Hi all,

We had a great turnout in both May and June, so we're going to continue the trend. Our next meeting of XPDX and APLN-PDX will once again fall on the third Friday of the month.

Friday, July 18, 1:00 pm until 3:00-ish or whenever the compelling conversations break up. At McMenamins on NE Broadway and 15th Ave. near Lloyd Center

We'll have a bit of formal discussion this time about venues on the west side, and whether we want to have occasional speakers. Maybe in the fall?

Spread the word. Come along and give us your thoughts. Or just come for the beer and McMenamins burgers. Or the tots. Mmmmm. Tots.

See you there, Diana

Hi all!!! To both of you - may the future be bright, happy and filled with continued blessings from above gold I've just been sitting around waiting for something to happen. gold element, gold, I just don't have anything to say.

In October, SolutionsIQ organized an entertaining, educational, and well-attended panel on Incremental Architecture.

In November, Michael Kelly will present our next evening meeting topic, Agile Methodologies: A Matter of Survival.

Metaphorically, we frequently think of things as surviving where there's no real threat to life. Companies survive. Products, and the teams that produce them, survive. Individual members of the team continue to be a member of the team by virtue of their ability to survive. In all these activities we see the same lively dance of competition and cooperation, of adaptation and evolution, within a constantly changing environment.

Michael Kelly, a survivor of numerous software campaigns, will bring together the insights of famed survival writer Laurence Gonzales, some rather surprising research into the neuroscience of decision making, and some hair-raising personal experiences to illuminate the importance of agile methodologies and suggest some potential new directions.

This is our usual monthly meeting for the month of November. Remember the location and time for future meetings! Third Wed of the month, at CubeSpace.

This 1-day session combines high-level insight and specific tactical thinking to address these issues and more. It will help you create plans that extend out 6 months or more, that drive reliable decision-making and on-time delivery, and that leave teams and organizations feeling supported. Topics will include agile release planning, iteration planning, and various approaches to estimation, such as unit-less points, ideal time, and the popular planning poker technique.

These classes are offered just once at this federally subsidized rate - at 10% of the regular cost. So please take advantage of this session, as it will not be available again at this price and these classes sell out quickly!

Trainer: Mitch Lacey, Agile Author & Presenter

Mitch is an agile practitioner and trainer, having managed plan-driven and agile projects for the past 12 years. He is the author of "Adventures in Promiscuous Pairing", "Transitioning to Agile: Key Lessons Learned in the Field", and "The Impacts of Poor Estimating - and How to Fix It". He has presented at the 2006 Agile Conference, the 2007 PMI Global Congress, the 2007 SQE Agile development conference, and the 2008 Agile and Better Software Conferences.

*This training opportunity is funded, in part, with Employer Workforce Training Funds administered by the Oregon Department of Community Colleges and Workforce Development.

$199 for members $199 for non members

Monthly, 3rd Friday meeting of the Extreme Programming user group conversation meeting to discuss all things Agile and Extreme Programming.

Lean methods in software development have progressed from conceptual understanding to practical techniques that people are using to solve problems and ship software today. The Lean toolkit augments or enhances the practices that are available to today's Agile practitioner. Lean expands the organizational scope of Agile and provides a rich and robust set of methods for process improvement.

Corey Ladas is a Lean Software Development consultant and practitioner who focuses on evolving local development processes through systematic self-organization and continuous improvement. He will discuss and demonstrate some of the techniques from his new book, Scrumban: Essays on Kanban Systems for Lean Software Development.

Pizza at 6:30pm, talk at 7pm, beer after. Pizza is sponsored by YesMail. As ever, we will follow the meeting with a chat and hang out at a local pub.

Join other XP and agile methdology practitioners and enthusiasts for a lunchtime discussion.

XPDX is group of IT professionals in the Portland, Oregon area that are interested in Extreme Programming and Agile software development methodologies.

Agile Open Northwest, an alliance of agile practitioners in the US Pacific Northwest region, invite you to our 3rd annual conference Agile Open Northwest 2009 "Agile for Real".

The Northwest has a wealth of practitioners with years of real-world experience with agile methods and self-organizing teams. Agile Open Northwest offers an opportunity to strengthen our community of practice and co-create the future for agile development in our region.

Your hosts designed this event to allow practitioners like you to meet in self-organizing groups where we can share our latest ideas, challenges, hopes, experiences and experiments.

Elisabeth Hendrickson will be coming to facilitate our February meeting. Here's her description:

UPDATE: SolutionsIQ are sponsoring pizza for twenty - arriving at 6:30 <<<

"It will essentially be a shorter preview of the Agile2009 demo I proposed at http://agile2009.agilealliance.org/node/641

Here's the blurb:

Agile teams practicing Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) define acceptance tests collaboratively while discussing each story. This practice helps uncover assumptions and confirm that everyone has a shared understanding of what “done” looks like. During implementation, the technical team automates the natural-language Acceptance Tests by writing code to wire them up to the emerging software. In this way, ATDD tests become executable requirements. This session is a demonstration of the full ATDD workflow from initial discussions through final demo, and everything in between."

Monthly late lunch at a pub featuring, food, beers, and casual conversation to share our experiences with Agile methods/practices/approaches/events. A time for more discussion of the speaker meeting topic (or not) from Wednesday night.

Pair Programming has many benefits for a team above and beyond coding, yet it's still one of the hardest XP practices to get into. Ping Pong pairing is a lot of fun and is my favourite way to pair. It has a game-like style that instils good pairing and TDD practices. So come along to the next XPDX meeting to try it out. It doesn't matter if you've been pairing for years or want to try it for the first time. This will be a chance to learn from each other. We'll spend a little time getting to know the mechanics of Ping Pong pairing, do a brief demonstration, and then all pair up for over an hour of practice.

Absolutely positively bring a laptop with you. We'll be using Java, JUnit, and Eclipse. A big time saver will be to ensure that you have the Java SDK installed beforehand.

Thanks to VersionOne there'll be pizza for thirty! <<<

Be there at 6:30pm for the pizza. We'll start at 7pm. At 9pm we'll move on to a local bar.

Monthly pub lunch featuring our stories about "doing" & "being" Agile; i.e., using XP, Scrum, Lean, et al, for software development. Seasoned practitioners and new-to-Agile welcome. We're usually at one (or more) of the long tables in the middle.

[Full details at http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1899638/ ] Software projects start with functionality and requirements. The clarity and quality of the requirements drive the deliverables of the project and set the expectations of customers. Managing requirements can be a challenge because we have been taught to capture all requirements up front, and achieve customer sign off. This process does not allow for change, and all software projects have change.

Enter user stories. Authoring project requirements as user stories is one of the most common approaches across any agile method. In this course, you will learn what a user story is, how to build and author them and how to manage and communicate them to users.

The course format consists of multiple lecture topics, group exercises and group discussion. Ample time will be devoted to analysis of the "real-world" industry experiences of the instructor based on case study examples and experiences managing agile projects and coaching agile project teams.

SAOpdx #OTN #Agile

Chris Sterling and Michael Tardiff are coming to Portland and will be running April's XPDX session:

"We know about items on the product backlog, and getting them to “Done.” We know about impediments, and removing them as soon as possible. And agile methods lead us toward shipping software with zero defects, we hope. But bugs remain, for now, and we think of and treat them quite differently from stories, tasks, and other work items—perhaps to our, and our project’s, detriment. Buy why? We need your help finding an answer, or posing better questions.

In this interactive session, we’ll explore the wealth of thoughts, opinions, and especially the strong feelings behind the things we call bugs."

Pizza is sponsored by YesMail <<<

Pizza arrives at 6:30pm, the session starts at 7pm, and at 9pm we move on to a local bar.

This 3 day series of classes covers the essential principles and practices for testing software in an Agile context. It is structured as a series of 1-day classes so that you can take all three days, or just choose one or two. Please see the registration page or course description for more information.

Elisabeth Hendrickson came to Portland last month to introduce us to Acceptance Test Driven Development at XPDX. She'll be back in town in April to run a three day workshop: Agile Testing Series.

There are still places available -- be quick to get a spot as I expect that this will sell out soon.

What: Agile Testing Series When: April 28 - 30, 2009 Where: McMenamin's Kennedy School, Portland, OR Instructors: Elisabeth Hendrickson and Dale Emery Cost: Before March 29, $499/day. Group discounts also available.

Description: This is a 3 day series of 1-day classes on the essential principles and practices in Agile Testing: - Day 1: Adapting to Agile (also known as the "WordCount Simulation") - Day 2: Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) in Practice - Day 3: Exploratory Testing in an Agile Context

These classes involve lots of exercises, demonstrations, and discussions, and absolutely no slideshows, and no long, boring lectures.

For more information, please see the registration page: http://www.regonline.com/ATS042809

They're also offering this same series of classes in Pleasanton, CA the preceding week if you know anyone in the SF Bay Area who might be interested. See: http://www.regonline.com/ATS042209

Whenever we attend an Open Space conference, the sessions on Agile Learning Games are always among the most fun and best attended. This will be a self-organized play party hosted by Chris Sims of the Technical Management Institute and Elisabeth Hendrickson of Quality Tree Software. There will be refreshments, and plenty of room to spread out and play.

Agenda

At 6 pm, Willem Larsen will demonstrate "Where are your keys?" a revolutionary language learning game.

At 7 pm, we'll all share--and play--our favorite Agile learning games. This evening is a preview and warm-up event for our daylong workshop, "Creating Agile Learning Games for Coaches & Consultants," to be held on Friday, May 1 at the Kennedy School.

Presented by Chris Sims and

This is a full day, experiential introduction that focuses primarily on the project management elements of Agile. It's ideal for anyone who is going to be or wants to be invovled in an agile project: developers, product people, managers, and of course, project managers.

Course Description:

On a software project, uncertainty is certain. The customer will change their mind, a 'must have' feature will be discovered, deadlines will move, or an unexpected competitive threat will need to be countered. The agile approach to project management allows the team to easily adjust to these changing conditions in order to produce the most valuable software possible.

This experiential workshop teaches the fundamentals of agile project management, and is recommended for everyone who will be involved in an agile project. We will explore the key roles, responsibilities, interactions, and processes that make a successful agile project happen.

Participants will learn:

• Estimation
• Release planning
• Prioritization
• The rhythm of iterative development and delivery
• The flow of deliverables
• Roles and responsibilities
• Communication on an agile team
• Empirical process control
• Agile metrics
• Simple tools for managing agile projects

The workshop focuses on practical 'how to' skill development, while providing enough theory so that participants will understand why the techniques work. Interactive exercises allow participants to learn by doing. Class notes, suggestions for further reading, and free follow-on consulting are all included to ensure that the workshop's lessons can be effectively applied back in the 'real world'.

BTW: We want $550 for the privilege of hearing us speak.

Love it or hate it, everyone seems to be talking about Agile. Agile is used at scrappy startups that are iteratively defining their products and markets and at large companies with complex business problems working with internationally distributed teams. In each of these different settings, some folks are strong advocates of Agile, while some are still skeptics. Some people in the User-Centered Design (UCD) community dismiss Agile as a fad, others have embraced it whole-heartedly. Can these two worlds intersect?

The first wave of Agile software development challenged waterfall project management methodologies and traditional Quality Assurance. The next wave of Agile challenges on-premise software through what is known as Software-as-a-Service (or SaaS).

Using Sun Tzu's timeless classic "The Art of War" as a framework, Founder/CEO of Cubic Compass, Mike Leach, presents principles and practices for creating an Agile SaaS organization that challenges the status quo of software development and delivery.

Pizza thanks to John Wilger at 6:30pm <<<

Casual conversation over no-host lunch about all things relevant to Agile software development. Sometimes a few of us show up to talk, more often a dozen (or more) practitioners join the fun.

• If your business card says programmer, tester, project manager, product manager or coach (or would if you had one)
• If you use Agile methods, practices, principles or approaches
• If you seek opportunities to keep working for companies that prefer an Agile approach
• If you want to recruit dev team members who know how to work in an Agile environment
• If you're curious about any the above Come on over for lunch.

We welcome practitioners from all Agile flavors--Scrum, XP, DSDM, Crystal, FDD, AUP, Adaptive, EVO, etc.

Learn everything you need to know about agile planning in this two-day course. Using a combination of lectures and hands-on simulations, we teach you:

• Estimating
• Story writing
• Iteration/Sprint planning
• "Done Done"
• Release planning
• Adaptive planning
• Risk management
• Vision
• Working with stakeholders

Project managers, product managers, coaches, ScrumMasters, team leads, and anyone involved in planning agile projects will benefit from this course.

Results

After completing this course, you will be prepared to:

• Reliably make and meet iteration commitments
• Reliably make and meet release commitments
• Create, estimate, and prioritize stories and features
• Get work to "done done" every iteration
• Collaborate with stakeholders to clarify and communicate requirements and your product vision

About the Instructors

James Shore is a prominent figure in the Agile software development community. He consults with development teams worldwide to help them meet commitments, improve product quality and increase productivity. James is co-author of The Art Of Agile Development.

Diana Larsen consults with leaders and teams to create work processes where innovation, inspiration, and imagination flourish. With more than fifteen years of experience working with technical professionals, Diana brings focus to the human side of organizations, teams and projects. Diana co-authored Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great! and is current chair of the Agile Alliance Board of Directors.

Testimonials

"The facilitators were excellent! I really enjoyed the 'jump in and swim' approach to applying what we learned as we went." --Bill Jackson III, Senior Software Engineer, Oracle Corp.

"[The instructors] had a lot of experience to draw from which enabled them to map Agile solutions to real situations." --Don Dornblaser, Director, WebMD

"[The course] Introduced techniques that are on the cutting edge of Agile which solve or answer questions I have in the real world." --Dan Nelson, Sr. Software Engineer, FEI Company

Learn everything you need to know about agile delivery in this three-day course. We use an innovative course structure that allows you to do real agile software development in cross-functional teams. Using two instructors and splitting the group as appropriate, we ensure that programmers get plenty of technical depth without boring everyone else.

You'll learn:

• Eliminating bugs
• Incremental requirements
• Working with stakeholders
• Customer tests and acceptance test-driven development
• Test-driven development
• Refactoring
• Code management
• Continuous integration
• Exploratory testing
• Pairing
• Incremental design and risk-driven architecture
• Cross-functional collaboration

Programmers, testers, on-site customers, business analysts, project managers, product managers, ScrumMasters, coaches, team leads, and anyone else on an agile team will benefit from this course.

Results

After completing this course, you will be prepared to:

• Work in a cross-functional team with on-site customers, testers, and programmers
• Understand and accommodate diverse stakeholder opinions
• Build and ship complete increments of software in one-week iterations
• Create nearly bug-free code using test-driven development, refactoring, and exploratory testing
• Prevent build failures with continuous integration
• Build technical infrastructure incrementally alongside features

Testimonials

"I don't know how they pulled off the [class project], but going through four iterations brought the concepts home. Also I was a programmer wanting to learn about the project development side. Diana's four-quadrant diagrams (about stakeholders) were enlightening as was Jim's [incremental design] box diagrams and analogy of TDD to double-entry bookkeeping. Thank you!!" --Steve Tamura, Developer

"Extremely educational--lots of new material. Well organized." --Dave Goldman, Senior Developer, Inspiration Software

"They were great. They were funny, understanding, and answered questions well." --Ven Cohen, Programmer/Technical Lead, ISI

Brian Marick is in town to talk with us about the spirit of Agile:

A problem with the word “Agile” is that everyone already thinks they understand it at a gut level. Worse, everyone already thinks they’re agile in spirit. (After all, the thesaurus tells us the alternative is to be clumsy, stiff, slow, and dull.) So it’s too easy for people to feel free to launch into “doing Agile” without ever having a serious conversation about what that actually means.

This problem is easily fixed. We’ll just stop talking about “Agile” and start speaking of “artisanal retro-futurism crossed with team-scale anarcho-syndicalism.” There is, I think, no danger that anyone will reflexively say, “Yes! That’s just what I’ve been wanting to do all along!”

The new name does more than just encourage conversation. It encourages conversation about those very properties of Agile that have become obscure as Agile has been commoditized. In this session, I’ll unpack the meanings of the new phrase and encourage you to rediscover what’s been lost.

Casual conversation over no-host lunch about all things relevant to Agile software development. Sometimes a few of us show up to talk, more often a dozen (or more) practitioners join the fun.

• If your business card says programmer, tester, project manager, product manager or coach (or would if you had one)
• If you use Agile methods, practices, principles or approaches
• If you seek opportunities to keep working for companies that prefer an Agile approach
• If you want to recruit dev team members who know how to work in an Agile environment
• If you're curious about any the above Come on over for lunch.

We welcome practitioners from all Agile flavors--Scrum, XP, DSDM, Crystal, FDD, AUP, Adaptive, EVO, etc.

For July’s meeting, Diana Larsen will run a retrospective for us. We’re going to cover the last year of XPDX activities.

This will be a good chance to see a well-run end of project retrospective. It’ll also be a chance to come weigh in and change what we do for next year.

Beer afterward will be at the Lucky Lab a few blocks from the meeting place (given our discoordination last month, we decided to figure the most important parts out ahead of time).

I hope to see several of you there.

We learn more, more quickly, and more deeply, once we redefine true learning as fluency, and play our way to getting there.


"Where are your Keys?", a language learning game system developed by Evan Gardner, is an integrated set of teaching techniques that creates fluent speakers in a language without resorting to textbooks or homework.  You can play the game anywhere, anytime, with anyone, so long as you have a single fluent speaker of the target language.


Because "Where are your Keys?" is a game, learning how to play the game also trains you to teach the game.  You can take your level of fluency and teach another person up to your level.  It is a way for a community to rapidly teach themselves a language by making every learner a new teacher.


"Where are your Keys" teaches not only language, but principles of learning that can be applied to any skill or field of knowledge.


Rather than presenting a lecture, Evan Gardner and Willem Larsen will actually run and debrief the game so everyone will have a hands-on experience (and a spankin' good time!).

We're going to talk about some of the best new stuff to come out at the Agile 2009 conference in Chicago. Oh, and drink beer, which is why we're setting the meeting at a brewpub.

Depending on the interests of those who show, those of us who went may reprise parts of the talks we gave that worked, sections of other peoples' sessions in which we learned something cool, or quick info-dumps about new thoughts expressed in hallway conversations. Certainly, we'll spur conversations - this won't be a 90-minute talking head. Topcis could include testing (end-to-end and otherwise), real options (and feature pricing), kanban planning, metrics, or really just about anything.

David Wheeler will be giving his "Unit Test Your Database" talk. It was well-received at Open Source Bridge; now he's giving it to an audience of Agile practitioners.

We’re all used to unit testing our applications by now. The Extreme and Agile programming movements have done a great deal to promote unit testing, to the extent that many of us are now dependent on tests to assure that our applications work reliably. But how often do we test the database underlying our applications? Given that the database, as the repository for all of the knowledge and data for an application, just might be the single most important part of that application, the time for standardized database unit testing has come.

This talk promotes the practice of writing and running unit tests that directly test the schema, storage, and functionality of application databases. Following a review of the available PostgreSQL unit testing frameworks, we’ll review examples of testing tables, views, columns, constraints, indexes, triggers, and functions. The idea is to promote complete test coverage every aspect of a database, independent of application unit tests, to ensure reliably canonical data integrity.

Pizza and networking at 6:30pm, 7pm talk, beer afterwards.

This is an informal lunch that happens regularly on the first Friday of the month. Come chat about agile software development with practitioners and folks who would like to be practitioners. Interest is required; experience is not.

SolutionsIQ Certified ScrumMaster Training gives you all the tools and information you need to get started with Scrum and Agile. Delivered by SolutionsIQ’s world-renowned Certified ScrumMaster Trainers, this course shares time-tested practices for managing Product Backlogs, planning your releases and iterations (Sprints), and tracking and reporting progress. You’ll learn how to lead Sprint Planning meetings, Daily Scrum meetings, Sprint Review meetings, Sprint Retrospectives, and much more.

Who should attend: All software team members, including project managers, team leads, development managers, product managers, architects,

developers, testers, as well as executives (e.g. CIOs and CTOs). Note: This course provides a Scrum Product Owner certification through the Scrum Alliance.

PMI Credits: This course can be claimed for 14 PDUs with the PMI institute.

<img src="http://www.solutionsiq.com/images/register.gif"

border="0"> Cost:$1200 per student 20% Early Bird Discount if registered by October 10th, 2009 Also, 5th Seat Free! Register 5 or more, registration for 5th student is free!

We're going to do a group activity on TDD. Please bring some tests -- good, bad, or interesting / enlightening in some way. (A USB stick is a good idea.) We’re going to discuss them, refactor them as a group, and generally use them as the fixed points around which we can discuss all things that improve our ability to design well (since design is what TDD is about)

Pizza and networking at 6:30; meeting at 7; beer and discussion afterwards.

We'll have a discussion on one of the people issues associated with agile software development: how do you turn a bad situation around?

Just as legacy code is a set of problems that take special techniques to overcome, legacy interpersonal interactions are too. I'm pretty sure that unit tests aren't the answer for most interpersonal problems, either. :)

More seriously, it's pretty common to join a company or team with existing trust and communication (and yes, tech) issues. Come share ways of turning those into successes.

Pizza and networking at 6:30pm, 7pm talk, beer afterwards.

(Note: location is hard to get to via GPS or map service. Use directions here instead.)

This is the informal complement to the more formal XPDX meetings. Come, eat, and discuss all things related (however loosely) to agile software development. We welcome people of all experience levels, from guru to newcomer.

Announcing Agile Open Northwest 2010! This Agile Open Space event will be held February 9th and 10th, 2010, in the Seattle Center Northwest Rooms. Please see http://www.agileopennorthwest.org for registration information and further details.

We invite you to our fourth annual Agile Open Northwest conference. Alternating each year between Portland and Seattle, AONW conferences bring together practicing members of the Northwest Agile communities to explore the latest developments in agile software development. We held our third annual event last year in Portland and enjoyed another great success. Registration is $125.00 for both days, including light breakfast and lunch. This low-cost regional conference is a great opportunity to connect with the local agile community, experts and novices alike.

Please join us this year as we host 125 experienced, collaborative, committed agile practitioners from the Northwest U.S. (and beyond) in tackling the issues around our recurring theme "Agile for Real." As in past years, attendance is limited to a predetermined number in order retain the many advantages a small conference has to offer.

Here is a comment from a previous attendee:

"These two-day Agile Open Northwest conferences are an extremely good value. ..[Y]ou learn directly from practitioners in the agile community what works and what doesn't. I attended the first two of these conferences, they were stunningly good... loads of practical, useful stuff and stimulating discussions." -- Ian Savage, PNSQC Program Chair

More information can be found at http://www.agileopennorthwest.org. Registration is open now. We look forward to seeing you there.

We're happy to announce that Elisabeth Hendrickson will be speaking to the Portland Agile Users Group on Wednesday the 17th. She's an energetic and informative member of the greater agile community who periodically comes up from the Bay Area to share her knowledge with us. Her talk on ATDD[*] last year at CubeSpace was great fun and well-received.

This year she'll be taking us through an interactive simulation of an agile transition. When she ran this simulation at Agile 2009, it replicated a number of problems I've seen take months and years to play out on real software teams. Bring your team members! It's far less stressful to talk about problems in the context of an evening's simulation than in the context of three years of product development.

Pizza is sponsored by YesMail of InfoGroup Interactive. Pizza and networking start at 6:30; presentation starts at 7. If there's enough interest, we'll go to a pub afterward for further discussion.

[*] Acceptance-Test-Driven Development

SolutionsIQ Certified ScrumMaster Training gives you all the tools and information you need to get started with Scrum and Agile. Delivered by SolutionsIQ’s world-renowned Certified ScrumMaster Trainers, this course shares time-tested practices for managing Product Backlogs, planning your releases and iterations (Sprints), and tracking and reporting progress. You’ll learn how to lead Sprint Planning meetings, Daily Scrum meetings, Sprint Review meetings, Sprint Retrospectives, and much more.

On successful course completion, participants are eligible for Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) status with the Scrum Alliance.

Contact: Rachel Kjack 503.867.0742 [email protected]

This is the informal complement to the more formal agile users group meetings. Come, eat, and discuss all things related (however loosely) to agile software development. We welcome people of all experience levels, from guru to newcomer.

Scrum increases the emphasis on assessing and driving business value through close collaboration with the delivery team. The Scrum Product Owner establishes the interaction between the business and the delivery team that is so essential to increasing productivity within an Agile organization. Product Owners who assume this crucial role have the ability to guide the team and the process to gain the full benefit of Agile delivery. SolutionsIQ Certified Scrum Product Owner Training is interactive and highly experiential. Participants gain practical tools and techniques for engaging with software delivery teams.

Register: http://www.solutionsiq.com/Training/CourseProfile.aspx?ID=1

Jon Bach is coming to our local agile users group to tell us about his specialty, exploratory testing. Pizza at 6:30, meeting at 7.

Talk: "Exploratory Testing: Now In Session"

The agile nature of exploration and the ability of testers to rapidly apply their skills and experience make exploratory testing a widely used test approach—especially when time is short. But exploratory testing is often dismissed by project managers who assume that it is not reproducible, measurable, or accountable. If you share these concerns, a solution may lie in a technique called Session-Based Test Management (SBTM), developed by Jon and his brother James specifically to address these problems. In SBTM, testers are assigned areas of a product to explore, and testing is time boxed in "sessions" which have mission statements called “charters” to create a meaningful and countable unit of work. Jon discusses—and you can practice—the skills of exploration and demonstrates a freely available, open source tool to help manage your exploratoration.

Speaker Bio: Jon Bach has been in testing for 14 years, 12 of which has been as a manager. His experience includes managing teams at Microsoft, HP and LexisNexis, and is currently a managing consultant for Quardev, Inc. -- a Seattle test lab. He speaks frequently about test management and exploratory testing, and is the co-inventor (with his brother James) of Session-Based Test Management. He’s also written a few articles for testing magazines as well as a listed co-author of a Microsoft Patterns and Practices book on acceptance testing (available for free online). Find him on Facebook, Twitter, or his presentations and articles on http://www.quardev.com, where he also has a blog.

This is the informal complement to the more formal agile users group meetings. Come, eat, and discuss all things related (however loosely) to agile software development. We welcome people of all experience levels, from guru to newcomer.

SolutionsIQ Certified ScrumMaster Training gives you all the tools and information you need to get started with Scrum and Agile. Delivered by SolutionsIQ’s world-renowned Certified ScrumMaster Trainers, this course shares time-tested practices for managing Product Backlogs, planning your releases and iterations (Sprints), and tracking and reporting progress.

You’ll learn how to lead Sprint Planning meetings, Daily Scrum meetings, Sprint Review meetings, Sprint Retrospectives, and much more.

Contact: Rachel Kjack 503.867.0742

This is the informal complement to the more formal agile users group meetings. Come, eat, and discuss all things related (however loosely) to agile software development. We welcome people of all experience levels, from guru to newcomer.

Join us for a discussion of topics related to agile software development! Audience participation strongly encouraged. Pizza is at 6:30; discussion starts at 7.

For those unfamiliar with the term, a fishbowl discussion works like fishbowl coding: there are a small number of people who are up front and allowed to speak at any given time. If you want to ask a question or say something, swap in for one of the people up front. If you're up front and done speaking, sit back down in the audience.

Potential discussion topics include mock objects in testing; balancing ideology with reality; certification; no/low bugs in a codebase; contracting without being able to give a fixed bid. Or bring your own! We'll decide what we're discussing at the beginning of the meeting, but expect the conversation to wander.

SolutionsIQ Certified ScrumMaster Training gives you all the tools and information you need to get started with Scrum and Agile. Delivered by SolutionsIQ’s world-renowned Certified ScrumMaster Trainers, this course shares time-tested practices for managing Product Backlogs, planning your releases and iterations (Sprints), and tracking and reporting progress.

You’ll learn how to lead Sprint Planning meetings, Daily Scrum meetings, Sprint Review meetings, Sprint Retrospectives, and much more.

Agenda:

* Introduction to Agile
* Origins of Scrum
* The Scrum process
* Roles and responsibilities
* Product Backlog
* Estimating Product Backlog items
* Scaling Scrum
* Scrum in detail
* Sprints
* Sprint planning meeting
* Daily standup meeting
* Burndown charts and project reporting
* Sprint review and retrospective
* Getting started with Scrum
* Graduation and closing

This is the informal complement to the more formal agile users group meetings. Come, eat, and discuss all things related (however loosely) to agile software development. We welcome people of all experience levels, from guru to newcomer.

SolutionsIQ Certified Scrum Product Owner Training is interactive and highly experiential. Participants gain practical tools and techniques for engaging with software delivery teams.

When the capabilities of the Product Owner are optimized, an Agile team will experience immediate benefits that lead to improved effectiveness and customer satisfaction as well as increased return on investment (ROI).

* Boost Product Owner capabilities
* Optimize Agile teams
* Increase Scrum functionality
* Enhance planning and scheduling
* Gain practical, proven techniques
* Improve estimating skills and results
* Maximize delivery capabilities
* Reduce risk
* Improve ROI
* Leverage proven experience
* Obtain thought-leader guidance and insight

This is the informal complement to the more formal agile users group meetings. Come, eat, and discuss all things related (however loosely) to agile software development. We welcome people of all experience levels, from guru to newcomer.

Delivered by SolutionsIQ’s world-renowned Certified ScrumMaster Trainers, this course shares time-tested practices for managing Product Backlogs, planning your releases and iterations (Sprints), and tracking and reporting progress. You’ll learn how to lead Sprint Planning meetings, Daily Scrum meetings, Sprint Review meetings, Sprint Retrospectives, and much more.

Agenda:

* Introduction to Agile
* Origins of Scrum
* The Scrum process
* Roles and responsibilities
* Product Backlog
* Estimating Product Backlog items
* Scaling Scrum
* Scrum in detail
* Sprints
* Sprint planning meeting
* Daily standup meeting
* Burndown charts and project reporting
* Sprint review and retrospective
* Getting started with Scrum
* Graduation and closing

SolutionsIQ Certified Scrum Master (CSM) Training gives you all the tools and information you need to effectively apply Agile Scrum Project Management principles to your project or program.

Students will learn how to:

* Maintain and use a burndown chart
* Manage Product Backlogs
* Plan Releases and Iterations (Sprints)
* Conduct Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, Sprint Reviews & Retrospective meetings
* Track and Report progress
* Effectively apply the principles of the Agile Manifesto

All SolutionsIQ Agile training courses are highly interactive. Students will participate in discussions group-based exercises, and simulations.

