Join your fellow coders for Portland's Fall Code Retreat! It will be a day of fun, programming, learning, teaching, and getting to know other programmers who are passionate about their craft. Food will be provided, so all you need to do is show up and participate. Just remember to bring your laptop!

What is a Code Retreat? It's a great place to practice your software skills and push your limits. If you haven't heard of code retreat before, you might want to take a look at http://coderetreat.org for a complete explanation of what to expect.

Test Driven Development has reached maturity. Goad Testing takes you a level deeper, examining what tests really are and using the outcome of that exercise to derive new ways of keeping software - both production and test - healthy, flexible, and on-specification. Making distinctions is a critical aspect of a test: It allows a test to serve as an executable specification. Sometimes this ability is lost in the course of maintenance. Goad testing is a way to prevent that from happening without introducing significant extra work or complexity.

About Max Guernsey III, Hexagon Software LLC: I’ve been in the software development industry for over ten years. Nearly half of that has been spent mentoring teams in various aspects of Agility, including Design Patterns, TDD, User Story creation & analysis. In the last few years, I’ve become interested in how Lean and Agile fit together.

This event is free and is at our new location, Puppet Labs. It begins at 6:30 pm with pizza, sponsored by PNSQC (Many thanks to both Puppet Labs and PNSQC for supporting agile in Portland).

The program starts at 7:00 pm.

After the program you're invited to join us for a no-host gathering at a nearby brewpub for further discussion of chicken wings and other agile conundrums.

AgilePDX is excited to present it’s first annual woman-focused Coderetreat with support from PDX WIT and Women Who Code Portland. Yes, it’s woman-focused, and everyone is welcome.

Coderetreat is a self-organizing international group of software developers who gather to help each other improve. Their website, if you’d like to go right to the source, is coderetreat.org. Key practices we’ll be focusing on are problem-solving, pairing, and moving to TDD (Test Driven Development). You will be pairing with new pairing partners all day long to help build your network, make new friends, and learn what it’s like to pair with people who use different coding strategies than you do. And Jean and Tracie will be there to support you!

If you learn one new thing on Saturday that you can take back to the office, you have a win, and so do we! We’ll also be supporting you in understanding the importance of taking care of yourself while coding and strategies for attracting skills transfer opportunities.

Breakfast and lunch are provided by our sponsor for this event, Cayuse. Come early and meet other attendees for a leisurely chat over coffee!

Register here so we can get an accurate count: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/255280597/

Join your peers for half-day event to learn best practices from local Agile leaders. Experts from WebMD and Intel will share their tips and tricks on Agile scaling and development at this complimentary event. Details: Thursday, Oct. 6th 8:30am - 12:00pm The Governor Hotel

Register Now! Spots are going fast!

This month's session has two parts: * Four lightning talks sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly of transitioning to Agile or practicing Agile. * Collaborate to refine Agile PDX's charter.

This event is free and is at our new location, Puppet Labs. It begins at 6:30 pm with pizza, sponsored by PNSQC (Many thanks to both Puppet Labs and PNSQC for supporting agile in Portland).

The program starts at 7:00 pm.

After the program you're invited to join us for a no-host gathering at a nearby brewpub for further discussion.

Come join us again at Rogue Eastside for a discussion of Lyssa Adkins' great book, Coaching Agile Teams. We'll be looking at Part II of the book - and exploring the various stances a coach takes to the team , be it coach, facilitator, teacher, mentor. If you are familiar with the Agile Coaching Competency Framework from ACI, this book is the root of that. We look forward to having you at the discussion where we'll dig into the different stances a coach takes and over a pint we'll try out an exercise to learn more about the areas where we are collectively strong, and the areas we could stand to learn more about!

Reading: User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product - Jeff Patton

All you have to do is read a few of the Amazon reviews to know that this book is something different. Patton succinctly illustrates the power of the story mapping process and leaves you going - yeah, that! It's a short read, but for me, I was left wanting to share what I learned. You will too! We're meeting in the Barrel Room at Rogue Eastside. It's a Monday night - little different for a meet up, but should give us a quiet space to talk and play around with some story mapping! Do join us :)

The Agile Alliance Board of Directors joins AgilePDX for a public reception on June 2, 2011 at 6 PM at Kennedy School in Portland, Oregon.

