Event Description

The majority of organizations have gotten their feet wet with Agile software development techniques and are now hoping to take it to the next stage. However, they’re discovering that the simple methodologies such as Scrum and XP they initially adopted aren’t sophisticated enough to address the complex situations they find themselves in. This presentation shares data from recent industry surveys as to actual adoption and success rates of agile techniques -- it's interesting to note what agile teams are actually doing in practice compared with what people are writing and talking about. It also explores scaling issues such as distributed development teams, regulatory compliance, governance, large teams, complex environments, and leveraging legacy assets. Practices from Unified Process (UP), Agile Modeling (AM), and Lean Development Governance which help to address scaling factors will be described in detail. Once you go beyond the Agile rhetoric you will find that you can in fact scale it to meet the complexities of the real-world situations you find yourself in.

Speaker Bio

Scott W. Ambler is the Practice Leader for Agile Development at IBM Corporation. He works in the IBM Methods group developing process materials and travels the world helping clients to understand and adopt software processes that are right for them. A prolific author, Scott has received awards for several books, including those focused on the Unified Process, agile software development, Unified Modeling Language, and development based on the CMM (Capability Maturity Model). A widely recognized expert on Agile Process, he is a regular speaker at international IT conferences and a senior contributing editor for Dr. Dobb’s Journal. Scott also writes the Agile Software Development at Scale blog on IBM DeveloperWorks. 

Prior to working for IBM, Scott led the development of several software processes, includingAgile Modeling (AM), Agile Data (AD), Enterprise Unified Process (EUP), and Agile Unified Process (AUP). He holds a BSC in computer science and a MS in information science from the University of Toronto.

The February APLN DC Chapter meeting is sponsored by Excella Consulting (www.excella.com).