Taught by Jim Shore, highly-respected author of “The Art of Agile Development”, and Diana Larsen, chair of the Agile Alliance and co-author of the acclaimed “Agile Retrospectives,” this training course provides knowledge you need to accelerate the adoption and practice of agile development.

Training Objectives: What You Will Learn

* Work consistently and reliably using iterations/Sprints
* Reliably release software on a regular basis
* Meet your commitments, even when things go wrong, by managing risks
* Take advantage of opportunities by adapting your plans
* Create, estimate, and prioritize minimum marketable features and user stories
* Collaborate with stakeholders to clarify requirements and product vision
* Get to “done done!”

Agenda:

This is a hands-on course with a heavy emphasis on doing, not watching! Topics include:

* Estimating
* Story writing
* The infrastructure outsourcing continuum
* Iteration/Sprint planning
* “Done Done”
* Release planning
* Adaptive planning
* Risk management
* Vision
* Working with stakeholders

This course gives you the hands-on experience and builds the skill set you will require to thoroughly understand and then utilize the real-world fundamentals of agile delivery. You also will learn to accelerate and enhance your adoption and practice of agile development within your organization.

Training Objectives: What You Will Learn

* Build and ship weekly increments of software using iterations/Sprints
* Create nearly bug-free code using test-driven development, refactoring, and exploratory testing
* Understand and accommodate stakeholders and their diverse opinions
* Work in a cross-functional team with on-site customers, testers, and programmers
* Prevent build failures with continuous integration
* Incrementally build technical infrastructure alongside features

Agenda:

In a class that emphasizes doing; you will form cross-functional teams and deliver actual software in four 90-minute iterations, in a real-world environment that includes version control, automated builds, and continuous integration. That’s right: you’ll design, build, test, and ship software, as well as build out your technical infrastructure, all in 90 minutes. If that sounds impossible, you must take this course.

Does everyone at your company respond to change as fast as your agile team? Or do you have critical partners who simply can't move as fast as your team? Are you required to provide detailed estimates in order to get enough resources to start uncertain and complex projects? How do you even build enough buy-in to avoid death by a thousand cuts? In this presentation, Nancy Van Schooenderwoert will explore practical, proven ways to address these questions.

Who should attend: Anyone trying to build enough buy-in for their company to give Agile methods a genuine try. Embedded systems developers and project leaders who need to envision the concrete workings of Agile practices in their domain, as a first step to making it happen.

Speaker: Nancy Van Schooenderwoert is an Agile Enterprise coach with over a decade of experience applying Agile practices as an engineer, manager, and consultant. She has led Agile change initiatives in safety-critical, highly regulated industries, and coached clients in the art of Agile technical and management leadership. Nancy's experience spans embedded software development and applications in aerospace, factory automation, medical devices, defense systems, as well as in financial services. In 1998 Nancy introduced agile techniques to embedded software, including safety- critical applications. She was among the first to publish advice on the techniques that work in real world embedded projects. She has introduced agile ideas and practices to another field where it was thought to be impossible – data warehousing and large data migrations. Coaches she mentored are now the leaders in this new field applying lean-agile principles to applications where data quality is central. Nancy Van Schooenderwoert is Principal Coach at Lean-Agile Partners Inc. www.LeanAgilePartners.com

Pizza sponsored by PNSQC starts at 6:30 p.m. Program starts at 7:00 p.m.

The Hawthorne Farm MAX station stops right next to Intel. See this map for the correct location:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Intel+Corporation,+hawthorne+farm,+hillsboro,+or&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=54.401733,61.523437&ie=UTF8&hq=Intel+Corporation,+hawthorne+farm,&hnear=Hillsboro,+Washington,+Oregon&t=h&ll=45.532372,-122.927656&spn=0.01189,0.01502&z=16&iwloc=A

Directions: From Cornell, head South on NE Elam Young Pkwy (near Costco). Take the first left to turn into the Intel parking lot. The HF3 campus will be directly in front of you. Parking is available on both sides of the building. Note: There are two NE Elam Young Pkwy streets that connect with Cornell. Go south on the street closest to Brookwood and Costco (between Brookwood and 51st).

Scrum increases the emphasis on assessing and driving business value through close collaboration with the delivery team. The Scrum Product Owner establishes the interaction between the business and the delivery team that is so essential to increasing productivity within an Agile organization. Product Owners who assume this crucial role have the ability to guide the team and the process to gain the full benefit of Agile delivery.

When the capabilities of the Product Owner are optimized, an Agile team will experience immediate benefits that lead to improved effectiveness and customer satisfaction as well as increased return on investment (ROI).

* Boost Product Owner capabilities
* Optimize Agile teams
* Increase Scrum functionality
* Enhance planning and scheduling
* Gain practical, proven techniques
* Improve estimating skills and results
* Maximize delivery capabilities
* Reduce risk
* Improve ROI
* Leverage proven experience
* Obtain thought-leader guidance and insight

Are you on a software engineering team? Does the project feel like a team effort all of the time? Between butting heads, agendas, communication issues, feature creep and shrinking schedules, these are difficult factors we all experience.

If you are in QA, learn how to move your Dev cohort to a test-first mentality. Or jump into a discussion on improving testing efficiency with risk based testing.

If you’re Dev, discover how to challenge your QA to add greater technical value throughout the project. Ever thought about co-ownership of code and tests? Come discuss and learn about the possibilities.

Join us for this full day Open Space structured event and engage with Agile luminaries such as Ward Cunningham, Wayne Allen, James Shore, Jeff McKenna, Rebecca Wirfs-Brock and Jon Bach. Special thanks to Diana Larson for helping facilitate!

We're meeting after the SAO day-long event,"Blurring the Lines between QA & Dev in an Agile Environment." Local Agilists will reflect on what we heard or said in presentations at the event, then we'll apply "personal kanban" to create table topic lists for the evening.

You don't have to have attended the SAO event to join us.

• If your business card says programmer, tester, project manager, product manager or coach (or would if you had one)
• If you use Agile methods, practices, principles or approaches
• If you seek opportunities to keep working for companies that prefer an Agile approach
• If you want to recruit team members who know how to work in an Agile environment
• If you're curious about any the above, Come on over.

We welcome practitioners from all Agile-related frameworks--Scrum, XP, Adaptive, EVO, Lean, Kanban, Scrumban, Crystal, FDD, AUP, DSDM, etc. And people who want to learn about same.

Agile PDX convenes a monthly 1st Friday practitioner's no-host lunch in central/eastside Portland Metro area as an informal complement to the more formal Agile PDX users group meetings (3rd Wednesday).

Come, eat, and discuss all things related (however loosely) to agile software development. We welcome people of all experience levels, from guru to newcomer, and people interested in all flavors of Agile - XP, scrum, crystal, evo, lean/kanban, FDD, build-your-own, etc.

There's also a 3rd Friday westside lunch. Watch for it too!

This course gives you the hands-on experience and builds the skill set you will require to thoroughly understand and utilize the real-world fundamentals of managing in an agile environment. The instructors bring their expertise in agile management, planning and development to help managers utilize their knowledge and skills to harness the power of an Agile organization.

Training Objectives: What you Will Learn

* Learn how Agile organizations work from a systemic perspective.
* Create strategic alignment between project teams and the rest of the organization.
* Explore practices for identifying and resolving business issues, setting goals and measuring progress, assessing organization culture, and using organization structure to effectively address the challenges facing you and your team.
* Examine the implications of Agile environments for managing human capabilities and handling human resources functions, such as, hiring, retention, reviews, and compensation.
* Learn how effective leaders manage the boundary between their Agile teams and the rest of the organization.
* Discover the latest brain research showing male/female differences and translate these findings into more effective strategies for coaching and mentoring within and across gender on high performing teams.

December 9th Rose City SPIN Seminar Announcement:

Beyond Acceptance Testing

Presented by BJ Clark

Dates/Times: Thursday, December 9th, 2010; Networking @ 6:00 PM; Seminar 7:00-8:00 PM Location: HF3 Auditorium, Intel Hawthorne Farms 3 (HF3) Campus, 5200 NE Elam Young Pkwy, Hillsboro, OR 97124 - View Map

Directions: From Cornell, head South on NE Elam Young Pkwy (near Costco). Take the first left to turn into the Intel parking lot. The HF3 campus will be directly in front of you. Parking is available on both sides of the building. Note that there are two NE Elam Young Pkwy streets that connect to Cornell. Use the west one, closest to Brookwood and Costco.

Abstract Fit, Fitness, and Cucumber have revolutionized development and brought the idea of acceptance-level testing and "Outside-in-development" to a whole community of developers, testers and product owners. But can we take the idea of acceptance testing to another level and test things other than the "correctness" of our software? What if we could also specify and test the quality of interaction in our applications? What if we could involve a whole other community of people, interaction designers and user experience professionals, in not just the ideation of our products, but the actual execution of the software itself? In beyond acceptance testing, we'll look into who could be writing acceptance tests and all the things that we could be testing that most of us currently aren't doing.

Speaker Bio

BJ Clark is a SE Portland based designer, "extreme programmer", and user experience professional. He works for Goldstar Events (goldstar.com) running skunk-works projects and working on the overall user experience. He has more than 10 years experience developing e-commerce platforms and working for numerous venture funded startups. You can read his blog at http://bjclark.me. He received his formal education in Fine Art and when not in front of a computer, likes to make furniture and wood-fired ceramics.

A Special Treat from PNSQC

Plan on coming early! In collaboration with the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC) the SPIN meeting will have pizza and pop provided by PNSQC beginning at 6:00 pm.

PNSQC is the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference, a group of volunteers interested in Software Quality. The Mission of the PNSQC is to enable knowledge exchange to produce higher quality software. As a non-profit, it seeks to promote software quality by providing education and opportunities for information exchange within the software community.

How to Register

This is a FREE lecture sponsored by the Rose City SPIN. Please RSVP to [email protected] so we know you’re coming!

Rose City SPIN

The Rose City Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN) is a monthly forum for networking, mutual support, and promotion of effective software practices. We exchange practical experiences, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and war stories about the technical, business, and human facets of software process improvement. The Rose City SPIN serves the software development community of the Portland/Vancouver metro area. Whether you work for a large company or a small one, corporate or self-employed, industrial or academic setting, you are welcome at the Rose City SPIN.

For our December Agile PDX evening meeting, James Shore and Arlo Belshee will be reprising their immensely popular Agile 2010 presentation, "Bloody Stupid Johnson Teaches Agile."

What is it? Almost impossible to explain! It's a farce and a parody of all things Agile. You have to see it for yourself!

The abstract:

This fun and energetic session features "Bloody Stupid" Johnson and his nemesis The Jester facing off to architect the Perfect Agile Process (PAP). On their journey, they will get just about everything wrong. Come learn what not to do and have a good time doing it.

This session received the highest ratings of the conference--actually, the highest two ratings of the conference, because they were invited to present a special encore session. (It was the only session that was invited to repeat.)

This event is free. It begins at 6:30 pm with pizza, sponsored by PNSQC (many thanks!). You will need to check in with security, so please arrive early.

The program starts at 7:00 pm.

Rich Claussen provided this custom map 'pin' http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/?org=aj#/fotw1o04svrqm3xg

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

For those who are curious, after the conference Dave Nicolette wrote a review of Jim and Arlo's session.

Agile PDX convenes a monthly 1st Friday practitioner's no-host lunch in central/eastside Portland Metro area as an informal complement to the more formal Agile PDX users group meetings (3rd Wednesday).

Come, eat, and discuss all things related (however loosely) to agile software development. We welcome people of all experience levels, from guru to newcomer, and people interested in all flavors of Agile - XP, scrum, crystal, evo, lean/kanban, FDD, build-your-own, etc.

There's also a 3rd Friday westside lunch. Watch for it too!

The Process Work Institute's parking entrance is at the west side of the building. Please park by the back side of the building and come to the only big room named "class room".

Let's experiment a new technology for communication!

WELCOME! Welcome to world of communication! This is one of my answers to “Is there an easier and cooler way to learn communication?”.

I have had so many troubles about communication. Human being science developed so much. There must be a new technology and practice to make things easier, and even cool way for me.

I am as a Tree hugger computer system engineer fascinated by transpersonal psychology and Process Oriented Ecology, Non Violent Communication and Deep Democracy. And I would like to mesh up and introduce for cool technical people.

And as you know, communication is important!

This new technology to inspire you about communication and team work is well designed for people who are very high functioning in technical area and interested in improving the art of communication.

Cost to Attend: Free

Organizer: Jiro Isetani

I am a student of Master of Art in Conflict Facilitation and Organizational Change at The Process Work Institute. I'm mainly from Japan, living in Portland since 1996. This is a part of my final project.

Process Work Institute's parking entrance is at the west side of the building. Please park by the back side of the building and come to the only big room named "class room".

Let's experiment a new technology for communication!

WELCOME! Welcome to world of communication! This is one of my answers to “Is there an easier and cooler way to learn communication?”.

I have had so many troubles about communication. Human being science developed so much. There must be a new technology and practice to make things easier, and even cool way for me.

I am as a Tree hugger computer system engineer fascinated by transpersonal psychology and Process Oriented Ecology, Non Violent Communication and Deep Democracy. And I would like to mesh up and introduce for cool technical people.

And as you know, communication is important!

This new technology to inspire you about communication and team work is well designed for people who are very high functioning in technical area and interested in improving the art of communication.

Cost to Attend: Free

Organizer: Jiro Isetani

I am a student of Master of Art in Conflict Facilitation and Organizational Change at The Process Work Institute. I'm mainly from Japan, living in Portland since 1996. This is a part of my final project.

This month, come to the Agile PDX 'Agile Tune-Up' meeting and tune up your agile process! Our panel of experts and practitioners will give you personalized feedback on the issues you're facing in an informal workshop-like format.

Before the session, visit http://agile-pdx-tune-up.appspot.com/ for a brief questionnaire that will help you identify your areas of greatest risk. Then bring a printout with you to the session to get targeted advice on what to keep doing and what to change!

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.

Process Work Institute's parking entrance is at the west side of the building. Please park by the back side of the building and come to the only big room named "class room".

Let's experiment a new technology for communication!

WELCOME! Welcome to world of communication! This is one of my answers to “Is there an easier and cooler way to learn communication?”.

I have had so many troubles about communication. Human being science developed so much. There must be a new technology and practice to make things easier, and even cool way for me.

I am as a Tree hugger computer system engineer fascinated by transpersonal psychology and Process Oriented Ecology, Non Violent Communication and Deep Democracy. And I would like to mesh up and introduce for cool technical people.

And as you know, communication is important!

This new technology to inspire you about communication and team work is well designed for people who are very high functioning in technical area and interested in improving the art of communication.

Cost to Attend: Free

I would like to take video for my learning purpose. The video will be viewed by only me, my supervisors and editors.

Organizer: Jiro Isetani

I am a student of Master of Art in Conflict Facilitation and Organizational Change at The Process Work Institute. I'm mainly from Japan, living in Portland since 1996. This is a part of my final project.

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.

This course gives you the hands-on experience and builds the skill set you will require to thoroughly understand and then utilize the real-world fundamentals of agile planning. You also will learn to accelerate and enhance your adoption and practice of agile development within your organization. The instructors bring their vast subject matter expertise in agile planning and development to lead you through a time-tested mix of content introduction, instruction and skill-based practice to reinforce learning and application.

Training Objectives: What You Will Learn

* Work consistently and reliably using iterations/Sprints
* Reliably release software on a regular basis
* Meet your commitments, even when things go wrong, by managing risks
* Take advantage of opportunities by adapting your plans
* Create, estimate, and prioritize minimum marketable features and user stories
* Collaborate with stakeholders to clarify requirements and product vision
* Get to “done done!”

This course gives you the hands-on experience and builds the skill set you will require to thoroughly understand and then utilize the real-world fundamentals of agile delivery. You also will learn to accelerate and enhance your adoption and practice of agile development within your organization. The instructors bring their vast subject matter expertise in agile planning and development to lead you through a time-tested mix of content introduction, instruction and skill-based practice to reinforce learning and application.

Training Objectives: What You Will Learn

* Build and ship weekly increments of software using iterations/Sprints
* Create nearly bug-free code using test-driven development, refactoring, and exploratory testing
* Understand and accommodate stakeholders and their diverse opinions
* Work in a cross-functional team with on-site customers, testers, and programmers
* Prevent build failures with continuous integration
* Incrementally build technical infrastructure alongside features

Agenda:

In a class that emphasizes doing; you will form cross-functional teams and deliver actual software in four 90-minute iterations, in a real-world environment that includes version control, automated builds, and continuous integration. That’s right: you’ll design, build, test, and ship software, as well as build out your technical infrastructure, all in 90 minutes. If that sounds impossible, you must take this course.

We cover a lot of ground in this three-day course. We intersperse the real-world iterations with lots of interactive workshops to ensure that you can experience remember everything you learn. Come prepared to drink from the firehose!

This is a free talk sponsored by the Rose City SPIN.

Networking starts at 5:00 PM Talk starts at 6:00 PM

Abstract

Join Scott Hanselman as he digs deep into the new open source NuGet package management system. How does NuGet fit into the .NET ecosystem? Learn how to create your own packages that are public and open source or internal ones for the enterprise. By the way, NuGet is an open source project hosted on Mercurial. Microsoft is starting to get serious about open source. We’ll talk about how and why. Scott will also describe the methods and processes his team used to successfully deliver NuGet including Kanban, continuous integration, Scrum and more.

Speaker Bio

Scott Hanselman, self-proclaimed failed stand-up comic, is a former software engineering professor, former Chief Architect at a large US retail banking company, former consultant, current father, current diabetic, and current Microsoft employee. Scott is a prolific blogger (http://www.hansleman.com) and hosts a weekly podcast called Hansleminutes (http://www.hanselminutes.com), where he spreads good information about developing software, usually on the Microsoft stack.

How to Register

This is a FREE lecture sponsored by the Rose City SPIN. Please RSVP to [email protected].

Rose City SPIN

The Rose City Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN) is a monthly forum for networking, mutual support, and promotion of effective software practices. We exchange practical experiences, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and war stories about the technical, business, and human facets of software process improvement. The Rose City SPIN serves the software development community of the Portland/Vancouver metro area. Whether you work for a large company or a small one, corporate or self-employed, industrial or academic setting, you are welcome at the Rose City SPIN

Join us March 16th at 6:30 pm as AgilePDX explores New Horizons in TDD. Two local experts, Mark Knell and Marty Nelson will preview their proposed talks for Agile 2011. They will discuss applying TDD at new scales: in the micro, with assertions driving the composition of tests, and in the macro, with confirmational aspects of features driving the communication of vision and intent

Mark's Talk:

Most tests follow an arrange/act/assert pattern that dates back to the earliest days of xUnit. A bowling test might set up a new frame, roll a ball, and expect that if no pins are left standing, the score will be a strike. But this test also passes if there were never any pins set up in the first place. Difference-Asserting Fluent Tests use a DSL to close this and several other loopholes in NUnit and MSTest assertions, while letting you keep those tools in place. You've heard of syntactic sugar? This is syntactic caulk. And more.

Mark Knell is a developer and Agile coach working in Portland. He has a master's degree from Harvard University Extension.

Marty's talk:

We all hope that our software will satisfy the goals and desires of our users and customers. Yet most development starts by focusing on features as a mechanism to achieve an outcome, rather than creating something demonstrable that will confirm that the vision and intent has been achieved. What if these confirmational and functional aspects were really two sides of the same feature that could be exploited to develop features in a test-driven manner? Feature TDD is a technique that does just that: create confirmational aspects that clearly establish desired outcomes and then use those to test-drive the functional mechanism that is the focus of traditional software development.

Marty Nelson is the Head of Architecture at Accelrys, Inc., an ISV offering Enterprise Lab Management solutions that serve a rapidly changing pharmaceutical and scientific R&D industry. Marty has been practicing agile development since 2003 and has taken a keen interested in the last couple of years in the architectural and organizational application of agile values and principals.

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.

Agile PDX convenes a monthly 1st Friday practitioner's no-host lunch in central/eastside Portland Metro area as an informal complement to the more formal Agile PDX users group meetings (3rd Wednesday).

Come, eat, and discuss all things related (however loosely) to agile software development. We welcome people of all experience levels, from guru to newcomer, and people interested in all flavors of Agile - XP, scrum, crystal, evo, lean/kanban, FDD, build-your-own, etc.

This months discussion will start with a discussion around Uncle Bob’s recent video blog “Restoring the Trust” (http://cleancoder.posterous.com/stub6-restoring-the-trust) as well as other topics related to the recent ten year anniversary of the Agile Manifesto.

Join us at our new location a reserved room at Paddy's Bar and Grill.

Being a ScrumMaster is not a role for the faint of heart. Effective ScrumMasters use a combination of natural talent, common sense, insight, observation technique, and--well, let's admit it, luck to help teams sustainably use Scrum to reliably deliver business value. But the standard two-day training course doesn't fully prepare us for what lies ahead.

In this talk, subtitled, "What I Wish I Knew Before I Became a ScrumMaster," experienced and newer ScrumMasters(or anyone who wants to help a team succeed and deliver) discover and share non-obvious insights into what a ScrumMaster can do to help their teams grow into great teams -- and learn a valuable technique.

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.

A free no-host open discussion forum for Agile practitioners in the downtown Portland area open to anyone who can get here. Discussion topics are selected from the AgilePDX mailing list or on the fly as the group convenes.

Register here

This agile, lightweight process effectively manages and controls software development through iterative, incremental practices. Scrum training will boost the capabilities of your Agile development team and positively impact projects for years to come.

Agenda:

* Introduction to Agile
* Origins of Scrum
* The Scrum process
* Roles and responsibilities
* Product Backlog
* Estimating Product Backlog items
* Scaling Scrum
* Scrum in detail
* Sprints
* Sprint planning meeting
* Daily standup meeting
* Burndown charts and project reporting
* Sprint review and retrospective
* Getting started with Scrum
* Graduation and closing

Great software comes from getting your team’s best ideas into the product. Jim McCarthy, who led the legendary turnaround of the Visual C++ group at Microsoft, left Microsoft in 1996 to create a team dynamics laboratory to figure out how to always create a create a high performance team.

The McCarthy lab has focused extensively on this challenge, and has produced 11 rich, precise protocols (called the Core) for making unanimous decisions, supporting quality thinking, strengthening design iterations, and incorporating feedback, emotions, nobility, and passion into products.

Learn about these protocols in this motivating, challenging talk. In just a few minutes, you can pick up the fundamentals of an entirely new class of tool.

• Do you notice too much discussion and arguing and would prefer the best ideas would just get implemented now? –Learn about the Decider Protocol which guarantees unanimous team decisions with accountability and moves the team forward with a bias toward action.

• Do you accept that it is vitally important that you get the opinions of others about the quality of work products but notice that it is consistently painful to give and receive feedback? – Learn about the Perfection Protocol which solves all the problems associated with criticism.

• Do you notice that dumb things consistently happen on your team and everyone seems to lack self-awareness to some degree, including you? – Learn about the Core Commitments which provide a team constitution about commitment and accountability to the team. And learn about the Personal Alignment Protocol which allows each team member to address self-awareness around courage, integrity, passion and other virtuous behaviors.

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.

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.

This course gives you the hands-on experience and builds the skill set you will require to thoroughly understand and utilize the real-world fundamentals of managing in an agile environment. The instructors bring their expertise in agile management, planning and development to help managers utilize their knowledge and skills to harness the power of an Agile organization.

Training Objectives:

* Learn how Agile organizations work from a systemic perspective.
* Create strategic alignment between project teams and the rest of the organization.
* Explore practices for identifying and resolving business issues, setting goals and measuring progress, assessing organization culture, and using organization structure to effectively address the challenges facing you and your team.
* Examine the implications of Agile environments for managing human capabilities and handling human resources functions, such as, hiring, retention, reviews, and compensation.
* Learn how effective leaders manage the boundary between their Agile teams and the rest of the organization.
* Discover the latest brain research showing male/female differences and translate these findings into more effective strategies for coaching and mentoring within and across gender on high performing teams.

When written well, use cases can effectively convey subtle user-system interactions. This hands-on workshop shows you how to “lighten up” use cases, write them just-in-time and use them to communicate essential system behaviors.

This workshop gives you the hands-on experience and builds the skills you will require to effectively write use cases for an agile environment.

In this hands-on workshop you will learn:

* How to effectively write use cases for agile development
* How to “tune” written descriptions to meet project specific needs
* How to break a use case into user stories and incrementally track their implementation
* Agile usability techniques—personas, Wizard of OZ prototyping
* Incremental writing—adding details when they matter
* How to write acceptance tests for use cases
* To relate use cases to features, business policies, and UI prototypes

This workshop benefits User Experience Designers, Product Owners, Business Analysts and Developers who will learn how to quickly write usage descriptions and integrate them with user prototypes and mock-ups. This workshop also benefits Business Analysts who still need to write requirements but want to “lighten” them up. Developers will benefit from knowing when to ask for usage descriptions and how to review them for “miracle” system powers.

Register and learn more: http://oregontrainingnetwork.com/writing-effective-agile-use-cases/

Value-first in the nick of time: how agile methods and lean program management averted crisis to deliver the goods on a $20 million business process change.

Part experience report, part expedition, this presentation will take you inside an Agile adoption nested within a project turnaround. From diagnosis through prescription, convalescence, and recovery to eventual triumph and the acceptance of a new status quo, you will hear how a century-old organization transformed its application delivery capability in the face of a crisis, growing a project team from six to 60 developers inside two months and accelerating from one release in six months to several releases every sprint. This is a must-see for anyone who has ever struggled against organizational inertia or dreamed of rapidly scaling Agile from the team level to the enterprise level to the sound of cheering business managers.

Our speaker is Adam Light, Ph.D. Adam is a Management Consultant and Principal at SoTech Advisors (www.sotechadvisors.com) where he plans and executes successful projects and builds work systems that deliver on client goals.

Adam has more than fifteen years’ experience designing and developing business applications from shrink-wrapped software to real-time information services in domains from natural resources management to supply chain optimization.

As a planning and program management leader, Adam has worked with as few as three and as many as twenty teams, using Agile methods and critical chain techniques to turn around failing projects, revive ailing organizations, and redesign application delivery at the enterprise scale. His broad perspective and deep experience enable him to rapidly deliver return on investment from large projects.

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.

Certified Scrum Master (CSM) Training gives you all the tools and information you need to effectively apply Agile Scrum Project Management principles to your project or program.

Students will learn how to:

* Maintain and use a burndown chart
* Manage Product Backlogs
* Plan Releases and Iterations (Sprints)
* Conduct Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, Sprint Reviews & Retrospective meetings
* Track and Report progress
* Effectively apply the principles of the Agile Manifesto

This is an introductory course. Participants should come prepared with basic knowledge of the Scrum framework. Proactive students are encouraged to read the Agile Manifesto & Principles (www. agilemanifesto.org and www.agilemanifesto.org/principles.html), and one of the following:

* Agile Software Development with Scrum, by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle
* Agile Project Management with Scrum, by Ken Schwaber

Register and learn more: http://oregontrainingnetwork.com/training-topics/agile-scrum-master/

Register and More Info: http://oregontrainingnetwork.com/training-topics/agile-scrum-master/

Save 25% (use discount code: OTN300)

The leading and fastest-growing of the Agile methodologies, Scrum is a simple software project management framework that adheres to a small set of interrelated practices and rules, is not overly prescriptive, and is able to produce productivity gains for software development teams almost immediately.

This agile, lightweight process effectively manages and controls software development through iterative, incremental practices. Scrum training will boost the capabilities of your Agile development team and positively impact projects for years to come.

Students will learn how to:

* Maintain and use a burndown chart
* Manage Product Backlogs
* Plan Releases and Iterations (Sprints)
* Conduct Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, Sprint Reviews & Retrospective meetings
* Track and Report progress
* Effectively apply the principles of the Agile Manifesto

Register and More Info: http://oregontrainingnetwork.com/training-topics/agile-scrum-master/

Good business decisions require relevant and valid information. Deciding what information is relevant can be challenging – especially as organizations transition to Agile development and project management methods. This presentation will explore ways to use the Goal-Question-Metric (GQM) technique to inform good decisions by identifying some relevant reporting measures when applying the Agile scrum methodology.

Agile teams value working software over comprehensive documentation. Teams deliver working software in short, iterative releases of business value rather than larger releases of longer duration. This increases the need to make quick decisions and the need for relevant and timely information. GQM provides a goal-driven way to identify the information our stakeholders really need.

This presentation will walk through using GQM, look at examples of applying it, review some relevant Agile measures and discuss relevant measures for different stakeholders. Audience participation is expected.

A 2-hour work session to assess and develop leadership qualities using interactive and improvisational techniques. This course is designed for professionals evolving into management or leadership roles, or growing within these roles. 

Wednesday, September 28, 2011 7 pm – 9 pm - Multnomah Arts Center, Portland, OR  Cost: $40, limit of 25 participants   DISCOUNTS: $10 off this class with promo code "Impro!" OR buy a 3-Workshop Bundle for $100 SPECIAL DEAL: We have a few free auditing spots available. Email us on our website for details.   Session Summary  We’ll use real-world scenarios and interactive games to explore the subtle and overt communications that define leadership. We’ll explore verbal and nonverbal communication, interpersonal tensions and other factors that drive group dynamics. Examines how body language, emotional cues, status actions, microexpressions and language choices affect relationship.

 You’ll practice leadership in the session, developing your ability to read and run a room with clarity, authenticity, and authority. You’ll learn how to set a tone of inclusion, enthusiasm and expansion in diverse group settings.    One of a series of professional skill-building workshops designed to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Our workshops use real-world creativity, collaboration and design methods to effect rapid growth and tangible results.  http://www.improvocateurs.com/events

If you want to tell more engaging and compelling stories in the workplace and beyond, this 2-hour participatory class is for you.

Storytelling is in our DNA. We create stories everyday to make sense of our world. Stories shape our memories and relationships. Stories breathe life into our shared reality, and galvanize shared visions. A great story, well presented, can move mountains. We can develop this innate ability to tell stories that move others.

We'll explore storytelling as a spontaneous act of self-expression and sense-making. Then we'll practice telling stories collaboratively and individually, using interactive and improvisational techniques.

You get the opportunity to hone and improve a real-world story you bring to the workshop, coached by a seasoned interactive consultant and a professional improviser. This is a limited size class, and you will not be asked to "perform."

LIMITED DISCOUNT OFFER: Use promo code "Impro!" to purchase tickets at $20. Half off regular price!

Additional group and professional discounts available - contact Patricia via the website for details.

Buy tickets at www.brownpapertickets.com/e/201484

More about us at www.improvocateurs.com

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!