Welcome to the Agile Alliance Board of Directors reception, in collaboration with AgilePDX. We invite you to an evening of food, drinks, and interesting discussions with the board of directors of Agile Alliance and AgilePDX. We will open up with introductions to AgilePDX and Agile Alliance. Hosted birds-of-a-feather table discussions will cover the hottest trends and controversies in the Agile space. Please send email to [email protected] to reserve your seat at the table.

We frequently encounter Agile teams struggling within larger organizations that are not Agile. The resistance to Agile frequently centers around predictability. Executives feel pressure to report to the Board of Directors what software will be delivered in the coming year. Product Owners are asked to work out long-term strategies and priorities. Sales is working with customers who want to know what features are coming and when. And Marketing departments are pulling together advertising campaigns for the coming year.

In each of these cases, there would be real and undeniable benefit in knowing what the future holds...but we don't. Agile is very clear on this point--software development is not predictable. And development teams are often hesitant to offer any form of prediction out of fear that the prediction will be taken as a "promise".

This AgilePDX Pub discussion is an attempt to imagine what an Agile team would offer in the way of predictions if we did not have that fear, if we were to give the best information we can devise about the future of our projects (in an Agile fashion). As a starting place, it pulls together a lightweight process for estimating size from the book "How to Measure Anything" by Douglas W. Hubbard, along with, recent research into common human biases that impact our assessment of risks.

Michael Kelly has been thinking about this a lot (see the thread he launched on the AgilePDX Yahoo Group in October), and he'll set context and get the discussion going for you.

Michael is a veteran of numerous software development campaigns. He has built software for power companies and banks, for the trucking industry and education, for internet start-ups and established companies, for his own companies and for others. Throughout, he has worked hard to master the craft of writing software and delve to the mysteries of Agile. Currently, he is working with the excellent folks at DAT Solutions, leading a team developing the next generation of software for the trucking industry.

As usual, look for us in the back of the pub. RSVP to [email protected] if you can. We nearly swamped the wait staff in October, and we'd like to provide a little warning if that may happen again. However, don't let lack of ability to RSVP keep you from showing up.

Bring your questions, your objections, your burning issues around agility and predictability. Bring your Product Owners and executive staff and THEIR burning issues.

Usual pub grub. The beer never stops flowing. See you there!

What do a 17th century painter’s workshop, an international photographic cooperative, and an early 20th century design house have in common with a modern software development team? On the surface it may not seem like much, but bringing a group of makers together to work presents special challenges and opportunities, regardless of field.

In this session we’ll explore what worked, and didn’t, for several groups of historical makers. We’ll draw parallels with agile software development teams, and discuss coaching strategies around the examples provided.

Nathaniel Cadwell has over thirteen years of strategic consulting experience in software development, Agile enablement, and change management, helping organizations achieve dramatic improvement in the efficiency of their software delivery. In his current role, Nathaniel is an Agile Coach working closely with software development teams. He has presented, or co-presented, sessions on Agile coaching, Agile portfolio management, and facilitation skills at multiple venues in the United States and abroad.

Details and Pizza:

This event is free. It begins at 6:30 pm with pizza, sponsored by PNSQC (Many thanks to both Puppet Labs and PNSQC for supporting agile in Portland).

The program starts at 7:00 pm.

After the program you're invited to join us for a no-host gathering at a nearby brewpub for further discussion.

Come hear quick stories from the community of Agile Highs and Agile lows.

This event is free and is at Puppet Labs. It begins at 6:30 pm with pizza, sponsored by PNSQC (Many thanks to both Puppet Labs and PNSQC for supporting agile in Portland).

The program starts at 7:00 pm.

After the program you're invited to join us for a no-host gathering at a nearby brewpub for further discussion.

This month at our evening meeting we will be hearing from another local exec who champions agile in his organization. Rony Lerner, VP of Engineering at Tripwire, will share how he stumbled upon Scrum and will argue that a top down approach is more effective than a bottom up approach to agile adoptions.

Don’t be shy. Bring your toughest questions and your management team. Rony can take it.

