Some organizations have done successful agile pilots and rolled it out to the rest of the organization and failed. If it works for one team, it should work for all, shouldn’t it? There are also early adopters that have had many successful projects using agile, but are becoming complacent or have lost the thrill of being on the leading edge of change.

One of the problems organizations face is changing their culture to embrace agile projects. Management may buy into the idea of delivering business value faster but don’t realize their roles change too and need to change their views and actions as well. They may not realize some the up-front investment in time or training will pay off over time in higher quality and speedier development.

Janet will explore common mistakes that organizations make, and introduce practices that can be used to help overcome them to create and nurture an agile culture. Agile development is all about baby steps, celebrating small successes, and continually improving. The right investment will yield a big return.

In order to foster trust and credibility between a project team and its stakeholders, the team has the responsibility to clearly communicate the health of the project. As the leaders of a project, we can apply the metaphor of medical care and their use of “vital signs” to help form a holistic view of the state of the project. Come learn the five “Project Vital Signs”, their associated quantitative metrics and how to enable a team to effectively use them as a tool to diagnose and treat project health problems.

Presentation Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/spantazopoulos/project-vital-signs

Want to be the next Twitter or Facebook? Find out some of the challenges in building and growing a "startup" software company with an agile development philosophy. The speaker will address how the ideology and practices of agile development, while healthy for development teams, can also be at odds (or perceived to be at odds) with success when defining your business focus, building your team, raising capital, applying for grants, pitching to investors, cultivating early customers, gaining certifications, meeting domain legal requirements, and even potentially selling your company. This talk will highlight the strengths and weaknesses of agile for tech startups, and offer some suggestions to new companies and budding entrepreneurs.

Agile has become commonplace in software development. But beyond software development, the commonsense approach that many agile methods advocate for addressing problems in traditional process has lead to them being adapted and applied to a number of areas that include manufacturing, project management and others.

One area that has been slow to pick up agile methods is semiconductor development. While the focus of semiconductor development teams has been primarily related to overcoming technical challenges, the team-oriented and organizational advantages that agile methods propose have been largely ignored. This approach cannot continue. This presentation discusses how agile practices might successfully be adapted for use in IC development and other technically complex disciplines. It is intended to assist people in applying agile methods in areas that are not traditionally associated with agile or people at companies that are reluctant to accept that agile methods may be adapted to suit their particular situation.

Assuming no related experience, the presentation starts with a brief discussion regarding the technical and organization challenges faced in IC development and how day-to-day activities compare with those of software development. It continues by identifying some high value agile principles that represent major deviations from IC development norm and how they may be used successfully. A summary includes some lessons learned in applying agile methods and a vision for full agile adoption.

Presentation Notes

Panel Discussion
Have you ever wondered what you should be looking for when hiring for an agile team? Is just having “agile experience” enough? What are some characteristics unique to agile teams? How can you possibly assess those characteristics? Come out and hear from a panel of experts on things that you might want consider. There will be an opportunity to ask questions and share your experiences.
Presentation Notes

To help build a vibrant Agile community in Calgary, we would like to invite you to a networking event. Come out and meet other Agile Leaders within Calgary, swap stories and share some laughs. Agile Recruiting has graciously sponsored the event by providing appetizers. Cash bar will be available.