Save 25% (use discount code: LFL300)

Certified Scrum Master (CSM) Training gives you all the tools and information you need to effectively apply Agile Scrum Project Management principles to your project or program.

Students will learn how to:

• Maintain and use a burndown chart
• Manage Product Backlogs
• Plan Releases and Iterations (Sprints)
• Conduct Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, Sprint Reviews & Retrospective meetings
• Track and Report progress
• Effectively apply the principles of the Agile Manifesto

This is an introductory course. Participants should come prepared with basic knowledge of the Scrum framework. Proactive students are encouraged to read the Agile Manifesto & Principles (www. agilemanifesto.org and www.agilemanifesto.org/principles.html), and one of the following:

• Agile Software Development with Scrum, by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle
• Agile Project Management with Scrum, by Ken Schwaber

Register and learn more: http://learningforleverage.com/events/agile-scrum-master-training/

Jon Bach is coming to our local agile users group to tell us about his specialty, exploratory testing. Pizza at 6:30, meeting at 7.

Talk: "Exploratory Testing: Now In Session"

The agile nature of exploration and the ability of testers to rapidly apply their skills and experience make exploratory testing a widely used test approach—especially when time is short. But exploratory testing is often dismissed by project managers who assume that it is not reproducible, measurable, or accountable. If you share these concerns, a solution may lie in a technique called Session-Based Test Management (SBTM), developed by Jon and his brother James specifically to address these problems. In SBTM, testers are assigned areas of a product to explore, and testing is time boxed in "sessions" which have mission statements called “charters” to create a meaningful and countable unit of work. Jon discusses—and you can practice—the skills of exploration and demonstrates a freely available, open source tool to help manage your exploratoration.

Speaker Bio: Jon Bach has been in testing for 14 years, 12 of which has been as a manager. His experience includes managing teams at Microsoft, HP and LexisNexis, and is currently a managing consultant for Quardev, Inc. -- a Seattle test lab. He speaks frequently about test management and exploratory testing, and is the co-inventor (with his brother James) of Session-Based Test Management. He’s also written a few articles for testing magazines as well as a listed co-author of a Microsoft Patterns and Practices book on acceptance testing (available for free online). Find him on Facebook, Twitter, or his presentations and articles on http://www.quardev.com, where he also has a blog.

In 2009, Performance Health Technology went "all-in" and began the adoption of agile methodologies throughout the software development process. In this talk, you'll take a multi-year journey with a growing small business and experience the transition from the blissful ignorance of cowboy-coding through the misery and despair of a sinking, dysfunctional organization, and on to the satisfaction and exhilaration that comes with a high-functioning agile team.

This interactive presentation is about both the pain and the fulfillment that comes with developing software in a small business, before, during, and after agile adoption. Developers, Business/IT Managers, Agile Coaches, and Executives are invited to look behind the curtain to see how PH Tech narrowly escaped from the Pit of Development Despair and survived a Total Immersion into Agile.

Chad is the Director of Information Technology at PH Tech. His responsibilities include all aspects of technological infrastructure and software development, including three technology departments; Information Systems, Business Intelligence, and Software Engineering. When he's not talking about healthcare or technology, he's expounding the life-giving qualities of bacon and BBQ. Buy him a beer and he'll give you the recipe for the greatest chicken wing rub he's ever stolen.

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.

At the heart of Lean Thinking is the Plan-Do-Check-Act problem solving process popularized by Dr. Deming over fifty years ago. This problem solving discipline is still vital today, and it’s the very core of what it means to be a “learning organization.”

This workshop provides hands-on, experiential learning by applying this discipline to a problem that is meaningful to you:

• First comes a little advance homework – choose a problem you and your team face, gather some data and artifacts, and speak to your stakeholders to understand their perspectives and needs

<li>Then attend the workshop for a six-hour interactive walkthrough of the problem solving process, during which we will tackle the problem you and your team have brought to class</li>

<li>Then participate in a conference call with the course instructor to discuss what you’ve learned, and how you and your team are addressing in a way that it stays solved</li> </ul>

Save 25% (use discount code: LFL300)

Scrum increases the emphasis on assessing and driving business value through close collaboration with the delivery team. The Scrum Product Owner establishes the interaction between the business and the delivery team that is so essential to increasing productivity within an Agile organization. Product Owners who assume this crucial role have the ability to guide the team and the process to gain the full benefit of Agile delivery.

When the capabilities of the Product Owner are optimized, an Agile team will experience immediate benefits that lead to improved effectiveness and customer satisfaction as well as increased return on investment (ROI).

Audience: Product Owners, Product Management, Business Analysts, ScrumMasters, Executive Management, Stakeholders

Register and learn more: http://learningforleverage.com/events/scrum-product-owner-certification/

A full-day work session using the tools of improvisation and critical inquiry to develop creative skills, group connections, and problem-solving strategies for professional and personal growth. Best for: Mid to senior project leaders, creatives or tech leads and other professionals wanting to add to their creative problem-solving strategies. 



We'll start with group warm-ups to stretch our collaborative muscles, then work on actual working scenarios chosen by the group, using highly interactive exercises and group brainstorming to generate new solutions, approaches and perspectives.

Cost: $300, limited to 25 participants A limited number of auditing slots are available, as well as discounts for members of certain professional organizations. Email [email protected] for more details.

We also offer theme based mini-workshops on Wednesday evenings, on special topics such as Leadership, Creativity, Storytelling and Taking Risks. Classes are $40 each, or get 3 workshops for $100.

For details visit http://www.improvocateurs.com/events

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.

This month, James Shore will join us for an informal discussion of Agile estimation techniques. Options include techniques for estimating user stories, making and meeting iteration commitments, and how to make long-term release projections. Your interests will drive the conversation!

James Shore teaches, writes, and consults on Agile development processes. He led his first Agile team in 1999 and was an early adopter of Extreme Programming in 2000. Today, he focuses on helping people who are willing to make dramatic changes in order to achieve great results.

James is an inaugural recipient of the Agile Alliance's Gordon Pask Award for Contributions to Agile Practice and is co-author of The Art of Agile Development (O'Reilly, 2007). You can find screencasts and more of his writing on his "Art of Agile" blog at http://jamesshore.com.

Difficulty iterating? Stuck in a rut at work? Throw caution to the wind and host a hackathon! You can finally play with Shiny Thing 2.0, show it off to your friends and teammates, all in a format that will encourage you to work in small, iterative slices.

Growing in popularity in recent years, hackathons provide a venue for folks to get together, explore new ideas and (hopefully!) build working software in the span of a couple of days. Come learn about their use in the corporate space and the public space at large, how to sponsor one, and how to make the event create lasting effects. We'll also explore the parallels between agile development and hackathons, and how each is good practice for the other.

Ben Houston is a pragmatic software engineer who is currently in love with mazes and geometry.

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 of chicken wings and other agile conundrums.

Traversing the Canyon of Anarchy: Making Change Stick Presented by Tamara Sulaiman Runyon

Dates/Times: Thursday, January 12th, 2012: Networking @ 5:30-6:30 PM; Seminar 6:30-7:30 PM Location: Lincoln Center 2 Conference Room (2nd floor above the cafe/barista stand. Use stairs or elevators), 10220 SW Greenberg Rd., Portland, OR 97223.

Abstract Have you ever begun a process change, only to watch in dismay and puzzlement as the change fizzles out like a wet firecracker? Have you generated excitement for new ideas, seen them seem to take root and grow, only to find a year later that there is no discernible behavior change? If so, you are not alone. In this talk Tamara Sulaiman Runyon discusses some causes of why process change is so difficult to make stick in many organizations. Topics include: the key role that vision and leadership play in instigating lasting change, the potential iceberg of organizational culture as a change blocker, as well as the people aspects – the levels of discomfort caused by change and measuring the growth of competence as change is assimilated.

Presenter Bio

Tamara Sulaiman Runyon has been assisting teams in transitioning to agile methods both as a hands-on ScrumMaster and as an Agile Coach and Scrum trainer since 2003. Tamara is focused on coaching teams to effectively provide value to key stakeholders and customers through the frequent delivery of software. Her passion lies in helping organizations plan and implement Agile transformations.

She is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and Project Management Professional (PMP). Tamara is the co-originator of the AgileEVM materials and processes that integrate the traditional project management practice of Earned Value Management with the Scrum framework. As a thought leader she is currently serving on the Agile Alliance Board of Directors. Tamara continues to publish articles on Agile-related topics in industry publications such as Agile Journal, Methods and Tools, InfoQ, Projects@Work and gantthead.com. She also shares her experiences, ideas and expertise as a presenter and speaker at conferences.

A Special Treat from PNSQC

Plan on coming early! In collaboration with the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC) the SPIN meeting will have pizza and pop provided by PNSQC beginning at 5:30 pm.

PNSQC is the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference, a group of volunteers interested in Software Quality. The Mission of the PNSQC is to enable knowledge exchange to produce higher quality software. As a non-profit, it seeks to promote software quality by providing education and opportunities for information exchange within the software community.

How to Register

This is a FREE lecture sponsored by the Rose City SPIN. You can help us plan food and drinks by registering at: https://www.eventbrite.com/event/2694702929

Rose City SPIN

The Rose City Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN) is a monthly forum for networking, mutual support, and promotion of effective software practices. We exchange practical experiences, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and war stories about the technical, business, and human facets of software process improvement. The Rose City SPIN serves the software development community of the Portland/Vancouver metro area. Whether you work for a large company or a small one, corporate or self-employed, industrial or academic setting, you are welcome at the Rose City SPIN.

It's time for your yearly Agile tune-up! Has your Agile team made its new year's resolutions yet? If not, this month's AgilePDX meeting will help. It's all about helping you understand what you can do to improve the state of your Agile practice.

James Shore will kick things off with a description of Agile Fluency. He'll describe multiple levels of proficiency and help you figure out where your team is today. Then, he'll provide specific techniques and practices to focus on as you work to reach the next level.

Next, we'll turn it over to you! You'll break into groups focused on the issues that matter most to your teams. You'll have the opportunity to learn from each other's experiences and to discuss how you can improve your team. Experienced Agile practitioners will be on hand to answer questions and help you figure out which improvements will make the most difference for you.

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 of agile fluency

Use code: LFL300 and Save 25%

SolutionsIQ Certified Scrum Master (CSM) Training gives you all the tools and information you need to effectively apply Agile Scrum Project Management principles to your project or program.

Students will learn how to:

Maintain and use a burndown chart

Manage Product Backlogs

Plan Releases and Iterations (Sprints)

Conduct Sprint Planning, Daily Scrums, Sprint Reviews & Retrospective meetings

Track and Report progress

Effectively apply the principles of the Agile Manifesto

Announcing Agile Open Northwest 2012! This Agile Open Space event will be held February 7th and 8th, 2012, in the Northwest Rooms of Seattle Center in Seattle. Spaces at this event fill up fast! So register today to make sure you get a space. For registration and further details go to :

http://www.agileopennorthwest.org

This will be our sixth annual Agile Open Northwest conference. Alternating each year between Portland and Seattle, AONW conferences bring together practicing members of the Northwest Agile communities to explore the latest developments in agile software development. We held our fifth annual event last year in Portland and enjoyed another great success. Registration is $150.00 for both days, including light breakfast and lunch. This low-cost regional conference is a great opportunity to connect with the local agile community, experts and novices alike.

Please join us this year as we host 125 experienced, collaborative, committed agile practitioners from the Northwest U.S. (and beyond) in tackling the issues around our recurring theme "Agile for Real." As in past years, attendance is limited to a predetermined number in order retain the many advantages a small conference has to offer.

Here is a comment from a previous attendee:

"These two-day Agile Open Northwest conferences are an extremely good value. ..[Y]ou learn directly from practitioners in the agile community what works and what doesn't. I attended the first two of these conferences, they were stunningly good... loads of practical, useful stuff and stimulating discussions." -- Ian Savage, PNSQC Program Chair

More information can be found at http://www.agileopennorthwest.org. We look forward to seeing you there!

Have you ever begun an Agile adoption, only to watch in dismay and puzzlement as the change fizzles out like a wet firecracker? Have you generated excitement for these new ideas, seen them seem to take root and grow, only to find a year later that people have fallen back into their old ways of doing things? Or, are they now cherry picking Agile practices, perhaps using Agile terms, but ignoring the Agile values? If so, you are not alone. In this talk, Tamara Sulaiman Runyon discusses some reasons why simple practice adoption is not enough; and why transformation is so difficult to make stick in many organizations. Topics include: the nature of change and complex systems models - where do we fit? The key role that vision and leadership play in instigating and supporting transformation; the potential iceberg of organizational culture as a change blocker, as well as people aspects - the levels of discomfort caused by any change; and measuring the growth of competence as Agile practices and Values are assimilated.

Presenter Bio:

Tamara Sulaiman Runyon has been assisting teams in transitioning to agile methods both as a hands-on ScrumMaster and as an Agile Coach and Scrum trainer since 2003. Her passion lies in helping organizations plan and implement Agile transformations. In her role as Enterprise Agile Coach at Intel, she is deeply involved with leading and supporting Agile teams and practices throughout the organization.

She is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and Project Management Professional (PMP). Tamara is the co-originator of the AgileEVM materials and processes that integrate the traditional project management practice of Earned Value Management with the Scrum framework. As a thought leader she is currently serving on the Agile Alliance Board of Directors. Tamara continues to publish articles on Agile-related topics in industry publications such as Agile Journal, Methods and Tools, InfoQ, Projects@Work and gantthead.com. She also shares her experiences, ideas and expertise as a presenter and speaker at conferences.

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 of agile fluency

You know Agile is the right path, but how do you convince your team, your management, and your organization?

Join Rally Software for a half-day interactive workshop to get the ideas and information you need to introduce, advocate and integrate Agile into your organization.

You'll walk away with:

• Your toughest Agile advocacy questions answered

• A comprehensive overview of the big three financial impacts of Agile

• Information to make your Agile case, both financially and philosophically

This is a complimentary event. Breakfast will be served.

Abstract: Seeing Software Quality through an Agile Lens ...or Scrum can’t buy you love (or quality), but it can get you there much faster.

For a software quality engineer entering an Agile team for the first time, the transition can be extreme. The traditional software quality practices and activities change in many ways but, looking closely, the core principles are still there. In fact, Agile development can be an SQE’s dream! Agile naturally combines all factors that impact quality from people to transparency all in a cohesive system.

Join Rhea as she details her experience of going from a waterfall background and jumping head first into an Agile development environment. She will focus on how she applied quality practices in this environment, road bumps along the way that any team adopting Agile might encounter, and how Agile enabled levels of quality beyond all previous expectations.

Bio:

Rhea Stadick is a software quality manager for product engineering teams in the Business Client group at Intel. She is focused on developing a sustained, strong capability in engineering teams to deliver high quality products. Over the last several years she has become an advocate for agile development and is an agile coach as well as a co-director of the Intel Agility Catalyst team promoting the adoption of agile culture and methodologies throughout the organization. Rhea graduated from Oregon State University with a Bachelor of Science Honors degree in Computer Science and is currently finishing her MBA at Willamette University.

A Special Treat from PNSQC

Networking at 5:30, seminar at 6:30. Plan on coming early! In collaboration with the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC) the SPIN meeting will have pizza and pop provided by PNSQC beginning at 5:30 pm.

PNSQC is the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference, a group of volunteers interested in Software Quality. The Mission of the PNSQC is to enable knowledge exchange to produce higher quality software. As a non-profit, it seeks to promote software quality by providing education and opportunities for information exchange within the software community.

How to Register

No need to register! This is a FREE lecture sponsored by the Rose City SPIN. But you can help us plan food and drinks by registering at: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3100344213

Rose City SPIN

The Rose City Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN) is a monthly forum for networking, mutual support, and promotion of effective software practices. We exchange practical experiences, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and war stories about the technical, business, and human facets of software process improvement. The Rose City SPIN serves the software development community of the Portland/Vancouver metro area. Whether you work for a large company or a small one, corporate or self-employed, industrial or academic setting, you are welcome at the Rose City SPIN.

Offshore development and distributed teams are here to stay (see CIO Journal 2/27/12 “Offshore Outsourcing Can Boost Agility).” Some people contend that it can’t be done effectively. Come hear a case study of how one distributed Scrum team (Beaverton/Bangalore) learned to work together, rapidly improve velocity in a few sprints, and deliver the expected product on schedule. Jean Richardson and Rob Mills will discuss what it took to make it happen, the ups, the downs, and the lessons learned.

Robert Mills currently is the VP of IT at Rivermark Community Credit Union and was previously the Director of Engineering for CoreLogic, Consumer Services. Rob has led multiple organizations during their transition from waterfall or iterative processes to using Scrum. His organizations have been both global and local as well as both in Software Engineering and Information Technology.

Jean Richardson is experienced in Scrum and leadership coaching, adaptive and predictive project management, writing, training, public speaking, and requirements and business analysis. She has led, coached, and participated on both co-located and distributed teams, presented to IEEE IPCC on virtual teaming, and has been previously engaged to create an offshore development best practices white paper for a large local high-tech firm. Her client list includes a wide range of businesses including ADP, CoreLogic, Daimler/Chrysler, Action Without Borders/Idealist.org, Mentor Graphics, Portland General Electric, Oregon Health Authority, The Regence Group, and Tripwire.

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.

March PDMA Learning and Networking Event

If your development has started to embrace Agile methods, you’ll quickly notice the team is acting strangely. All of a sudden an MRD becomes a “backlog”, software releases become “sprints”, requirements become “user stories” and new languages such as “estimating poker” and “fist to five” start creeping into meetings.

A successful transition also requires that Product Management behaves differently to leverage the benefits of Agile. During this transition, Product Management can either become the hero that helps Agile to shine as a serious business tool, or a villain that drives Agile deep into the dark corners of development.

We’ll discuss some of the following specific challenges the Product Managers often experience in this transition among others: - Converting visions to backlogs - Driving and reporting roadmaps in Agile - Working with Product Owners… or being a Product Owner - PM’s role in iteration and release planning

The Oregon Chapter of the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) invites you to its March Learning and Networking Event. At this event, experienced professionals will share their experiences with transitions to Agile and offer specific tactics to make your transition successful. They will then lead a vigorous discussion based on Q&A from the audience.

A special thanks to the Oregon Technology Business Center (OTBC) for hosting this event.

Speakers

• Tony Aiello, Consulting Vision Engineer, Machine Vision Consulting

• Dorian Simpson, Managing Partner, Planning Innovations

• Miki Tokola, Managing Partner, Micom Consulting

Date, Time, and Cost

• Tuesday, March 27, 2012, 5:30-8:00 PM
• $20 on-line registration prior to the event
• $25 at the door
• To register for this event, click on the website address above
• A discount is available for PDMA members

The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) is the premier global advocate for product development and management professionals. The Oregon chapter's mission is to help local professionals and organizations to identify, develop, and launch more innovative and profitable products and services through cross-industry collaboration, thought leadership, and the sharing of best practices and practical knowledge. For more information about the Oregon Chapter of the PDMA, please contact:

Miki Tokola, Chapter President

[email protected]

In partnership with the Intel Agile Conference, Rose City SPIN is proud to present this panel discussion on “Agile and the Enterprise”

This will be an open discussion with the panel speakers around the topic of Agile and the Enterprise. Some questions will be facilitated but bring your burning questions about Agile as the audience will be able to ask questions of the panel. This is your opportunity to generate discussion about Agile and Lean topics with some of the top minds in the industry!

About Our Speakers

Mary Poppendieck (poppendieck.com) teaches and consults worldwide on Lean principles for software. Her approach identifies real business value and enables product teams to realize that value.

Ron Jeffries is one of the 3 founders of the Extreme Programming (XP) software development methodology circa 1996, along with Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham. He was from 1996, an XP coach on the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System project, which was where XP was invented. He is an author of Extreme Programming Installed, the second book published about XP. He has also written Extreme Programming Adventures in C#. He is one of the 17 original signatories of the Agile Manifesto.

Chet Hendrickson specializes in assisting software organizations become more effective through the use of agile software techniques. A co-author of Extreme Programming Installed, Chet has taught Extreme Programming's values and practices around the world

How to Register

No need to register! This is a FREE lecture sponsored by the Rose City SPIN. But you can help us plan by registering at: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3127126319

About the Rose City SPIN

The Rose City Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN) is a monthly forum for networking, mutual support, and promotion of effective software practices. We exchange practical experiences, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and war stories about the technical, business, and human facets of software process improvement. The Rose City SPIN serves the software development community of the Portland/Vancouver metro area. Whether you work for a large company or a small one, corporate or self-employed, industrial or academic setting, you are welcome at the Rose City SPIN.

AgilePalooza is a community event that brings together internationally recognized agile coaches and trainers with local software professionals. Attendees will learn about advancing agile methods through workshops and collaborative sessions.

Use promo code V1Save50-C for 50% off. Only $35!

Speakers include: Dr. Ahmed Sidky has a Ph.D. in value–based process frameworks for effective agile adoption. Ahmed’s work has gained popularity and respect in the agile community as a pragmatic approach for organizations of all sizes attempting to adopt agile. Diana Larsen Drawing on 15+ years of experience working with technical professionals, Diana is a pragmatic agile consultant with FutureWorks. Diana leads system-wide groups in collaborative thinking and planning, as well as guiding teams through project kick-offs, chartering and retrospectives. Dave Sharrock drives change within technology-driven organizations through the introduction of agile product development practices, using agile frameworks such as Scrum. And more!!

For $69, attendees receive a full day of agile learning, lunch and the opportunity to participate in one of two tracks: Practicing Agile and Planning Agile. The Practicing Agile track is geared toward those interested in agile fundamentals and engineering practices and the Planning Agile track is for those planning and managing multiple teams and projects.

Go here to learn more and register: http://www.agilepalooza.com/Portland2012/default.asp

What alternatives are there to the predominant linear management approach which relies on reductionism and the ability to predict. How can you avoid the temptation to engineer and control outcomes by manipulating the component parts of organizations business and process?

Ola describes his nonlinear approach, where he combines Real Options, the Mikado Method, and evolutionary design to form a dynamic, diametrically opposite perspective to the familar linear management view.

Presenter:

Ola Ellnestam likes to combine people, technology and business which is best done with simple means and flexible processes. More than that he likes to share his knowledge and experiences because that’s how new insights are created according to him. Ola is a founder of Agical.se , a board member of the Agile Aliance, director of the Agile Alliance conference sponsorship program, and co-author (with Daniel Brolund) of The Mikado Method book.

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 of agile fluency

Also, on Thursday, April 19, join Ola for a one-day workshop on The Mikado Method

For more information on the workshop, see: http://calagator.org/events/1250461927

This time around, we're reading Agile Experience Design: A Digital Designer's Guide to Agile, Lean, and Continuous. Want to read, learn, talk about UX and agile, and maybe drink some beer? You should come along!

Build Winning Products with Rapid Customer Insigh The Build Winning Products with Rapid Customer Insight workshop gives you the tools necessary to deliver successful products through more effective ways to access customers, listen for their needs, and integrate this learning into real products. This program is ideal for Agile and Lean development teams working with fast-paced development schedules.

Exclusive offer! OTBC has partnered with Planning Innovations to pilot this program to 12 participants at a special “at cost” rate of $57. By participating, you agree to join us for a 90-minute facilitated discussion to provide Planning Innovations feedback on the program. After this pilot offer, the program will normally be offered at $895/participant.

The best way to learn is by doing. This program is highly interactive with role-playing, real customer interviews, and participating in real world requirements tradeoff discussions using the tools we discuss in the program.

We'll focus on key questions and challenges, such as:

• How do I determine the right customers for insight?
• How can I build a customer panel for fast access?
• What are the best ways to really “listen” for customer needs?
• How can I understand the tradeoffs customer make every day?
• How do I manage and communicate fuzzy customer input?

May 9th Rose City SPIN Seminar

Why We Need Architects And Architecture On Agile Projects

Presented by Rebecca Wirfs-Brock

Dates/Times: Wednesday, May 9, 2012: Networking @ 5:30-6:30 PM; Seminar 6:30-7:30 PM

Location: OTBC (Oregon Technology Business Center), 8305 SW Creekside Place, Suite C, Beaverton, Oregon, 97008, 2nd floor.

Abstract:

The rhythm of agile software development is to always work on the next known, small batch of work. So where is the place for architecture on an agile project? Some think that software architecture should simply emerge and doesn’t require ongoing attention. But it isn’t always prudent to let the architecture emerge at the speed of the next iteration. Complex software systems cam have lots of moving parts, dependencies, challenges, and unknowns. Counting on a good architecture to spontaneously emerge without any architectural investigation can be risky. So how should architecting be done on agile projects? It varies from project to project, depending on risk, complexity, and size. This talk presents some useful practices for architecting on both smaller and larger agile projects and explores what it means to be an agile architect.

Bio:

Rebecca Wirfs-Brock is an internationally recognized leader in the development of object design methodologies. Although best known as a software design guru and creator of Responsibility-Driven Design and the x-driven meme, Rebecca is also an innovator of techniques for simply expressing complex requirements and effectively designing and communicating software architecture. She is active in the agile community, and is currently President of the non-profit Agile Open Northwest openspace conference and co-producer of the Agile 2012 Insights (experience reports) Stage. She champions bringing the right balance of design and architecture into agile projects and frequently helps product engineering, IT, and startups with the technical bits, as well as with effective teamwork and agile design and architecture practices. Her passion is software design habitability. You've got to be able to live comfortably with your code.

A Special Treat from PNSQC

Plan on coming early! In collaboration with the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC) the SPIN meeting will have pizza and pop provided by PNSQC beginning at 5:30 pm.

PNSQC is the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference, a group of volunteers interested in Software Quality. The Mission of the PNSQC is to enable knowledge exchange to produce higher quality software. As a non-profit, it seeks to promote software quality by providing education and opportunities for information exchange within the software community.

Thanks also to OTBC

We want to thank OTBC (http://www.otbc.org/) for providing the space for this talk

How to Register

No need to register! This is a FREE lecture sponsored by the Rose City SPIN. But you can help us plan food and drinks by registering at: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3436487627

Rose City SPIN

The Rose City Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN) is a monthly forum for networking, mutual support, and promotion of effective software practices. We exchange practical experiences, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and war stories about the technical, business, and human facets of software process improvement. The Rose City SPIN serves the software development community of the Portland/Vancouver metro area. Whether you work for a large company or a small one, corporate or self-employed, industrial or academic setting, you are welcome at the Rose City SPIN.

Prioritize People Over Process: The Brain Science of Happy Agile Teams

Learn how to apply neuroscience and psychology to more effectively work with each other as a happy team that produces better software. You will take away:

• Concrete techniques for more quickly building trust on teams
• Actionable ideas for managing social stress
• Proven techniques for getting the best results from each other

Comments from the Game Developers Conference presentation of similar material:

"Mr. Scott Crabtree was also an absolutely excellent speaker - very inspiring, thought-provoking, and energizing! Please have him back on the same topic of the importance of happiness within teams in the future!"

"The speaker about happiness was amazing."

"Scott Crabtree was Excellent...an excellent tutorial that I would recommend to anyone."

Presenter:

Scott Crabtree, Chief Happiness Officer, Happy Brain Science: www.HappyBrainScience.com/about

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 and will run until 8:30.

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

A Case Study of “PDLC and an Agile Process”

Presented by Ira Hill

Abstract:

A review of implementing agile processes in a waterfall environment the presentation outlines the journey of guiding several ‘pseudo’ agile projects to completion in an environment that was structured for waterfall efforts. This presentation is intended for the practitioner that may be trying to adopt some agile concepts while functioning in a waterfall environment and was originally created as an introduction to agile processes for the PMO.

Bio:

Working at as a supervisor for two development teams (Linux OS and Windows Platform) at ADP Dealer services Ira has been a software practitioner for over 30 years. A former adjunct professor at Portland State University Ira taught OMSE 525 (Software Quality Analysis) in the Oregon Masters of Software Engineering program and focuses on adding quality into products early in their life cycle. A graduate of the University of Oregon (MS Software Engineering) and Eastern Washington University (BS Computer Science) Ira is a native of Portland and has held various positions around the northwest specializing in systems software development.

A Special Treat from PNSQC

Plan on coming early! In collaboration with the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC) the SPIN meeting will have pizza and pop provided by PNSQC beginning at 5:30 pm.

PNSQC is the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference, a group of volunteers interested in Software Quality. The Mission of the PNSQC is toenable knowledge exchange to produce higher quality software. As a non-profit, it seeks to promote software quality by providing education and opportunities for information exchange within the software community.

Thanks also to OTBC

We want to thank OTBC (http://www.otbc.org/) for providing the space for this talk.

How to Register

No need to register! This is a FREE lecture sponsored by the Rose City SPIN. But you can help us plan food and drinks by registering at: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3710965598

Rose City SPIN

The Rose City Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN) is a monthly forum for networking, mutual support, and promotion of effective software practices. We exchange practical experiences, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and war stories about the technical, business, and human facets of software process improvement. The Rose City SPIN serves the software development community of the Portland/Vancouver metro area. Whether you work for a large company or a small one, corporate or self-employed, industrial or academic setting, you are welcome at the Rose City SPIN.

Join us for happy hour to hear how Scrum and Kanban can work together to focus your team’s energy on the most important work -- delivering high quality, on-time projects that exceed expectations.

At the event, you will:

• Learn the characteristics of Scrum and Kanban and how they differ
• Discover best practices that enable these approaches to work together for the good of your organization
• Hear stories of how others have implemented both Scrum and Kanban practices to manage projects and portfolios

The event is complimentary, but space is limited. Please register in advance. We look forward to seeing you there.

Agile Chartering ignites your project Liftoff in a way that gives impetus to the project team, and the business, and sets the endeavor on the trajectory to success. Project leaders and team members use Agile Chartering to inform, inspire, and align everyone involved in product delivery. Experience a journey through the framework for effective, yet lightweight, "just enough" Agile chartering, including the three key elements of inspiring Purpose, collaborative Alignment, and dynamic Context. Learn why real-life team members say Agile Chartering provided the initial momentum that powered their projects toward success.

In this high energy talk, Diana Larsen, co-author of Liftoff: Launching Agile Teams and Projects, will take you on an exploration of ways to accomplish team and project Liftoffs, including the vital step of chartering the project.

Bio:

Diana Larsen partners with clients in the software industry to create, guide, and fortify resilient workplaces and improve project performance. In addition to consulting with and coaching leaders and teams on adopting Agile work systems, she draws on 20+ years of working with technical professionals to lead team, project, and whole system processes for collaborative thinking and planning. Diana co-authored Liftoff: Launching Agile Teams and Projects and Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great. She serves on the board of directors of the Agile Alliance and is a principal of FutureWorks Consulting LLC.