Bio: When Aaron (Rony) Lerner joined Tripwire as Vice President of Engineering he brought years of product development and management experience to Tripwire’s recognized team of industry experts. Rony is responsible for growing and extending the company’s market-leading software products across a wide range of industries to help customers meet compliance regulations, improve security and drive IT efficiency. Prior to joining Tripwire, Rony was Vice President of Research and Development for the Database Management Business Unit of Quest Software Inc., where he led the development and release of more than 40 products, with 250 engineers distributed in 20 locations across four continents. Rony earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. Rony also served eight years in the Israeli Air Force, where he received intensive technical and officer's leadership training. He retired with the rank of Major.

Application Delivery at PGE currently uses both waterfall and iterative work management methodologies. PGE’s IT uses these to support six internal lines of business with their project and production support needs. PGE started the agile journey in 2009 in aid of a large scale multi-project initiative to roll-out network read meters for our customers. Over the subsequent four and half years, that experience was extended into where PGE’s IT delivery is today. Scaling to the enterprise required the synthesis of many different viewpoints, overcoming the deficiencies of agile training as applied in larger circumstances, and fabricating new processes and tools to enhance and manage the value of delivery. During this talk Mark will share highlights of what was valuable, what was a struggle, what he would do the same if starting over, and what he would do differently.

Bio: Mark Menger is a passionate leader in the adoption of Scrum at Portland General Electric, believing strongly in the underpinning concepts of servant leadership and self-organization. He led four Scrum teams and the enterprise architecture function of PGE’s multi-million dollar Automated Metering Infrastructure initiative. As the supervisor of Application Delivery Services, he is currently scaling PGE’s adoption of Agile software delivery to 14 teams across six business client functions. This effort includes business client relationship development, and improvements in quality assurance and engineering practices. When he’s not rooting for the Timbers, the remainder of his attention is focused on Sailflow reports for the Columbia and Willamette rivers.

This event is free and is at Puppet Labs. It begins at 6:30 pm with pizza, sponsored by PNSQC (Many thanks to both Puppet Labs and PNSQC for supporting agile in Portland).

The program starts at 7:00 pm.

After the program you're invited to join us for a no-host gathering at a nearby brewpub for further discussion.

Some Agile software teams struggle to colocate their members so the software developers and testers can be near each other at work. What happens when development team members have the luxury of sitting together, but still want something more? We took the bold step of colocating some development teams with their end-users. We had lofty goals and some specific expectations, but ended up with some unexpected results, as well.

This presentation covers a case study and a retrospective on our company's effort to colocate development teams with their end users. It discusses reasons for moving the teams, as well as the lessons learned and the changes made to our process. The experiment caused our development organization re-examine its best practices and processes. We think these lessons are applicable to teams regardless of their industry and experience.

About the speaker...

Mary Panza is the scrum master at Parametric Portfolio Associates in Seattle, Washington. She has supported, tested and managed software for the past twenty years for various companies around the Puget Sound area. Mary’s passion has always been problem-solving and process improvement, as well as seeing the human side of software development. In her free time, she enjoys volunteering for the Seattle Mountaineers, an outdoor education non-profit.

Fluency is "what you can say without having to think about how to say it." "Refactoring" is a language that describes ways to make your code suck less. I want to inspire you to become more fluent in that language, so you can make your code suck less without having to think about it.

Note for Agile PDX: this presentation is in no small part an homage to, and a continuation of, "Therapeutic Refactoring" by Katrina Owen. If you have time, you might enjoy watching that talk first: http://confreaks.com/videos/1071-cascadiaruby2012-therapeutic-refactoring

About the speaker...

Sam Livingston is a developer from sunny* Portland, Oregon. Sam's been working in code since 1998, in Ruby since 2006, and at LivingSocial since 2012. He likes TDD/BDD/TATFT, pair programming, and refactoring—but finds that long walks on the beach tend to result in sandy keyboards.

• YMMV

Instilling good habits isn't easy: Just ask anyone trying to give up a bad one. It's more challenging trying to change the habits of 100,000. Matt will discuss efforts at Intel to accelerate adoption of better technical capabilities, and the impediments faced by teams in adopting new skills under pressure.

