Calgary APLN - Welcome

Calgary APLN is a local chapter of the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN). The APLN is a non-profit organization that looks to enable and cultivate great project leaders by focusing on the following:
  • Value
  • Individuals
  • Customers
  • Context
  • Teams
  • Uncertainty
These ideas are described further in the Declaration of Interdependence, which was written by the founding members of APLN and expresses the values that the group holds with respect to leading projects in today's "chaordic" world. To read more about the APLN visit the main web site. Calgary APLN is a forum where individuals can come together to discuss topics of interest relating to agile project leadership. Membership is free, the meetings are provided free to members through sponsorship by host companies.

Site News

Calgary APLN 2008/2009

May 27, 2009 — Welcome to the 2008/2009 season of the Calgary APLN.

Please book these FREE Calgary APLN events in your calendar:
Jan 28, 2009 The Agile Mindset: Applying Agile in Non-Technical Areas of an Organization with Tiffany Lentz
Feb 27, 2009 Agile Retrospectives with Jennitta Andrea
April 29, 2009 Agile in a Nutshell with Jonathan Rasmusson
May 27, 2009 Planning for Success with Accurate Agile Project Estimation with Brian Donaldson

Calgary APLN events stop from June to August, stayed tuned for the next event in fall of 2009.

All meetings will run from 12:00 – 1:00pm and will be located at Fifth Avenue Place Conference Room Suite 202, 420 2nd Street SW. We are currently looking for sponsors to help bring these events to you free of charge. If you are able to sponsor an event please contact:
Mike Griffiths - Mike@LeadingAnswers.com or
Janice Aston – Janice@agileperspective.ca

» News Archive

Upcoming Events

Next Calgary APLN Event Fall 2009

Guest Speaker

N/A

Date
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
Time
12:00pm - 1:00pm
Location

Description

Calgary APLN events stop for the summer months. Become a Calgary APLN member to receive the newsletter in the fall regarding the next event.

Presentation Slides
Event sponsored by
Calgary APLN

Past Events

Planning for Success with Accurate Agile Project Estimation

Guest Speaker

Brian Donaldson, Executive Technical Director, Quadrus Development Inc.

Date
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
Description

Software estimation has been called a “black art”. Standard industry methods for estimating software projects are highly complex, geared toward very large waterfall projects and require a myriad of complex and non-intuitive inputs. Often Agile estimation approaches focus on stories or iterations, but fail in their attempt to accurately estimate an entire project.

Quadrus has developed an easily accessible and accurate estimation methodology and tool, built on cutting-edge mathematics and statistics. This presentation will introduce the next generation in software project estimation and demonstrate the Quadrus estimation tool.

About the Speaker

Brian Donaldson co-founded Quadrus in 1993 and continues his active role as a senior member of the Quadrus leadership team and as a key strategic advisor to select Quadrus clients. Brian brings to his role a 20-year track record of success as an IT industry leader and an uncommonly wide breadth of skills and experiences. Brian began his career as a technical software architect, then moved into project management, and then progressed to overall program planning, IT business strategy and executive management. This unusual breadth of experience affords Brian a unique insight into the IT business and has helped him to amass a strong track record of building and leading highly effective teams and directing mission-critical technology initiatives.

Presentation Slides
Event sponsored by
Quadrus Development Inc.

Agile in a Nutshell

Guest Speaker

Jonathan Rasmusson, Agile Coach & Consultant, Rasmusson Software Consulting

Date
Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
Description
If you’ve been doing Waterfall delivery most of your career - agile can be down right scary.
- Changing requirements
- Adaptive planning
- Iterative development
- Time boxed delivery

All intimidating things for managers and organizations used to doing things sequentially in discrete phases one stage at a time. Most people get intellectually what agile is (much of it they already do). What isn’t so obvious is how to explain it in simple terms to others and how waterfall shops can consider transitioning.

In this introductory presentation, we will look at agile in simple terms explaining:

Why / how we got here?
Agile in a nutshell
Agile in concrete terms
Agile in people terms
Myths about agile
What you can expect from working on an agile team
Which agile method is right for me?
Three steps you can take towards agility today
About the Speaker

Jonathan is a software professional with a passion of agile software delivery. As a former consultant at ThoughtWorks, Jonathan got to cut his teeth early on agile methods like XP and Scrum, while working for companies like British Petroleum, Microsoft, and TransCanada Pipelines.

As the co-founder of a local startup, Jonathan got to see first hand how agile methods could be adapted to work at web 2.0 startups. Currently serving at Shaw as a practice lead, Jonathan is keen on helping Shaw discover better ways to produce production ready software for their customers.

Presentation Slides
Event sponsored by
MKS

Reinvigorate Your Retrospectives

Guest Speaker

Jennitta Andrea, The Andrea Group

Date
Friday, February 27th, 2009
Description

You know you should be performing regular retrospectives, but you can't convince management or the team that it's a worthwhile investment of time ... Your team has been performing retrospectives every iteration, and they have become monotonous and have stopped producing valuable insights ... You've heard about retrospectives, but don't even know how to get started ...

