Presentations

Evo + Scrum = Value Delivery

Tue, 9 Mar 2010 17:31:29 -0500

My Presentation from the 2010 Scrum Gathering in Orlando about transitioning from Feature Builders to Value Deliverers. This message is important for Product Owners and Agile Coaches trying to maximize the real business value of every Release.

Highlights include:

1. Why more features/stories does not equal more value
2. Distinction of Ends vs. Means and why planning for the ends is more important (but not currently done in Scrum)
3. How to define and measure stakeholder value
4. 7-step recipe for integrating Value Delivery concepts from Evo with Scrum

Marco Mulder sat in on my talk and over lunch we continued our discussion around these concepts. Marco is an experienced Agile Coach and practitioner with Xebia. He agreed that the concepts around value, taught by Tom and Kai Gilb and myself, are superior to what’s being taught to Product Owners currently. The challenge is getting the ideas spread to a broader audience.

Marco agreed with me that the title of the presentation wasn’t the best description for the main point, which was a shift in focus from means to ends. The concepts borrowed from Evo are the main points, not the Evo method itself. I haven’t come up with a better title, but I have submitted this for Agile 2010, so perhaps if I get selected a better title is in order.

Changing Organizational Culture

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 07:28:46 -0400

Presentation from the 2009 Tom Gilb conference on “Culture Change”. Discusses 7 proven techniques (or at least those that have worked for me) on changing software development culture. Also presents some emerging techniques that I’m starting to research, including how Babic, my Nabaztag rabbit, can help keep software teams on track and bring some fun into development teams.

Agile Engineering for Architects

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:16:52 -0400

Presentation from the April Richmond Java User Group meeting. This is a slight update of a talk I gave at Agile Development Practices on November 13, 2008. Shows how to break down a business strategy into possible system qualities, how to quantify them and then how to use Impact Estimation to determine best one. Finally discusses how to integrate this into a Scrum process.

Here’s the Impact Estimation worksheet used in the presentation.

Measuring Business Value with Agile

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:03:24 -0400

Updated version of talk from Agile 2008 for Agile Richmond. This talk discusses what I think is missing from Agile methods like Scrum and XP, namely that they only focus on 1/2 of the problem: building things right. What they lack is a way to know you’re working on building the right things. I present four practices that can help address this:

1. Deliver the Right Thing
2. Measure Business Value
3. Align to Value
4. Measure Progress to Goals

These practices are strongly influenced by Evo and cover areas that in my experience are lacking in mainstream Agile thinking. I’ll go through some exercises that help reinforce these concepts in practice.

Agile Engineering for Managers

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 22:03:12 -0400

Presentation that’s part of a series I’m doing on the subject, this one aimed at software managers. After some story telling, I introduce Principles of Agile Engineering and questions managers can ask to see if their team is doing agile engineering.

Agile Engineering: Test Driven Development

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:13:37 -0400

Presentation I gave in March 2008 at local company doing agile development with 60+ Scrum teams. This is a simple introduction that covers the basic principles and provides an exercise in practicing TDD (without a computer). Overall feedback was good but not great. May dust-off at some point and give it again.

Smart Decisions

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 23:40:04 -0400

My latest update on a presentation I first gave in July 2007 at Tom Gilb’s seminar and later at No Fluff Just Stuff. First introduction of Evo + Scrum to work from Strategic to Tactical levels with mini-case study that goes from quantified business objectives to Scrum backlog. Quote I like the most: “Just because you’re doing Agile doesn’t mean you’re making smart decisions”.

Scaling Agility

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 10:07:49 -0400

Presentation I first gave at the Agile Business Conference in London 2005. Discusses how the team I was leading doing XP with 40 developers and 100+ team members was shipping a commercial enterprise product using XP. Discusses what was working and not working with some thoughts of my own. I got very good responses to this presentation, mostly because it’s not theoretical but a very practical how-to for large agile teams. I later presented this at No Fluff Just Stuff.