Details and Pizza:

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 of launching Agile Projects.

Please join us Tuesday night for the PADNUG August meet-up!

This month, Dave Harrison will be presenting on Agile Development.

WHERE: Intel Hawthorne Farms 3 (HF3) 5200 NE Elam Young Pkwy Hillsboro, OR 97124 Map: http://binged.it/IntelHF3Map

WHEN: Tuesday 8/7/2012 6:00 p.m. Pizza 6:30 p.m. Presentation ~8:30 p.m. After Words at On the Border Mexican Grill

WHO: Dave is the .NET lead developer at Columbia Sportswear.

TOPIC: At Tech Ed 2012, the biggest change over the previous years had to do with ALM and agile development – it seemed like one out of every four classes dealt with Agile in one way or another. What is all the fuss about – and how can our team use the best tools to keep developers and BA’s humming and business owners happy? We’ll explore our two-year long experience with Agile development at Columbia Sportswear Company and a live demo of the new features in the preview edition of Team Foundation Service. Along the way we’ll cover:

• The Software Development Hierarchy of Needs (from a great post by Scott Hanselman) • Our experiences with MVC, TDD, and Azure • Why the Spanish Armada didn’t work and Apollo 13 did – the Cone of Death • The dirty little secret behind scrum – hint, it’s not a magic bullet • Jealousy as a proactive emotion • Save the poker for Vegas • Managing priorities across software development teams in one list

Thanks to our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

azad, inc. Technology Consulting | Engineering | Project Management http://www.azad.com/

Cinetopia Why watch a movie in coach when you can see it in first class? http://www.cinetopia.com/

CompuCom The leading IT outsourcing specialist http://www.compucom.com/

Infragistics Design / Develop / Experience http://www.infragistics.com/

Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com/

Orcsweb http://www.orcsweb.com/

O'Reilly Spreading the knowledge of innovators. http://www.oreilly.com/

TEKsystems People you can trust. Results you can count on. http://www.teksystems.com/locations/united-states/oregon/portland.aspx

Telerik Deliver more than expected http://www.telerik.com/

VanderHouwen & Associates, Inc. VHA specializes in the placement of Software Developers. http://www.vanderhouwen.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Cheers, Jesse PADNUG Outreach Coordinator

"Real World Agile: Going All-in with Agile at Performance Health Technology

Speaker: Chad Casady

Abstract: In 2009, PH Tech went "all-in" and began the adoption of agile methodologies throughout the software development process. In this session, you'll take a multi-year journey with a growing small business and experience the transition from the blissful ignorance of cowboy-coding through the misery and despair of a sinking, dysfunctional organization, and on to the satisfaction and exhilaration that comes with a high-functioning agile team. This session describes both the pain and the fulfillment that comes with developing software in a small business, before, during, and after agile.

Bio: Chad Casady is the Director of Information Technology at Performance Health Technology, aka PH Tech. His responsibilities include all aspects of technological infrastructure and software development, including three technology departments; Information Systems, Business Intelligence, and Software Engineering. When he’s not talking about healthcare or technology, he’s expounding the life-giving qualities of bacon and BBQ. Buy him a beer and he’ll give you the recipe for the greatest chicken wing rub he’s ever stolen.

SQAUG and TAO Presents:

A Conversation With James Bach

James Bach: Author, Public Speaker on All Good Things QA and Principle Consultant for Satisfice,Inc.

James likes to explore the answer to what 'good' means in software development. Come and chat with him about what Rapid Software Testing means, to testers, companies and the definition of quality!

Modern projects are in the clutches of constant pressure. They must deliver more with less, while meeting short schedules and tight budgets. Unfortunately, too many projects fail at this challenge. This class shows you how to organize small to medium size projects, then work with a team to accomplish them on schedule and within budget. Participants learn practical and proven project management techniques, then immediately apply them to real projects as in-class teams.

Topics include:

• Starting a project on a firm foundation by defining it clearly, then getting alignment among the stakeholders
• Visual tools for building a good plan that addresses the how, when, and who of the project
• Executing the plan, monitoring progress, steering, and making changes
• Properly closing a project, including how to learn lessons for future improvement

The class includes proven techniques researched by the Project Management Institute, the global professional body for project management.

Bio:

Jez Humble is a Principal at ThoughtWorks Studios, and co-author of the Jolt Award winning Continuous Delivery, published in Martin Fowler’s Signature Series. He has worked with a variety of platforms and technologies, consulting for non-profits, telecoms, financial services, and online retail companies. His focus is on helping organisations deliver valuable, high-quality software frequently and reliably through implementing effective engineering practices.

Details and Pizza:

Many thanks to New Relic for covering the speaker costs!

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 of launching Agile Projects.

Talk description:

Businesses rely on getting valuable new software into the hands of users as fast as possible, while making sure that they keep their production environments stable. Continuous Delivery is a revolutionary and scalable approach to software delivery that enables any team, including teams within enterprise IT organizations, to achieve rapid, reliable releases through better collaboration between developers, testers, DBAs and operations, and automation of the build, deploy, test and release process.

I’ll start by discussing the value of CD to the business, inspired by the lean startup movement. I’ll then present the principles and practices involved in continuous delivery, including value stream mapping, the deployment pipeline, acceptance test driven development, zero-downtime releases, and incremental development. I’ll cover how CD is enabled by an ecosystem including Devops, cloud computing, agile testing, and continuous deployment.

At Tech Ed 2012, the biggest change over the previous years had to do with ALM and agile development – it seemed like one out of every four classes dealt with Agile in one way or another. What is all the fuss about – and how can our team use the best tools to keep developers and BA’s humming and business owners happy?

In this talk Dave will explore his team's two-year long experience with Agile development at Columbia Sportswear Company, including experiences with TFS and other tools.

Along the way we’ll cover:

• The Software Development Hierarchy of Needs (from a great post by Scott Hanselman)

• Our experiences with MVC, TDD, and Azure

• Why the Spanish Armada didn’t work and Apollo 13 did – the Cone of Death

• The dirty little secret behind scrum – hint, it’s not a magic bullet

• Jealousy as a proactive emotion

• Save the poker for Vegas

• Managing priorities across software development teams in one list

Speaker: Dave Harrison is the Development Manager and .Net Lead Developer at Columbia Sportswear. He has 7 years of Windows and Internet/Web applications development experience. Dave is a certified Scrum Master and agile enthusiast (www.rogueagile.com)

Rose City SPIN Presentation in partnership with PNSQC

Agile Metrics – Velocity is Not the Goal

Michael “Doc” Norton, LeanDog

Velocity is one of the most common metrics used—and one of the most commonly misused—on agile projects. Velocity is simply a measurement of speed in a given direction—the rate at which a team is delivering toward a product release. As with a vehicle en route to a particular destination, increasing the speed may appear to ensure a timely arrival. However, that assumption is dangerous because it ignores the risks with higher speeds. And while it’s easy to increase a vehicle’s speed, where exactly is the accelerator on a software team? Michael “Doc” Norton walks us through the Hawthorne Effect and Goodhart’s Law to explain why setting goals for velocity can actually hurt a project’s chances of success. Take a look at what can negatively impact velocity, ways to stabilize fluctuating velocity, and methods to improve velocity without the risks. Leave with a toolkit of additional metrics that, coupled with velocity, give a better view of the project’s overall health.

A promoter and practitioner of agile since 1999, Michael “Doc” Norton (@DocOnDev) is an agile coach and a partner with LeanDog. Doc’s twenty-plus years of software development have provided him with experience on a wide range of topics. As a member of LeanDog, living in Wadsworth, OH, Doc provides coaching, mentoring, training, and delivery in agile/XP/lean software development techniques. Doc is immediately suspicious of anyone who declares expertise in a single programming language or methodology. He is passionate about helping others become better developers, working with teams to improve delivery, and emphasizing software craftsmanship.

About Rose City SPIN

The Rose City Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN) is a monthly forum for networking, mutual support, and promotion of effective software practices. We exchange practical experiences, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and war stories about the technical, business, and human facets of software process improvement. The Rose City SPIN serves the software development community of the Portland/Vancouver metro area. Whether you work for a large company or a small one, corporate or self-employed, industrial or academic setting, you are welcome at the Rose City SPIN. Monthly seminars are sponsored by the Rose City SPIN and the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference.

About PNSQC

PNSQC is the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference, a group of volunteers interested in Software Quality. The Mission of the PNSQC is to enable knowledge exchange to produce higher quality software. As a non-profit, it seeks to promote software quality by providing education and opportunities for information exchange within the software community.

Sponsored by AgilePDX, Agile Open Northwest, TAO QA & Dev Forums, PNSQC:

"Agile Testing: How do WE Make it Work?"

As our organizations move toward "Agile” for developing software, we all face the challenge of understanding how to adapt our former roles and ways of working to new work roles and processes. How do we ensure the continued value of testing?

Join us in Open Space to share your questions, challenges, strategies, success stories, and how you've overcome stumbling blocks.

In small groups, we’ll discuss topics such as:

· How is Agile testing different from how we’ve always done it? · How do we know what to test? · How do we know what not to test? · On Agile teams, when does testing happen and whose job is it? · What is Exploratory Testing and why should we care? · How do regression tests work? · How does testing improve my design? Should it? · How do we ensure it is cost effective? · What do people mean when they say, "no defects”? · Does Agile change how we test or does it just raise the existing issues?

Bring the topics you feel passion for and add them to the list!

Each self-organizing discussion group will create a document or other record of their discussion, ideas, questions, and insights. We’ll share everyone’s experiences at the end of the day.

Who should attend?

· Testers facing an Agile adoption/People new to the testing role/Testers eager to jump in · Devs who want to get serious about defect-free code · CTOs and Managers of Test/Validation, Dev, Application Delivery · Academics preparing new software/IT professionals for the real world

Cost to attend: $75 per person (Register early. We expect to sell out.)

Title: Test-Driven Development and Mock Objects for C++ in Eclipse

Speaker: Prof Peter Sommerlad, Institute for Software at FHO/HSR Rapperswil, Switzerland

Abstract

At IFS Institute for Software, several plug-ins have been developed for the Eclipse C/C++ Development Tools (CDT), to assist Agile C++ developers. Some of the features have already been integrated into CDT, such as the refactoring infrastructure and some refactorings, such as toggling function definition and declaration. In this talk Prof. Sommerlad will explain how IFS's plug-ins make it easier to adopt an agile style of development, through code-generation for Test-driven Development (TDD), unit testing, test doubles and mock objects, quick feedback from static analysis tools, and quick-fixes for problems.

Speaker Bio:

Prof. Peter Sommerlad is head of IFS Institute for Software at FHO/HSR Rapperswil. Peter is co-author of the books POSA Vol.1 and Security Patterns. His goal is to make software simpler by Decremental Development: refactoring software down to 10% of its size with better architecture, testability and quality and functionality. Peter is the also the author of the CUTE unit testing framework. He inspired and leads several Eclipse CDT plug-in projects, such as the CUTE unit testing, Sconsolidator, Mockator, Linticator, and Includator. IFS contributed most of the CDT refactoring infrastructure and is employing it to develop further TDD and Refactoring support for Eclipse CDT.

Frank D’Andrea is an enthusiastic Agile evangelist, mentor, educator, and most recently, the Vice-President of Software Development at Tater Tot Designs. He has extensive experience in managing web and software development projects as well as mobile application and Content Management System development efforts. He is an experienced process improvement specialist with expertise in both Agile and Waterfall development environments.

Frank has leadership experience in both Product and Project Management as well as hands-on experience as a Certified Scrum Professional. Frank has been involved in numerous extracurricular activities as well; such as a 10-year stint of teaching poetry, literature, creative writing, and composition classes at Portland Community College; representing Portland as a member of Portland’s National Poetry Slam team; publishing and performing with Haiku Inferno, and getting his J.D. from Willamette University College of Law.

Here's the abstract:

Agile Still Sucks.

Bringing Agile into an organization is never a good idea. It is disruptive, complicated, and very expensive. It brings organizational dysfunction to the surface and shines a bright light on business practices that sabotage teams and fail to deliver value to clients. Further, unwitting teams may adopt a version of Agile that becomes dogmatic, inflexible, and interested in perpetuating the "process” of Agile rather than being, well, agile. The only thing worse than bringing Agile in, is trying to get Agile right.

That said, everyone should be using Agile. This presentation will explore ways to bring Agile into an organization, how to choose the right "flavor” of Agile, and what to do when it goes badly – because it will. This presentation will also examine how to expand the Agile conversation from within the software development team, outward to internal stakeholders, and eventually into client engagements.

Details and Pizza:

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 of launching Agile Projects.

November 8th Rose City SPIN Seminar

Mindful Engineering

Presented by Lindsay Van Driel

Dates/Times: Thursday, November 8, 2012: Networking @ 5:30-6:30 PM; Seminar 6:30-7:30 PM

Location: OTBC (Oregon Technology Business Center), 8305 SW Creekside Place, Suite C, Beaverton, Oregon, 97008, 2nd floor

Abstract:

Mindfulness refers to one’s ability to sustain attention, in a particular way, in the present moment and non-judgmentally. Although it may sound easy, five minutes of practice proves how tricky this can be. The conditions of modern life and the modern work place, with our hyper-connectivity, continue to erode our ability to willfully focus our attention. Mindfulness is based in the wisdom of ancient traditions, but modernized and secularized to reach its contemporary corporate audience. With academia leading the way, some 180 business schools across the world offer education and training in the field of mindfulness, most notably at Harvard, Stanford and the University of Michigan. Google created a program as a part of their employee development offerings dedicated to mindfulness and emotional intelligence. It is now accompanied by a NYT best-selling book of the same name as the course, Search Inside Yourself, as well as an industry wide conference pulling top tech CEO’s, innovators, authors and philosophers together for two days a year to discuss the importance of mindfulness. Intel’s Awake Inside program seeks to deliver the mindfulness teachings to employees, to relieve stress and build emotional resiliency and competency. As the technology industry continues to shape-shift, large firms are forced to constantly reinvent themselves to stay relevant. Intel’s program, dedicated to Mindful Engineering, is designed to teach employees the skills to look deeply within themselves for the answers to today’s most pressing issues. The program has proven to yield results in both personal and professional contexts, with the ultimate goal of promoting an overall sense of well-being in the individual.

Bio:

Lindsay Van Driel is a Business Operations Manager inside the Business Client Platform Division of Intel Corporation. She holds a Masters in Business and Administration from Arizona State University. Additionally, she is a registered Yoga and Meditation Teacher with the International Yoga Alliance. She joined Intel in the Fall of ’99 and has been there since, holding various positions inside the company’s vast engineering structure. Coinciding with her duties in Business Operations, she currently teaches both Yoga and Meditation on site at Intel and has founded Intel’s Awake Inside Program. This program is dedicated to realizing mindfulness in the midst of the corporate work experience and specifically in the field of engineering.

A Special Treat from PNSQC

Plan on coming early! In collaboration with the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC) the SPIN meeting will have pizza and pop provided by PNSQC beginning at 5:30 pm.

PNSQC is the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference, a group of volunteers interested in Software Quality. The Mission of the PNSQC is to enable knowledge exchange to produce higher quality software. As a non-profit, it seeks to promote software quality by providing education and opportunities for information exchange within the software community.

Thanks also to OTBC

We want to thank OTBC (http://www.otbc.org/) for providing the space for this talk How to Register

This is a FREE lecture sponsored by the Rose City SPIN. But you can help us plan food and drinks by registering at: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/4689946757

Rose City SPIN

The Rose City Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN) is a monthly forum for networking, mutual support, and promotion of effective software practices. We exchange practical experiences, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and war stories about the technical, business, and human facets of software process improvement. The Rose City SPIN serves the software development community of the Portland/Vancouver metro area. Whether you work for a large company or a small one, corporate or self-employed, industrial or academic setting, you are welcome at the Rose City SPIN.

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 three 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.

Bring your questions. Bring your Problems. Join us for Lean Coffee facilitated by Diana Larsen.

Lean Coffee started in Seattle in 2009 when Jim Benson and Jeremy Lightsmith wanted to combine lean and Knowledge work. Now, Seattle Lean Coffee happens every week, and is very popular.

Lean Coffee is a structured, but agenda-less meeting. Participants gather, build an agenda, and begin talking. Conversations are directed and productive because the agenda for the meeting was democratically generated.

(http://leancoffee.org/)

Details and Pizza:

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.

This month we’re all about managing the backlog:

Backlog Grooming: What does it mean? How do teams do it? Outside the sprint? What other things can be considered to be done "outside" the scrum team to facilitate a better backlog of stories that are ready for the team? Planning days take too long if the stories aren't ready for the team. It takes effort--how are teams ensuring that it gets done? Should we/ do we consider backlog grooming another of the critical 'scrum ceremonies'?

Estimating the backlog: How do teams estimate the backlog? Who does it? How do teams accommodate the business pressure to have information about sizing from which to make long term business plans (roadmap planning)? Is estimation a key part of the grooming process?

PO’s, BA’s, SM’s, and Team members, link hands and make the walk over to Ringlers on Burnside at noon this Friday. Bring your questions, your answers, and your backlog grooming passions.

Yes, there is still beer.

Diana Larsen (co-author of "Agile Retrospectives" "Liftoff" and"Virtuosity") will lead participants in a personal retrospective by helping each person ask the question, "How am I doing? Exploring my personal best," and find answers in a hands-on, highly interactive session. Everyone will reflect on how they developed their craft in 2012, then set aspirations for the coming year. Join us to develop an individualized plan for your professional development in 2013.

Arlo Belshee and James Shore present "This One Goes to 121:"

We will explore excellence. What it is, how one achieves it, and how one exceeds it. What determines the outer limits of your team s capability? How can you be continually more awesome? We've each got a decade of transitioning to (Jim), being on (Arlo), and building (both) awesome Agile teams.

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 of launching Agile Projects.

This month we will have an open discussion about Agile at Nike as well as across the "Westside" of Portland, and gather future topics for discussion and presentation during 2013. We look forward to your feedback in helping shape the community for 2013.

Agile Fluency Tune-Up

It's time for your annual tune-up! Do you want to get more mileage out of your Agile teams? Is one of your New Years' resolutions to figure out how to get the results Agile promises? If so, come to AgilePDX's annual tune-up session, hosted by James Shore and Diana Larsen. They'll walk you through four levels of Agile fluency and how to make the leap from one level to the next, then help you apply those ideas to your real-world situation. You'll go home with specific, actionable ideas you can use with your own teams.

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.

In the agile software development world many techniques exist to aid teams in constructing and organizing backlogs into sprints. But what about a collaborative technique to visualize the big picture between the vision and the product backlog? How do you support fixed milestones while still being agile? Roadmaps can help bridge the gap between the long term vision and the current sprint. So what are some best practices? What methods have been used in the past, good and bad, and how can we improve the process at our own organizations?

Panelists: •Adam Light, Management Consultant - Agile Delivery •David Nash, Vice President Product Management, ADP •Dean Bergan, Vice President Network Engineering, ADP Dealer Services International •Dave Patterson, Sr. Agile Software Engineering and Quality Leader
•Dorian Simpson, Managing Director, Planning Innovation and former PDMA President

Moderator: •Jeff Krueger, Chairman of the TAO Technology Leadership Exchange and PM Evangelist

Please join the Technology Association of Oregon Development Forum and the Oregon Product Development Managers Association in a panel discussion as we share ideas and talk about lessons learned.

Event Details: When: Thursday, January 31, 2013 Time: 5:30 - 8:30 PM (includes buffet dinner) Where: Kells Irish Restaurant, Portland,OR Cost: $25 Members $45 Nonmembers Register: TAO - 503-228-5452

Series Sponsors: Rally Software Salesforce.com

Agile Open Northwest, a non-profit alliance of agile practitioners in the US Pacific Northwest region, presents our seventh annual conference, now expanded to a third day! This conference contains over 90 sessions bringing novices, journeymen, and experts together for face-to-face conversations exploring the most important topics in Agile software development today.

What: An Open Space conference about Agile practices and techniques. Where: Ambridge Event Center, Portland, Oregon When: February 6 to 8, 2013 - Now three days long! Who: YOU and other experienced, collaborative, committed agile practitioners. Registration is limited to 150 participants. Cost: $200 for the three-day event, including continental breakfast and lunch each day, and dinner on the first night.

Agile Open Northwest 2013 offers an opportunity to strengthen our community of practice and co-create the future for Agile development in our region. For three days, we build on conversation after conversation as we engage important questions like:

What is Agile really? What are the most important practices in making Agile approaches really successful on my team? Who practices Agile philosophies, methods, principles or practices in the Northwest, and what's the impact? What is the difference between Lean, Scrum, XP, and other Agile approaches? What new technical challenges face Agile? What are the latest cutting edge developments in the Agile software development world? How do Agile frameworks and methods co-exist with project management, process control and other governance structures? How do we adapt Agile practices to our organizations without diluting them? Can Agile methods work in big, risky projects? How? When distributed teams use Agile approaches, what changes? If we adopt an Agile mindset, what might the transition look like in my organization?

Agile Architecture and doing "just enough" while maintaining a forward looking view within an Agile Delivery Model.

Format: Panel discussion and Q&A

Agile Portfolio Management – From Vision to Backlog

The enterprise is going to invest in a new product or service: it’s on the strategic plan, senior management is energized and the funding has been promised…

But what happens next? How do you get from vision to value? How do you drill down from a high level mission statement or market opportunity to the right user stories and how do you manage resource allocation with competing projects?

The goal of this session is to explore this critical transition and it’s implication for portfolio management.

We are pleased to welcome three panelists to help us answer these questions.

Panel Members:

Jamie Swails, Manager Network Data Operations, Portland General Electric

Pat Pesetti, Sr. Director Engineering, Tripwire

Adam Light, Management Consultant, SoTech Advisors

Meeting will start at 7:45 AM until 8:55

To join the online meeting (Now from mobile devices!)

1. Go to https://nike.webex.com/nike/j.php?ED=226516297&UID=1600919732&RT=MiM0
2. Enter your name and email address.
3. Enter the meeting password: (This meeting does not require a password.)
4. Click "Join Now".

To view in other time zones or languages, please click the link: https://nike.webex.com/nike/j.php?ED=226516297&UID=1600919732&ORT=MiM0

To join the teleconference only

Call-in toll-free number: 1-877.874.1777 (US) Call-in number: 1-720.239.5053 (US) Show global numbers: https://www.tcconline.com/offSite/OffSiteController.jpf?cc=5035328650 Conference Code: 503 532 8650

The Use of Cadence in Agile and Traditional Projects: Sprint Length, Integration Frequency, and Other Matters of Rhythm

Presented by Kathy Iberle

Dates/Times: Thursday, March 14, 2013: Networking @ 5:30-6:30 PM; Seminar 6:30-7:30 PM

Abstract:

A sprint is just one example of the use of cadence or rhythm to make a process more efficient. Once you understand the fundamentals of cadence, you can apply cadence in both agile and traditional projects to reduce overhead and coordinate activities. Learn how to determine the ideal sprint length for your project, find out when continuous integration won’t help, and discover other ways that cadence can benefit your project! This talk explores the science behind the concept of a “project heartbeat” using 2nd-generation Lean thinking. Bio:

Kathy Iberle is an expert at producing high-quality software and high-tech products using practical methods. She worked in a variety of fields during her long career at Hewlett-Packard - electronic instruments, medical products, printers, and Internet applications – and she has seen development from a range of perspectives: software developer, quality engineer, test lab manager, requirements manager, agile coach, process improvement expert. Kathy has a deep knowledge of the underlying theory behind agile and Lean development, combined with a flair for pragmatic applications, which has enabled her to successfully extend software agile development methods into areas where most people think “agile just can’t work”. Kathy reviewed technical papers for the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC) for many years, served as co-chair of PNSQC’s Program Committee in 2009, participated in the invitation-only Software Test Managers Roundtable for five years, and has published regularly since 1997. Kathy has an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Washington, and an excessive collection of degrees in Chemistry from the University of Washington and the University of Michigan. Visit her website: www.kiberle.com

A Special Treat from PNSQC

Plan on coming early! In collaboration with the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC) the SPIN meeting will have pizza and pop provided by PNSQC beginning at 5:30 pm.

PNSQC is the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference, a group of volunteers interested in Software Quality. The Mission of the PNSQC is to enable knowledge exchange to produce higher quality software. As a non-profit, it seeks to promote software quality by providing education and opportunities for information exchange within the software community.

Thanks also to OTBC

We want to thank OTBC (http://www.otbc.org/) for providing the space for this talk

How to Register

This is a FREE lecture sponsored by the Rose City SPIN. But you can help us plan food and drinks by registering at: http://marchspin.eventbrite.com

Rose City SPIN

The Rose City Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN) is a monthly forum for networking, mutual support, and promotion of effective software practices. We exchange practical experiences, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and war stories about the technical, business, and human facets of software process improvement. The Rose City SPIN serves the software development community of the Portland/Vancouver metro area. Whether you work for a large company or a small one, corporate or self-employed, industrial or academic setting, you are welcome at the Rose City SPIN.

As developers, we've created heuristics that help us build robust systems and employed test-driven development (TDD) to improve code design and counter instability. Yet object-oriented development principles and TDD have failed to gain traction in the database world. That’s because database development involves an additional driving force—the data.

Max Guernsey shows how to treat databases as objects with classes of their own—rather than as containers of objects—and how to drive database designs from tests. He illustrates a way to give these database classes the ability to upgrade old data without introducing undue risk. Max also shares how to apply good object-oriented design principles to database classes and how to enforce semantic connections between databases and clients. Max demonstrates how it all works together, ensuring that your production databases work exactly the same as test databases, minimizing the risk of design changes, and enabling client applications to more easily keep up with database changes.

Come for pizza & networking from 6:30pm. The program starts at 7:00 pm.

Speaker Bio Max Guernsey is currently a Managing Member at Hexagon Software LLC. He has 15 years of experience as a professional software developer. For nearly half that time, he has been blogging, writing, and delivering lectures on the topic of agile and test-driven database development. For much of Max’s professional career, he has been a consultant, advising a variety of software companies in many different industries using multiple programming and database technologies. In most of these engagements, he spent months or even years helping teams implement cutting-edge techniques such as test-driven development, object-oriented design, acceptance-test-driven development, and agile planning.

Max has always been a “hands-on” consultant, working with teams for long periods of time to help them build both software and skills. This series of diverse, yet deep, engagements helped him gain a unique understanding of the database-related testing and design problems that impede most agile teams. Since 2005, he has been thinking, writing, blogging, lecturing, and creating developer-facing software dedicated to resolving these issues.

Max posts regularly on his Twitter account (@MaxGuernseyIII) and his blog (maxg3prog.blogspot.com).

Networking at 5:30 PM, talk begins at 6:00 PM.

In partnership with the Intel Agile & Lean Conference and the Pacific Northwest Quality Conference, Rose City SPIN is proud to present this park bench discussion on “Escaping Velocity.”

Has Agile crossed the chasm and if so, what’s next? What will the industry look like in the next five years? This will be an open discussion with the speakers and audience about where we are and where we’re going in product development. Bring your burning questions about Agile as the audience will be able to ask questions during the park bench session. This is your opportunity to generate discussion about Agile topics with some of the top minds in the industry!

Speakers:

James Grenning trains, coaches and consults worldwide. James professional roots are in embedded software. His mission is to bring modern technical and management practices to embedded development teams. He is the author of Test-Driven Development for Embedded C. He is a co-author of CppUTest, a popular unit test harness for embedded C and C++. He invented Planning Poker, an estimating technique used around the world, and participated in the creation of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. His business website is http://renaissancesoftware.net.

David “The Dude” Hussman teaches and coaches agility in companies of all sizes all over the world. For more than 10 years, David has evolved the successful adoption of agile methods in medical, retail, legal, education, health care, control systems, digital audio, financial and more. Sometimes he is pairing with developers and testers, while other times he is helping product manager create product roadmaps. David believes in helping companies design processes that help them instead of simply teaching them to follow a process. In addition to working side by side with design and delivery teams, David works with leader and executives to promote the use of agile methods to attack the real challenges of their specific industry. In 2009, David received the Gordon Pask Award from the Agile Alliance. David’s company called DevJam provides coaching, coursework, development staff and product development. DevJam has seasoned mentors and builders who pragmatically match technology, people, and processes to create better products in more competitive cycles.

Diana Larsen is a founder of FutureWorks Consulting, LLC, Diana Larsen partners with clients in the software industry to create, guide, and fortify resilient workplaces and improve project performance. In addition to consulting with and coaching leaders and teams on adopting Agile work systems, she leads team, project, and whole system processes for collaborative learning, thinking and planning. Diana co-authored Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great! and Liftoff: Launching Agile Teams and Projects. She serves on the boards of directors of the Agile Alliance and the Agile Open Northwest non-profit, and is an associate of the Human Systems Dynamics Institute.

Please register at: http://www.eventbrite.com/myevent?eid=6157030845. (Registration is option, but it does help organizers plan).

Agile Portfolio Management – From the Lean Startup Perspective

We will discuss, in an open forum, ways of identifying critical information such as product vision, possible risks, technology solutions, and key project metrics, in a way that utilizes the minimum amount of time in the predevelopment period of the project.

A focus will be placed on practical group exercises and research techniques for gaining the critical information needed to start a project and build the initial backlog.

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 join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free, but space is limited, please purchase a ticket to let us know you will be coming.

The event is free and open to the public, but please let us know you are coming by grabbing a ticket at leancoffee.eventbrite.com.

This month will be an open discussion with fellow practitioners from within Nike and across the West Side of Portland. During the session we will also discuss topics for the upcoming quarter and identify folks within the community that are willing to "own" the topics as part of the community. All are welcome to attend and we look forward to the discussion.

Teleconference information

Call-in toll-free number: 1-877.874.1777 (US) Call-in number: 1-720.239.5053 (US) Show global numbers: https://www.tcconline.com/offSite/OffSiteController.jpf?cc=5035328650 Conference Code: 503 532 8650

This is your chance to influence upcoming topics and speaker selection.

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free, but space is limited, please purchase a ticket to let us know you will be coming.

The event is free and open to the public, but please let us know you are coming by grabbing a ticket at leancoffee.eventbrite.com.

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free, but space is limited, please purchase a ticket to let us know you will be coming.

The event is free and open to the public, but please let us know you are coming by grabbing a ticket at leancoffee.eventbrite.com.

