Better Software - September 2008 - (Page ADP19) CONCuRRENT CLASSES MONDAY, MAY 16, 8:30-5:00 THuRSDAy, NOvEMBER 13, 10:00 a.m. T1 PEOPLE & TEAMS T5 TESTINg Who Do you Trust? Beware of your Brain Linda Rising, Independent Consultant Cognitive scientists tell us that we are more productive and happier when our behavior matches our brain’s hardwiring—when what we do and why we do it matches the way we have evolved to survive over tens of thousands of years. One problematic behavior humans have is that we are hardwired to instantly decide who we trust. And we generally aren’t aware of these decisions—it just happens. linda Rising explains that this hardwired “trust evaluation” can get in the way of working well with others. Pairing, the daily stand up, and close communication with the customer and others outside the team go a long way to overcome our instant evaluation of others. As linda helps you gain a better understanding of this mechanism in your behavior and what agile processes can do to help, you are more likely to build better interpersonal relationships. Agile Software Testing Strategies Jared Richardson, 6th Sense Analytics Test automation is like exercise. We know both are great ideas, but most of us don’t do enough of either. Although we know that creating a solid automated test suite is critical to any agile testing strategy, we are often just told to “do it” without much support—money or people. Jared Richardson examines the infrastructure and tools needed for your automated testing to succeed and prosper. He describes three strategies— test-driven development, defect-driven testing, and blitzkrieg testing—that you can use to ensure excellent test coverage on your projects. gain an understanding of how to leverage your testing investments by employing continuous integration practices in your development projects. With reallife scenarios as a backdrop, Jared discusses appropriate testing strategies for your current project or the next one down the road. Jared will get you moving toward automated testing, whether you’re starting fresh or trying to clean up an existing project. T2 AgILE MANAgEMENT T6 AgILE DESIgN & ARCHITECTuRE Selling Agile: getting Buy-In from your Team, Customers, and Managers Michele Sliger, Sliger Consulting, Inc. Are you excited by the potential of agile software development, but find that your colleagues are a bit reticent? Is your whole team ready to dive in, but your business partner is only interested in dipping in their big toe—if that? Or maybe you’re wishing you could find a way to convince your clients that there’s a better way to contract for a software development job—without having to do a full-blown detailed design upfront? Michele Sliger discusses all of these questions surrounding how to best “sell” agile in your organization. Michele focuses on the general idea of a “sales pitch,” including what to say and what not to say. Then she discusses selling agile to the team, to management, to the customer, and to others in your organization. She wraps up with a pointed look at not selling, and instead focusing on finding other ways to promote and share agile. Test-Driven Development Takes on Embedded Software James Grenning, Renaissance Software Consulting Embedded software developers face the same challenges as other software developers—unpredictable schedules, poor quality, and the problems that follow. In addition, embedded software developers must overcome the realities of concurrent hardware/software development, scarce target hardware availability, long download times, high deployment costs, as well as the challenges of testing embedded C. Test-Driven Development (TDD), a key agile practice, helps software developers improve schedule predictability and product quality, but very few embedded software engineers apply TDD to their craft. James grenning describes the problems addressed by TDD, as well as the additional challenges and benefits of applying TDD to embedded software. He provides valuable lessons for doing TDD in the hostile environment of C. After the class, get hands-on experience with James’ independent study exercise, “TDD in C.” T3 AgILE PROJECTS When to Step up, When to Step Back: How to Lead Collaboration Pollyanna Pixton, Accelinnova leaders can stifle progress when they interfere with team processes. But as a leader, you don’t want an on-track project to go over the cliff and deliver the wrong results either. There are times when leaders should stand back and let the team work and times when they should step up and lead. How do we know which is which? Pollyanna Pixton focuses on collaboration and teaches you how to step back by unleashing the talent in your organization and teams. learn how to create an open environment that fosters innovation and creativity, and how to let your team members take ownership and hold themselves accountable. Equally important, develop the techniques to step up and lead without impeding the flow of ideas, yet keep the project on track. Master this balancing act and come away with tools to both motivate and guide effectively. T7 SPECIAL TOPICS Assessing your Agility Mike Cohn, Mountain Goat Software and Kenny Rubin, Innolution Are you curious how “agile” your organization is? Do you wonder how you compare with other organizations that have been using agile for a similar amount of time? Do you want an authoritative source of information to help guide your successful transition to agile? Mike Cohn and Kenny Rubin present a framework for assessing organizational agility. Specifically, they examine the areas of teamwork, requirements, planning, technical practices, quality, culture, and knowledge creation. Mike and Kenny describe how to use a framework to assess agility at various times during an organization’s adoption of agile and how to derive actionable information from each assessment. Mike, Kenny, and their colleagues have collected over 300 assessment surveys from participants working on agile projects around the world. They will present preliminary industry-specific findings derived from analyzing the results of these assessments. T4 AgILE PROCESSES Making People and Processes Congruent Ken Pugh, Net Objectives Agile processes work better if developers and customers have specific aptitudes and attitudes, such as the ability and willingness to handle rapid change. Members of an agile product team cannot always be selected to ensure that they have these capabilities. Developers may not appreciate the need for unit testing while customers may not be able to interact easily to create just-in-time requirements. In this interactive class, you first outline people issues you have faced. Based on common issues, the class divides into groups to discuss their challenges in depth. Each group develops ways to approach these issues and improve their teams. At the end of the session, you will have the opportunity to share your key results with the entire group. You will learn to adapt your agile implementation so that team members can work effectively within their capabilities. Join Ken Pugh to find out about creating issue stories, looking for root causes, and making fix/avoid decisions. “Excellent conference, especially for the first running. I plan to attend next year and encourage heavy participation from my organization.” — Deborah Moseley, Program Manager Specialist CAll 888.268.8770 OR 904.278.0524 TO REgISTER • W W W. S Q E . C O M /A D P R E g 19 http://WWW.SQE.COM/ADPREG
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