants. |
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WED | 2.15PM | Grand Ballroom A
» Steve Lawrence - Agile Consultant, Slice Consulting A basic but proven process to transition projects beyond an idea into something real and tangible - with stakeholder commitment. Utilising some of Rob Thomsett's concepts, this presentation will outline a basic flow with a light touch overview of some of the tools and techniques for gathering information required to successfully deliver an Agile project. Utilising the key Agile concepts of 'Collective Wisdom' and 'Shared Understanding', the tools shown will allow you to capture stakeholder objectives and outcomes, priorities and understand stakeholder tradeoffs, information critical to ensuring not only a successful delivery but stakeholder satisfaction. Attendees will discover: » Tools and techniques to move a project forward from an idea to something real with stakeholder understanding and commitment » How to capture objectives and outcomes from a sponsor and stakeholder's perspective. Understanding their key drivers and the tradeoffs they are prepared to make to be successful » How to use sliders and how they impact on the project as a whole » Understanding the benefits from a stakeholder and sponsors point of view and how to use this information to prioritise a feature list » Getting commitment that stakeholders support an Agile approach and understand their role and the risks involved » This process is an extremely powerful and cost effective method to gather information and make informed decisions on a project's viability. The information gathered can provide the back bone for a business case or feasibility analysis |
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WED | 2.15PM | Grand Ballroom B
» Alexandra Stokes - Solutions Delivery Manager, Insuranceline This talk will focus on Insuranceline's journey toward an Agile transformation of a mid-size (45 people) IT department in a direct insurance company. It seems almost anything can exist inside a quadrant, including an Agile transformation. Mapping out 20 aspects of our Agile transformation across a quadrant from Expensive -> Cheap / Hard -> Easy; Alexandra Stokes will talk about how Insuranceline paved its way to a better IT department by employing Agile techniques and practices at low cost and at a stainable pace. Examples include: 1. Freebie and Cheapies - there is some low hanging fruit in your IT department. Increase visibility, increase communication, stand up daily and increase commitment. We implemented daily stand up meetings back in 2007 for our waterfall projects. This was our first tiny step on our Agile journey. 2. Prioritise ruthlessly - benefits can be had by mapping inside a quadrant, time is money and there's never enough time to do everything. Banish the 'it's all must have' conversation. We have made quadrants for technical debt, process and even for decommissioning systems. 3. Agile Skills - how to get them, nurture them, retain them, grow them. Swap natural attrition with Agile skilled workforce. 4. Finding a 'skunkworks' budget. There are ways and means to find some budget to assist you. What is not helping you that is costing you? Can you lose an expensive toolset for example? Attend to discover: » Ability to prioritise an Agile transformation » An awareness of the low cost and high return practices to implement » An appreciation of the expensive and difficult practices to tackle and where to get assistance » An appreciation of the shift in thinking in moving from traditional to Agile development methods, the investment in culture, creativity and learning » The benefit of our experience if you are going through a transition or starting a project » Encouragement that you can start using Agile techniques with a 0 dollar budget |
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WED | 2.15PM | State Room
» Nish Mahanty - Software Delivery Manager, MYOB » Lawrence Song - Technical Architect, MYOB Live Accounts is an online accounting application. It was a 10 year-old legacy system with complex architecture and no test or build scripts. The manual deployment was quite complex, involving deploying one Java application and three DotNet applications to three windows servers. Over the past six months, MYOB has progressed incrementally from manual build and deploy processes based on Perforce, to CI and semi-automated deployments (using Perforce, Hudson, Maven,) to fully automated delivery (using Go, Git, Rake). This talk summarises that journey, and explores the technical challenges and lessons-learned. MYOB has measured the increase in number of deployments, decrease in deployment issues, and decrease in deployment time over the six months. Developers were working closely with Ops to understand the pain points and automated the deployment process as much as possible to make their lives easier. This talk explains the business problem and how to begin the incremental, iterative, adaptive journey to Continuous Delivery for a complex legacy system, illustrated with data and technical tips. Attendees will discover: » The value argument for Continuous Delivery » Clear steps on how to integrate DevOps and progress on the automation journey » Insights into a common set of tools, with the opportunity for a technical in-depth pros and cons discussion |
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WED | 2.15PM | Function Rooms 3&4