Product Owners as catalyst for Agile Teams

Topic: Coaching and Empowering Product Owners Format: Facilitated discussion by Chet Amborn Location: Nolan Ryan 1 Air Huarache Date: 6/11/13 Time: 7:45am to 9:00am

Overview:
The performance and empowerment of the product owner is often the most important factor in a successful Agile project. Chet Amborn, Agile Coach, has identified 5 key areas where Product Owners need help from their ScrumMaster in making decisions that will make or break a project. Too often, ScrumMasters overly focused on low level issues with the development/implementation team while the truly significant issues involving Product Owner decisions are ignored.

Teleconference information: Call-in toll-free number: 1-877.874.1777 (US) Call-in number: 1-720.239.5053 (US) Show global numbers: https://www.tcconline.com/offSite/OffSiteController.jpf?cc=5035328650 Conference Code: 503 532 8650

The Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference is hosting a gathering for authors, poster presenters, reviewers, conference attendees, and organizers. You can get tips on writing drafts, get any questions answered, meet the software quality community, and converse with other presenters.

Food and non-alcoholic drinks will be provided for the group.

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

Test-First Mentality (BDD and TDD) , Testing Automation and Continuous Integration

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

The art of tailoring/integrating Agile into an Organization - Dave Harrison will be joining us to demonstrate how you can adopt Agile techniques in a way that fit in YOUR company's structure!

Who: YOU and all members of the local active Agile community (i.e., anyone who's doing any form of Agile - or wishes they could)

What: We invite you to join us in looking at future opportunities for AgilePDX.

When: On our regular meeting date, 3rd Wednesday, August 21

Why: Because "self-organizing" "collaborative" "responding to change"

How: Alicia Lanier (our facilitator) will help us stay on track as we take a couple of hours to look at:

• our draft Purpose and how it influences our decisions

• where we are now and how we got here (3+ meetings at different days, times of day, and geographic locations!)

• what that tells us about where we'd like to be

• what next steps will help us get there

Not one of our usual meetings, but more of an AgilePDX-wide retrospective and continuous improvement event. Please join us in service to the local Agile community. AgilePDX can be the best user group EVER!

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

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.

Waterfall to Agile: Flipping the Switch
Presented by Bhushan Gupta, Nike Inc.

Abstract:

Agile software development methodology is transitioning from a fad to a practice. More and more software development practitioners are contemplating to switch from Waterfall to Agile if not entirely at least partially. Terms like scrum, sprint, stand up, story points, and velocity are becoming the ‘Lingua Franca’. While enough light has been shed on the mechanics of creating a release and iteration plan, managing story development, and sprint retrospectives, the team dynamics and behavior for success has not been given the mindshare it deserves.

Although the rules of the game when moving from waterfall to agile development change substantially, the players and their goals do not. The player that, “product manager” now becomes “product owner” and need to very actively pursue customer interest as a customer surrogate. Test engineers who took pride in breaking the code are now urged to work side by side with the developers and ensure that the defects are resolved immediately for a successful completion of a sprint. The project managers who are supposed to drive the schedule take on a role of facilitators making every effort to see that the sprint is complete and the velocity is adequate. Requirements that are frozen rarely gel and the designs go through multiple refactoring cycles to make sure that the development progresses. The new product quality champions who were always looking for “the knee in the defect trends” now barely have any fluctuations in the defect find trends from sprint to sprint. Referring the game, there is a new character in the theatre, “scrum master”, who manages the delivery of the stories.

Can this change be achieved by simply creating a backlog, a release plan, and a sequence of iterations? No. It takes changes in people’s perspectives, the way they think, and the way they achieve their goals. Would a Type A “product owner” who is used to take a product to the market with all the bells and whistles be comfortable to do so with less than the planned functionality? Would a star developer forget about gold plating and would a test engineer who always took pride in finding errors in someone else’s work be able to stand by developers and work with them. Most of all, would the orchestra be able to perform without the precisely written music, the “requirements document”? This paper analyzes the transition of a waterfall team to an agile environment and how changing the perspectives of the players can make the transition a success when the switch from Agile to Waterfall is flipped.

Bio:

Bhushan Gupta has a M.S. in Computer Science from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro, NM. Bhushan has 27 years of experience in software engineering, 17 of which have been in the software industry. Currently a senior member of the GSS QA team at Nike, Bhushan is deeply involved with the agile development. Prior to joining Nike, Bhushan worked at Hewlett-Packard for 13 years in various capacities and led his groups in product development lifecycles, development methodology and execution processes, and software metrics for quality and software productivity. Bhushan has published and presented numerous articles in various conferences and has participated in panel discussions.

A Special Treat from PNSQC

Plan on coming early! In collaboration with the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC) the SPIN meeting will have pizza and pop provided by PNSQC beginning at 5:30 pm.

PNSQC is the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference, a group of volunteers interested in Software Quality. The Mission of the PNSQC is to enable knowledge exchange to produce higher quality software. As a non-profit, it seeks to promote software quality by providing education and opportunities for information exchange within the software community.

Thanks also to OTBC

We want to thank OTBC (http://www.otbc.org/) for providing the space for this talk

How to Register

This is a FREE lecture sponsored by the Rose City SPIN. But you can help us plan food and drinks by registering at: https://sept2013spin-reg.eventbrite.com/?ref=estw

Rose City SPIN

The Rose City Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN) is a monthly forum for networking, mutual support, and promotion of effective software practices. We exchange practical experiences, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and war stories about the technical, business, and human facets of software process improvement. The Rose City SPIN serves the software development community of the Portland/Vancouver metro area. Whether you work for a large company or a small one, corporate or self-employed, industrial or academic setting, you are welcome at the Rose City SPIN.

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

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.

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.

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

It's not too late to register or volunteer for PNSQC, the Northwest's premier software quality conference. Attend the conference, watch the keynotes, talk to paper and poster presenters, come to the official party.

Your Path Through Agile Fluency: Making Agile Work for You

Presented by Diana Larsen and James Shore

Networking with complimentary hors d'oeuvres at 5:30pm
Presentation at 6:30pm

Abstract

The promise of Agile is simple and compelling: a team that effortlessly surfs the wave of business possibility, changing direction to meet the needs of a changing market. Transitioning to Agile confers many benefits to an organization, but all too often teams don’t (or can’t) deliver on the promise. Too few teams achieve the ideal.

Diana Larsen and Jim Shore developed a model of the ways agile teams deliver value. This model describes four conditions of Agile fluency, what you can expect from each condition, and how to increase your team’s fluency, so you can achieve what Agile promises.

Diana and Jim will demonstrate how the organization’s desire for benefits and willingness to invest make the real difference. From creating value, to delivering, optimizing, and beyond, you will learn the practices, techniques, and change necessary as teams stretch their understanding of Agile and achieve new levels of excellence. This talk is based on the ideas behind the article at www.agilefluency.com.

Bio

Diana Larsen is a founding partner of FutureWorks Consulting. She is considered an international authority in the areas of Agile software development, team leadership, and Agile transitions. Diana works with organizations in the western US and around the world. Deeply in tune with how work teams grow, adapt, and develop, she co-authored Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great, Liftoff: Launching Agile Teams and Projects, and most recently, with James Shore, “Your Path through Agile Fluency: A Brief Guide to Success with Agile” at www.agilefluency.com.

An active volunteer, Diana is a current board member for Agile Open Northwest and the Organization Design Forum, coordinating committee member for AgilePDX, and past board member of Agile Alliance and PNSQC. She is also an associate of the Human Systems Dynamics Institute. You can follow her on Twitter (@DianaOfPortland) or contact her directly at [email protected].

James Shore teaches, writes, and consults on Agile development processes. He led his first Agile team in 1999 and was an early adopter of Extreme Programming in 2000. Today, he focuses on helping people understand how all aspects of Agile, from technical, to business, to social, fit together to create successful software projects.

James is an inaugural recipient of the Agile Alliance’s Gordon Pask Award for Contributions to Agile Practice and is co-author of The Art of Agile Development (O’Reilly, 2007). In 2012, InfoQ named him as one of the “most influential people in Agile.” He writes about software development on his “Art of Agile” blog at http://jamesshore.com and he hosts the screencast series “Let’s Code: Test-Driven JavaScript” at http://www.letscodejavascript.com.

A Special Treat from PNSQC

Plan on coming early! In collaboration with the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC) the SPIN meeting will complimentary hors d’oeuvres and beverages beginning at 5:30 pm. This is a great opportunity for networking and knowledge exchange with other practitioners on the current state of software development.

PNSQC is the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference, a group of volunteers interested in Software Quality. The Mission of the PNSQC is to enable knowledge exchange to produce higher quality software. As a non-profit, it seeks to promote software quality by providing education and opportunities for information exchange within the software community.

How to Register

This is a FREE lecture sponsored by the Rose City SPIN. But you can help us plan by registering at: https://2013octspin-reg.eventbrite.com

Rose City SPIN

The Rose City Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN) is a monthly forum for networking, mutual support, and promotion of effective software practices. We exchange practical experiences, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and war stories about the technical, business, and human facets of software process improvement. The Rose City SPIN serves the software development community of the Portland/Vancouver metro area. Whether you work for a large company or a small one, corporate or self-employed, industrial or academic setting, you are welcome at the Rose City SPIN.

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.

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

This coming Tuesday the west side Agile PDX group will be holding a round-table on the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner certification recently emerged from the Project Management Institute—the famous purveyors of the PMP certification.

Topics include: What’s the upside and downside of the creation of this new certification? Did we need one? How does it differ from the famous Scrum series (CSM, CSPO, CSP, CSD, CSC, and CST) of which the Certified Scrum Master (CSM) has become a market differentiator for many organizations and individuals in the Portland metro area—and around the world? Will it be an improvement over PMI’s Project Management Professional (PMP) certification? What kind of content does it actually cover? Do we want one for our very own—or not?

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

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.

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

Topic:

Scrum Must Die: Many teams over the last decade have moved to Agile Scrum development, but many have missed the key point of doing the adoption-Scrum and it's rituals are merely training-wheels for building a lasting Agile culture. In this topic, Ray Arell talks about how long-term dependency on Scrum can hinder the potential creativity and profitability of teams. Then he will look at successful patterns of how to use the framework to develop core skills and methods that, once the time-box is removed, will enable teams to deliver value daily. Finally, he will contrast the key challenges for teams stuck in the transition as well as key methods for moving forward.

Bio:

Ray Arell is Director of Intel Emergent Systems and Coaching. He is currently a transformative leader in the adoption of agile, Lean, and complex system methods inside Intel, and his group is currently coaching a community of practice of over ten thousand people that are moving to a continuous value delivery culture. Prior to this role, he spent several decades as both an engineer and engineering manager of teams focused on CPU, chipset, graphics, wireless, and software development. He is the coauthor of Change-Based Test Management: Improving the Software Validation Process and is a popular speaker at events worldwide.

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

In December, we'll be playing the Agile Adoption Game created by James Shore and Arlo Belshee. The Agile Adoption Game is a board game in the style of "Eurogames" such as Settlers of Catan. In the game, you'll be part of a team adopting Agile for the first time. Your job is to decide when and where to spend your team's effort to get the best results possible. Will you deliver features, which earn points? Or Agile practices, which don't? Choose wisely, and don't get fired!

The game isn't just a fun time—it's also a fairly realistic simulation of the tradeoffs involved in adopting Agile. It's suitable for anyone who's interested in adopting Agile or who just likes games. Bring your product owner and your thinking cap!

Bio: James Shore, AgilePDX coordinating group member, is a thought leader in the Agile software development community. He combines deep technical expertise with whole-system thinking, and believes that great software development teams consistently deliver market success, technical success, and personal success for team members and stakeholders. Find him at http://jamesshore.com

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 join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

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.

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

Greetings! 2014 is going to be great. I have teamed up with ISITE DESIGN and people from Silicon Valley to bring experts from the Agile Community to speak on topics ranging from Innovation to Enterprise Agile Transformation. We have speakers lined up from PayPal, Twitter, Ebay, Cisco, Apple, Visa, Walmart.com, Macys.com, etc.

These meetings will be monthly - happening on the last Thursday of every month at ISITE Design in NW Portland. To make the it even more interesting, we will have networking, food, and wine/beer the first hour, followed by the speaker for the 2nd hour, and then wrap up for the last 30 minutes. And the events will be FREE!

So, hope you can join us and make 2014 a Success for the Agile community in Portland. Speaker details to follow soon - check the website!

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

This month we will be doing a roundtable focused on "Agile estimation." We start on time at 12p, take the first 5 to 10 minutes to generate a list of subtopics and vote to select two to three to discuss. Then, we discuss the selected subtopics as a group before closing at 12:50p to select next month's topic and adjourn at 1p.

Feel free to bring your lunch. Feel free to continue the conversation afterward. Bring your stories, problems, Agile buddies, and Agile-curious colleagues.

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.

Scaling Agile Adoption into the Enterprise: A Transition Community Based Approach

Presented by Aashish Vaidya, Cambia Health Solutions

Dates/Times: Thursday, Feb. 20th, 2014: Networking @ 5:30-6:30 PM; Seminar 6:30-7:30 PM Location: OTBC (Oregon Technology Business Center), 8305 SW Creekside Place, Suite C, Beaverton, Oregon, 97008, 2nd floor

Abstract:

Since July of 2011, Cambia Health Solutions, a not-for-profit health solutions company has been transitioning to enterprise wide agile practices. Cambia develops its own software solutions as well as integrates software from other vendors. It has a distributed workforce that spans four states with many work-at-home employees. Cambia’s health insurance business is regulated by various state and national entities. Many of Cambia’s deliverables are large, mandated compliance projects that have a fixed time box and a set scope, driven by external entities. Missing either the deadline or scope could potentially mean losing a significant portion of its business or facing monetary penalties. This brings unique challenges for effective agile adoption, where set templates, cookbooks and recipes may or may not be effective. In order to transition from a patchwork of agile practices to large-scale agile, Cambia organized an Enterprise Transition Community and other communities. Initially, majority of the transition efforts were focused on rolling out agile to delivery teams and corresponding business areas. The experiences from this phase were shared during PNSQC 2012 presentation. Since, then the transition and transformation efforts continue to extend further at all levels: team, project and portfolio. This presentation will draw on the experiences shared in the 2012 PNSQC paper as well as augment additional lessons learned during the subsequent year. It will provide insights to company of any size that is looking to make or is in process of making a similar transition. Agilists of all stripes can also benefit from practical in-the-trenches information to bring back to their own organizations.

Bio:

Aashish Vaidya is an IT Staff Consultant at Cambia Health Solutions. He is a founding member of Cambia’s Enterprise Transition Community, and other Best Practices Exchanges. Currently he works on large portfolio projects leading agile and quality practices. He also serves as an internal coach on Agile and Quality practices. Aashish has been involved in agile practices in the earnest since 2007, and is a Certified Scrum Professional. He has over 20+ years of experience working at technology companies such as Compaq, Intel, and Kronos Incorporation. He has held various technical, leadership and management positions. Aashish has been a presenter/panelist at AgilePDX, PNSQC conference and Technology Association of Oregon. A recent article he co-authored appeared on AgileAtlas.org. He also muses on agile and management topics on his occasional blog agilesutra.wordpress.com. A graduate of Texas A&M University, Aashish holds Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering. He can also be found on twitter: @aashishvaidya and on Linkedin.

A Special Treat from PNSQC

Plan on coming early! In collaboration with the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC) the SPIN meeting will have pizza and pop provided by PNSQC beginning at 5:30 pm.

PNSQC is the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference, a group of volunteers interested in Software Quality. The Mission of the PNSQC is to enable knowledge exchange to produce higher quality software. As a non-profit, it seeks to promote software quality by providing education and opportunities for information exchange within the software community.

Thanks also to OTBC

We want to thank OTBC (http://www.otbc.org/) for providing the space for this talk

How to Register

This is a FREE lecture sponsored by the Rose City SPIN. But you can help us plan food and drinks by registering at: http://rosecityspinfebtalk.eventbrite.com

Rose City SPIN

The Rose City Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN) is a monthly forum for networking, mutual support, and promotion of effective software practices. We exchange practical experiences, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and war stories about the technical, business, and human facets of software process improvement. The Rose City SPIN serves the software development community of the Portland/Vancouver metro area. Whether you work for a large company or a small one, corporate or self-employed, industrial or academic setting, you are welcome at the Rose City SPIN.

A lot has changed with the tools and methods for web-based and mobile development. Affordable cloud hosting and full stack development solutions exist in great numbers. But what is the real benefit? Can using these new tools help build better software, faster? Or is it just for toy apps? Join the TAO Developer Forum as developers build a responsive web-based application using some of the newest technologies available (AngularJS, RESTful services, Firebase, Xcode, JetBrains, AppCode, JetBrains WebStorm, Android Studio, Objective-C, Java, Cloud providers, JIRA, GitHub and so on).

The event will start with the audience selecting the application that will be built, and will lend with a Q&A session. If you're looking to learn about the latest technology trends in web and mobile development, this is the event to be at.

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

Build a bridge to becoming an author and speaker, study and develop ideas in quality engineering, meet other like-minded volunteers.

Please join us for a brainstorming session.

Food and non-alcoholic drinks will be provided for the group.

(Pacific NW Software Quality Conferences are designed to enable knowledge exchange to produce higher quality software. This meeting is the first step in producing content in our own software quality roles and for PNSQC in October 2014.)

On March 7th the Downtown Pub Lunchers will be talking and learning about Human System Dynamics (HSD) with David Whitlock, Scrum Master at Tripwire. David has been trained in HSD and has found it valuable in his work, especially as he helps employees in a newly acquired division become part of Tripwire.

He’ll come chock full of information to answer questions and spur new thinking. One of the most interesting aspects of HSD is how it approaches change. It can be seen as a protocol-based or pattern-based system (whether it should be or not) for “dancing with change.”

There is a burgeoning body of knowledge about HSD, some of it quite technical. Here is a good, quick video on the topic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mBx12-yf-U) and a link to the Human System Dynamics Institute’s FAQ (http://www.hsdinstitute.org/about-hsd/what-is-hsd/faq-tools-and-patterns-of-hsd.html) to get you started.

Perhaps HSD is a pathway toward increasing our capacity to incorporate change?

We start at 12p and end at 1p. Strive to be on time: we do. RSVP's appreciated but not required. You'll find us in the back room.

See you there!

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

Our topic this month is "Distributed Agile Teams." One of the principles behind the Agile Manifesto is "The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation." And, we know that distributed teams, whether around the world or across a large corporate campus, are a fact of organizational life.

What have you seen or experimented with that has worked well? What's your thorniest remote worker problem? Have you been able to move to co-located teams? What persuaded the organization to do that? Has it helped?

This month we're moving to a larger space where we can move around, work in small groups, and get those sticky notes up on the wall!

The PMI Portland Agile Round Table is held on the second Wednesday of every month during the noon hour.

The round table provides project managers, scrum masters and others engaged in agile projects an opportunity to discuss topics of interest, issues they're facing and to join in an evolving community to promote effective use of agile methods.

Bring your lunch, ideas and challenges to the table.

(Note: PMP's & PMI-ACPs can claim 1 PDU for attendance)

COME LEARN TO PROGRAM JAVA...

The most popular & scalable computer language in use today and the language used on the AP Computer Science Exam. This session is hands-on, it is designed for immediate feedback throughout the course, allowing for students to have fun creating with Java and removing much of the frustration normally associated with computers. See how rewarding & accessible programming can be. Students will learn clean coding techniques and proper use of advanced tools.

Register for a free ticket with the Event Brite link above.

Ages: 11-18 Requirements: Please bring a laptop setup with code & eclipse from the "more information" link below. Note: we will be pairing durning the event, so kids will share laptops. This means we might not use your actual laptop and that if you don't have a laptop you can still join and participate.

Adults: Every child must be accompanied by an adult. Adults are welcome to particpate as well, although we ask you to pair with other adults instead of with your kids.

On Wed 19 March there will be a more adult focused session on the techniques: http://calagator.org/events/1250465770

More information: https://github.com/TeachingKidsProgramming/TeachingKidsProgramming.Java

About the speakers...

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.’

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.

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.’

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

Each year the Downtown Pub Lunchers talk about what's new and cool in agile life cycle management tools. On April 4th, instead of doing a free-for-all about the newest tools, we're going to be talking about the craziness and the goodness that can about from adopting a tool to track what's going on with agile teams. Sometimes even talking about adopting a tool can bring these patterns and anti-patterns up.

We mean to say: why bother with a tool? And when we need to bother, how can we best adopt a tool without hurting ourselves--and our quest for agility?

We start at 12p and end at 1p. Strive to be on time: we do. RSVP's appreciated but not required. You'll find us in the back room.

See you there!

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

You know how to plan a sprint and now they say you have to plan a release? You've got agile release planning down like clockwork and you want to share how you figured it out? You think release planning is bunk and want to explain why? Have we got a venue for you!

In April, the PMI Portland Agile Roundtable comes together for a fast dive into agile release planning. Please plan to start and end on time: we do. Networking after the event as you walk back to the office in the lovely sprint weather.

The PMI Portland Agile Round Table is held on the second Wednesday of every month during the noon hour.

The round table provides project managers, scrum masters and others engaged in agile projects an opportunity to discuss topics of interest, issues they're facing and to join in an evolving community to promote effective use of agile methods.

Bring your lunch, ideas and challenges to the table.

(Note: PMP's & PMI-ACPs can claim 1 PDU for attendance)

PNSQC Presents:

Join PNSQC board members and supporters in downtown Portland at Glyph Cafe on April 9 to discuss our upcoming conference with other software quality advocates. You'll learn how you can get involved in the conference by submitting an abstract proposal. Submission deadline is April 17.

Lean Project Management Specialist Kathy Iberle will give a short talk, and you'll have the chance to sign up to present a Lightning Talk. We're encouraging speakers to turn their talks into abstract proposals for the 2014 conference.

Location: Glyph Cafe - Downtown Portland Date: April 9th, 6:00pm

RSVP's appreciated but all are more than welcome. Event detail questions: email Dwayne at [email protected]

Join us at ProductCamp Portland 3.0, Portland's annual "unconference', now in its third year, where product managers, product marketers and product developers unite.

Why attend?
ProductCamp is a user-driven “unconference” that brings together passionate product managers and marketers who are interested in collaborating to share insights, learning best practices, and networking with other top professionals in the Portland product community. You decide the topics, you pick the agenda, you participate in making this unconference a great learning opportunity.

Ready to participate?
Register for ProductCamp Portland 3.0: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/productcamp-portland-2014-tickets-9352961961

Submit a topic: http://productcamppdx.userecho.com/

Learn more about facilitating a discussion: http://productcamppdx.org/propose-a-session.html

We look forward to your participation.

Thanks to our Sponsors!

• Pragmatic Marketing
• Jama
• Rally Software
• ADP
• AudaExplore
• Proficientz
• PDMA Oregon
• Pichler Consulting
• Blackblot
• SVPG Silicon Valley Product Group
• Actuation Consulting
• Brainsnacks Cafe
• Mironov Consulting

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.

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

The April attendees chose a topic that should generate a dynamic discussion May:

What exactly is an ‘agile project manager’?

What value do ‘project managers’ or ‘agile project managers’ add to an agile organization? They sit outside the team and coordinate between teams, right? Or something else?

How should they interface with the team? Isn’t what we’re talking about actually program management or release management? If you have teams on different release cycles, someone needs to coordinate all that so they deliver together? What exactly is an ‘agile project manager’ and how can they add value? What if you’re being pushed to have a project manager? How do they fit in? Should agile organizations be leveraging the PMI-ACP?

Come with your opinions, your experiences, and with your expertise.

We start at 12p and end at 1p. Strive to be on time: we do. RSVP's appreciated but not required. You'll find us in the back room.

See you there!

The SEI Architecture Technology User Network (SATURN) Conference is the largest conference in North America dedicated to software architecture.

In 2014, the SATURN Conference will celebrate its 10th year. Each year, SATURN attracts an international audience of practicing software architects, industry thought leaders, developers, technical managers, and researchers to share ideas, insights, and experience about effective architecture-centric practices for developing and maintaining software-intensive systems.

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

This month the PMI Agile Roundtable welcomes a local PMP to talk about Serving Two Project Management Masters with a Hybrid Approach. Read the article (http://pmi.memberclicks.net/serving-2-pm-masters--chiang-). Then come to the roundtable and get the back story on the article he published in the newsletter this month, and we’ll take this opportunity to talk about hybrid agile adoptions, their efficacy, challenges, benefits, and dangers.

Allen Chiang, PMP is a career IT project manager with deep experiences in companies like Intel, IBM, and Nike. Allen has over 15 years of experience managing both hardware and software projects, as well as small business ownership. He is also an avid electronics hobbyist and collector.

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

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

Our world is changing fast. Markets and consumers are demanding more … faster, cheaper and better. Technology, new product development and innovation have to churn faster than we’re used to. How do companies like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Apple keep up? They practice agile techniques, in particular they utilize scrum to manage their projects.

IBEA Foundation is hosting a Scrum/Agile Event to coach and train professionals and students about Intel Scrum Product Development. This event will help Project Management, Computer Science and Engineering professionals to gain extensive knowledge about Scrum Framework Development at Intel.

Scrum is an agile philosophy used widely within Intel's main projects. All proceeds from this event will go towards Domo de Organico, an organization devoted to sustainable recycling in Mexico City

Come Join us for an all day Scrum workshop on May 31st, 2014, hosted by the IBEA Foundation featuring Suzanne Ward, a Scrum Master & Agile Coach/Trainer at Intel. So if your the right fit for this event contact us at [email protected].

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

This month we'll be talking about how to help Agile Teams develop an awareness of the organizational context they are working in. Is this a good idea? Is it necessary? Is it a distraction? How do you do this and still stay focused on meeting commitments?

And, what is "organizational awareness," anyway?

We plan to be in the back room. Look for us there. We start and 12p and end at 1p.

Bring your questions, concerns, and unshakeable opinions. We'll shake them up for you.

Lunch is on you. The camaraderie we provide.

RSVP if you can. It helps us arrange the tables.

Our meetup site.

This month one of our regular attendees will reprise her talk at XP2014 for us.

Applying Agile Management Concepts to a Complex, Multi-Year, High Stakes Scientific Research Project presented by Alicia Lanier

The South Florida Water, Sustainability, and Climate Project is a $5M research project funded by the National Science Foundation. This research project is in its second year of a five-year duration, with a geographically distributed team representing ten universities across the U.S. This research team is developing a hydro-economic optimization model and relevant inputs that will be used to evaluate management scenarios for south Florida water and environmental resources. A unique human systems dimension is also included as input to the model. Risks from potential climate change impacts, such as sea level rise, are major drivers for pursuing this work.

Alicia introduced Agile management and Adaptive Action concepts have been introduced over the last nine months, including iterative development, retrospectives, Scrum, kanban , and agile chartering. This combination of ‘light-weight management’ concepts has enabled researchers to continue to pursue their scientific inquiry independently, while ensuring collaboration across the sciences. Ensuring individual creativity with simultaneous collaboration and integration additionally maximizes stewardship of federal funds. The effectiveness on integration and productivity will be continuously analyzed through tools such as in-depth interviews, retrospectives, and online surveys of project participants and stakeholders.

Alicia's inner fire is stoked by helping teams achieve big dreams using agile project management, adaptive action, and unique facilitation methods. Alicia is intrigued by the possibility of a world of (non-software) teams who understand the power of being agile, and have tools to help get them there. Her clients include municipalities and state organizations, distributed university teams, and businesses. When she started her own company 11 years ago, she gave herself the gift to study anything that piqued her curiosity. That gift led to her exposure to agile principles, human systems dynamics, servant and facilitative leadership concepts, importance of retrospectives, unique facilitation methods, Lean, and more. She currently manages the LinkedIn site ‘Agile Project Management (non-software)’. Prior to starting her own company, she worked for over 13 years at CH2M HILL, and 6 years at North Carolina State University. She is a registered Professional Engineer in California, Oregon and North Carolina, as well as a Human Systems Dynamics Professional.

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

“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.

Companies who have ‘gone Agile’ often experience several failure modes. We know that Agile brings unprecedented transparency to adopters - but this often exposes organizational dysfunction which has ‘always been there,’ but often neither acknowledged nor addressed. This can result in one of the most disruptive transitions a company can go through. What to do?

-How can we spare ourselves months of what seems like inevitable struggle? -What have some veteran Agile practitioners learned, and done, to accelerate their transition, and reap the rewards that have eluded others? -How have they measured success?

Our panel of Product & Development experts will share their experience and strategies, to help you cross this minefield successfully and faster.

Mark Bednarski has worked with iGrafx since 2007, starting in Germany as a Business Process Consultant and Six-Sigma Black Belt. He transitioned into Product Management in October 2013 when he transferred to iGrafx headquarters in Tualatin, OR. iGrafx goal - to reduce the release cycle from 18 mos. to 6 mos. - required major changes in both Dev & PM processes, which Mark will lead to completion by the end of this year. This goal screamed for an Agile approach, causing Mark to learn and discover on his own – a tough learning curve, which started to pay back just a few months ago.

Tony Aiello has spent 20 years in machine vision / factory automation engineering, and 5 years in the movie business. He's regularly intrigued by how much these disciplines actually have in common from development / production viewpoints, and gratified that the skills are transferable.

We will confirm the remaining two panelists early next week.

Questions? Contact [email protected]

Everyone is talking about "Lean UX" -- the last time Julie 'JB' Booth was with us, we did some really fast prototyping.  This time we are going to back up a bit and work on writing simple, clear, testable statements about our users, needs, features and usages.  

Julie 'JB' Booth is a UX geek who is so into providing value to users that it borders on obsession.  Currently at Intel, JB is bringing user centered design into Agile product development teams.

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

The Summer Code Retreat has been cancelled.

Code Retreat is designed to hone software craftsmanship skills and software design through repeated attempts to build an implementation of a well-known software problem (Conway's Game of Life). Developers use pair programming and discussion to exchange knowledge, and additional constraints are given throughout the day to emphasize good design concepts and practices. More details about the Code Retreat format can be found at http://www.coderetreat.org.

There are so many reasons that people decide to adopt agile principles, practices, and frameworks. Going fast is just one of them—though it may be the one that gets the most press.

This Friday, let’s talk about “How much agility is enough” and everything that goes along with that. Why did your organization adopt agile? Why do you gravitate toward agile? Is there a personal benefit, or is it all about the business. And, if it’s all about the business, how does the group you work in define agility and how much is enough for them?

Yes, we’re still meeting at Ringler’s on Burnside, still from 12p to 1p the first Friday of the month. That’s this Friday, 8/1.

I have a meeting right up until 12p, so Phyl will be there to get you all started.