Bio:

Matt Plavcan is a Technical Practices Coach with the Intel's Emergent Systems and Coaching team. He has worked at Intel for sixteen years, and has been writing code for three decades. His previous jobs include hardware validation for the Pentium 4 and Core microprocessors and teaching Intel architecture at the University of Illinois. Matt is the founder of the Code Dojo and Retreat program at Intel, which uses dedicated practice to hone professional programming skills.

In this workshop, attendees will experience our Intentional Method of introducing children (ages 10+) to programming (in java) using recipes . We use Agile techniques such as pair programming, randoris, short iterations, re-factoring & test-driven development in teaching. Pair instructors model Agile practices while teaching. Learn how to teach technical processes using Agile techniques. Although we’ve mostly used our method with children, we have also successfully taught adults using similar methodologies.

Note: on Tue 18 March there is a version of this event for kids to try it out along with their peers and parents: http://calagator.org/events/1250465864

Note: There will be hands-on sections of this presentation. While not everyone will need a laptop, please bring one if you can, and set it up with the courseware & eclipse from our github account

full link: https://github.com/TeachingKidsProgramming/TeachingKidsProgramming.Java

short link: http://lfal.co/tkpjava

About the speakers...

Llewellyn Falco learned to jump horses in the 7th grade while living in France. Back in states, while studying drafting in high school, he started fire eating, sleight of hand magic, and once rode a unicycle 6 miles. After learning to juggle torches, he joined a acrobatics group in college where he specialized on the trampoline and walking a slack rope. He can calculate the cube root of any perfect cube under 1,000,000 in his head, as well as pick a standard lock. He can rollerblade down a flight of stairs, backwards. Later, he has learned to play the doumbek (a type of drum), to accompaniment a belly dancing girlfriend. Llewellyn studied Tai Chi for 2 years, can throw a knife at 20 feet, and a playing card at 50. He has taught swing dancing, and loves to salsa. He is also an accomplished speed chess player. In the last year, he has been scuba diving over 20 times, become a guitar hero, and broke his personal record of paddle balling over 200 times. Llewellyn attributes his success to the large amount of caffeine he has consumed, and enjoys computer programming in his spare time.

Lynn Langit - Big Data Architect and Educator. Former FTE at MSFT (4 years). Awards – SQL Server MVP, Google Cloud Developer Expert, MongoDB Master. Lynn has done production work with SQL Server, MongoDB, AWS and Google databases and more. Lynn has over 150 BigData screencasts on her YouTube channel (SoCalDevGal). In addition to her work with Big Data, she is also the co-founder of a non-profit, ‘Teaching Kids Programming.’

The key to successful adoption of any development methodology is a clear understanding of the roles and responsibilities of each team member within that framework. As agile continues its rapid adoption, it’s essential to define the role of QA in Scrum as concretely as we’ve defined the other team roles.
Agile methodology gives QA an opportunity for broader and deeper involvement in the software development lifecycle, enabling us more effectively to ensure quality, not by finding defects, but by preventing the introduction of defects in the first place. Because quality starts with the user story, QA can drive defect prevention by asking key questions of product owners during requirements definition. We can ensure that comprehensive acceptance criteria are in place, to drive high quality development, testing, and story acceptance. We can also ask technical questions of developers. This results in more thoroughly defined user stories and prompts developers to consider additional issues, and avoid pitfalls in advance of implementation. Finally, to prevent the steady growth of technical debt, we must remind scrum masters to plan story points for fixing both known and unknown defects as part of every sprint. This presentation will teach you how to leverage Agile within your organization to see immediate improvements in the quality of your software delivery.

About the speaker... Karen Ascheim Wysopal has been in software QA for over 20 years, in roles including tester, release manager, software engineer, test automation engineer, and 8 years as QA manager. She’s spent the past five years at Hewlett Packard, and currently heads Quality & PMO in the Software and Web Services organization, overseeing HPConnected.com, ePrintcenter.com, and related HP web-connected print technologies. She was a leader in the organization’s transition to Agile last year. Karen has presented at the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference. Her professional passions are building high functioning innovative teams from the ground up, defining processes that encompass a holistic approach to quality, and speaking on best practices to foster improvements across the industry. She can’t seem to stop breaking software.

