Troy Tuttle – Why Kanban

Troy Tuttle will speak on “Why Kanban“.

Kanban is receiving a large amount of attention recently. What does it offer compared to other established agile approaches? Answering that question may require you to hit the “reset” button on previously held biases and assumptions.

Kanban blends Lean thought with ideas from first generation agile methodologies. To get started with Kanban, we will examine what steps are necessary to establish a transparent, work-limited, pull system. We will highlight the perils of allowing too much work-in-progress and how it affects development performance. Once established, Kanban teams need only a few metrics and tools to monitor their performance and improvement.

Troy Tuttle is a self-described pragmatic agilist, and Kanban practitioner, with more than a decade of experience in delivering software in the finance and health industries and as a consultant. As a team leader he has mentored teams on improving their approach to iterative development though achieving technical proficiency. He advocates teams improve their performance through pursuit of better practices like continuous integration and automated testing. Troy is the founder of the Kansas City Limited WIP Society and is a regular speaker at local area groups on team related topics. He currently works as a Project Lead Consultant with AdventureTech Group of Kansas City, KS.

Dennis Stevens – Feeding the Agile Beast

Dennis Stevens is talking on “Feeding the Agile Beast“.

Kanban is being used by agile development teams to produce software faster and with higher quality than ever before. While agile works for small teams achieving these same benefits at the enterprise level has failed. Agile’s delivery cadence drives transparency which compels learning and adaptation. Within small teams, this learning and adaptation happens in real time. At scale, the adaptation and learning happens at different times resulting in a kind of intellectual version control problem that corrupts progress across teams.

Business capability analysis supports the cadence of agile development and has proven an effective control mechanism for these larger teams. This helps larger teams realize similar speed and quality results of smaller teams while remaining aligned with what is most valuable to the business.

Dennis Stevens has been helping organizations improve economic outcomes through improved technology alignment and software development since the mid-1980’s. Starting in 2000 he has been focused on developing business analysis and project management methods that leverage the incremental and iterative cadence of Lean and Agile delivery. His approach to capability analysis was the basis for Microsoft’s Business Architecture methodology, was published in Harvard Business Review in June 2008, and has contributed to improved performance in dozens of projects delivering over $200 million in value. Dennis has been certified as a Project Management Professional, in Lean Value Stream mapping, as an OPM3 Certified Consultant and a Certified Scrum Master. Dennis originally attended Florida State University on a violin scholarship and eventually earned his degree in Organizational Psychology and Development. He served as a US Marine during Desert Storm and earned a Naval Commendation Medal during Operation Fiery Vigil in the Philippines.

Erik Sowa – Feature Bits: Enabling Flow Within and Across Development Teams

Erik Sowa will talk about “Feature Bits: Enabling Flow Within and Across Development Teams“.

“Feature Bits” is the technique we use at Lyris for deploying latent code to our SaaS application. Latent code allows us to separate rolling code to production from releasing features to customers. The flow of product development work is enabled by eliminating many of the collision points that would otherwise require intensive coordination and big-bang deployments. We review the business context for this technique, the solution design, and the coding patterns we use to implement it. We present some usage statistics and observations based on 1.5 years of experience. Attendees will take home knowledge and data sufficient to decide when and how to apply this technique in their work.

Erik Sowa is Director of Engineering at Lyris, Inc. in Emeryville, CA. Erik has led product development and professional services teams for SaaS products for over a decade, first at DigitalThink (eventually acquired by Convergys) and now at Lyris. In that work, Erik has focused on building great teams that deliver great products using repeatable, scalable, and sustainable processes based on lean thinking and appropriate for multi-tenant hosted solutions. Erik has also led teams building client-server solutions and has developed computational materials science programs on massively parallel supercomputers. Erik holds a Ph.D. in Physics from U.C. Berkeley.

Siraj Sirajuddin – The Lean Change Agent’s Mantra

Siraj Sirajuddin is speaking on “The Lean Change Agent’s Mantra“.

Mantra (n): A word or group of words, an act or a series of acts – all considered capable of creating “transformation”. (“man” – mind + “tra” – liberation).

Adopting Lean and Kanban in large organizations presents a unique challenge to The Change Agent. This presentation is about the unique challenge and provides a “Mantra” for The Change Agent to influence the adoption process.

The Lean Change Agent’s Mantra looks at the philosophy of Lean process improvement and then deep dives into the Forces around Lean and Kanban adoption. We also discuss the team Dynamics that enable adoption of Lean and Kanban.