In the face of unpredictable business conditions, ever changing customer needs, and rapidly evolving technologies, the only sustainable advantage comes from your organization's ability to adapt and continuously improve.

In response to this modern reality, Agile methods have changed technology management by shifting the focus of production away from the individual contributor and toward the self-organizing team. But supervisors and managers have sometimes struggled to exert their influence without sacrificing the benefits of self-organization even as teams have struggled to fully situate themselves in the context of business value.

When they reflect at regular intervals by conducting retrospectives, Agile teams embody the most basic element of continuous improvement. But, lacking a defined mechanism for understanding the organizational system outside their own boundary, teams are frequently unable to sustain the pace of improvement over time.

The Improvement Kata is a basic pattern of practice for continuous improvement that aligns tightly focused improvement experiments across the breadth and depth of the organization using teachable coaching protocols. Profound in its simplicity, the Improvement Kata embodies truly scientific management!

Attend this talk to learn more about what the Improvement Kata is, to understand where it came from and how it operates, and to appreciate what can be gained by combining the Improvement Kata with selected Lean and Agile ideas and practices.

Adam Light is Management Consultant and Principal at SoTech Advisors where he helps technology leaders apply Lean and Agile methods to deliver increased customer value, enhance organizational capability, and improve the lives of their employees.

Adam has more than 20 years of technology experience. He began his career as an application developer before becoming a manager of projects and people. Adam first experienced the power of Lean and Agile methods when he adopted them as Director of Planning and Program Management at TransUnion. That initial knowledge led him to found SoTech Advisors and he has built his consulting practice steadily by seeking knowledge of new and better management methods at every opportunity. Working with enterprise clients to adopt, integrate, and adapt Lean and Agile practices, Adam helps people learn to think and act differently by deepening their understanding. He focuses on pragmatic techniques that increase organizational capacity by improving leadership capability.

We're bringing Lean Coffee back from summer vacation!

Come join us for Lean Coffee. We will be talking about "Lean Knowledge Work" using the Lean Coffee format. We tend to focus on the business of software development, but you can talk about any topic your group agrees to talk about.

For more on Lean Coffee, check out leancoffee.org. To see what this group has discussed in the past, check out portland.leancoffee.org.

New Relic is hosting this event, providing us space and coffee (and a spectacular view). The event is free.

As if transitioning to Agile is not challenging enough in any company, what does Agile look like ‘at scale’? For the North American market, ADP Dealer Services develops software & services across 100 sprint teams, 4 major product groups, and half a dozen sites across the US & India. We are now 2 years into our Agile transition. We’ll take a look at some of the practices & tools we utilize each day, and some of the lessons we’ve learned along our journey.

David Nash is Vice President of Product Management at ADP Dealer Services, the leading provider to Automotive Retailers and OEMs, globally. Prior to ADP, David spent 17 years at Intel in various Product Management, Product Marketing, Advanced Research, and Venture Investing assignments. He is the President of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA) Oregon Chapter, and is the co-founder of ProductCamp Portland.

RSVP's appreciated but not required. For more info, contact [email protected] or post your query to the AgilePDX mailing list.

The PMI ACP tests a knowledge of a set of agile principles, practices, and frameworks, but it does not indicate how the role should be structured. Because there is so much variation in Agile adoptions, and therefore, “how” to be an Agile PM, much is left to individual practitioners and the organizations they practice in. So, what are some options for PM’s who want to support agility through their PM practice?

On October 8, Jean Richardson will set context for and facilitate a discussion on Agile PM role design options based on her experience and an Agile Coach and an Agile PM. Fresh from an engagement where she worked this issue regularly, Jean brings years of coaching experience, award winning project management experience, and fresh experience to bear on the problem before so many PM’s today.

Note our new downtown location: Unitus Community Credit Union Unitus Plaza 1300 SW Sixth Ave – 4th Floor Community Room

Mike will be sharing the Kanban implementation at Urban Airship and the agile journey that he took along the way to find what works best for Urban Airship. Agile and Kanban are used throughout the organization - this is not where Urban Airship started with their agile implementation but rather where they settled.

Mike Herrick is the SVP of Product & Engineering at Urban Airship and is responsible for developing, operating, supporting, and sustaining Urban Airship’s products. He joined the company in 2010.

Prior to Urban Airship, Mike was the Vice President of Products for Collaborative Software Initiative. In that role, he was responsible for product management, product development, technical support, and hosted operations. Prior to Collaborative Software Initiative, Mike built a broad background in the software business with management and individual contributor roles at Liberty Mutual, C-bridge/eXcelon (now Progress Software), Mentor Graphics, and Andersen Consulting (now Accenture).

Annually, PNSQC provides a two-day technical program and a one-day workshop during our fall conference. PNSQC events draw participants from Universities and Corporations from around the world. Among the major participants are ADP, Boeing Computer Services, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Mentor Graphics, Tektronix, Microsoft, Portland State University and Oregon State University.

Speaker Bio:

Michael Kelley Harris is an active developer, Scrum/Agile coach & trainer. He has 20+ years of software development experience in roles including software engineer, architect, manager, director, consultant, trainer, and coach. 12+ years of direct experience with Scrum values, principles, and practices, including the full suite of Agile engineering practices from Extreme Programming. He also uses the Lean Startup perspective to help innovators, investors, and development teams validate products & features. Kelley is a CST, CSP, CSPO, CSM, CSD with the Scrum Alliance and has Three patents. He has trained and coached hundreds of people in Scrum & Agile principles & practices, in the US, Canada, Europe, and India. You can view Kelley's CSM training schedule: http://www.sourcecell.com/calendar.html

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!

This month we'll be doing a collaboratively facilitated roundtable with a focus on leading offshore teams on agile projects.

Bring your problems, questions, and success stories to share!

See you at Unitus at noon tomorrow!

Join us for, the TAO Agile Smack-Down, a thought-provoking discussion and debate of the good, bad, and ugly ways to implement Agile methodologies. Adam Light will moderate a rousing dialog between Frank D'Andrea, VP Software Development at Tater Tot Designs, and James Shore, author of The Art of Agile Development. Our panel will discuss real-world lessons from applying and misapplying Agile to application development, with time set aside for Q&A from the audience.

For details, click here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/pdx-global-day-of-code-retreat-2014-tickets-11470688137

As organizations expand agility into the enterprise it quickly becomes clear that traditional approaches such as Scrum of Scrums and Release Trains are not sufficient. How do you move away from a fixed financial budget to create a lean and Agile product portfolio? Can you empower self-organizing teams when individually-focused Management By Objectives (MBOs) and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) rule the way the organizations measure progress?

Beyond Budgeting is a way of thinking that aligns with Agile and provides enterprises with the language, subject matter context and concrete detail necessary to address these dilemmas and complement the Agile mindset found in software and product development.

Created as part of Agile Alliance's "Supporting Agile Adoption" workshop, this talk will define Beyond Budgeting, highlight how it aligns with Agile as well as describe where it differs and propose an approach to taking advantage of both lines of thinking to create a holistic approach to enterprise agility.

Bio: Jorgen Hesselberg is the Director of Agile Enterprise Transformation at Intel Security. He has more than fifteen years of experience in creating organizational environments that generate end-to-end business value and is passionate about making the world a better place to work through agile, Lean and complex systems thinking. Prior to Intel Security, Jorgen was heading the enterprise transformation efforts at NAVTEQ, Nokia and Nokia Xpress. He is a frequent speaker at international conferences, author of several white papers and the Director of Agile Alliance’s Supporting Agile Adoption program.

As pitched in October, we have Matt Mayer coming to talk to use in December. Remember, anyone can pitch a talk to the group just by showing up and tossing in your idea when we vote on upcoming topics at the end of the hour.

At Monsoon, we’ve tried and tested Kanban—and we’ve learned a lot! Our microservices team is driven to do fast, small changes to deliver bug fixes and features to production fast. Interdependencies between services mean a single service going down causes customers and Monsoon to lose money. Using a physical Kanban board meant the difference between guessing where bottlenecks were versus identifying the problem, targeting it and applying multiple forces to eliminate it. It also makes large tickets stand out so they can be analyzed and sliced into smaller tickets for faster delivery.

Matthew Mayer has been programming professionally since 2006, with an emphasis on performance and complex problem solving. He’s worked with a variety of technologies from ASP.NET web applications to .NET installed products to cloud services in Go, quickly providing data for customers worldwide. He developed an increasing interest in integration tests and tools for that end, such as cucumber and Docker. He advocates for close integration with QA counterparts so programmers can focus on delivering early and often, lowering barriers to entry for new team members.

RSVP's to the AgilePDX Yahoo list or to [email protected] are much appreciated. We occassionally have very large turnouts, and its great to be able to warn the wait staff.

Look for us in the back. We start on time and end on time so you can get back to making the world safe for agilists everywhere. Yes, the beer flows and so does the pub grub.

Our topic this month is “The Role of Functional Managers with Agile Teams.” We’ll be doing a traditional roundtable and sharing our experiences as managers and working with managers associated with agile teams.

This month, Aashish Vaidya will be reprising his well attended PNSQC 2014 talk and providing additional content his time slot at the conference did not allow him to cover.

Organizations, large and small, that are experimenting and succeeding in using agile practices at team level, face their next challenge in scaling these practices across the enterprise. This challenge can come from expanding pilot programs from handful of teams to more teams; or, it comes from agile teams working with non-agile parts of the organization. The process inevitably creates confusion as teams employing different methods interface with each other. Are there large scale practices that work in easing the interaction between agile teams, and other non-agile, semi-agile business units? While scaling, can an organization get too process heavy and risk losing the original intent of transitioning to agile practices? There are primarily three scaling frameworks that try to address scaling agile practices: Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD), Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS), and Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). Each of these frameworks draws from variety of agile and lean practices. However, an organization’s context matters most in deciding whether to embrace particular framework or only select practices to obtain desired results. In most cases, an organization has to make informed, pragmatic choices and experiment with various practices.

Cambia Health Solutions has for over three years rolled out Scrum and other agile practices across more than 40 development oriented teams. For Cambia, scaling practices, articulated in scaling frameworks, such as enterprise-wide synchronized Sprints, multi-program Quarterly Release Planning, Scrum of Scrums and Communities of Practices, have been effective in organizing our work. Many of these practices can prove useful not only to larger, but also to smaller ones, who are looking to improve and refine their adaption of agile practices.

Aashish Vaidya is a Staff Consultant at Cambia Health Solutions, parent company of The Regence Group, a not-for-profit, Health Insurance Company. He works on large portfolio projects, and serves as an internal Agile and Quality coach. He is a founding member of Cambia’s Enterprise Transition Community, Agile Best Practices Exchange and the Software Quality Best Practices Exchange. Aashish has over 20+ years of industry experience working in various leadership and management positions for companies such as Compaq, Intel, Kronos Incorporation, and other IT companies. Aashish has been a presenter and a panelist for Technology Association of Oregon, AgilePDX, RoseCity SPIN and PNSQC. He has been practicing Agile for over 7 years and holds Scrum Practitioner and ScrumMaster certifications. He is a co-author of 2 articles on AgileAtlas.org on Scrum common practices and he maintains an infrequent blog on Agile and Management topics at agilesutra.wordpress.com. Aashish holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University.

This month we're having a roundtable discussion on choosing Scrum or Kanban. Everyone has her opinion about whether teams should start with one and evolve to the other, whether Scrumban is the ideal, and whether Kanban is even feasible in some kinds of situations--or absolutely required in others. This is likely to be a lively discussion.

If you use either framework, have used both, or are just curious about what all the fuss is about, come on down to Ringler's the SECOND Friday of January and join in the fray. We'll be in the back room. RSVP's are appreciated. It helps me know whether or not to rearrange the furniture and warn the restaurant to call in more staff. Sometimes we're a pretty big crowd. RSVP's to [email protected].

Announcing the re-launch of AgilePDX Westside! It’s a new year... what do you want to accomplish? Bring your Agile New Years Resolutions for the coming year to the January session, and we will determine what topics to target for the coming year.

We are starting the new year in a NEW LOCATION. Intel has generously offered meeting space for this year…please note the new location at Intel - Hawthorne Farms. We will be in the Building 3 Auditorium.

This month's roundtable focuses on what we want to see happen for Agile PM as a profession and as a practice in Portland for 2015.

We the doers are the influencers. How we are and the methods we use on the projects we lead shape not only our own futures and the future of the projects but also grow the profession. We lead projects. We share experiences and learning. And, from this, we build our competency and extend our reach as agilists in the PM community.

Come share with your peers what draws you to agile and what you would like to see happen in the Agile PM community and in Agile PM practice in Portland in 2015.

Feel free to bring your lunch. Unitus generously provides a lunch-friendly meeting space.

The market environment today is challenging: Teams need to deliver working, high-quality code in an increasingly short time frame. We hear echoes of this in leadership’s implorations to “go faster”. To succeed, engineering teams need the flexibility to alter our course multiple times during product development. The practices to accomplish this are well-established, yet teams continually encounter difficulty changing their behavior. Matt will discuss the challenges a team faces in adopting new techniques, and an approach for achieving sustained excellence.

Matt Plavcan is a Technical Practices Coach with the Intel Emergent Systems and Coaching team. He is a 17-year Intel veteran; his previous efforts include validation of the Pentium 4 and Core microprocessors and teaching Intel architecture at the University of Illinois. Matt is the founder of the Code Dojo and Coderetreat program at Intel, which uses dedicated practice to hone professional programming skills. He runs similar events for the Portland programming community.

Last month the Pub Lunchers overwhelmingly voted to talk about estimation of business value, so here we go!

Does your product management team talk about business value in terms that confound you? When you ask which story is more valuable to deliver now are you told “it’s all high priority”? Do you wonder whether it’s possible to estimate business value? Does your PO have this down pat and never blinks an eye when rapidly and masterfully prioritizing the backlog in flawless priority order?

Well, then, come on down to Ringlers on Burnside for lunch on February 6th for we will be there to edify, exhort, and console you over pub grub and your favorite Friday afternoon libation. Bring your questions, stories, and hard won lessons to this roundtable where you will find your Agile comrades in arms, co-conspirators, and sages for a day.

We start at 12p and end at 1p. You’ll find us in the back. RSVP’s to [email protected] are appreciated, but not required. We were 27 last month, and such numbers mean alerting the wait staff and moving the furniture are in order on the day.

Are you ready for a new fast-paced format idea? We are bringing in 5 speakers with fantastic stories around the use of Agile in non-traditional projects. Each speaker will offer a fast-paced 5 minute presentation, with another 3-5 minutes allocated for questions.

Please join us for a rousing round of lightning talks on the following topics:

Agile stories from the underground (sewers, that is) - Mark Liebe
Process Design using the 'Agile Periodic Table' Approach – Megan Miller
Applying Agile Mgt Concepts to a Complex, Multi-year, High Stakes Scientific Research Project – Alicia Lanier
Family Activity Planning Wall - Sarah Francaviglia
The Agile Attorney – John Grant III

We'll begin at 7:45 with "The Buzz". Bring your recent links, books, or other tibits to share and txt them to the facilitator. We will present them on screen and collect to send to the AgilePDX mailer.

Agile Open Northwest, a non-profit alliance of agile practitioners in the US Pacific Northwest region, presents our ninth annual Open Space conference exploring agile practices, techniques, realities, and visions!

Our new theme for the Open Space this year is “Agile Vision”:

What does Agile let us see with fresh eyes? Where do you see Agile taking your shop? What do we see as the future of Agile? What role do you see for “QA” and estimates and projects? Do you see Agile scaling beyond company boundaries to the entire value chain? Do you see Agile scaling beyond the software industry?

As many of us know, servant leadership is the preferred model in most Agile-aspiring organizations and communities. So, why what is pervasive leadership and why do we need it?

On January 1, InfoQ, an international go-to source for agilists and technologists alike, published "We Need No Less than Pervasive Leadership" (http://www.infoq.com/articles/need-pervasive-leadership). This leadership model, propounded by Jean Richardson, builds on research done for her master's thesis and her experience in and observations of Agile Teams and Agile-aspiring organizations.

Reading the article is not a requirement for attendance. Jean will open with a brief outline of why she was motivated to form this model and what it's basic approach is. This presentation, as with most of Jean's public engagements, will be dialogic in nature. So, your curiosity and questions are key to the quality of the experience for all of us.

AgilePDX has been graciously granted space by the Agile Open Northwest Conference to hold a community night this Thursday after the conference sessions! You DO NOT have to be registered for the conference to attend this event.

Once the pizza and pop are liberally distributed, we open with a look at AgilePDX "behind the scenes." This is your chance to learn about how AgilePDX works: who makes it all happen, what's coming up for the rest of the year, and how you can influence and/or support what goes on in the Agile community in Portland.

Next, Frank D'Andrea, fresh from the TAO Agile Smackdown, challenges and delights us with "Scrumfounded, or After the Burndown." Frank's witty, irreverent, and completely unapologetic evaluation of Agile draws large audiences for good reasons: He knows his stuff, and he doesn't hesitate to demonstrate it with a brash sense of humor.

Then, we close with some social time. If you are an AONW attendee, share what's going on at the conference. If you're not an AONW attendee, feel free to catch up on the buzz and network with friends in town for the event.

Pizza and pop generously sponsored by Intel.

The smallest unit of work in an Agile organization is produced by the team. Creating an environment of communication and collaboration in which highly productive teams emerge is not trivial, however. This talk takes a closer look at what it means to be on an Agile team. It outlines concrete behaviors, techniques and practices to help groups deal with transitioning from siloed, functional teams and organizations to becoming cross-functional, high performing teams.

Collin Fagan is a Technical Coach with the Agile Transformation Team at Intel Security . Prior to joining Intel, Collin was a Lead Engineer at Nokia in the Here maps division. Collin holds a BS in Computer Science from the Rochester Institute of Technology and is an avid collector of fine guitars.

First of an energetic Lean Coffee discussions where we discuss a wide variety of questions that you bring for feedback, inquiry and laughs with fellow Agile practitioners. You pick your poison (in more ways than one).

Can we be agile if the organization isn't agile? Does agile have to roll across the organization in order to thrive? And, if it must, how do we do this? What organizations in town are agile beyond the engineering group?

The Downtown Pub Lunchers voted this topic most desirable for their March discussion.

Come on down and share the wealth of your knowledge. Questions? Answers? All are welcome.

We start at 12p and end at 1p. You'll find us in the back. RSVP's ([email protected]) are encouraged but not required.

ProductCamp is a user-driven “unconference” that brings together passionate product managers, product marketers and others who are interested in collaborating to share insights, learning best practices, and networking with other top professionals in the Portland product community.

Join us for our fourth camp!

It might technically be Winter, but Portland's weather doesn't seem to think so. Which is fine, we're holding the 2015 Spring Coderetreat a little earlier this year.

Come join your fellow Portland programmers to practice the art of software development together. Write code, learn from others, teach someone else, and expand your network of friends who are passionate about their craft. Show up with your laptop and favorite development tools to participate, everything else is provided.

Agile Terms from A to Z

What do Yaks, Rubber Duckies and Bike Sheds have to do with Agile?

Come update your Agile Terminology with an interactive conversation around the language we use every day in our Agile travels.

For those starting out, this is a great opportunity to learn both the common and less-than-common terms. Agile experts, this is a chance to contribute your best ideas and refine the common vocabulary.

Are you ready for a new fast-paced format idea? We are bringing in 4 speakers with fantastic stories around the use of Agile in non-traditional projects. Each speaker will offer a fast-paced 5 minute presentation, with another 5 minutes allocated for questions.

Please join us for a rousing round of lightning talks on the following topics:

• Agile stories from the underground (sewers, that is) - Mark Liebe
• Process Design using the 'Agile Periodic Table' Approach – Megan Miller
• Family Activity Planning Wall - Sarah Francaviglia
• The Agile Attorney – John Grant III

As usual, we’ll begin at 12p and end at 1p. See you at the Unitus Credit Union Community Room this Wednesday. Feel free to bring your lunch. Unitus kindly provides a lunch-friendly meeting room.

Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches know the critical importance of fostering a continuous improvement ethos within our teams and we have a number of practices that we implement to that end. But often times we find that this only allows our teams to grow to a local optimum, as they are quickly impeded by the organization they work within, and it's lack of mature inspect and adapt mechanisms. How do we as front line coaches or managers effectively influence the organization around us to thrash this impediment for our teams?

This interactive talk will explore the peaks and pitfalls of coaching an organization towards continuous improvement, sharing real world examples of goal setting, alignment, and accountability mechanisms. We will also discuss effective and ineffective ways to measure an organization, and finally we will identify where are we likely to run into resistance and how it can be overcome.

Bio: For the past two years Andy Whaples and his merry band of acronyms (CSP, CSM, PMI-ACP, SPC, PMP, MBA) have been helping Tripwire adopt and master Agile Practices within it's software development organization. Before Tripwire, Andy experienced the many challenges of large scale software development at AT&T and as a consultant for Accenture. These challenges led him to embrace Agile and Lean's focus on delivering incremental customer value through highly motivated, supported and performing teams of crafts-men and women. His focus of late has been on extending his experience in building continuously improving teams to influencing the overall organization in which they work.

Distributed teams . . . virtual teams . . . remote workers . . . are a part of the daily life of most teams aspiring to agility. This is ironic given that "The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation."

Many teams are finding ways to work around lack of co-location. These include things such as portable webcams carried around documentary style, telepresence tools which are becoming more affordable, team agreements to support the needs of co-located and telecommuting workers, and frequent trips to meet face-to-face at critical times, such as at sprint transitions. What have you tried in your organization? What works--or doesn't?

In April, the Downtown Pub Lunchers will be chewing over the distributed teams aspiring to agility problem. Thank goodness there will be beer! See you all there. You know the drill:

We'll be in the back. Bring your war stories, your conundrums, your friends, and people you want to be friends with. But--wait--here's a new twist:

Our attendance is getting to be large enough that RSVP's are becoming important. If it looks like we'll have a crowd again this month (and the word is we will) we're going to try a slightly different format to get all the goodness we can out of the hour. So, RSVP to [email protected] saying how many you expect to bring with you. We'll move the furniture and get going right at 12p.

The PMI Agile round table is a monthly gathering of Project Managers, Scrum Masters, Product Owners and others interested in discussing how to apply agile techniques, tools and organization structures.

The April round table will be an open discussion on tools supporting agile project management and product development.

For those of you with a downtown phobia, this is our first Lean Coffee on the inner eastside!

Lean Coffee discussions are where we discuss a wide variety of questions that you bring for feedback, inquiry and laughs with fellow Agile practitioners.

Sharpies and sticky notes are our agenda-setting tools of choice.

Intel Corporation’s preeminent development conference is back for its 7th year. This year’s conference focuses on building Culture, Community, and Craft to enable you and your teams to deliver faster with higher quality and customer value.

Discover the latest in Agile methods, Lean practices, requirements engineering, complex adaptive systems and more. Each week offers opportunities in which you can participate, including:

Keynotes with leaders and innovators from industry Tutorials and workshops, from basic through advanced Experience reports from leading development teams across Intel Networking events

This month we'll be congregating for a free evening event at the Intel Agile and Lean Conference instead of our usual location at Puppet Labs.

We'll have a chance to meet with the keynote speakers from the conference as well as participate in an interactive panel discussion. Not to be missed!

Participants include: - Jurgen Appelo of Happy Mello - Bjarte Bogsnes of Statoil - Cindy Coleman of Gensler - Ryan Martens of Rally - Noopur Davis of Intel

...and many others from the PDX Agile community

Software companies have been employing distributed teams for decades—longer than many of their current workers have been on the planet. Some distributed teams cohere and work fluidly together. Others never seem to develop a sense of “team” and have ongoing human dynamics challenges which frustrate or halt the work they are asked to do together.

Changing online collaboration tools is not the answer in many of these cases. Some organizations try boosting face time through periodic on-sites—which is an excellent thing to do. But, when problems come up, teams are caught up in organizational or market changes, team membership changes, and so on, the same unhelpful patterns can re-emerge. What to do?

This month’s pub lunch—following up on topics raised last month—will look specifically at what we do that nurture’s true human connection across space and time. We’ll share observations on common social anti-patterns that can emerge and inquire into possible ways to address them. The simplicity of some of these things may surprise you!

So, grab your co-located colleagues and come on down to Ringler’s this Friday to get up close and personal across the table and learn to do the same across space and time. We’re returning to our usual format of friendly and forthright conversation among a circle of supportive folks. We’ll be in the back room from 12p to 1p and stop at 12:55 to choose next month’s topic. RSVP’s are helpful but not required.

Scaled Agile - Too Big to Fail?

Join us for a format introduced last month at the Intel Agile & Lean Conference: Lean Coffee++

Participants will actively brainstorm and prioritize the agenda and become part of the conversation. Up-votes will continue the discussion, while down-votes mean move on to the next sub-topic.

To guide the conversation we'll seed the topic, and also seed the audience with expert contributors. This is the ++ portion of our take on the LeanCoffee(tm) format.

Seed Topic: Scaled Agile - Too Big to Fail?

Seed questions: Why do large organizations embrace SAFe? Is it possible to 'get off' the release train? How to scale the human factor.

Are you a Project Manager who wants to use Agile methods on the projects you lead? Or, are you a Project Manager who is faced with working with Agile teams, and you are wondering how best to do that?

The PMI Agile Roundtable is all about helping you gather information, tools, and techniques on these topics this month.

As usual, we’ll begin at 12p and end at 1p. See you at the Unitus Credit Union Community Room this Wednesday. Feel free to bring your lunch. Unitus kindly provides a lunch-friendly meeting room.

In today's volatile business environment, it's vitally important to create an Agile environment that enables the benefits realization of our Agile development practices and engages and empowers each of us with the autonomy to create value and pursue mastery. Many of our organizations HR processes and people management systems are doing the exact opposite and creating an enterprise blocker to effective agile adoption and increasing individuals frustration, disengagement and attrition.

This calls for new ways of thinking and new ways of approaching performance and people management.

Please join us for an interactive evening where we will review some drivers and catalysts behind some new performance management practices emerging from organizations like Adobe and Microsoft and explore new evidence from the field of neuroscience as well as share ideas on how we can build a case for change in our organizations. We'll explore practical approaches as well as some simple tools for crafting our personal career strategy and creating support structures with career circles.

Pat Reed is an experienced Agile executive, coach, transformational leader and trainer with proven success transforming large Agile organizations and developing world class Business Agility processes and practices. Pat has deep domain expertise in enterprise Agile Accounting, PMO, Portfolio Management, Dev Ops, Change, Compliance, Performance Management and Adaptive career processes and practices. She has a proven track record of leading and coaching teams that have transformed Fortune 500 companies. Pat excels in leveraging cutting edge technology, delivery and project management methods to solve challenging business problems with impressive results across a wide range of industries including her work as Executive Director for 15 years at the Walt Disney Company, 5 years at Universal Studios / GE and 8 years at Gap Inc. Pat is passionate about creating healthy, high performing and learning teams. She designed, co-created and currently teaches the Agile Management Certificate program for UC Berkeley extension and has over 30 years of experience in teaching technical and business process improvement at the undergraduate, graduate and extension level as an adjunct professor. She is a popular speaker with numerous keynotes and Agile Conference sessions and workshops; and co-founded the Agile Alliance Executive Forum with Jim Highsmith. Pat is equally passionate about advancing agile practices and serves at the PMI Agile Community of Practice Council Leader with over 32,000 global members; and as a Director on the Agile Alliance Board where she directs the Agile Accounting Program and co-developed the Agile Alliance Value Model. Pat graduated with honors from the University of Illinois with a B.S. in Behavioral and Clinical Psychology and an MBA from Woodbury University and is authoring a book on "Making Value Visible" and "Making Sense of Agile Accounting".

What kinds of helpful roles can managers of all types play in relation to Agile teams? And, do they play these roles, or does something else happen?

This month, the AgilePDX Downtown Pub Lunchers consider how different kinds of power operate within Agile, what it can feel like for a manager to encounter an "empowered" Agile team, and what reactions can come up.

Bring your war stories and questions on down to Ringlers where we will solve the Agile world's problems with regard to managers, power, and empowered Agile teams over beer and pub grub from 12p to 1p.

RSVP's to [email protected] are welcomed but not required. It's nice to know who many tables to push together!

How Agile is Agile Enough?

Join us for a format introduced at the Intel Agile & Lean Conference: Lean Coffee++

Participants will actively brainstorm and prioritize the agenda and become part of the conversation. Up-votes will continue the discussion, while down-votes mean move on to the next sub-topic.

To guide the conversation we'll seed the topic, and also seed the audience with expert contributors. This is the ++ portion of our take on the LeanCoffee(tm) format.

Seed Topic: How Agile is Agile Enough?

Seed questions: Do large organizations need to accept the same definition of agility as small ones? Is it possible to accept some known impediments and still be considered 'agile'? How do we measure when we have become 'agile enough'?

What's the project manager's role in an Agile project? More importantly, how can a project manager add value?

Frank D'Andrea will provide real-world insights and discuss how PMs can act as translators across project disciplines.

As usual, we’ll begin at 12p and end at 1p. See you at the Unitus Credit Union Community Room this Wednesday.

The PMI Agile Roundtables are open to all interested in Agile and managing agile products - Project Managers, Scrum Masters, Product Managers, et. al. are welcome.

This month we'll be bringing pizza and drinks.

Bob Loihl will be presenting:
Secure Software Development Life Cycle in an Agile World
In this day and age we must do everything we can to produce secure software. But how you ask? I will be talking about some of the options available and how to get an initiative started in your workplace/project. I will cover some of the choices out there for Agile Development and then we'll examine one choice, BSIMM (https://www.bsimm.com/), in more depth. I will follow that up with a discussion of some of the challenges and some of the benefits of implementing an SSDLC.

Bob Loihl is a Software Engineer with 20+ years of experience developing business applications, leading teams and spreading the security word. He has a strong interest in delivering applications that are secure by design in an agile world. He has been helping Tripwire grow and mature its development processes for the last 10 years and his current hobby is incorporating SSDLC (Secure Software Development Life-Cycle) processes into the software manufacturing process. Bob is passionate about family, software, canoes and guitars. In his spare time he works at Tripwire producing high quality software using Agile methodologies. Oh yeah, he cares a tiny bit about security.

The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a 501c3 not-for-profit worldwide charitable organization focused on improving the security of application software. To sign up for future meeting notes and to discuss security topics with local gurus, sign up on the OWASP Portland mailing list:

 https://lists.owasp.org/mailman/listinfo/owasp-portland

Meetings are free and open to the public.

