Timetable Sydney SDC 2011

9:00-10:10
Thursday 24 March, SDC 2011 (www.softed.com/sdc), Sydney

Creating an Adaptable Life

Johanna Rothman
Rothman Consulting Group (USA)
http://www.jrothman.com/

Change happens to us all the time. Normally, it happens so slowly that we don't particularly notice. Sometimes the change happens so quickly that we do notice.

My life changed in September 2009. With sudden hearing loss and constant vertigo, life became more challenging. I learned to ask for help; to accept that I can't control everything; to see what's really going on; to see the current state and to envision where I want to go. I'm adapting how I work, live and travel so that I can be successful. Things have changed; adapting has allowed me to continue to live, work and enjoy my life.

In whatever way your organisation is growing and evolving your role and activities will change.
Irrespective of what drives the changes you in your role must adapt to the new challenges. It may be a move to Agile or working with partners and other teams who are adopting new ways of working. For some these changes and challenges may be subtle. For others, such as BAs and PMs moving to Agile, the change can feel like a 2 by 4 that connects with your head! How do you adapt to ensure continued success?  

I'll discuss change, how you can use it to create an adaptable life, and how you can make choices that can work for you and your organisation.

About Johanna: An internationally recognised expert in managing IT product and software development. She helps managers and leaders solve problems and seize opportunities. She has written a number of popular books. Her most recent book is "Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects" more >>>

10:30-11:30
Thursday 24 March, SDC 2011 (www.softed.com/sdc), Sydney

Agile Grows Up

Steve Adolph
Agile Coach, Rally Software (USA)
http://www.rallydev.com/

An introduction to scaling Agile software development methods.  

"Oh Agile is great for six or seven people, but it won't work for a real project" is a criticism often heard by those proposing Agile methods. After all, many of the more widely known Agile methods make some very specific assumptions about the development environment: small co-located teams, on site customer, and emergent architecture.

Does this mean larger projects cannot be Agile projects because these assumptions are not usually valid for larger projects? Absolutely not!

Agile thought leaders and many large Agile teams have demonstrated that Agile methods scale by adding best practices to address scaling issues. But how is an effective analysis or architectural process incorporated into the fast paced Agile world? Unfortunately the Agile methods themselves provide little guidance for scaling and this often leaves growing projects floundering as they re-invent and re-discover the practices necessary to support their growth.

There have been past attempts to create scalable software methods but often these methods required a skilled software process engineer intimately familiar with a complex method to “tailor it down”. Often those scaling the process were reluctant to throw out practices they might need and the result was often small and medium projects burdened with a method suitable for constructing a national air traffic control system.

We will offer a better approach by starting with the simplest process possible  - but no simpler - adapting the method to the project context and letting the method grow and adapt as the project itself evolves.  

About Steve:  He is active in the Agile community, is the co-founder of Agile Vancouver and was a track producer for the Agile 2009 conference in Chicago. Steve is an Agile Coach with Rally Software and is co-author of the book "Patterns for Effective Use Cases" more >>>

11:50-3:10 (incl Lunch)
Thursday 24 March, SDC 2011 (www.softed.com/sdc), Sydney

Writing Good User Stories: The Key to Defining Agile Requirements

Shane Hastie
Chief Knowledge Engineer, Software Education (NZ/AU)
http://www.softed.com

This session is for anyone who needs to define requirements using User Stories. 

User Stories are the most common technique for requirements identification and management on many Agile projects.  User Stories are a great tool, and have been used very effectively for over 10 years now.  In concept User Stories are very simple - define the business need in a single sentence so it can be prioritised and ranked and then used to drive the development of the product. In practice building good User Stories is hard, but well worth the effort.

Poor stories result in poor understanding of customer needs and will burden your projects with unnecessary churn and potentially lead the project team down a path that very efficiently solves the wrong business problem. Learning the art of writing good User Stories can vastly improve the value of your requirements definition leading to smoother and more successful projects.

Shane will take you through a structured process for identifying User Stories, discuss the characteristics of good stories, common mistakes and anti-patterns of bad stories and then introduce you to the overall lifecycle of a story in an Agile project.

The major focus of the workshop is to give you tools to identify and prepare good User Stories as a starting point for an Agile project. The topics to be dealt with in depth are:

• Introducing User Stories.
• Techniques for identifying User Stories.
• The difference between Stories and Epics and when to use both.
• How to use  the INVEST criteria to develop good User Stories.
• The “Three C's” of a story.

The session will be very hands-on, with participants working in groups to identify, improve and prioritise stories for a case study project.

The identification of stories is not the end of the life for a story.  Shane will discuss the lifecycle of a story over an Agile project and discuss how stories iteratively evolve through the project activities - identification, prioritisation, estimation, elaboration, development and testing.

About Shane: A member of the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA™), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the Agile Alliance. Shane is a frequent speaker at industry events, a trained personal development coach and is currently contributing to the IIBA™BABOK™ agile-extension more >>> 

11:50-3:10 (incl Lunch)
Thursday 24 March, SDC 2011 (www.softed.com/sdc), Sydney

Keeping Your Neck: Product Owner Success Strategies

Steve Adolph
Agile Coach, Rally Software (USA)
http://www.rallydev.com/

Strategies and guidelines for being a better Product Owner. 

