Agile Atlanta on September 9th: Agile Metrics and Measurement

What better way to wrap up the Summer by coming to Agile Atlanta to hear Mike Cottmeyer help you learn how to use metrics and measurements with your Agile projects?

Agile Metrics and Measurement

Speaker: Mike Cottmeyer, leader of the APLN Atlanta group
Date: September 9th, 6:45 PM
Location: IBM-ISS (6303 Barfield Rd NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30328)

Agile delivers value through iteration and inspection. Agile reporting is the key that will unlock that value and make your projects manageable again. This presentation will explore how agile teams estimate and plan, what these teams measure, and how these metrics can be used to manage project performance. The talk will cover four key agile concepts: story points, velocity, defect trend, and burndown and how these measurements can be used to deliver graphically rich, accurate, and timely project reporting.

Agile Atlanta group on LinkedIn:
http://www.linkedin.com/search?search=&sortCriteria=3&groupFilter=120862

Other upcoming Agile events:
Sept 25-26: The APLN Atlanta Leadership Summit
Oct 14th: Monthly Agile Atlanta meeting (topic TBA)
Oct 27-28: Agile 201: Winning with Scrum with Jeff Sutherland and Joe Little

APLN Leadership Summit is coming to Atlanta!

"Leading the Agile Transition"
September 25th and 26th
Marriott Atlanta Perimeter Center
summit.aplnatlanta.org

We are proud to announce that the next APLN Leadership Summit is coming to Atlanta!

For the past few years, local APLN chapters have organized and hosted regional Leadership Summits. These events have been very well received and attract fantastic speakers and exceptional local thought leaders.

This is your chance to attend an Agile conference specifically designed to address the needs of the Agile community in Atlanta and the Southeast. Our speakers will discuss topics ranging from Product and Portfolio management to Agile Architecture and Metrics. Each speaker will present two talks, one geared toward the practitioner that is looking for tools and techniques they can use on a daily basis, the other toward leaders considering, or leading, a switch to Agile.

The summit is geared toward new and seasoned Agile leaders at all levels: organizational leaders, product leaders, development leaders, and project leaders. This is your chance to spend a whole day with some of the leading experts in the area of Agile Leadership, to network with with other agile leaders, and to share your experiences and concerns with those who are in the same situation as yourself.

The Dallas and Seattle Summits were a huge success! Next up is Atlanta!

The APLN Leadership Summit format includes:

• Networking opportunities throughout the day
• Speakers addressing how to lead their organizations to become agile.
• "Think Tank" sessions on Agile Leadership with topics addressing advanced leadership tools, experiences, lessons learned, and issues yet to be resolved.
• Networking social at the end of the first day to review think tank solutions and suggestions.

The APLN Atlanta planning committee has lined up an all star group of speakers and local Agile leaders. The conference is limited to 120 participants so you need to act now. If you are in the area, or able to make a the trip, the Atlanta Summit will be well worth attending.

For more information (including speaker bios and abstracts) and information on how to register, please visit the APLN Summit home page: http://summit.aplnatlanta.org

(This whole post was copied directly from Mike!)

Agile Atlanta on July 8th: Agile Architecture IS Possible

Before you start your Independence Day celebrations, don't forget to add the next Agile Atlanta meeting to your calendar! On Tuesday, July 8th, Mark Isham will us a special sneak preview of the presentation he is delivering in August at the Agile 2008 conference in Toronto.

Agile Architecture IS Possible - You First Have to Believe!

Speaker: Mark Isham
Date: July 8th, 6:45 PM
Location: IBM-ISS (6303 Barfield Rd NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30328)

Have you ever been told “Agile works great for UI, but just doesn’t work for large scale systems architecture”? In this experience report, I will review a real world project to redesign a successful large scale ecommerce system that became plagued with growing pains. After the team initially ran to the comfort of a long term waterfall project, cost overruns and escalating problems necessitated a new approach. Enter in Scrum and a focus on iterations and frequent customer feedback, and a once failed project turned into a blazing success.

Process/Mechanics

1. Review of the problems we were hitting
2. Overview of the initial “monolithic” redesign ideas
3. Discuss business pushback on those ideas
4. Discuss push to try agile technics to solve
5. Cultural resistance faced by original architects from #2
6. Talk about the points made and counter-arguments presented
7. Review the revised iterative approach to solving
8. Followup with results on how that approach worked.