Frank D'Andrea and John Halberstadt will be discussing the 9th annual State of Agile survey.

This survey is the largest, broadest and most consistent annual public survey on agile adoption internationally. It provides an interesting look into which types of organizations are using agile and lean approaches, why, what is working for them and what is not. Everything from usage of specific frameworks and methodologies, to team practices to measurement techniques to software tools, and more, are part of this survey.

More than just a review of this survey, Frank and John will lead the dialogue - and potentially a friendly debate - with the Agile PDX audience to suggest "bigger picture" learnings and cautionary tales, as well as to collaborate on how those of us in the agile community can use this information to help within our organizations to further our processes and practices.

John Halberstadt is a Managing Agile Consultant, Coach and Trainer for LitheSpeed, an Agile and Lean-focused training and consulting organization. John has 20 years of diverse, senior-level technology leadership and experience throughout the SDLC, having led, grown and built teams including software engineers, quality assurance, product, program and project management, user experience and IT operations. John is a self-described "excessively pragmatic, lowercase 'a' agilist". He is a firm believer in agile's founding philosophy, principles and its potential to help build happy teams who deliver exceptional products.

Frank D’Andrea, a veteran of multiple Tech Ignite’s and the TAO Agile Smackdown is also Vice President of Software and Business Development at DADO Labs, connects clients, their brands, and their products to the Internet of Things (IoT). DADO’s Platform as a Service (PaaS) provides best-in-class hardware and software solutions for white-label, turn-key solution for a number of Internet of Things (IoT) clients whose products will be appearing in market over the next 6-12 months. He listens to clients and asks them thoughtful questions regarding direct product management, product direction, and product roadmap across social, mobile, SaaS, cloud, BigData in the IoT space, and identify how DADO can achieve their goals. He leads an experienced, multi-faceted engineering organization with both a software development team and product team of award-winning professionals.

Join us for Lean Coffee at Viewpoint Construction Software on Wednesday, August 5 at 7:30am. Viewpoint is located at the east landing of the Hawthorne Bridge, at 1510 SE Water Ave. Come to the Tech Center on the eastern side of Water Ave.

Lean Coffee is a simple, efficient, and fun way to discuss open ended topics in a small group. We’ll tend to focus on agile software development, but welcome any and all topics of interest. Porltand Lean Coffee is always an open, free community event. Some notes from past discussions are available on http://portland.leancoffee.org/

For more on Lean Coffee, check out http://leancoffee.org/

Come join your fellow Portland coaches and programmers to learn facilitation of disciplined practice of software technical skills. Matt Plavcan will be sharing his experience teaching software development and running Coderetreats and Code Dojos for the Portland community and Intel.

Some simple coding is part of the day, but all work will be done in pairs. You do not need to be a coder to participate.

Please see event URL for more details.

Team complaining about too many meetings? Planning day is two days long? How did this happen?

Many teams are learning how to create shorter sprint transition planning sessions. Various techniques are used with various risks and benefits. One pub luncher believes he has the secret sauce for teaching teams to drastically shorten their planning days.

Want to be a hero? Come to this session and take tips and tricks back to your team for shortening planning so you can get on with the work.

You know the drill: We'll be in the back. RSVP's to [email protected] welcome but not required.

PNSQC has a strong Pacific Northwest region attendance profile with a substantial proportion of national and international presenters and invited speakers.

The conference attracts a diverse audience and is considered a “must attend” event for software product managers, quality professionals, Agilists, managers, contractors, consultants, customers, developer-testers, tester-developers, and maintenance engineers.

PNSQC Mission: Enable knowledge exchange to produce higher quality software.

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

For October, we will debrief on the PMI Org Agility Conference and the Agile Alliance conference by those who attended. If time permits, we'll select topics from our backlog (or ones added by attendees) to discuss as a group.

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

Thanks to Unitus for their continued support

Matthew Mayer shares a field guide for how to get a delivery team started down the path to agile development.

A slightly more technical focus than the usual AgilePDX fare, this talk provides guidance to take a team from traditional to an agile-enabled one, providing business value to customers faster. Aimed at agile coaches, manager and technical managers, it provides guidelines, stories and other tools to help enable teams to implement agile in their environment.

Culture changes, patterns and anti-patterns are covered, giving a holistic approach to helping a delivery team reach their potential.

Teams are the engine of an Agile effort, but sometimes it seems that the organization sees them as a mere “resource.” They can get chewed up in organizational processes. As Agilists we need to be smart and proactive about the care and feeding of teams. So, what is the ideal size and composition a team? 7 +/- 2? Generalizing specialists? How do you scale teams? Do you have to scale teams? Do you always need the whole team in every conversation?

You have your opinions and experiences. Come help your colleagues avoid the mistakes you have learned from. If you have current issues you’re worrying yourself over, bring them to those who have been there. We gather on the first Friday of every month in the back room at Ringlers.

RSVP's to [email protected] are welcome but not required.

It's time to check in with you, the Agile Community, again about how you would like AgilePDX to serve you. Come share your ideas for kinds and formats for events, people you'd like to hear from, learning experiences you'd like to co-create, and stories you'd like us to bring with you. This evening will be an informal pizza and beer discussion facilitated by our organizing committee to learn from you and build connections among those who show up. Come share in this possible turning point in AgilePDX's history.

Come practice Pair Programming and Test-Driven Development with us. Pair Programming is an Agile methodology in which two developers share a single workstation and work together to solve some problem. Test-Driven Development is a development process that relies on the repetition of a short development cycle driven by writing tests before any implementation code. Red, Green, Refactor.

Contact ACM:
Website: www.acm.pdx.edu
E-mail: [email protected]
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pdxacm

Have you ever worked on or helped build a great team only to see it disbanded at the end of the effort that helped build it? Are you familiar with notion that the best way to spread goodness that one team learns is to disperse its members among many teams? Have you ever been almost to the point of having a high performing team only to see team members sent off to other efforts? Well, have we got a topic for you!

This Friday, the Downtown Pub Lunchers are going to pick up where they left off last month talking about demonstrating the value of and preserving intact teams.

Moving the work to the people rather than the people to the work is a principle some organizations try to live by. This helps them keep teams intact so they can continue to grow together. This can require some creativity in allocating work to teams. Come join us as we talk about how to demonstrate the value of intact teams and move the work to the team.

Same bat time, same bat cave. We'll be in the back at Ringlers from 12p to 1p. We start on time and end on time. Come share hot pub food and a hot topic over beer on a cold day. RSVP's to [email protected] are welcome but not required.

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This month as a group we'll select topics (either from our backlog or ones proposed be attendees), vote on the most interesting and time box discussions on each.

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

Thanks to Unitus for their continued support

Test Ruby PDX is a new user group focusing on testing from a developer's perspective. Join us for peer mentoring, conversation, and pizza at 6, followed by presentations at 7. This month, Jason Clark of New Relic will discuss how to tackle the complex testing issues that come up when your code needs to be compatible with multiple dependencies.

For more information about this and future meetings, follow @TestRubyPDX on Twitter.

Testing the Multiverse

Jason Clark

It’s a basic principle of testing that minimizing dependencies will make you happier, faster, and more productive. But what happens when you can’t? If your code plugs into or extends another gem, comfortable isolation might be out of the question. Stubbing and careful design can carry you a ways, but eventually you need to actually test your code against those gems you’re building on. Luckily, there are ways to reduce this pain. We’ll dig deep on creating a simple environment to check your work against multiple dependencies. We’ll see patterns that help avoid pulling your hair out when those dependencies change. We’ll even search around the raw edges, examining how to verify what your code does when it lands in an environment you haven’t tested. There’s a multitude of gems out there to build on. Let’s see how we can test with them!

ActiveMocker: Fast ActiveRecord Mocks

Dustin Zeisler

Tired of a slow test suite in Rails? Hitting the database so often it's getting you down? Is waiting for Rails to boot as you do red, green, refactor killing your vibe? Wouldn't it be great if your tests ran in milliseconds instead of seconds or minutes? You may say "That's all great, but I'll have to change the way I test and program adding tedious boilerplate, making my code ugly." And I would say, no! I created ActiveMocker to save my team from just that. You can have nearly all of the benefits by adding one setting to your test file and with just a little more work you can have full, glorious, unadulterated speed. ActiveMocker creates mock classes from ActiveRecord models, allowing your test suite to run at breakneck speed. This can be done by not loading Rails or hitting a database. The models are read dynamically and statically so that ActiveMocker can generate a Ruby file to require within a test. The mock file can be run by itself and comes with a partial implementation of ActiveRecord. Attributes and associations can be used the same as in ActiveRecord. Methods have the same argument signature but raise a NotImplementedError when called, allowing you to stub it with a mocking framework, like RSpec. Mocks are regenerated when the schema is modified so your mocks won't go stale, preventing the case where your units tests pass but production code fails.

Thanks to Renew Financial for providing the space and pizza for this event!

Agilists, what's ailing you lately? Broken practices, dysfunctional teams, intractable impediments? Whatever it is, come join us at AgilePDX for an Agile Clinic where we'll crowd-source an agenda of your maladies and engage in an interactive round-table discussion to help you uncover remedies from each other. Come to find healing, come to share your favorite Agile medicine, or just come for the pizza, beer and good company.

Now here's something we don't talk about often enough: prioritization skills. Yet, our inability to prioritize--at every level of the organization--easily trips us up. The liquor of urgency inebriates us until everything looks equally important. And then, we are paralyzed or dashing off in all directions at once and getting nothing done . . .

Fear not! Help is on the way.

On January 8th Lorie Gordon will lead us in a discussion centered around the notion of a prioritization score card, a tool she regularly uses in her work. Bring your friends. Bring your Product Owner. Bring your prioritization conundra, and join your colleagues in a rousing discussion of the perils of prioritization.

Same place. Same time. We'll be in the back.

RSVP's not required but gratefully accepted at [email protected].

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This month, Agile coach Phyllis Thompson will be discussing how to use Open Space for company meetings and facilitating organizational change.

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

Thanks to Unitus for their continued support

"Do you or someone you know suffer from multi-tasking? Does your company value and promote multi-tasking as a critical key to success? Do your Agile teams have difficulty reconciling their organization’s longstanding culture of multi-tasking with Agile’s emphasis on limiting WIP (“Work In Process”)?

Craig Carrington has observed and coached numerous Agile teams and organizations, all of whom have been challenged in some way by multi-tasking (a.k.a. context-switching) during their Agile journey.

In this session, Craig will describe some of his recent experiences working with clients in this context, and invites everyone to bring their own experiences and thoughts to participate in a conversation about this topic.

He will also facilitate an interactive game that explores the effectiveness of multi-tasking (versus limiting WIP), which you could take and try with your own teams and organizations.

Craig has been an Agile practitioner since 2007, with experience in Scrum, Kanban, and SAFe. He is currently serving as an Agile Coach with SolutionsIQ. He has coached at a number of clients around the country, spanning industries including consumer electronics, internet security, networking equipment, IT, insurance, healthcare, energy, and automotive."

Yes, this topic is so important to us we voted for it again!

Have you ever worked on or helped build a great team only to see it disbanded at the end of the effort that helped build it? Are you familiar with notion that the best way to spread goodness that one team learns is to disperse its members among many teams? Have you ever been almost to the point of having a high performing team only to see team members sent off to other efforts? Well, have we got a topic for you!

Friday, 2/5, the Downtown Pub Lunchers are going to pick up where they left off last month talking about demonstrating the value of and preserving intact teams.

Moving the work to the people rather than the people to the work is a principle some organizations try to live by. This helps them keep teams intact so they can continue to grow together. This can require some creativity in allocating work to teams. Come join us as we talk about how to demonstrate the value of intact teams and move the work to the team.

Same bat time, same bat cave. We'll be in the back at Ringlers from 12p to 1p. We start on time and end on time. Come share hot pub food and a hot topic over beer on a cold day. RSVP's to [email protected] are welcome but not required.

Register to reserve your seat and save $95! http://www.ruckandmaul.org/upcomingcsmclasses/pdx209csm

By earning a Certified ScrumMaster® certification you:

• Expand your career opportunities by staying relevant and marketable across all industry sectors adopting Agile practices.
• Demonstrate to employers and peers your attainment of core Scrum knowledge.
• Learn the foundation of Scrum and the scope of the Certified ScrumMaster’s role from the best minds in Scrum.
• Engage with a community of recognized Scrum experts who are committed to continuous improvement.

As a CSM, you will be able to fill the role of ScrumMaster or Scrum team member. Through the certification process, you will gain an understanding of the Scrum framework, including team roles, activities, meetings, and artifacts.

Additionally, with your CSM certification, you will have access to local user groups, online social networks, and additional resources that are only available to Scrum Alliance members.

In addition, CSMs receive a profile page on the SCRUM ALLIANCE® website and have access to a specially designed logo to highlight their credentials.

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This month the group will select agile-related topics / issues and have time box discussions. All attendees are encouraged to bring their burning agile-related topics, issues and questions for discussion/debate/brainstorming.

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

Thanks to Unitus Credit Union for their continued support.

Test-driven development, refactoring, evolutionary design… these Agile engineering techniques have long been established for back-end code. But what about the front-end? For too many teams, it's dismissed with a "JavaScript sucks!" and unreliable, brittle code.

In this session, we look at what it takes to bring the best of Agile development to front-end code. Test-drive your JavaScript and refactor your CSS.

James Shore teaches, writes, and consults on Agile development processes. He is a recipient of the Agile Alliance's Gordon Pask Award for Contributions to Agile Practice, co-author of /The Art of Agile Development/, and host of "Let's Code: Test-Driven JavaScript." In 2012, InfoQ named him one of the "most influential people in Agile." You can find his screencasts at letscodejavascript.com and essays at jamesshore.com.

It can be a struggle to find useful metrics for evaluating the efficiency of agile teams. Traditional metrics can give an incomplete or misleading view of how well a team is actually delivering. Story points can also be misleading, as it's easy to inflate story sizes to game the metric.

So what's a worthwhile metric to use for judging how well a team is doing, and most importantly, how well the team is improving? What have you found that works well?

Come join us discuss what's valuable and what to avoid.

Usual time, usual place. We'll be in the back at Ringlers from 12p to 1p. We start on time and end on time. RSVP's to [email protected] are welcome but not required.

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This month the group will select agile-related topics / issues and have time box discussions. All attendees are encouraged to bring their burning agile-related topics, issues and questions for discussion/debate/brainstorming.

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

Thanks to Unitus Credit Union for their continued support.

2016? Agile? Like to prognosticate, expound or listen intently? We're there for you.

(Did you miss the last one due to some unfortunately hyper-confusing instructions? Ahem. That organizer has been taken out to the back shed for re-education. Let's do this right.)

We'll meet at 5pm, spend a few minutes gathering ideas and drinks, then roll right into the smooth easy cadence of lively discussion.

Details on how Lean Coffee works are on the meetup site.

RSVP on meetup.com to secure your spot!

Portland's testing user group for Ruby developers! Conversation and peer mentoring starting at 6, presentations at 7. For more information, follow @TestRubyPDX on Twitter or join the #testrubypdx Slack channel (under the pdxruby team).

How and Why to Test Rake Tasks - Brett Chalupa

Testing classes and modules is essential to writing well tested Ruby code. However, testing Rake tasks is not as straight-forward. In this talk, you will learn how and why it is valuable to test Rake tasks. This talk will go over testing regular ole Rake tasks and Rake tasks in a Rails app. Before you know it, you will be writing Rake tasks in a test-driven manner, hooray!

Are you not sure how to start solving the tough problems that you and your organization face? Do you ever wish that you could leverage the combined knowledge of your coworkers to innovate? Have you ever wanted to cross-pollinate practices across your company without having to plan a conference without PowerPoint and speakers and did I mention PowerPoint? Then Open Space might be right for you. Open Space is a facilitation technique that empowers large groups to leverage the shared knowledge of the attendees to self-organize to understand and ultimately solve problems (large and small) facing individuals, teams, and organizations. Open Space Technology has been used by corporations, non-profits, and community organizations to share knowledge, work through problems, and determine how to take action. At this month’s AgilePDX, we’ll learn how two Portland companies, ShiftWise and Tripwire, use Open Space to spread knowledge across team silos, identify organizational impediments, and guide change from the bottom up, while injecting some fun and teambuilding.

The discussion leaders:

Phyllis Thompson is the Agile Process Coach at ShiftWise, where she is has participated in the company’s agile adoption since 2012. Phyllis has worked with agile teams for nearly 10 years in a variety of roles: Scrum Master, Agile Project Manager, Product Owner, and as the manager of a PMO that rolled out an “Agile PLC” and Scrum/Agile training to more than 100 engineering team members at Serena Software, which used Scrum to develop an agile project management tool.

David began his career as a software engineer hacking on the Java Virtual Machine. After realizing that the challenges of leading people were just as exciting as crafting software that delights its users, he turned his attention to working with others to help grow individuals and Teams within the context of a larger organization. He feels that listening and communication are fundamental to understanding others and understanding yourself. By day, David is a member of Tripwire’s Agility Enablement Team. By night, he is an adjunct lecturer in the Computer Science Department at Portland State University. David likes watching things grown whether they are Teams, companies, his students, his family, or the vegetables in his garden.

As usual, pizza and pop are sponsored by the good folks at the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC).

This topic came from a conversational path last month's pub lunch conversation took.

What tools and techniques do you use to measure team happiness? Do you do anything at all? Is there a solution you've found you can't live without?

Has there been something you've discovered that has a large impact on team happiness? Maybe there's a better place to spend money on than sodas and snacks.

And why have a happier team? Do they deliver better results? Or stick around longer? Or some other reason?

Come with your ideas, examples, experiments, hopes, dreams, and conundrums. Come with your friends and colleagues. We're a friendly bunch and only bite during a full moon which isn't due again until the 21st.

We'll be in the back. RSVP's not required but very much appreciated to [email protected]. It helps us determine whether to move the furniture.

The traditional role of a Project Manager is evolving. In the world of technology Project Managers who have relied on a highly structured model that imposes timelines in a long term project plan, working Agile may seem quite incompatible; even possibly traumatic.

Join the TAO Project Management Community in a discussion on the Role of the Project Manager in an Agile Environment on Tuesday, April 5th at 5:30 pm at CENTRL Office.

Some questions we’ll be pondering: What the heck does a Project Manager do in an Agile environment? What are the difference between Product Owner vs. Project Manager? How do you manage client facing expectations? How do the framework, processes, interactions with stakeholders change? *How do you estimate in Agile?

PANELISTS

Jay Haldors- Sr. Development Project Manager, Viewpoint Construction Software

Jay Haldors is a Development Program Manager at Viewpoint Construction Software. He is focused on the development of Viewpoints core products and works directly with the product development teams in an agile development environment. He has 18 years of high tech experience in Project Management and holds multiple certifications, including PMP, ACP, CSM and ITIL. He is married and has two boys, a crazy cat, and a old house that always needs work. For fun he loves to travel and photography, and enjoys triathlons when he can a way to work them into his schedule.

Jean Richardson - Principal, Azure Gate Consulting

Over the course of nearly 25 years, Jean has become experienced in coaching, agile and traditional project management, requirements and business analysis, and training. Her experience and career path have spanned both traditional and agile methods, frameworks, and cultural perspectives. The agile leadership model she espouses, Pervasive Leadership, is designed to help leaders set a collaborative context while still meeting their own stewardship responsibilities to the organization. In addition to coaching and managing projects, Jean has been a Multnomah County Court mediator for the last 13 years and served as a Better Business Bureau arbitrator. She currently serves on the Agile PDX coordinating committee, is co-founder of the Leadership Salon, serves in the role of PMI Chapter Engagement Representative for the Agile Community of Practice in Portland, and is a member of the Portland Chapter mentoring committee.

Chris Tobias- Lead Services Integrator, GE Healthcare

Chris Tobias builds great teams to solve tough problems. With more than 20 years’ experience in Healthcare software, business leadership, organizational change and customer service, he works hard to create a clear vision of excellence and inspire people to bring their best work to the table. As Lead Services Integrator for GE Healthcare his teams have tackled numerous complex software releases, new product launches and business transformation efforts. He is deeply experienced with project management methodologies, Lean methods and Agile business transformation. As a speaker and author Mr. Tobias loves to engage audiences in thought provoking conversations about technology, health and personal transformation. He has taught Project Management and has both PMP and Six Sigma certifications. He also co-chairs the Technology Association of Oregon’s Digital Health Community which hosts Oregon’s largest health innovation events and forums. Outside of the office Chris enjoys spending time with his wife and two very active children, cycling and tinkering with inventions in the garage.

MODERATOR

Melissa LaFrance Project Manager, Fiserv

Portland's testing user group for Ruby developers! Conversation and peer mentoring starting at 6, presentations at 7. For more information, follow @TestRubyPDX on Twitter or join the #testrubypdx Slack channel (under the pdxruby team).

Paul Baker - Golden Thorns: Lessons from the Gilded Rose Kata

The Gilded Rose Kata is a fairly well known kata that utilizes a "golden master testing" strategy to provide safety while the developer refactors a messy legacy code base in order to add new features. I will walk through my take on the kata and then review some lessons that I have learned as a sr. developer working with legacy code and where this pattern can be helpful.

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This month the group will select agile-related topics / issues and have time box discussions. All attendees are encouraged to bring their burning agile-related topics, issues and questions for discussion/debate/brainstorming.

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

Thanks to Unitus Credit Union for their continued support.

We are gathering on April 13, 2016 to meet like-minded professionals interested in the future of meaningful work and effective teams.

Our world is increasingly complex, and traditional models for managing organizations, incentivizing workers, and fostering innovation are broken. A movement is growing that embraces openness, experimentation, empowerment, and purpose in the workplace. This movement has many influences, best summed up in the ResponsiveOrg Manifesto: http://www.responsive.org/manifesto

This event will be informed by attendees. We hope to connect, share ideas, and plan future gatherings based on the interests and enthusiasm of our fellow Portlanders. We’ll also indulge in locally-sourced beer, wine and treats as we ruminate on the meaning of responsive.

Some of the tools and approaches we bring to the table include (but are not limited by): Responsive.org, Agile, LEAN, Holacracy, B Corporations, and Equity & Inclusion initiatives.

Books we’ve been reading include: Smarter Faster Better, Teaming, How Google Works, Creativity Inc., Deep Work, Reinventing Organizations, The Connected Company, and Team of Teams.

Everyone welcome.

Stop waiting! Start driving the change YOU want.

Accelerate Results 2016

Click Here to Register Today

• Event: Accelerate Results 2016 Leaders Forum
• Date: April 19-21, 2016
• Location: NW Events, 2900 NW 229th Ave. #100, Hillsboro, OR
• Price: $995. Space is limited
 

What is Accelerate Results?

Accelerate Results 2016 offers exposure to a collection of established and emergent thinking and practices, all centered around what you truly desire: Results. Whether your current challenge requires a need for inclusion, agility, clarity, value delivery, collaboration, speed, or predictability, you’ll find the people and practices to help you accelerate your results today.

Engage with more than 500 software and hardware leaders, project, program, and portfolio managers, executives, and more, for nine keynotes, plus a selection of workshop opportunities. Cohort-based discussion groups will share real-world challenges and design effective ways to apply results-driven thinking and practices right away.

Keynotes

See Keynote Bios here!

David Marquet author, speaker, former submarine commander
Kimberly Bryant founder of Black Girls Code
Tom Gilb author of Competitive Engineering
Gifford Pinchot author of Intrapreneuring
Carol Ptak Partner, Demand Driven Institute
William Noonan author of Discussing the Undiscussable
Debra Smith author of Demand Driven Performance
Michael Hannan author of The CIO’s Guide to Breakthrough Project Portfolio Performance
April Mills Intel change coach and leadership engineer

Event Features

Accelerate Results 2016 is designed to maximize your application of new thinking. Your registration includes:

• Pre-event articles and videos which will introduce you to Accelerate Results concepts and speakers • Ample discussion and networking time plus action planning and coaching • Keynote video archives available immediately post-event so you can scale your learning back into your organization • Breakfast and lunch daily, plus Wednesday evening networking social

Amplify Your Impact

Accelerate Results 2016 is a catalyst for wide-reaching organizational change. Forward this opportunity to your executives, staff, peers, and partners and start accelerating your organization today!

General Questions & Sponsorship Inquiries

Contact [email protected]

Last month we learned from Phyllis Thompson and David Whitlock about "Open Space", a facilitation technique for group learning and problem solving, and how they've used it in their workplaces. This month we're going to give you a chance to try out the power of an Open Space un-conference yourself. We will be taking the group through a lightning quick 70 minute open space format, where you will help set the agenda and drive the discussions alongside your fellow Agile

PDXers. Come see what value can emerge out of an unplanned and loosely structured conference format. As usual, pizza and pop are sponsored by the good folks at the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference (PNSQC).

Come join your fellow Portland programmers to practice the art of software development together. Write code, learn from others, teach someone else, and expand your network of friends who are passionate about their craft. Software developers of all skill levels and backgrounds are welcome! Show up with your laptop and favorite language and development tools to participate, everything else is provided. Continental breakfast and lunch will be served.

The idea of "Minimal Viable Product" (MVP) is well known in Agile and Lean Startup circles. Where does an MVP reach its limit? What's another set of tools to use in minimal/startup mode but gain further understanding of customer needs?

"Minimal Loveable Product" is another arrow in the quiver for startups and startup-like organizations. By extending and expanding the ideas MVP uses, it concentrates on making users happy and excited to use the product.

What experiences do you have with Minimal Loveable Products? Is it good? Less than stellar? Does MVP actually fall short in the real world?

We'll be in the back. RSVP's to the Meet Up Group not required but very much appreciated or email [email protected]. It helps us determine whether to move the furniture.

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This month the group will select agile-related topics / issues and have time box discussions. All attendees are encouraged to bring their burning agile-related topics, issues and questions for discussion/debate/brainstorming.

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

Thanks to Unitus Community Credit Union for their continued support.

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This month the group will select agile-related topics / issues and have time box discussions. All attendees are encouraged to bring their burning agile-related topics, issues and questions for discussion/debate/brainstorming.

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

Thanks to Unitus Community Credit Union for their continued support.

We’ve been hearing about it for years. GROW is the new new thing. DevOps builds on Agile and is the new new thing. Hybrid is bad, and Agile only works if you follow the book—right? You got that book? Are we ineffective, tired, fighting back, plodding on, or something else?

Has the practice of what we think of as Agile changed? Can we not be Agile without first being Lean? What about Agile/Lean? When even signers of the Agile Manifesto speak up against Agile, what’s an agilist to think?

Or is agile SAFe and sound and the Agile brand has developed a stink? Too many forced marches to agility? Do we need to start calling “agile” “nimble” in order to make progress? And, frankly, how much do we care about what’s in the press?

The Downtown Pub Lunchers care enough to have voted this topic in last month with a participating attendance of 40 pub grub munching agilists. Come on down and help us sort this one out. You probably have the answer. There’s beer, and we’ll be in the back.

RSVP's not required but much appreciated at [email protected]. It helps determine whether to move the furniture and ask for additional servers.

We’ve been hearing about it for years. GROW is the new new thing. DevOps builds on Agile and is the new new thing. Hybrid is bad, and Agile only works if you follow the book—right? You got that book? Are we ineffective, tired, fighting back, plodding on, or something else?

Has the practice of what we think of as Agile changed? Can we not be Agile without first being Lean? What about Agile/Lean? When even signers of the Agile Manifesto speak up against Agile, what’s an agilist to think?

Or is agile SAFe and sound and the Agile brand has developed a stink? Too many forced marches to agility? Do we need to start calling “agile” “nimble” in order to make progress? And, frankly, how much do we care about what’s in the press?

The Downtown Pub Lunchers care enough to have voted this topic in last month with a participating attendance of 40 pub grub munching agilists. Come on down and help us sort this one out. You probably have the answer. There’s beer, and we’ll be in the back.

RSVP's not required but much appreciated at [email protected]. It helps determine whether to move the furniture and ask for additional servers.

The PMI Agile Roundtable meets the second Wednesday of every month from Noon to 1:00 pm. It provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing Agile projects. We welcome roles beyond project managers and value a variety of perspectives and levels of experience with Agile.

This month we'll have a Lean Coffee talk with Diana Larsen, co-author of "Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great" http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Retrospectives-Making-Teams-Great/dp/0977616649/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1464982080&sr=8-1&keywords=retrospectives+making+good+teams+great.

The theme will be "Ask me anything Agile". Bring your favorite Agile-related topics / problems. We'll select up to three for for Diana to discuss.

PMI Certifications holders can claim 1 PDU.

Thank you again to Unitus for hosting this round table

NOTE: Diana will also be hosting a workshop "Getting Great Results from Retrospectives", July 7 & 8. http://www.pmi-portland.org/activities/workshops/662-great-results-retrospectives

Portland's testing user group for Ruby developers! Conversation and peer mentoring starting at 6, presentations at 7. For more information, follow @TestRubyPDX on Twitter or join the #TestRubyPDX Slack channel (under the pdxruby team). We are still looking for speakers, so if you're interested, visit testrubypdx.org/speak for details and suggested topics!

In September of 2015 the Agile Alliance held a community Open Space meeting in Portland and one of our community facilitated a topic on Agile as a context for improved workplace experience for women. Twelve to fifteen people attended her topic—and split pro and con right down the middle with men and women on both sides. Over the last few months, software-related Meetups all over Portland have held discussions focused on women in STEM and women in software development. Now AgilePDX invites you into an Agile-focused discussion on gender dynamics on Agile teams.

What do you think? Has Agile improved, hindered, or left the issue of gender dynamics completely untouched? Does self-organization mean women have more of a voice? When men and women speak up about gender dynamics on teams is anyone left out? What about “gamergate?” Do the Agile Manifesto and Principles imply anything about gender dynamics on teams? And, if so, what is that? Or, is there something additional in the Agile “secret sauce” that improves (or hinders) how men and women work and play together on Agile teams? Would you want your son or daughter on an Agile team?

This month, AgilePDX gathers a panel of two men and two women to consider the state of Agile and gender diversity.

To follow the conversation before the event, join the AgilePDX Slack.

Panelists:

Megan Bigelow -- a connector and tech community leader, having co-founded Portland Women in Tech (PDXWIT) and continues to serve as its President. In this role she's created a platform to connect tech women to companies, mentors and practical skills. PDXWIT is 2000 strong and includes the support of 30+ tech companies. Above all, Megan has a commitment to building community to solve issues. In her day job, she is the Manager of Customer Support at Jama Software.