It is a common pattern for advocates of any kind (Agile, Quality, Process Improvement methods, Waterfall, etc.) to start off banging a drum with almost religious zealotry. “This is the way to achieve quality products!” “Follow me or be cast aside!” I have certainly done this and many of the change agents and forward thinkers I respect in the industry have struggled with this as well in their careers. However, riding a train of dogmatic viewpoints and practices has, in many cases, ruined the original efforts of change agents and more tragically, created bad patterns of development. This presentation (also presented at the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference earlier this year) will explore how we can clarify our intentions and work towards creating an environment where the people involved are empowered to think and experiment but still march in the same general direction. As product development becomes more and more complex, different approaches are needed to get to the right outcome and we can no longer afford to apply rigid methods that worked for a simpler environment. This presentation will help the audience think critically about where they are being too dogmatic in their efforts while introducing some new ways of thinking around complex adaptive systems and complex product development. The full paper written for this conference presentation can be found here: http://www.uploads.pnsqc.org/2013/papers/t-095_Stadick_paper.pdf

Our Speaker: Rhea Stadick is an Organizational Coach at Intel, Corp. She has spent the last eight years in software quality and development of engineering teams. Today she helps organizations across her company develop cultures and competencies to create thriving work environments that support excellence in product development. She received her B.S. in Computer Science from Oregon State University and M.B.A. from Willamette University. For the past several years she has organized the Rose City Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN) in the Portland-metro area that gathers professionals in the area to learn and network.

Anyone who has seen a few generations of computer technology knows that each generation brings in a whole new vocabulary. It seems like the same old thing but with all of the names changed. Why do they do that?

It helps us get unstuck. That's the short answer. Each generation brings with it unfamiliar capabilities. It takes serious effort to find application for those capabilities and hiding the good stuff among the familiar just makes doing new things harder.

In this presentation I'll describe my own lurch forward over the last two years. The web, which has been stuck in its own way, has busted free. Its a great time to try something new. Some of this is technology, some methodology, and some community. All of it impresses me. Let me tell you why it's important.

Bio: Ward Cunningham made the first wiki 18 years ago to host the conversation that became agile software developments. Now, two years into developing a truly modern wiki he finds that he must approach programming a completely different way.

This event is free and is at Puppet Labs. It begins at 6:30 pm with pizza, sponsored by PNSQC (Many thanks to both Puppet Labs and PNSQC for supporting agile in Portland).

The program starts at 7:00 pm.

After the program you're invited to join us for a no-host gathering at a nearby brewpub for further discussion.

“A Matter of Survival: What Wilderness Survival Can Tell Us about Software Development.”

In a book titled Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why, Lawrence Gonzales explores the qualities of individuals and groups who survive under extraordinary conditions. This presentation asserts that there are similarities between an extended trek through the woods and software development, and that the qualities that enable one to survive in the woods can help us to be more successful in our projects. Along the way, it borrows from recent research in Neuroscience, Psychology, and Systems Science to provide some understanding about how and why fostering these qualities might be helpful.

Our speaker, Michael Kelly is a veteran of numerous software development campaigns. He's built software for power companies and banks, for the trucking industry and education, for internet start-ups and established companies, for his own companies and for others. Throughout, he has worked hard to master the craft of writing software and delve into the mysteries of Agile. Currently, he is working with the excellent folks at DAT Solutions to develop the next generation of software for the trucking industry.

Details and Pizza:

This event is free. No need to RSVP. It begins at 6:30 pm with pizza, sponsored by PNSQC (Many thanks to both Puppet Labs and PNSQC for supporting agile in Portland).

The program starts at 7:00 pm.

After the program you're invited to join us for a no-host gathering at a nearby brewpub for further discussion.

Are you in an organization that isn't traditionally associated with agile? Perhaps the water bureau or a non-profit? Or are you in an organization that is committed to a very structured project, process or quality framework? Either way our 4th Friday conversation this month is just for you.

If your organization somewhere in the middle; wanting to be agile but not entirely set up for it OR you are in a well oiled agile shop, my experience is that the folks applying agile in non-traditional places have a lot to teach us. Come join the conversation!

If we are “doing agile” why isn't every team “doing it the same”? Let’s chat about the reasons (positive and negative) about the differences between teams at your organizations. What it the impact on the individuals and companies? Why should we be similar in actions? Where does it make sense to differ? How do we avoid dysfunctions between teams, management, and other important roles & partners as we honor differences?

