As organizations try to become more Agile, they face many tricky questions. How to best organize teams? How big should they be? How similar should they be? This talk looks at the world of biology for metaphors that can inform how we approach creating and sustaining successful Agile organizations.

Product owners face a challenge: potential new markets are vast and full of unknowns. Current thinking in successful product management recognizes the importance of learning about potential customers
and adapting product decisions to reflect those insights. However, many exercises and workshops
geared towards product owners treat target products and markets as a fixed, concrete objective—failing to include any market feedback

Dicey Markets is a product owner simulation designed to reflect many of the forces driving product owners, including unknown information about the market, competitive pressure, and technical debt. The simulation
emphasizes the role of rapid regular feedback in creating successful products in the face of uncertain markets.

It can be difficult for developers to find the motivation to write automated unit tests.  This workshop introduces a simulation that can demonstrate the value of automated unit tests to identify and localize defects.  In the simulation, participants will play the roles of programs and tests.  We will discuss barriers to creating and maintaining unit tests, and how this simulation addresses those barriers.

Theme: Games for Learning, Code and Test

  (We have not published slides for this workshop.  "Slides" link below is to representative slides from other presentations.)

In the simplest of terms, software development decisions for commercial organizations can be reduced to a calculation of whether the cost of developing the software will be outweighed by the estimated revenue generated or costs saved by the software.  However, as Mark Schwartz points out in his book, “The Art of Business Value Paperback” this simple explanation is insufficient for commercial organizations, and not applicable for government and other non-commercial organizations for whom the impact of software isn’t primarily measured in terms of revenue.  

In this session participants will experience a simulation that has been created to explore these question of how to make decisions about investments to deliver mission and business value by examining the impact of these decisions on the performance of organizations in changing environments.

FeatureBan is a simple and quick simulation that introduces several of the key concepts of Kanban, including visualization, feedback loops and limiting work in process and that lets participants learn by doing.  The simulation is also useful because it lets organizations who are curious about Kanban quickly learn about it before investing further.  Mike Burrows invented the simulation, but in this session we will present a modified version that we have used with both technical and non-technical audiences.

In the simplest terms, software development decisions for commercial organizations can be reduced to a calculation of whether the cost of developing the software will be outweighed by the revenue generated or costs saved by the software.

However, what does this mean for government and other non-commercial organizations for whom the impact of software isn’t primarily measured in terms of revenue?  How should organizations prioritize work in the face of conflicting goals and metrics?  Help more people?  Minimize delays?  Prosecute more crimes? Lower costs? In this session participants will experience a dice-based simulation that has been created to explore these questions by examining the impact of these decisions on the performance of organizations in changing environments.

Many organizations are using DevOps to speed the ability of organizations to gain value from the software investments.  Too many organizations attempt to reduce DevOps to just a series of technical tools and practices. Organizations to address organizational and cultural issues in order to effectively bring development and operations groups together.  In this section we will present a play to illustrate how DevOps requires communication and understanding to be successful.

In large Government and Commercial organizations with many interacting systems, architecture is necessary to collaborate effectively across disparate entities and systems. Traditional command and control approaches to architecture are often ineffective and cause great tension, especially when Agile efforts are part of the portfolio. We will discuss two principles, Vision and Partnering.  These principles provide insight and get results for both architects and Agilists; and present tools and approaches on how to effectively engage architects and architecture.

Director Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids, El Mariachi, Sin City) is an Agile Director. He enjoys making highly creative movies quickly and cheaply. His ambition is to make movies at the speed of thought. To achieve this goal, he works in small teams to develop the ideas, visualize them quickly, shoot the movie fast, and build the movie in layers. This workshop will introduce Rodriguez's approach to film making by screening several of his 10 minute flick school featurettes and we will explore how these techniques translate to Agile software development in a lively group discussion.