Finally, we summarize The “Mantra” that would help Change Agent’s to influence the adoption process for Lean and Kanban.

Siraj has provided excellent change management coaching and leadership to large and medium sized organizations like ShoreTel, Winn Dixie Stores, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and Compaq Computers.

He has 18 years of experience with people and process improvement consulting and coaching.

He has deep and varied domain and functional knowledge and process improvement experience using Lean, Kanban, Agile, CMMI, Six Sigma, PMBOK, SOX, BASEL and HIPAA.

He is also an expert / student of Systems Thinking / Learning Organizations, People Dynamics, Transactional Analysis, MBTI, FIRO(B), Element B, Leadership & Motivation and Team Building.

He brings tremendous energy and passion to every engagement.

He invented several unique techniques (The Interview, Clean Slate, Cereal Box, Intensive Collaboration & Discovery) that are now used for managing strategic projects at various client locations.

He loves poetry, travel, music, books and being with people.

Specialties:
Influencing Leaders, Followers & Teams Systems Thinking / Learning Organizations Building Hyperperforming Teams Lean, Kanban and Agile Coach

Paul Rayner – Measure for Measure – Lean Principles for Effective Metrics and Motivation

Paul Rayner is talking on “Measure for Measure – Lean Principles for Effective Metrics and Motivation“.

This presentation explores the nature of motivation and the place of metrics and measurement in software development, and how lean software development principles and practices shed light on motivation and metrics and how they can be used to support deep organizational improvement. We will examine the nature of motivation in terms of the four intrinsic rewards that drive positive engagement, and also how certain approaches to measuring and managing performance lead to organizational dysfunction. We will also show how the application of lean principles such as building quality into the product, respect for people and optimizing the whole enable more effective approaches to motivation and metrics in software development.

Paul Rayner is a Denver-based independent consultant with more than twenty years of software development and consulting experience. His company, Virtual Genius LLC, helps organizations architect and implement well-crafted enterprise software solutions using agile development principles and practices. Paul is the founder and president of the Denver chapter of the International Association of Software Architects (IASA) and an activist for innovation and improvement in the agile, .NET and IT architect communities in Colorado. He holds graduate degrees in computing science, theology and philosophy, and writes with an Australian accent about software development at http://www.virtual-genius.com and about the intersection of faith and work at http://www.rayneronline.com/blog.

Ken Pugh – Determining Business Value

Ken Pugh is speaking on “Determining Business Value“.

Lean focuses on delivering business value to the customers as rapidly as possible. On agile projects, story points are often used to estimate development effort . However to concentrate on delivering business value, we must be able to place a business value on user stories. Through lecture and interactive exercises, Ken Pugh explains how to estimate and track business value. He presents two methods for quickly estimating business value for features and stories. He shows the relationships between business values and story points and how to chart business value for progress tracking. By the end, you’ll be able to use business value to focus both the customers and the developers on the most important requirements.

Ken Pugh (ken.pugh@netobjectives.com) is a fellow consultant with Net Objectives. He helps companies transform into agile practices through training and coaching. His particular interests are in communication (particularly communicating requirements), delivering business value, and using lean principles to deliver high quality quickly. He also trains, mentors, and testifies on technology topics ranging from object-oriented analysis to embedded systems. He is author of several books, including the 2006 Jolt Award winner Prefactoring and an upcoming book, Lean-Agile Acceptance Test Driven Development.He has presented at numerous national conferences, including Software Development, Best Practices, Better Software, Agile Development Practices, and AgileAlliance.

Mary Poppendieck – What’s Wrong With Targets? How Policy Deployment differs from Management by Objectives

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Mary Poppendieck will speak on “What’s Wrong With Targets? How Policy Deployment differs from Management by Objectives“.

For years, common sense in Western Management thinking has dictated that the way to get something done in an organization is to set performance targets and hold people accountable for achieving those targets. But leaders in lean organizations have a mindset that defies this common wisdom. They prefer to identify the ultimate goal (true north) and spend their time helping people navigate in that direction. They are neither “hands‐off” nor “hands‐on” – they focus on developing the people and systems that are capable of delivering superior results. Policy Deployment in a lean organization is like navigating a ship – it starts with an understanding of the final destination, but leaders don’t forget that it’s their job to steer the ship along the way.

Mary Poppendieck has been in the Information Technology industry for over thirty years. She has managed software development, supply chain management, manufacturing operations, and new product development. She spearheaded the implementation of a Just‐in‐Time system in a 3M video tape manufacturing plant and led new product development teams, commercializing products ranging from digital controllers to 3M Light Fiber™.