The difference between a retrospective that is considered dull and worthless and a retrospective that produces team bonding and valuable insignts is in the planning and preparation. All effective retrospectives share a common structure: safety, review history, insight mining, prioritization, and concrete action planning. Explore the different ways that iteration and milestone retrospectives fill in this structure based on the type of learning that we need to draw out of the team at a particular point in the project. Variations on the activities that fill in the structure are described and experienced first hand.

Presentation Slide Notes
Related Article The Case Of The Missing Fingerprint

About the Speaker

Jennitta Andrea has been a multi-faceted, hands-on practitioner (analyst, tester, developer, manager) and coach on over a dozen different types of agile projects since 2000. Naturally a keen observer of teams and processes, Jennitta has published many experience-based papers for conferences and software journals, and delivers practical, simulation-based tutorials and in-house training covering: agile requirements, process adaptation, automated examples, and project retrospectives. Jennitta's ongoing work has culminated in international recognition as a thought leader in the area of agile requirements and automated examples. She is very active in the agile community: serving a third term on the Agile Alliance Board of Directors, director of the Agile Alliance Functional Test Tool Program to advance the state of the art of automated functional test tools, member of the Advisory Board of IEEE Software, and member on many conference committees. Jennitta founded The Andrea Group in 2007 where she remains actively engaged on agile projects as a hands-on practitioner and coach, and continues to bridge theory and practice in her writing and teaching.

Presentation Slides
Event sponsored by
BrightSpot Consulting

The Agile Mindset: Applying Agile in Non-Technical Areas of an Organization

Guest Speaker

Tiffany Lentz & Manu Tandon

Date
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009
Description

Agile techniques are often pigeon-holed as just applying to software projects and IT organizations. Agile techniques are a mindset more than a list of rules to follow and can bring efficiency and improvements to all areas of an organization. This presentation will cover a case study of ThoughtWorks experience with a major bank and credit card company in the US and their application of Agile techniques. We will cover the process, outcomes and challenges of the Agile implementation.

The Agile Mindset Presentation Slides: Slides

About the Speaker

Tiffany Lentz is an Agile Consultant and Program/Project Manager and is proudly employed by ThoughtWorks, Inc. Tiffany has 5 years experience as a Project Manager with ThoughtWorks, with several years previous experience as a Financial Consultant at Nationwide Financial. Tiffany has worked on multiple and disparate system delivery projects, from inception to production. She has also assisted several organizations with Agile Enablement and Organizational Transformation efforts to incorporate and enhance efficiency and delivery processes. She is an author, mentor, coach and trainer of Agile methodologies, processes and practices.

Manu Tandon is an Account Manager with ThoughtWorks Inc. During his tenure with ThoughtWorks, Manu has worked on Agile teams as a Tester, Business Analyst, Iteration Manager, Scrum Master, Agile Coach and Project Manager delivering systems that solve complex business problems.
He has worked with clients in Financial Services, Insurance, Medical Health Systems and On-line Media. Most recently he has helped clients navigate the landscape of Agile Methodologies in order to develop road maps that lead to successful adoption of Agile practices within their enterprises. Throughout his career at ThoughtWorks Inc. he has enjoyed helping Project Managers, Business Sponsors, Development Leads, Risk Officers, Auditors, Executives, Business Analysts, Developers and Testers understand their roles on Agile teams and how each of them add value to the overall goal of making the delivery of enterprise software a more rewarding experience.

Presentation Slides
Event sponsored by
ThoughtWorks

The Agile Playground: Learning Games for the Agile Practitioner

Guest Speaker

Michael McCullough, Quadrus Development Inc.

Date
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008
Description

The Agile Playground: Learning Games for the Agile Practitioner

playground |ˈplāˌground| noun
a place where a particular group of people choose to enjoy themselves :
• the mountains are a playground for hang gliders.
• this session is a playground for Agile teachers and learners.
This fun, energetic, and interactive session explores game techniques for accelerating the adoption and understanding of Agile principles through experiential learning. The audience will learn unique learning Vectors (Physical, Emotional, and Impressional) for targeting the understanding of Agile values and principles. This session is for anyone looking to learn new and powerful techniques to convey and reinforce the concepts and principles behind Agile.
Attendees will participate in a game that illustrates Lean pull mechanisms to see a firsthand example of how these techniques can be applied to explain complicated ideas.
I am going to attend this session because;
• I want to have fun.
• I am an instructor and I want to learn new and powerful techniques to convey and reinforce the concepts and principles behind Agile.
• I am a coach or Scrummaster and I need efficient and effective tools to help teams become confident and capable at applying Agile practices as quickly as possible.
• I am a lead on my team and I need a toolset to change the way my team works together
• I am new to Agile and I want to learn the principles behind Agile in a fun and interactive way.

About the Speaker

Michael McCullough is a trainer and consultant at Quadrus. He has served as a project leader, trainer, coach and mentor for an impressive list of clients in a broad range of industries and business environments. With a broad background in software development and practical experience leading Agile teams, Michael is able to effectively assist and mentor clients in the adoption and application of Agile methodologies.

Michael has a keen interest in team dynamics and approaches to creating environments for highly productive teams. Michael has deep, practical experience applying game techniques in the classroom and project room to communicate Agile values and principles.

Presentation Slides
Event sponsored by
Quadrus Development Inc.
Syndicate content