Topic:

Agile Panel Discussion on Incremental Development, Instrumented Agile templates and Agile Mindset.

 by Mr. Don Borcherding, Dr. Satish Thatte and Mr. Bob Small. 

Abstract 1: Incremental Development

Incremental development is an excellent way to control risk. Begin by breaking activities into high risk paths and execution path. Then strategize how to make incremental handoffs from the high risk paths to the execution paths to maintain progress even things go wrong. Incremental development can be used with any type of development process.

Biography 1: Mr. Don Borcherding has 25 years experience with managing all types of Projects; software applications, embedded system development, IT projects and ERP systems.

Founded NexSummit, LLC in 2004 to help organization streamline their processes, eradicate chaos and achieve on time quality. Recently completed writing a book called The Resourceful Project Manager.

Abstract 2: Instrumented Agile Templates 

Agile templates embed agile/Scrum process elements with built-in examples to allow standardized use of agile practices throughout an organization.  Several agile templates listed below will be demonstrated as concrete examples:

Engineering work (features) templates

·         Daily availability, capacity and workload calculation template

·         Sprint backlog ordering template

·         Daily Scrum template

·         Sprint Retrospective template

These templates ensure consistency across all agile projects in an organization, eliminate reinvention of the wheel, reduce process errors, help comply with a standardized agile lifecycle process with minimal process overhead, improve overall agile team productivity, and help scalability of agile processes to handle large projects.  Most of these templates are also instrumented to allow quick metering and measurements (with minimal overhead) of estimated and actual efforts for each sprint, which is the critical information needed at the Sprint retrospectives to improve the agile process sprint by sprint.  These templates are based on familiar Microsoft Office tools (can also be used as Google Docs), and can be used with popular agile project management tools of your choice, such as Rally.

Biography 2: Dr. Satish Thatte received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has over 30 years of industry experience in a variety of technology areas  and management positions His industry experience covers large, multinational companies (Texas Instruments, Bellcore and LG Electronics), and a number of entrepreneurial companies and start-ups.  

He has extensive experience of customizing and adapting agile software development methods and practices in a number of companies to deliver client-specific IT services as well as commercial software products.  He is Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) and Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO).  Dr. Thatte is Senior Member of the IEEE and Member of the ACM.  He holds 14 patents (13 US and one International).  

Dr. Thatte is the CEO of New Synergy Group, specializing in software and management consulting.  At New Synergy Group, he offers customized training, workshops and consulting services for software product and project management, software business strategy development driving product lifecycle and operational processes -- drawing upon the strengths of agile and lean methods, and organizational systems thinking.   

Abstract 3: The Agile Mindset – How the agile mindset differs from the classical worldview and why it matters to the success of your agile initiative.

Biography 3: Mr. Bob Small joined Verizon Wireless in April ‘11 as a senior member of the technical staff; he has coached more than 75 teams in agile development during the past 6 years. He has more than 30 years of experience in information technology, having worked as a developer, project and program manager, and consultant in the commercial and federal sectors. He has presented twice before to the NJ Spin – once on agile and once on the ISO-27000-family of standards for information security.

Agenda:

5:45 Networking
6:15 Introductions
6:20 SPIN News, Updates
6:25 Presentation Panel Discussion 1 - Incremental Development

6:55 Presentation Panel Discussion 2 - Instrumented Agile Templates

7:25 Break, Refreshments and more Networking

7:35 Next Month's Topic

7:40 Presentation Panel Discussion 3 - Agile Mindset

8:10 Q & A

8:20 Wrap-up & conclude meeting

For More Event Details go to www.NJSPIN.org