Mary is a popular writer and speaker, and coauthor of the book Lean Software Development, which was awarded the Software Development Productivity Award in 2004. A sequel, Implementing Lean Software Development, was published in 2006. A third book, Leading Lean Software Development, was published in November 2009.

Richard Hensley – A Story about McKesson ADM Business Development

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Richard Hensley is talking on “A Story about McKesson ADM Business Development“.

We proposed to create a software as a service endeavor as an experiment in software business done a new way at McKesson. We theorized that the principles behind current software methodologies, specifically SCRUM could be instilled into the whole business so that value could be delivered significantly faster and of better quality when compared to our corporate peers. We predicted that we could deliver a live revenue producing customer with the business in less than one year from the time of funding. We tested by executing our funded business plan. To our great relief, the theory was largely correct. The presentation will cover the steps and missteps taken along the way, and detail the results of our ongoing experiment, including our kanban implementation.

Richard Hensley is a 25 year veteran of the healthcare information technology industry. Richard has built systems to support the healthcare industry including retail and hospital pharmacies, prescription insurance claims, hospital based and ambulatory clinical laboratories, insurance utilization and authorization management, hospital patient accounting, and hospital clinical documentation. Richard’s role in these products has progressed along the software engineering career path. For the last 15 years, Richard has been in technical leadership roles on various products. Richard’s latest endeavor is to guide McKesson along the path of being a better software product development organization. Richard is the engineering director for the ADM business.

Richard is also involved with the McKesson office of the CTO. In that role, he is involved McKesson-wide activities including technical due diligence for merges and acquisitions, technology convergence initiatives, technology adoption initiatives, technology acquisition initiatives, and process adoption initiatives.

Ryan Martens – PDCA: Beyond Simple Inspect and Adapt

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Ryan Martens will talk about “PDCA: Beyond Simple Inspect and Adapt“.

Lean and Kanban focus on practices of continuous flow of product delivery. Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) is a Lean discipline that moves beyond inspect and adapt of Agile team-level processes. At a corporate level, PDCA provides guidance for strategy as well as problem-solving work. In 2009, I led Rally’s move to PDCA for the company’s strategy process at both the annual and quarterly levels. My primary guide was Pascal Dennis’s “Getting the Right Things Done”. In this experience report, I share Rally’s PDCA first year of adoption: where we started, how this impacted our corporate behaviors, and where we are now. I want to share Rally’s story to compel participants to embrace PDCA and get good at it. I ask each participant to come with its organization’s #1 goal and success criteria. I will close with a planning A3 exercise from Pascal’s book.

The CTO and founder of Rally Software, Ryan Martens began his career in software in 1985 while in college and has broad industry experiences with BEA Systems, US West/Qwest Communications, BDM, and three start-ups. As Rally’s CTO, he is a lean/agile consultant, blogger, portfolio manager, technical operations manager and senior sales resource. Ryan is known for his triple bottom-line thinking as well as his farm fresh eggs, and his love for skiing, fishing, and biking with his family in Colorado.

Siddharta Govindaraj – A Startup Journey: Evolving from ad-hoc to Agile to Kanban

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Siddharta Govindaraj will speak on “A Startup Journey: Evolving from ad-hoc to Agile to Kanban“.

This experience report describes a period of 6 years in two startup companies that I was involved with.

The first part covers the period from 2004 to 2006 when I was working with a startup based out of Singapore. I explain how we moved from doing ad-hoc development to adopting Scrum. Adopting Scrum was a big improvement over our previous ad-hoc approach but Scrum also led us to make some classic mistakes (from a lean point of view).

The second part covers the period from 2007 to 2009 when I started my own company in India. The company was started with Scrum right from the beginning. I explain how we evolved from vanilla Scrum to Lean and Kanban.

My primary interest is in improving the way software is delivered. I take great interest in lean and agile software development methodologies. I am also interested in the social aspects of software development and how it relates to the technical aspects. I started a company, Silver Stripe Software Pvt Ltd, to work further in the area of software process.

I help conduct Lean and Agile software development events and seminars in Chennai, India through the Chennai Agile User Group. I am also a part of the Agile Software Community of India (ASCI) and help organise ASCI events in Chennai.

I’m also one of the organizers of Proto.in, a bi-annual event that showcases startup companies to an audience of venture capitalists, technologists and media, and the co-organizer of the Chennai OpenCoffee Club, a place where entrepreneurs from Chennai meet once a month.