On paper, off-shoring IT work is a no-brainer – the salaries of programmers in India, Panama or Romania are a fraction of the salaries of programmers in Calgary. However, as most people who have worked with off-shored resources have learned, things are not as simple as they may seem, because managing off-shored resources is not the same as managing Canadian resources. Because people in different parts of the world think, communicate and behave differently in the same situations, projects that involve off-shored resources often experience significant difficulties, particularly at the beginning. This presentation examines the root causes of these difficulties and provides practical tips and suggestions that participants can readily implement when working with off-shored resources.

But I thought you were flying the plane!

During the mid 60s the frequent crashes of perfectly good working aircraft alarmed world airlines. What was missing from their pilot training programs? After extensive research, the airlines discovered nothing lacking in the pilot’s “stick and rudder” skills, rather these accidents where the result of the flight crew to work as a team. In response the airlines instituted the Crew Resource Management program teaching pilots, flight attendants, dispatchers how to work together as a team.

So what does this all have to do with software development? For the last 4 years while researching my doctoral dissertation, I studied agile teams to understand how people manage the process of software development. During this research the question always in the back of my mind was a question similar to that which perplexed the world airlines: Even for agile teams, why do smart hardworking people fail to deliver on their commitments? Like the airlines, is something missing from our Agile training programs? Is something missing from our Agile practices? Part of the answer to these questions comes the theory developed during this research and a course of action is offered for improving agile teams.

Software development projects are all about trade offs. One of the most common is between quality and cost. As all trade offs, the tendency of the answer varies as time goes. The start of a project usually allows for less quality to reduce the cost of evaluating the idea's potential resulting in a poor code base. However, having such code base has a big impact in the software's ability to evolve and be maintained. This is what is called Technical Debt.
This session consists of three presentations and one discussion. The first presentation will provide more information about what is considered Technical Debt. The second one will present arguments in favor of acquiring this debt while the third one will expose reasons to avoid it. Those presentations will then lead to a Fish Bowl discussion around the impact of that technical debt in the management and planning of a software project.

Do you want to connect with other like minded leaders but don’t have the time to network? Do you have an interesting challenge and not sure what to do? Join us for an Agile Coffee Break at Sunterra. Take a break and drop by for a coffee and some stimulating conversation. Eagle Professional Resources is sponsoring the event by providing coffee and other beverages.

An Agile PMO?
Does your PMO Produce Multiple Obstacles for your agile projects or Promote Many Opportunities for success?

A Project Management Office (PMO) can act as an obstacle to agile projects. This can take the form of asking for inappropriate planning detail by not recognizing the likelihood of changes; or asking for conformance to templates that are not even used on an agile project. For these reasons PMOs often get a bad reputation on agile teams, but it need not be that way, they can also add tremendous support and be a great help.

This presentation examines the role of the PMO, how common behaviours can be obstacles for agile teams, and how organizations have positioned the PMOs to support agile projects. Accompanied with case studies from Nationwide insurance who used lean principles to transform their inefficient, blocking PMO to an efficient enabling hub for project assistance.

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