» Rowan Bunning - Principal Consultant and Trainer, Scrum withStyle » Simon Bennett - Principal Coach and Trainer, Scrum withStyle Do you often encounter surprises on your projects that actually seem to be explainable later on? If so, you may have a project environment that is complex. Complexity is the domain of unpredictability and unknown unknowns. It turns out that the directive management style that we inherited from the industrial revolution is not the most effective approach in a complex environment. In this session, we use a framework from the social complexity field to make sense of what aspects of our day-to-day work fall into a complex domain. We then look at what the latest management science has to say about leadership and appropriate methods for working in complex, unpredictable environments and explore how you can leverage this guidance through specific Agile principles and practices. Learning objectives » Understand the difference between complicated and complex domains » Identify what elements of your work are complicated and which are complex » Learn which leadership styles and methods are most appropriate for the different elements of your work » Discover connections between appropriate leadership styles and specific Agile principles and techniques that you can use » Gain insights into which agile tools and techniques to use when |
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WED | 3.00PM | Grand Ballroom A
» Beverley Head - Freelance Journalist (moderator) » Richard Banks - Principal Consultant, Readify » Richard Durnall - Head of Delivery, REA Group » David Chatterton - Chief Technology Officer, Aconex » Lorena Healey - HR Manager, SEEK What are the challenges faced when trying to hire people for Agile teams? What happens when you get the wrong people? Our panellists will share some of their experiences hiring staff, the advantages and disadvantages of the prevention versus cure approach, and their tips on retaining good staff once they've been hired. They'll also have some hot tips and techniques used to figure out if that special someone you want to hire is either fool's gold or pure gold. |
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WED | 3.00PM | Grand Ballroom B
» Simon Bristow - Engineering Manager, SEEK Today I find myself in the office supplies shop buying coloured pens for my team. I have over 15 years experience working in IT and I've been a manager for 10 of those. Now my job involves buying pens. Now I think about it, this is not really what I imagined my role as a leader would be when I stepped out of university all those years ago. Surely someone should be buying pens for me? What happened?! In this presentation Simon Bristow examines Robert Greenleaf's key characteristics of servant leaders and provide some insights and practical experience to demonstrate why leading by serving is a key behaviour in Agile organisations. |
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WED | 3.00PM | State Room
» Evan Bottcher - Principal Consultant, ThoughtWorks » John Viner One of the practices encouraged by DevOps is the creation of cross-functional delivery teams that contain all of the skills necessary to bring software from concept to production. In the enterprise, unfortunately, development and operations teams have historically been separate groups; each with their own management, reporting, tools, and practices. Bringing these teams closer together involves a clash of cultures & values that can be both disheartening and unhelpful. In this session, find out the presenters top ten tips for helping development and operations people overcome their differences and start truly collaborating on the practices necessary to create and run great software. Delegates will be learn to: » Recognise (anti-)patterns in their organisation's behaviour » Address shortcomings in a productive and practical way based on real-world examples » Bolster useful practices » share common experiences of how to overcome differences between development and operations teams |
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WED | 4.15PM | Grand Ballroom A
» Adrian Smith - Director of Technology, Ennova Start-up businesses face significant risk in the search for a sustainable, profitable and scalable business model. Consequently, the success rate for start-ups is low, making them a typically high risk investment. Agile methods offer a way of reducing the risk for both the technical implementation and the development of customers. This is achieved by increasing the ability for a start-up to adapt to change and to incorporate the lessons learned from early customer engagement. In this presentation the nature of technology start-ups is examined and the application of Agile principles, practices and tools discussed. Additionally, Adrian Smith will share some real life experiences in the application of Agile to his own start-up business. Attend to discover: » Key business challenges that face start-up businesses » Concept of the Lean start-up and customer development » Application of Agile principles and practices to start-ups » Tools that support Agile practices in start-ups » Experiences and lessons learned from a real-life start-up |
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WED | 4.15PM | Grand Ballroom B
