Calgary APLN / Site Updates

Leadership Think-tank

karenb — Thu, 13 May 2010 08:34:29 -0600

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." "My team is totally dysfunctional? Where do I start? How do you build trust within a team?" "Sponsorship, what sponsorship, is anyone really there? How to address the problem of an absent sponsor."
Presentation Slides	5th_Ave_Place_Conference_Room.pdf ThoughtWorks2010_To-Use.gif

Using Persona to Move Your Project Forward

karenb — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 09:26:15 -0600

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. Throughout his career, he has delivered complex data analysis tools to the demanding Canadian oil and gas industry. Mike has experience in bridging the business and technical domains, balancing the communication needs of multiple stake-holders, and aligning project teams to the end-user. While working in commercial software firms leading development teams that utilize agile project methods, Mike gained valuable experience in delivering application development projects ranging from true R&D through new commercial developments to replacements of “industry-flagship” applications. His current role at EnergyIQ is focused on a new data analysis product for the US oil and gas industry, developing business processes and technology to support distributed product development. Mike is a Project Management Professional, a Certified ScrumMaster, and a Six Sigma Green Belt. He is presently the VP Communications for the Southern Alberta Chapter of PMI. He dreams of eventually finishing the rejuvenation of a 100-year-old house and having more time for his outdoor pursuits in the mountains near Calgary.
Presentation Slides	5th_Ave_Place_Conference_Room.pdf logo_main_Quadrus.gif CAPLN April 2010 - Using Personas Move Project Forward.ppt

Creating and Sustaining an Agile Culture

karenb — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:18:53 -0700

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	5th_Ave_Place_Conference_Room.pdf

Project Vital Signs

karenb — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:40:16 -0700

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	5th_Ave_Place_Conference_Room.pdf ThoughtWorks_2009.png

Agile At Your Software Startup

karenb — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:39:22 -0700

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	5th_Ave_Place_Conference_Room.pdf logo_main_Quadrus.gif

The Challenge of Adopting Agile Outside Software Projects

karenb — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 08:49:01 -0700

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	EEDA logo.gif XtremeEDA Slide Presentation.PDF

Hiring for an Agile Team

karenb — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:22:34 -0600

Guest Speaker	Dustin Aleksiuk (Developer) Dustin is a Calgary independent software developer and consultant. He has been using agile methods in various roles for the last 9 years. Jennitta Andrea (Tester) Jennitta has been actively engaged on a variety of different agile projects in Calgary as a hands-on practitioner (analyst, tester), consultant (retrospectives, assessments), and instructor. Her writing and conference presentations have brought international recognition as a thought leader in the area of agile requirements and test driven development. Janice Aston (Project Manager) Janice is an Agile project manager and coach currently working as an independent consultant. She is passionate about building high performing teams and delivering business value. John Johnston (Business Analyst) John is a BA and Agile coach at ThoughtWorks. He is particularly interested in finding ways to make agile and user centered design work together. Right now he wants to know more about Lean and Kanban systems. Gerard Meszaros (Solution Architect) Gerard is an independent consultant specializing in coaching agile teams. He is the author of the Jolt Productivity Award winning book xUnit Test Patterns - Refactoring Test Code and frequently speaks at agile conferences.
Date	Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
Description	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
Presentation Slides	Eagle_2009.png 5th_Ave_Place_Conference_Room.pdf Hiring for an Agile Team.pdf

Season Opener – Networking Social

karenb — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:08:36 -0600

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	Agile Recruiting_2009.png Barley Mill Eau Claire Map.pdf

Calgary APLN 2009/2010

karenb — Wed, 27 May 2009 09:32:33 -0600

Welcome to the 2009/2010 season of the Calgary APLN!

Please book these FREE Calgary APLN events in your calendar:

October 1, 2009 Season Opener – Networking Social (Barley Mill, Eau Claire - Event 4:30pm to 6:30pm)
October 28, 2009 Panel discussion - “Hiring for an Agile Team”
November 25, 2009 Neil Johnson - "The Challenge of Adopting Agile Outside Software Projects"
January 20, 2010 Kris Read - “Agile At Your Software Startup”
February 17, 2010 Stelios Pantazopoulos - “Project Vital Signs”

Planning for Success with Accurate Agile Project Estimation

karenb — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:17:47 -0600

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	logo_main_Quadrus.gif 5th_Ave_Place_Conference_Room.pdf Estimation Slides May 2009.pdf