A self-organized team is perhaps the holy grail of agile. Ideally, scrum masters work themselves out of a job as the team becomes less dependent on managers, scrum masters, and project managers. But how is this achieved; what does it take to get there? Can a scrum master simply step away from a self-directed team yet everything remains seamless? Or does a team still benefit from coaching and facilitation to improve sprint after sprint? Let’s share our successes and failures of teams past and present so as a community we can seek that holy grail!

Limited spots! Reserve your seat at https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/239176786/ before the waitlist kicks in.

Doors open half hour before noon for those who wish to purchase a lunch and settle in before we begin.

Need more hints and tips about one of our newest locations? http://agilepdx.org/westside_hints_and_tips.html

It's happened to the best of us. We hold or participate in a great retrospective with high energy and then…nothing. Retrospectives that identify key learnings but don't cause us to adapt and improve as a team can leave us feeling stalled. With no follow up, teams may no longer see the value of holding these key agile ceremonies and sometimes abandon them altogether.

Why does this continue to be a challenge for Agile teams? What can we do to make retrospectives useful and a key enabler of continuous learning and improvement in our teams? How do we bring the high energy and insightful discussion to our retrospectives and keep that momentum for change going?

We invite you to join us and share your experiences in leading great retrospectives or listen to other agile practitioners share theirs. We will explore what might cause lack of action and identify practical steps we can take to get the most out of our team retrospectives.

Please note that this month we are meeting on the third Friday, Dec 15 to avoid the holiday rush.

As usual we gather on the 4th Friday of the month for a west side lunch discussion.

This time we focus on our Fastest Fails and Quickest Learning Moments. We know we are supposed to fail fast and learn but do we? Come and share your quickest learning moments and encourage the rest of us that failing fast is normal and something to encourage.

And we promise, no agilists will be hurt in the production of this meeting.

W. Edwards Deming said in his book Out of the Crisis, "The most important figures that one needs for management are unknown or unknowable, but successful management must nevertheless take account of them." Are metrics truly valuable for our teams and who is the most important audience? What dysfunction might we introduce with "measurable" metrics? What positive results could we see with collecting team data?

Let's explore the benefits, risks, and how to avoid abuse of metrics as they relate to teams. Bring your worst nightmares, your success stories, then let's compare and see how we can effectively evaluate the use of metrics and the types of metrics we use in our Agile teams.

True or false? While Agile is meant to focus teams and companies on delivering customer value, very few Agile adopters today are actually measuring value. What have you have found to be true in your experience?

Strangely, we often hear of teams adopting many great Agile practices but missing this core element of true value delivery. What might be holding our Agile teams back? What stories can we share of Agile teams measuring value in meaningful ways? Why is it so difficult to measure customer and business value? What actually works? Is it measurement that most affects a team's focus on understanding and delivering value or the culture of the company?

Imagine coming to work every day where you're free to be your authentic self, you have open trust with all of your coworkers, and you can easily focus together, experiment, and create great value without regard to role or hierarchy. What if all individuals and teams got to experience this kind of open, creative, productive, inspiring workplace? We too often see that this is not the case for ourselves or our teams as we often lack Psychological Safety in our work environment.

So what are the culprits that cause this lack of safety? Is it miscommunication, politics, old management practices, or something else? Join us as we explore the challenges to Psychological Safety and learn from each other's experiences where Psychological Safety was at it's best and teams thrived. If you've been on either side of this Safety line, we invite you to share your experiences and what has helped your teams to open up or caused them to shut down.

Continuing with our theme of learning, the Westside cafe will discuss how we can create a culture where it is ok to probe deeply into our mistakes without fear.

Please join us Nov 17th for this discussion.

[Note: This session will be held at the McMenamins Cornelius Pass Roadhouse. Please ask the host at the front of the Imbrie Hall building for the AgilePDX group's location.]

As usual we gather on the 4th Friday of the month for a west side lunch discussion. The topic focuses on Product Owners:

• What makes a Product Owner great?

• What does a Product Owner do for the team?

• How can we best fulfill the intention of this role?

Share your experiences, techniques, and ideas on product ownership, allowing us to dive beyond the theoretical and documented responsibilities.