Agile Atlanta group on LinkedIn (Thanks Al Snow!!):
http://www.linkedin.com/search?search=&sortCriteria=3&groupFilter=120862

Upcoming Meetings:
August 12th: Regular monthly meeting, topic TBA
September 9th: Regular monthly meeting, topic TBA
September 25th-26th: APLN Leadership Summit, Marriott Perimeter Center

Upcoming Training:
July 31st - August 1st: Certified ScrumMaster, trainer: Chris Doss, Innovel, LLC
August 13th-14th: Certified ScrumMaster, trainer: Bryan Stallings, Rally Software Development

Thanks!
Handly Cameron
http://handly.blogspot.com
" type="hidden"> Before you start your Independence Day celebrations, don't forget to add the next Agile Atlanta meeting to your calendar! On Tuesday, July 8th, Mark Isham will us a special sneak preview of the presentation he is delivering in August at the Agile 2008 conference in Toronto.

Agile Architecture IS Possible - You First Have to Believe!

Speaker: Mark Isham
Date: July 8th, 6:45 PM
Location: IBM-ISS (6303 Barfield Rd NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30328)

Have you ever been told “Agile works great for UI, but just doesn’t work for large scale systems architecture”? In this experience report, I will review a real world project to redesign a successful large scale ecommerce system that became plagued with growing pains. After the team initially ran to the comfort of a long term waterfall project, cost overruns and escalating problems necessitated a new approach. Enter in Scrum and a focus on iterations and frequent customer feedback, and a once failed project turned into a blazing success.

Process/Mechanics

1. Review of the problems we were hitting
2. Overview of the initial “monolithic” redesign ideas
3. Discuss business pushback on those ideas
4. Discuss push to try agile technics to solve
5. Cultural resistance faced by original architects from #2
6. Talk about the points made and counter-arguments presented
7. Review the revised iterative approach to solving
8. Followup with results on how that approach worked.


Agile Atlanta group on LinkedIn (Thanks Al Snow!!):

Upcoming Meetings:
August 12th: Regular monthly meeting, topic TBA
September 9th: Regular monthly meeting, topic TBA
September 25th-26th: APLN Leadership Summit, Marriott Perimeter Center

Upcoming Training:
July 31st - August 1st: Certified ScrumMaster, trainer: Chris Doss, Innovel, LLC
August 13th-14th: Certified ScrumMaster, trainer: Bryan Stallings, Rally Software Development

Upcoming Agile events in Atlanta

January is turning out to be a very Agile month in Atlanta! In addition to the APLN board meeting being held here this week, there are two presentations and a couple of courses coming up that should help people working on implementing or improving Agile with their organization:

January 15th: Mike Cohn presents at Agile Atlanta on Succeeding With Agile: A Guide to Transitioning and Improving

Transitioning to an agile development process is unlike most transitions an organization may make. Many transitions begin when a strong, visionary leader plants a stake in the ground and says, "Let's take our organization there." Other transitions start with a lone team thinking, "Who cares what management thinks, let's do this." The problem in transitioning to agile is that neither of these approaches alone is likely to lead to the long-term sustainable change required. Transitioning to agile is harder than many other corporate transitions because the transition process must be congruent with development process we are trying to adopt. We cannot, for example, wish to adopt an agile process because we believe in the power of self-organizing teams but then use a transition process that is not itself self-organizing. Nor can we adopt agile because it acknowledges the inherent uncertainty in precisely planning a project but then hope to precisely plan the transition to agile. In this session we will look at eight patterns of agile adoption and how to successfully transition to agile.

January 15th and 16th: Mike Cohn is teaching a Certified ScrumMaster class in Buckhead.

January 17th: Mike is also teaching a one day Agile Estimating and Planning class based on his great book on the subject.

January 30th Mary Poppendieck presents at APLN Atlanta on Organizational Agility: What's Not in the Book?

So, you've got some cross functional teams, you're running in sprints, you're doing stand-ups - Awesome!!! Hm, but alas, it doesn't quite feel agile. What now?

In this session, we will listen to Mary Poppendieck talk about what sort of things her experience shows will help in this respect. Some examples of high performance cultures and where organizational change in thinking really occurred. What is involved in having such a change? What are those hidden fundamental organizational process and cultural changes that make the most positive impact?

The session is for all audiences, whatever your role in your software organization.

The talk will be interactive, with plenty of time for Q&A