Agile in a Nutshell

karenb — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:34:18 -0600

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	MKS_Logo.gif agile-in-a-nutshell.pdf

Reinvigorate Your Retrospectives

karenb — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:33:41 -0700

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 ...
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	5th_Ave_Place_Conference_Room.pdf brightspot_consulting 2009.gif reinvigorate your project retrospectives - apln - february 27 2009.pdf theCaseOfTheMissingFingerprint_betterSoftware2007.pdf

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

mikeg — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:29:34 -0700

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.
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	5th_Ave_Place_Conference_Room.pdf Agile Recruiting_2009.png ThoughtWorks_2009.png ThoughtWorks - Introducing Agile in non Tech Areas Slides.pdf

The Agile Playground: Learning Games for the Agile Practitioner

karenb — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:58:41 -0700

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.
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	5th_Ave_Place_Conference_Room.pdf logo_main_Quadrus.gif

Overview of Agile Project Leadership

karenb — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 09:24:35 -0600

Guest Speaker	Mike Griffiths, independent consultant Leading Answers
Date	Monday, October 27th, 2008
Description	Agile projects require shared leadership and collaboration to be successful, yet many organizations try to use outdated command-and-control approaches. "We manage property and lead people. If you try to manage people they feel like property". This presentation exposes the weaknesses of trying to use formal project management on emergent endeavours and outlines the leadership and collaboration based alternatives.
About the Speaker	Mike Griffiths is an independent consultant specializing in effective project management. Mike was involved in the creation of DSDM in 1994 and has been using agile methods (Scrum, FDD, XP, and DSDM) for the last 14 years. He is active in both the agile project management community and traditional PMI-based circles. He has served on the board of the Agile Alliance and the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN), he was a contributing reviewer to the PMBOK v3 Guide and is a trainer for the PMI SeminarsWorld program. He maintains the award winning leadership and agile project management blog at www.LeadingAnswers.com.
Presentation Slides	5th_Ave_Place_Conference_Room.pdf Agile_Recruiting.gif Agile Recruiting_2009.png

Executing Agile in a Structured Organization: The City of Calgary

karenb — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:17:45 -0600

Guest Speaker	Michael McCullough, Technical Director, Quadrus Development Inc. Janette Scott, Project Manager, City of Calgary Robyn Johnson, Management Systems Analyst, The City of Calgary
Date	Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
Description	Learn from our experience executing Agile into the constraints imposed by the complicated and integrated organization and culture at The City of Calgary. We are going to briefly describe the lessons learned from our journey from first deciding to look at Agile to actually executing and evaluating it. Our particular viewpoint will focus on how this played out in a government IT organization that is highly structured. Please use the Executing Agile_Presentation Slides link under the Presentation Slides Section below.
About the Speaker	Michael McCullough is a Technical Director with Quadrus Development Inc., an IT consulting and services company based out of Calgary, Alberta. As one of Quadrus’ thought leaders in Agile concepts, Michael plays a leading role in assisting Quadrus’ clients in the quick and practical adoption of agile paradigms and techniques through the application of Quadrus’ Agile Jumpstart methodology; an approach that integrates formal classroom training with on-site mentoring and ad-hoc coaching to teach, practice and apply agile techniques to real project delivery. Over the past 5 years, Michael has been helping fortune 500 companies in the United States and leading organizations here in Canada to understand, integrate and adopt Agile techniques in both project management and software development. In addition to his focus on Agile development, Michael has a background and experience in software development and project management. Robyn Johnson is a Management Systems Analyst in the The City of Calgary's IT Program Management Office. Robyn has been actively involved in project management and application development methodolgy since 2002. Her interest in Agile in Calgary started with a course on SCRUM, and ever since it has been her goal to introduce Agile to The City. Janette Scott is a Project Manager in Application Development with The City of Calgary. Janette is currently leading the Agile Evaluation project that was started in late 2007. She has an extensive background in software development and project management at The City of Calgary.
Presentation Slides	5th_Ave_Place_Conference_Room.pdf City and Quadrus Logo.GIF Executing Agile_Presentation Slides.pdf