» Kane Mar - President, Scrumology » Tania Broome - Agile Practice Manager, BankWest » Sandra Dalli - Agile Coach, BankWest » Sarah McAllister - Agile Coach, BankWest THE FAILURE BOW: The failure bow (or circus bow) is an exercise from improv theatre that helps recognise failures as learning opportunities. GO: A game with deceptively simple rules, but complex in behaviour. Fun to play and fast paced, it helps teams focus on communication and collaboration. THE MARSHMALLOW CHALLENGE: Created by Tom Wujec of Autodesk, the marshmallow challenge is a fun and instructive design exercise that encourages teams to experience simple but profound lessons in collaboration, innovation and creativity. In 18 minutes, teams must build the tallest free-standing structure out of spaghetti, tape, string and one marshmallow. The marshmallow must be on top. |
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WED | 4.15PM | State Room
» Neil Bryden - Senior Consultant, DiUS Computing » Dean Netherton - Senior Consultant, DiUS Computing Innovative and Agile software product development can be challenging at the best of times. Add to that the complexities of developing a product that straddles: » Consumer device engineering, the need for embedded software and integration with hardware » Vastly differing methodologies and technical constraints between device hardware and software worlds » Dealing with off-shore third-party providers, traditional manufacturing and heavy certification processes At a time when Agile software delivery is a reasonably mature industry, we take the audience through the mechanics of how we are delivering a 'real world' proof of concept that incorporates vastly different methodologies and constraints from both consumer device hardware and software domains. The session will explore: » Dealing with integration between different methodologies » How to handle integration of vastly different hardware and software cycles » Agile practices and coping mechanisms being applied to manage these constraints » How this extends the traditional Agile software development domain |
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WED | 4.15PM | Function Rooms 3&4
» Philip Abernathy - Agile Professional Development Lead, Suncorp This workshop will teach you how to setup and run an Agile PMO. It will be an interactive session using a case study. Attendees will break into teams and simulate and run an Agile PMO and Agile governance within an organisation running multiple Agile and non Agile projects. Attendees will learn: » What an Agile PMO is and what its characteristics are » How is it different from a normal PMO » How to set up an Agile PMO and how to run it » What the benefits are of having an Agile PMO |
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WED | 5.00PM | State Room
» Philip Chan - Senior Development Manager, IBM Agile transformation requires more than just adopting development and testing practices. Agile teams need solid tools that provide engineers with feedback and flexibility as well as helping release and line managers to understand progress and quality trends. In this session, Philip Chan will discuss Agile transformation in the IBM WebSphere Portal team in the context of the tooling strategy that has enabled it over the last four years. These tools range from source code and build tools to test automation, defect tracking and information sharing across a number of open source, bespoke and commercial tools. Attendees will gain an understanding of: » The intent and construction of tools that support Agile development » How tools and process can scale to support a hundreds of engineers across multiple continents » How and why the WebSphere Portal have adopted different tools at different types of their transformation |
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WED | 5.45PM | Grand Ballroom A&B
» Neal Ford - Software Architect, ThoughtWorks » Martin Fowler - Chief Scientist, ThoughtWorks » Evan Bottcher - Principal Consultant, ThoughtWorks Do you suffer "release trauma"? Does the last 5% of effort in integration, final testing, and deployment cost much more than expected, leaving you to continually revise release dates and frustrate customers and stakeholders alike? Having incorporated automated testing and Continuous Integration into their daily routine, development teams seek to clear the downstream bottlenecks in their pipelines, in "the last mile" between the end of development and production. Web 2.0 organisations often lead the way in this approach by being able to deploy complex software systems into production seemingly at will. The same techniques provide significant improvement to risky deployments and responsiveness for enterprises. The practice of keeping your applications in a release-ready state at all times is commonly referred to as Continuous Delivery. This session will introduce the topic of Continuous Delivery and explore how it delivers greater benefits. Delegates will gain an understanding of the history and benefits of Continuous Delivery (and Deployment) along with answers to practical questions on how to implement the business, cultural and technology changes required. |
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WED | 6.45PM | ThoughtWorks Offices, Level 8, 51 Pitt Street Sydney
Following on from the success of Open House last year, Thoughtworks will again be opening the doors of their office - which will be filled with food, drinks and Agile enthusiasts! Join us after Agile Australia 2011 on Wednesday evening at 6.00pm. Register at the ThoughtWorks booth. More info here » |
View Topics - Day 2, Thursday 16 June 2011 »
