Guest Speaker |
Facilitated Discussion |
Date |
Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 |
Description |
For the season windup, join us for this special meeting when we try something new! – An interactive discussion in which we explore a number of project leadership challenges and difficulties. Possible topics include the following, amongst a long list: "I have challenges completing agile projects with dependencies on non-agile (i.e. waterfall) projects." |
Presentation Slides |
Past Calgary APLN Events
Leadership Think-tank
Using Persona to Move Your Project Forward
Guest Speaker |
Mike Haden, Application Development, Project / Product Management, and Global Product Development, Stride Project Management Inc. |
Date |
Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 |
Description |
The use of personas has received scant attention in project management literature. First utilized in the late '90s as a tool of business analysis, a persona is a detailed description of a fictional end-user including how they use and perceive the product you're delivering. However, personas can have a strong impact on projects by providing a project team with a human face to enhance otherwise abstract data about customers. |
About the Speaker |
Mike Haden is an independent consultant with over 20-year's experience in Application Development, Project / Product Management, and Global Product Development. |
Presentation Slides |
Creating and Sustaining an Agile Culture
Guest Speaker |
Janet Gregory, Agile Coach, Process Consultant |
Date |
Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 |
Description |
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. |
About the Speaker |
The co-author of Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Agile Testers and Teams, Janet Gregory is a consultant who specializes in helping teams build quality systems using agile methods. Based in Calgary, Janet’s greatest passion is promoting agile quality processes. As tester or coach she has helped introduce agile development practices into companies and has successfully transitioned several traditional test teams into the agile world. Her focus is working with business users and testers to understand their roles in agile projects. Janet teaches courses on agile testing and is a frequent speaker at agile and testing software conferences around the world. |
Presentation Slides |
Project Vital Signs
Guest Speaker |
Stelios Pantazopoulos, Lead Consultant, ThoughtWorks |
Date |
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 |
Description |
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. |
About the Speaker |
Stelios is a Lead Consultant with ThoughtWorks. He has 13 years of IT professional services experience on 17 different projects. His project roles have included Project Manager, Iteration Manager, Quality Management Lead and Developer. As a project manager he has a reputation for bringing order to chaotic situations. He has delivered an experience report on automated functional testing to the Agile 2008 conference, a talk on "Project Vital Signs" to the Agile Tour Toronto 2009 conference and has been published in a book titled ThoughtWorks Anthology. |
Presentation Slides |
Agile At Your Software Startup
Guest Speaker |
Kris Read, Chief Technology Officer, Curve Dental |
Date |
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 |
Description |
Want to be the next Twitter or Facebook? |
About the Speaker |
Kris Read is Chief Technology Officer at Curve Dental, a Calgary-area startup offering web-based solutions to the dental industry. Curve Dental was a finalist for a 2009 Codie Award and has appeared on the cover of Dental Product Report Magazine. Kris has a Master's degree in Software Engineering from the University of Calgary, has a background in software development, and has been published both online and in print (including IEEE Internet Computing). In the past Kris has helped implement and improve agile methods at two previous Calgary-area startups, and he is a former moderator of the Calgary Agile Methods User Group. |
Presentation Slides |
The Challenge of Adopting Agile Outside Software Projects
Guest Speaker |
Neil Johnson, Principal Consultant, XtremeEDA |
Date |
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 |
Description |
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. |
About the Speaker |
Neil Johnson has been working in the field of IC design and verification for 10 years and has authored several papers on functional verification methods and testbench architecture. Recently, his focus has been more on project management and analyzing how agile methods may be adapted for use in the IC development domain. Neil is a certified scrum master and currently works as a principal consultant with XtremeEDA, a professional services company based in Ottawa. He also acts as co-moderator for www.agilesoc.com advocating agile methods in IC development. |
Presentation Slides |
Hiring for an Agile Team
Guest Speaker |
Dustin Aleksiuk (Developer) Jennitta Andrea (Tester) Janice Aston (Project Manager) John Johnston (Business Analyst) Gerard Meszaros (Solution Architect) |
Date |
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 |
Description |
Panel Discussion |
Presentation Slides |
Season Opener – Networking Social
Guest Speaker |
N/A |
Date |
Thursday, October 1st, 2009 |
Description |
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. |
Presentation Slides |
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. |
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 |
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. |
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 |