Large Decomposing Programs and the PMI Framework Mappings

karenb — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:31:50 -0600

Guest Speaker	Mike Griffiths, Independent Consultant at Leading Answers
Date	Thursday, May 15th, 2008
Description	Back in October at the Calgary APLN planning meeting we asked attendees what they would like to hear about this year. People made suggestions and voted on the topics, the top 5 were: 1) Using Agile on distributed teams 2) Team collaboration / motivation / accountability 3) How to decompose large programs into agile projects 4) Mapping PMI Framework to Agile best practices 5) Fitting agile into the constraints imposed by the business
About the Speaker	Mike Griffiths is actively involved in the agile methods community. He serves on the board of the Agile Alliance and the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN). He presents and writes on agile project management for a variety of conferences and journals. Mike helped create DSDM in 1994 and have been using agile methods (DSDM, Scrum, FDD, XP) for the last 14 years. Mike is also active in the traditional project management world. He was a contributor to the current PMBOK v3 Guide and teaches for the PMI SeminarsWorld training program. Mike presented on agile project management at the PMI Global Congress conferences 2004, 2006, and 2007.
Presentation Slides	5th_Ave_Place_Conference_Room.pdf Agile-Recruiting.gif PMI Agile Mappings.zip Calgary APLN May 15 Slides.pdf

Using Collaboration to Build Team Commitment

mikeg — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:07:51 -0700

Guest Speaker	Gerard Meszaros, Chief Scientist ClearStream Consulting
Date	Thursday, February 7th, 2008
Description	This interactive session introduces the key concepts of collaboration as a tool for creating highly committed teams that get the job done quickly and with high quality. Highly committed, accountable teams aren't created by traditional "command & control" management techniques; they are the result of collaborative leadership and good facilitation skills. Gerard describes some of the benefits and opportunities for collaboration on software projects and introduces some key techniques for facilitating collaborative team events.
About the Speaker	Gerard Meszaros is a Calgary-based consultant specializing is agile development processes. He is a frequent speaker and tutorial presenter at major international conferences on topics ranging from "Right-sizing User Stories" and "Adding Usability Testing to Agile Projects" to "xUnit Test Patterns and Smells." He is the author of the Jolt Award finalist book "xUnit Test Patterns – Refactoring Test Code" published by Addison Wesley Professional in the Martin Fowler Signature Series.
Presentation Slides	5th_Ave_Place_Conference_Room.pdf Collaboration_GerardMeszaros.pdf Collaborative Team Assessment.xls

Using Agile on Distributed Teams

karenb — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 16:11:21 -0700

Guest Speaker	Jane Robarts, Senior Consultant/Project Manager ThoughtWorks
Date	Friday, November 30th, 2007
Description	Practices that must be employed when leading distributed agile projects are often counter to some agile core principles. This presentation will explore techniques and tools agile project leaders can use when initiating and running distributed projects. Discussion will also include learnings, failures, and successes based on the presenter's past experiences with both outsourced and co-sourced distributed teams.
About the Speaker	Jane is a senior consultant and project manager with ThoughtWorks. She has worked on agile projects in India, China, the UK, the US, Australia and Canada. Jane has spent a lot of the last several years working directly on distributed agile delivery projects or coaching distributed teams. Jane's current role involves her working with the ThoughtWorks project portfolio to improve collaboration between teams and consistency of project delivery.
Presentation Slides	5th_Ave_Place_Conference_Room.pdf ThoughtWorks.gif ThoughtWorksDistributedAgile.pdf

Calgary APLN 2007/2008 Kick-Off Meeting!

karenb — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 11:02:46 -0600

Guest Speaker	Janice Aston and Mike Griffiths
Date	Wednesday, October 17th, 2007
Description	The Calgary chapter of the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN) invites you to the APLN 2007/2008 Season Kick-Off Meeting. Come and experience Agile planning in action at the Calgary APLN season kick-off meeting. If you are interested in how to run effective agile projects here is your opportunity to help choose the presentation topics for this season's talks and workshops. Agenda • Welcome and overview of Calgary APLN group • Report on new initiatives from the APLN • Brainstorming of topics for 2007/2008 season
About the Speaker	Janice Aston has over 16 years of project management experience with an emphasis on delivering business value. She is passionate about building high performing teams focused on continuous improvement. Janice has a proven track record delivering on project commitments with a heart for leadership and people. She has recently founded Agile Perspective Inc. specializing in creative collaboration. Mike Griffiths is an independent project manager and trainer with over 20 years of IT experience. He is active in both the agile and traditional project management communities and serves on the board of the APLN & Agile Alliance, and teaches courses for the PMI. Mike founded the Calgary chapter of the APLN in 2006 and maintains the Agile Leadership site www.LeadingAnswers.com.