While the "single wringable neck" is a less than flattering description of the Product Owner, it does emphasise the importance of this crucial role. The Product Owner is one of the most influential roles on the product team and takes on much of the responsibility for successful value delivery to the customer.

Without skilled direction and support from great Product Owners, great development teams may create great software only to discover they have created the wrong product.

So what are the skills and strategies great Product Owners should know?  This workshop helps the Product Owner “keep their neck”. Using a set of exercises, simulations and reflection, participants learn strategies for becoming successful Product Owners.

Specific Topics include:

• Don't throw the baby out with the bath water!
• Don't go dark!
• Knowing your boundaries while being there for your colleagues.
• Working effectively with epics and stories.
• Grooming the backlog.
• When is a story ready, and when is it done?
• Working with multiple Product Owners.  

About Steve:  He is active in the Agile community, is the co-founder of Agile Vancouver and was a track producer for the Agile 2009 conference in Chicago. Steve is an Agile Coach with Rally Software and is co-author of the book "Patterns for Effective Use Cases" more >>>

9:00-10:00
Friday 25 March, SDC 2011 (www.softed.com/sdc), Sydney

Strategically Speaking: Why Are We Doing This Again?

Kent J. McDonald
Knowledge Bridge Partners & Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield Health Insurance (USA)
http://www.knowledgebridgepartners.com

How Business Analysts can build their understanding of organisational strategy and use it to really analyse the business.

Have you ever asked “why is the company working on this project?”  If so, what did you do about it?  Business Analysts actually have at their disposal a full set of tools to help an organisation convert strategy to reality.

This keynote will discuss how business analysts can utilise their tool set, categorised as Enterprise Analysis by the BABOK™, to:

• Understand how their project supports the organisation's strategy.
• Help their team members understand this tie.
• Utilise that tie to guide day to day decisions on the project.

This session will also cover what to do if you find yourself on a project that does not appear to align with organisational strategy, and how to add even more value by helping avoid this situation in the first place.

About Kent: Kent specialises in successfully applying pragmatic approaches to strategic planning and coaching business analysts and project managers. He is co-author of Stand Back and Deliver: Accelerating Business Agility, a book that brings together immediately usable frameworks and step-by-step processes that help organisations deliver business value and build competitive advantage more >>>  

1:00-3:30
Friday 25 March, SDC 2011 (www.softed.com/sdc), Sydney

Is It Worth It: Using a Business Value Model to Guide Decisions

Kent J. McDonald
Knowledge Bridge Partners & Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield Health Insurance (USA)
http://www.knowledgebridgepartners.com

How to develop a business case in the form of a value model that can be used throughout the project to make decisions.

One trait of an effective business analyst is the ability to ask the right questions.  One “right” question that applies to just about all projects can sometimes be difficult to ask, let alone answer: “Is it worth it?”  This question is difficult to answer, because the answer will change as you proceed through the project and gain more knowledge about the purpose, considerations, costs and benefits involved in a project.

In this session, we'll explore a tool you can use to help organise the necessary information to answer the “is it worth it?” question on a regular basis.  This interactive session will simulate several stages in a project's lifecycle to demonstrate how you can create a value model to make an initial decision about whether to pursue a project, and then utilise that model as your knowledge grows throughout the project to revisit the question and confirm whether the project is on the right course, or if changes need to be made.

Topics discussed during the session include:

• The benefit of using multiple measures (NPV, ROI, TCO, IRR) in combination to get a full picture of the financial characteristics of a project.
• Structuring your value model to show the feature's impact on the value provided by the whole.
• The costs and benefits that you have to consider, not only during the project, but ongoing. 
• The impact of timing of implementation on the Cost/Benefit discussion.  

About Kent: Kent specialises in successfully applying pragmatic approaches to strategic planning and coaching business analysts and project managers. He is co-author of Stand Back and Deliver: Accelerating Business Agility, a book that brings together immediately usable frameworks and step-by-step processes that help organisations deliver business value and build competitive advantage more >>>  

3:50-4:50
Friday 25 March, SDC 2011 (www.softed.com/sdc), Sydney

Who's On Your Team?

Johanna Rothman
Rothman Consulting Group (USA)
http://www.jrothman.com/

You've probably heard the old joke about “who's on first?” where Abbot and Costello manage to talk past each other to discuss the makeup of a baseball team. Have you ever felt a little like that when you try to organise a team in your organisation?

If so, maybe it's time to rethink how you create teams. It's not that the names or titles of the people are confusing - it's much more often the issue of what kinds of talents, skills and experience you want on a team.

When it's time to select team members, whether you are hiring new people or organising a team from members already inside the organisation, you want to consider the cultural issues, the kinds of experience people have had in the past and what they don't know. You also want to consider personality diversity and cultural fit. And, of course, you do want to consider technical skill fit.

Johanna will discuss each of these issues and help you see how to define what you need, and how to determine if a potential candidate has the right stuff to be on your team.

About Johanna: An internationally recognised expert in managing IT product and software development. She helps managers and leaders solve problems and seize opportunities. She has written a number of popular books. Her most recent book is "Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects" more >>>