Erick Banks -- Sr. Quality Assurance Engineer at Puppet. Hosted the discussion on gender inequality in tech at Agile Open Northwest (http://aonw2015.blogspot.com/2015/02/gender-inequality-in-tech.html). My first degree was in physics, my second in computer science, two of the most male-dominated majors. Incidentally I'm single. Interested in gender equality at work largely for selfish reasons. My hope is for my nieces to feel comfortable entering technical fields like mine without the burden of those fields being so gender imbalanced. I try to keep current on issues concerning gender in the workplace by reading (preferably data driven) articles online, a collection of some of them can be found here: https://github.com/ThoughtCrhyme/TechAndGender

Matt Plavcan -- an Agile and Technical Practices Coach with Intel’s Emergent Systems team. He assists teams within the company adopt Agile practices and build their technical capabilities. His career includes verification of desktop microprocessors and teaching Intel architecture at the University of Illinois. Matt is the founder of the Code Dojo and Coderetreat program at Intel, which uses dedicated practice to hone professional programming skills. He runs similar events for the Portland community, and is a coordinator for the 2016 Global Day of Coderetreat. He posts his coaching and development musings on Twitter (@mplavcan)

Kathryn Gruenefeldt -- Sr. Director of Backend Engineering at Simple, where she leads the team focused on services that reliably manage customers' financial transactions and adds homegrown Simple goodness on top, such as Goals and Safe-to-Spend. Simple is a technology company that’s changing the way people bank and think about their money. Kathryn has spent over 20 years in variety of engineering roles, ranging from Database and Middleware development to Healthcare and Energy Conservation applications. Kathryn has a BA in Computer Science, Finance, and Management from University of Oregon, and a MS degree in Computer Science from University of California, Davis.

The SAFe® Agilist certification program is for executives, managers and Agile change agents responsible for leading a Lean-Agile change initiative in a large software enterprise. It validates their knowledge in applying the Scaled Agile Framework, lean thinking, and product development flow principles in an enterprise context so they can lead the adoption of the Scaled Agile Framework.

This Leading SAFe® workshop will show you how to deliver large projects with multiple teams and how Agile works at the portfolio and program levels.

Want to learn how to take your projects to the next level?

Practical, Hands-on Training for Scrum

Join us for an all day Scrum workshop on June 25th, 2016; hosted by the IBEA featuring Suzanne Ward MBA MEng PMP CSM CSPO PSM CSP, a Scrum Master & Agile Coach/Trainer from Intel.

Our world is changing fast. Markets and consumers are demanding faster, cheaper and better products. Demands for quicker turnaround on new product development and innovation have only increased. How do companies like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Apple keep up? They practice agile techniques, in particular they utilize scrum to manage their projects.

Scrum has the power to transform project management across every industry, every business, and even across your personal life. By using Scrum, you’ll become more agile, discovering how to react more quickly and respond more accurately to the inevitable change that comes your way. By staying focused, collaborating, and communicating with customers and your team, you can accomplish what truly needs to be done — successfully.

Come get a taste of the future of project management and learn about the Scrum process. This one day classroom training with exercises will cover the material from scrum introduction certification class and Product Owner role in the Scrum Process.

STRUCTURE OF EVENT:

Day 1 – Learn about the Scrum Process, Learn what a Scrum Master is responsible for, come away with insights on how to manage your next project

BENEFITS

Retain more information because of our unique hands-on approach; based on the latest research into brain science

Be entertained by stories from our real-world experienced and knowledgeable instructors

Maximize investments already made by gaining valuable Professional Development Units (PDUs)

Increase your personal worth within your company and in the marketplace

Network with people from Intel Corporation and other software companies

Additional for Audience:

SW Engineers: eXtreme Programming, Test Driven Development, Pair Programming

Project Managers: Bridging the Gap between Project Management and Scrum

WORKSHOP STRUCTURE:

WHO SHOULD COME?

People whose work is completed through projects and through teams; Software Engineers, Marketing Professionals, Project Managers, Technology Professionals.

ADDITIONAL BENEFITS?

If you share our event via Linkedin using @ibea then you have front row seats to this event! Thanks for spreading the word.

      FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: PLEASE CONTACT US AT [email protected].

How do Agile teams think and feel about DevOps?

DevOps is a term for a group of concepts that, while not all new, have catalyzed into a movement and are rapidly spreading throughout the technical community. Like any new and popular term, people have somewhat confused and sometimes contradictory impressions of what it is.

Here’s one take: DevOps is the practice of operations and development engineers participating together in the entire service lifecycle, from design through the development process to production support.

Here's another: DevOps is also characterized by operations staff making use many of the same techniques as developers for their systems work - such as: using source control to testing to participating in an Agile development process - like sprints or kanban and regular check-ins to communicate with the entire team.

You may have your own take - so come join the discussion and share.

The Downtown Pub Lunchers care enough to have voted this topic in last month with a participating attendance of 40 pub grub munching agilists. Come on down and help us sort this one out. You probably have the answer. There’s beer, and we’ll be in the back.

By earning a Certified Scrum Product Owner® certification you:

• Expand your career opportunities by staying relevant and marketable across all industry sectors adopting Agile practices.
• Demonstrate to employers and peers your attainment of core Scrum knowledge.
• Learn the origins of Scrum and the scope of the Certified Scrum Product Owner's role from the best minds in Scrum.
• Engage with a community of recognized Scrum experts who are committed to continuous improvement.

As a CSPO, you will be able to fill the role of Product Owner or Scrum team member. Through the certification process, you will gain an understanding of the Scrum framework, including team roles, activities, meetings, and artifacts.

Additionally, with your CSPO certification, you will have access to local user groups, online social networks, and additional resources that are only available to Scrum Alliance members.

In addition, CSPO's receive a profile page on the SCRUM ALLIANCE® website and have access to a specially designed logo to highlight their credentials.

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This month the group will select agile-related topics / issues and have time boxed discussions. All attendees are encouraged to bring their burning agile-related topics, issues and questions for discussion/debate/brainstorming.

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

Thanks to Unitus Community Credit Union for their continued support.

As a movement, DevOps has now replaced Agile as the key factor in getting software builds out the door faster and safer. This workshop will help you define conditions of success for your organization and lay out a practical roadmap to change management. We’ll discuss features and advantages of leading DevOps tools and how to make sure your org culture and people can use these to best advantage to drive value and repeatability.

Agenda: - Building a 3-Phase roadmap to sanity – and getting out of firefighting - Defining DevOps For YOUR Organization - Release Management Plain and Simple – Which Tool is Best? - Metrics Make It Happen – KPI’s You Can Use to Track Progress and Drive Success - Overcoming Obstacles in Adoption

Contact Dave Harrison (dharriso AT microsoft .com) for more details and an invite.

Summer Orientation starts now! Learn how Little Data can lead to BIG results. For anyone interested in how to manage and align your team with data, learn from product experiments, and answer the questions "How are we doing?" and "How can we be better?"

Notion hosts a Portland-based, quarterly speaker series, and you're invited! Be inspired by leaders who use data to identify bottlenecks and build a collaborative data culture. You'll join members of Portland's vibrant tech and startup communities while enjoying some tasty snacks and beverages.

Many thanks to CENTRL Office for hosting Wednesday, July 27!

RSVP now to reserve your spot as there will be a limited number of tickets available!

As requested by attendees last month, Jama comes back this month to talk about the experiments its been running in bringing the team to the work.

Agile development practices encourage static teams with predictable velocities. However, this sometimes means giving projects to teams that may not be staffed appropriately to get it done as effectively and efficiently as possible. Jama has flipped this theory on its head and is focusing on trusting our teams to self-select onto projects they’re interested in tackling given our business and engineering priorities. In doing so our goals are to decrease epic lead time and increase quality and engagement in the work we are doing.

Cristian Fuentes has 12 years software experience working in various small startups and large IT organizations. As a developer Cristian has worked on teams experimenting with and using various XP, agile, scrum and Kanban practices and processes. Cristian is currently an Engineering Manager at Jama Software where he joined in the very early startup stage and experienced the growth and evolution of the product and engineering organization. Through this growth, the Jama engineering team has evolved and adapted to a changing landscape in pursuit of effective and empowering ways to work.

RSVP's are not required but gratefully accepted at [email protected]

Portland's testing user group for Ruby developers! Conversation and peer mentoring starting at 6, presentations at 7. For more information, follow @TestRubyPDX on Twitter or join the #testrubypdx Slack channel (under the pdxruby team). We are still looking for speakers, so if you're interested, visit testrubypdx.org/speak for details and suggested topics!

Want to learn how to take your projects to the next level?

Practical, Hands-on Training for Scrum

Join us for an all day Scrum workshop on August 20th, 2016; hosted by the IBEA featuring Suzanne Ward MBA MEng PMP CSM CSPO PSM CSP, a Scrum Master & Agile Coach/Trainer from Intel. Our world is changing fast. Markets and consumers are demanding faster, cheaper and better products. Demands for quicker turnaround on new product development and innovation have only increased. How do companies like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Apple keep up? They practice agile techniques, in particular they utilize scrum to manage their projects. Scrum has the power to transform project management across every industry, every business, and even across your personal life. By using Scrum, you’ll become more agile, discovering how to react more quickly and respond more accurately to the inevitable change that comes your way. By staying focused, collaborating, and communicating with customers and your team, you can accomplish what truly needs to be done — successfully. Come get a taste of the future of project management and learn about the Scrum process. This one day classroom training with exercises will cover the material from scrum introduction certification class and Product Owner role in the Scrum Process.

STRUCTURE OF EVENT: Day 1 – Learn about the Scrum Process, Learn what a Scrum Master is responsible for, come away with insights on how to manage your next project

BENEFITS Retain more information because of our unique hands-on approach; based on the latest research into brain science Be entertained by stories from our real-world experienced and knowledgeable instructors Maximize investments already made by gaining valuable Professional Development Units (PDUs) Increase your personal worth within your company and in the marketplace Network with people from Intel Corporation and other software companies

Additional for Audience: SW Engineers: eXtreme Programming, Test Driven Development, Pair Programming Project Managers: Bridging the Gap between Project Management and Scrum

WHO SHOULD COME? People whose work is completed through projects and through teams; Software Engineers, Marketing Professionals, Project Managers, Technology Professionals.

ADDITIONAL BENEFITS? If you share our event via Linkedin using @ibea then you have front row seats to this event! Thanks for spreading the word. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: PLEASE CONTACT US AT [email protected].

Last month’s pub lunchers voted for a familiar topic with a bit if twist: How can you adopt Agile principles, practices, and methods on your team when you’re in a non-Agile friendly organization? How does personal influence play into a Team’s ability to be Agile? Is there hope for Agility in a desert of non-Agility?

Experienced Agilists say, when has it been different at the beginning?

But, the socially aware change agent wants to know how to be Agile without building in an eventual backlash. Smart change agent. On September 2nd, we’ll pour the beer, circle the wagons, and tell a few stories around the campfire of agility. We hope McMennamins won’t mind the smoke as we nurture the fire of hope for agile-aspiring change agents everywhere.

So, come on down to the usual place at the usual time with your comrades and stories. Come alone or come in a pack. We’ll be in the back.

RSVP’s not required but gratefully accepted at [email protected].

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This month the group will select agile-related topics / issues and have time boxed discussions. All attendees are encouraged to bring their burning agile-related topics, issues and questions for discussion/debate/brainstorming.

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

Thanks to Unitus Community Credit Union for their continued support.

Software and product development are being considered a strategic business process, and it's evident now more than ever before that all teams need quantitative goals. Discover the hard-won lessons of how to measure the right things over time and some of the secrets of the most productive teams.

Presenter: Dave Shanley Co-Founder, CEO, Notion

Data changes the conversation. Good teams can become great teams. Dave wants all teams to have the tools they need for making the best decisions. Dave brings his experience growing a company from his apartment through acquisition to IPO (CrowdCompass, acquired by Cvent, NYSE:CVT) and years building technology for the Fortune 500 (Syclo, acquired by SAP). When Dave isn't digging in to the latest numbers, he's dreaming of sailing trips with the Notion team.

For years now, various smart people with bright ideas have been saying it's time to rewrite the Agile Manifesto. So far, no traction. Maybe that's a good thing. On the other hand, haven't we learned a thing or two in the last 15 years? And, what does it mean that Agile has moved the horizon of its influence well beyond software development.

Yet another smart person with a bright idea has piped up, and you can learn all about the Modern Agile model here (https://www.infoq.com/news/2016/08/agile2016-modern-agile) and then come down and share your affirmation of the model or it's necessary improvements or stand up for the Manifesto we all love. There's an article, an interview, a video, and a graphic! No matter you're learning style, you can be gratified at the link above.

As usual, we'll be in the back. We start at 12 and end at 1p. Those who attend shape next months topic. RSVP's are welcome but not required at [email protected].

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

Working with Complex Systems (with an Introduction to the Cynefin Framework)

Have you ever been part of a project that no matter how well planned it is, it seems much harder than it should be and you don't see the results you originally hoped for? It's possible that the approach taken may have been incorrect for the situation and a new paradigm of decision making may be necessary. This talk will give you a useful framework to understand different contexts that we work in and more appropriate decision making techniques for the different situations we find in our business. The session will also cover how this understanding can be applied in project management and leadership. Be prepared for an eye opening discussion that may very will change how you approach your work from now on!

Rhea Stadick applies leading edge techniques to accelerate business results across complex, global organizations. She's driven by the need to do the right things right and ensure healthy workplaces that support diversity of thought and encourage continuous improvement and learning. Over the last 10 years she's led grassroots efforts and initiatives to establish improved ways of working that focus on fast value delivery and sustainable development. As one of the early adopters of Agile at Intel Corporation, Rhea helped to foster other change agents in this space and cleared a path to enable Agile to be an accepted and embraced way of working across 100,000+ people and over 60 countries. As a systems engineer, she has developed an expertise in Complex Adaptive Systems and applying practical methods to work in dynamic contexts. Rhea is a TEDx speaker and keynoter on topics including new approaches for modern business and thriving in changing environments.

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

Thanks to Unitus Community Credit Union for their continued support.

A two-day technical program and one day of workshops for software quality engineers, testers, managers, consultants, software developers, Agilists and non-Agilist.

A featured speaker is author, consultant and “Pragmatic Manager” Johanna Rothman of the Rothman Consulting Group, Inc. She will lead a workshop on using Agile + Lean to deliver business value every day..

PNSQC events draw participants from Universities and Corporations from around the world. Among the major participants are ADP, Boeing Computer Services, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Mentor Graphics, Tektronix, Microsoft, Portland State University and Oregon State University.

PNSQC’s mission is to enable knowledge exchange to produce higher quality software. We seek to increase the awareness of the importance of software quality. As a non-profit corporation, we seek to promote software quality by providing education and opportunities for information exchange within the software community. PNSQC provides opportunities to demonstrate, teach and exchange ideas on both proven and leading edge software quality practices.

Welcome to the nuCognitive Agile Coaching Network.

Do you need help with your Agile adoption? Or, would you like to give advice to others on what worked or did not work as you were doing an adoption in your own company? If so, then than I am excited to invite you to attend the Agile Coaching Network. It’s an online community and a bi-weekly webcast that allows you to learn and share with other Agile practitioners.
​ Ray Arell will be the moderator of the bi-weekly event. The agenda and format are very simple, we are using a park bench chat style where everybody can participate. The goal is to get and provide help with adoption of Agile and other related topics. If no topic is introduced, then as the moderator I may propose a topic to get the group talking.

The ground rules are simple: · Keep it conversational. Jump in if you have something new to say. · One person talks at a time. · No shameless promotion. · Generate light not heat. Our goal is to support people. · Lastly, we will be recording the call for podcast. Remember you manners

Our facebook chat group is here: https://www.facebook.com/groups

It’s completely free and safe. Just subscribe below to join the mailing list. http://www.nucognitive.com/acn

Propose and vote on topics for this week's meeting at Slido.com - meeting #9488

To test our ability to bring in Agilists from around the world, this month AgilePDX is sponsoring a live videoconference with Agile Manifesto signer Andy Hunt, who will be talking with us about the GROWS method, which he developed with Jared Richardson.

Everyone claims they are "agile"; but are you and your team actually effective?

Learn the three important steps to creating a truly effective agile team: 1) Lower your risk on software implementation, scalability, usability and more using Tracer Bullet Development; 2) Make accurate decisions and corrections with rapid, real-time feedback using the Continuous Paradigm; and 3) Converge on success with quick, inexpensive GROWS Method Experiments. You and your teams won't need to guess; you'll know.

Pizza and pop are sponsored by the Pacific Northwest Quality Conference.

BIO

Andy started in the do-it-yourself days of CP/M and the S100 bus, of Heathkits and Radio Electronics. Andy wrote his first real program, a combination text editor and database manager, for an Ohio Scientific Challenger 4P. It was a great era for tinkering. Andy started hacking in 6502 assembler, modifying operating systems, and wrote his first commercial program (a Manufacturing Resources Planning system) in 1981. He taught himself Unix and C, and began to design and architect larger, more connected systems.

Andy joined up with Dave Thomas and they wrote the seminal software development book, The Pragmatic Programmer, followed a year later by the original Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide, which introduced the Western world to this new language from Japan. Together they founded The Pragmatic Programmers and are well known as founders of the agile movement and authors of the Agile Manifesto, as well as proponents of Ruby and more flexible programming paradigms. They founded the Pragmatic Bookshelf publishing business in 2003, helping keep developers at the top of their game.

Andy is a founder of the Pragmatic Programmers, founder of the Agile Alliance and one of the 17 authors of the Agile Manifesto, and author of nine books. He is an active musician and woodworker, and continues looking for new areas where he can stir things up.

Come join your fellow Portland coders to practice the art of software development together. Write code, learn from others, teach someone else, and expand your network of friends who are passionate about their craft. Software developers of all skill levels and backgrounds are welcome!

This event is free, continental breakfast and lunch will be served. (Event starts promptly at 8:30am, breakfast served at 8am)

Please bring your laptop with your favorite development tools and a unit test framework, everything else is provided.

Coderetreat is a worldwide pattern designed to hone software skills and design practices through repeated attempts to build an implementation of a well-known software problem (Conway's Game of Life). Unit testing and Test-Driven Development will be emphasized as key practices. Developers use pair programming and discussion to exchange knowledge, and additional constraints are given throughout the day to emphasize good design concepts and practices.

How do we make it safe to explore, fail, and grow when the stakes are high? In a world of high complexity & high cost tied to upcoming revenue forecasts, it’s difficult to allow the time we want & need to try new things, learn new skills, and evolve as a team. So, how do we allow time to fail & ultimately grow when the stakes are high? What have you tried that has succeeded? What have you tried that failed? Come share and discover some new ideas to help your teams balance time with business drivers to create success!

As usual, we'll be in the back. We start at 12 and end at 1pm. Those who attend shape next month's topic.

Agile teams are all about high bandwidth cross-functional communication. But, we can get really jumpy about conflict. Creative conflict is where the good stuff is in product development and innovation.

In her travels Jean has had the opportunity to observe a large number of teams work together—and attempt to work together. It’s clear that conversations change, the way the team moves together changes, and quality of work changes as the teams consciousness is raised. Many agile practices serve to support the goal of consciousness raising. Through observation, research, and experimentation, Jean has developed a working definition of team consciousness which will be a useful tool for you as you lead agile projects.

Come learn about how effective conflict engagement deepens consciousness and what we mean when we talk about consciousness and software development. Jean’s style is dialogic, so expect to interact!

About Jean Richardson Jean Richardson is principal consultant and founder of Azure Gate Consulting. Through more than 25 years of experience in software development she consulted in project management, writing, training, public speaking, and business analysis, and the last five years as an Agile coach helping leaders transform organizations.

As a businessperson, she has learned that basic human issues are at the root of most business problems and most customer/vendor, employer/employee, or client/consultant disputes. Jean believes that if we ignore this fact we dehumanize ourselves and imperil our society.

As a consultant, her client list boasts a wide range of businesses including ADP, Cambia Health Systems, Chrome Systems, Dealertrack, Intel, Daimler/Chrysler, Kaiser Permanente, Mentor Graphics, Oregon State Department of Human Services, Portland General Electric, The Regence Group, US Bank, and UTi. Jean’s background includes thirteen years’ experience as a court-based mediator, and she brings a strong orientation to her practice as healing work.

She has taught at Oregon Graduate Institute, Portland State University, and at Marylhurst University where she taught MBA students. She teaches “Collaboration for Cross Functional Teams,” “Facilitative Leadership,” and “Effective Conflict Engagement” for private clients. She is a frequent speaker at conferences and professional development events.

"[T]he most powerful thing a leader can do to foster effective collaboration is to create conditions that help members competently manage themselves. The second most powerful thing is to launch the team well.” J. Richard Hackman, “Six Common Misperceptions about Teamwork,” Harvard Business Review, June 07, 2011.

Resource staffing isn’t enough. New product development and operations teams need effective Liftoffs to accelerate their start and put them on the trajectory toward success. It's an unexplored, often ignored, yet critical, Agile practice. Through Liftoff, business sponsors, product managers, and product owners, inform, inspire, and initiate their teams. Team members align their work and make a great beginning.

In this talk, Diana Larsen describes ways you can accomplish Liftoff, including Agile Chartering, with real-life stories about effective teams, teamwork, and delivery.

BIO

Diana Larsen is author of Liftoff 2nd ed.: Start and Sustain Successful Agile Teams; Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great; Five Rules for Accelerated Learning; and co-originator of the Agile Fluency(TM) Model. A founding partner of FutureWorks Consulting, she leads the practice area for Agile software development, team leadership, and Agile transitions. Diana delivers inspiring conference keynote talks and has contributed as a leader with Agile Alliance, Organization Design Forum, and the Agile Open Initiative.

Agile Stakeholders (product owners, product managers, and the like) are key to success, but with customer visits, conferences, product alignment meetings, and staffing constraints they are rarely 100% dedicated to one team. So what do you do when the stakeholders should be more involved?

Once you've tried tantrumming, threatening, begging and pleading, point your feet toward Ringler's on the first Friday in December and just keeping coming until you get here. There's beer and folks who have been where you are now. Have sit and join in the chat. We've got salve for your wounds, and stories to tell. Bring your friends. Bring your stakeholders. It's Friday, and well, we're all on the same side, for better or worse. Those who've figured stakeholder engagement out and those who're ready to give up--perforce.

See you at Ringler's from 12p to 1p. You can come late but come in quiet as a bunny rabbit as we'll be under full steam by 12:05. We'll be in the back. RSVP's welcome, but not required, at [email protected]. It helps us know whether to move the furniture.

A Leader's Framework for Decision Making - The Cynefin Framework

How do you make sense of situations in order to make decisions appropriately?

Proposed Agenda: • We will cover the basics of situational-based decision making. • What has changed since the 2007 HBR Article? • Discuss the latest changes to the framework

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5689229_A_Leader%27s_Framework_for_Decision_Making

Due to the possibility of inclement weather we're canceling this event - we apologize for any inconvenience

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This month the group will select agile-related topics / issues and have time boxed discussions. All attendees are encouraged to bring their burning agile-related topics, issues and questions for discussion/debate/brainstorming.

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

Thanks to Unitus Community Credit Union for their continued support.

Winter is coming, let the Agile Games begin! There are some REALLY fun games out there that increase agile understanding, enhance teamwork, and more. Come play some games with fellow agilists to learn new things and take new ideas back to your own teams!

Did someone say Cards Against Agility and Agile Paper Airplanes?

Yes, there's pizza, pop, beer . . . and surplus holiday cookies are really appreciated!

Interpersonal conflicts, talking past one another, and friction within teams are a few symptoms people experience in the disordered domain of the Cynefin framework. Let's explore this domain in our next meetup.

-How do you know if you are in the domain of disorder?

-What are the characteristics of this domain?

-What heuristics are appropriate?

This is still a fairly new group, so other topics of interest related to Cynefin or complex adaptive systems are welcome. Feel free to invite others that may be interested.

Due to the current weather conditions, we're canceling this event - we apologize for any inconvenience. Please be safe.

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This month the group will select agile-related topics / issues and have time boxed discussions. All attendees are encouraged to bring their burning agile-related topics, issues and questions for discussion/debate/brainstorming.

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

Thanks to OHSU for their support.

Agile development methods and practices are radically different from ‘waterfall’ or sequential, phased approaches. Agile development has become mainstream in software development over the last decade and has recently spread beyond software to other domains. It is important for leaders and manager to understand how to build, develop, and lead Agile teams -- not just for your company, but also for your own career.

This workshop introduces leaders and managers to a cohesive set of methods, practices, and principles to maximize business results from Agile and Lean development, while also cultivating a workplace where people thrive. The workshop defines and clarifies the roles of leaders, first-line managers, middle managers, and executives using materials drawn from over a decade of Agile and Lean adoption experience covering tens of thousands of people within Fortune 100 companies. It also addresses what does and doesn't work well in Agile and Lean adoptions across a diverse set of global cultures.

Brought to you by https://www.nucognitive.com

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This month the group will select agile-related topics / issues and have time boxed discussions. All attendees are encouraged to bring their burning agile-related topics, issues and questions for discussion/debate/brainstorming.

Take the elevator to the 7th floor and follow the signs

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

Thanks to OHSU for their support.

Agile development methods and practices are radically different from ‘waterfall’ or sequential, phased approaches. Agile development has become mainstream in software development over the last decade and has recently spread beyond software to other domains. It is important for leaders and manager to understand how to build, develop, and lead Agile teams -- not just for your company, but also for your own career.

This workshop introduces leaders and managers to a cohesive set of methods, practices, and principles to maximize business results from Agile and Lean development, while also cultivating a workplace where people thrive. The workshop defines and clarifies the roles of leaders, first-line managers, middle managers, and executives using materials drawn from over a decade of Agile and Lean adoption experience covering tens of thousands of people within Fortune 100 companies. It also addresses what does and doesn't work well in Agile and Lean adoptions across a diverse set of global cultures.

Brought to you by https://www.nucognitive.com

Agile development methods and practices are radically different from ‘waterfall’ or sequential, phased approaches. Agile development has become mainstream in software development over the last decade and has recently spread beyond software to other domains. It is important for leaders and manager to understand how to build, develop, and lead Agile teams -- not just for your company, but also for your own career.

This workshop introduces leaders and managers to a cohesive set of methods, practices, and principles to maximize business results from Agile and Lean development, while also cultivating a workplace where people thrive. The workshop defines and clarifies the roles of leaders, first-line managers, middle managers, and executives using materials drawn from over a decade of Agile and Lean adoption experience covering tens of thousands of people within Fortune 100 companies. It also addresses what does and doesn't work well in Agile and Lean adoptions across a diverse set of global cultures.

Brought to you by https://www.nucognitive.com

Agile development methods and practices are radically different from ‘waterfall’ or sequential, phased approaches. Agile development has become mainstream in software development over the last decade and has recently spread beyond software to other domains. It is important for leaders and manager to understand how to build, develop, and lead Agile teams -- not just for your company, but also for your own career.

This workshop introduces leaders and managers to a cohesive set of methods, practices, and principles to maximize business results from Agile and Lean development, while also cultivating a workplace where people thrive. The workshop defines and clarifies the roles of leaders, first-line managers, middle managers, and executives using materials drawn from over a decade of Agile and Lean adoption experience covering tens of thousands of people within Fortune 100 companies. It also addresses what does and doesn't work well in Agile and Lean adoptions across a diverse set of global cultures.

The workshop topics are highly dynamic and customizable. ~80% will be based on participant interests. These are a few of the topics participants can choose from: -Agile mindset -Shared leadership -Great teams -Work environment -Resources -Experiments -Vision -Common goals -Shared learning -Welcome change -Iteration -Mastery -Diversity -Reflection -Sensemaking -Visualization -Deliver Value

This class is designed for leaders and managers of Agile and Lean teams. This includes executive and organizational level management at all levels. Leaders and managers in non-Agile and Lean environments will also find the workshop refreshing and helpful as the concepts are broadly applicable.

After completing this course, participants should: 1) understand the Agile and Lean mindset, and the business case for Agile and Lean product development 2) understand the main tenets of mainstream Agile and Lean methods 3) understand the role of the manager on Agile and Lean teams, and leadership styles that work 4) know how to establish and shape an environment for successful Agile and Lean adoption 5) understand the role of the customer and other non-development roles in your company 6) know how local and corporate culture affects Agile and Lean adoption 7) recognize common pitfalls and know how to avoid them

If you would like to know more, please contact [email protected].

Brought to you by https://www.nucognitive.com

Want to learn how to take your projects to the next level? Practical, Hands-on Training for Scrum

Join us for an all day Scrum workshop on Feburary 25th, 2017; hosted by the IBEA featuring Suzanne Ward MBA MEng PMP CSM CSPO PSM CSP, a Scrum Master & Agile Coach/Trainer from Intel.

Our world is changing fast. Markets and consumers are demanding faster, cheaper and better products. Demands for quicker turnaround on new product development and innovation have only increased. How do companies like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Apple keep up? They practice agile techniques, in particular they utilize scrum to manage their projects.

Scrum has the power to transform project management across every industry, every business, and even across your personal life. By using Scrum, you’ll become more agile, discovering how to react more quickly and respond more accurately to the inevitable change that comes your way. By staying focused, collaborating, and communicating with customers and your team, you can accomplish what truly needs to be done — successfully. Come get a taste of the future of project management and learn about the Scrum process. This one day classroom training with exercises will cover the material from scrum introduction certification class and Product Owner role in the Scrum Process.

STRUCTURE OF EVENT: Day 1 – Learn about the Scrum Process, Learn what a Scrum Master is responsible for, come away with insights on how to manage your next project

BENEFITS Retain more information because of our unique hands-on approach; based on the latest research into brain science Be entertained by stories from our real-world experienced and knowledgeable instructors Maximize investments already made by gaining valuable Professional Development Units (PDUs) Increase your personal worth within your company and in the marketplace Network with people from Intel Corporation and other software companies

Additional for Audience: SW Engineers: eXtreme Programming, Test Driven Development, Pair Programming Project Managers: Bridging the Gap between Project Management and Scrum

WHO SHOULD COME? People whose work is completed through projects and through teams; Software Engineers, Marketing Professionals, Project Managers, Technology Professionals.

ADDITIONAL BENEFITS? FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: PLEASE CONTACT US AT [email protected].

There’s a lot of talk about throughput and just “getting stuff done” in Agile and Lean environments. We relative size things with story points. We wrapped around the axle about velocity. But, isn’t the point to deliver value for the best quality and price while fostering humane workplaces?

If Agile is about delivering value, then why do we spend the greatest amount of our time on metrics for the delivery side of the house? How can we measure value? How would this help inform prioritization?

Last month’s pub lunchers started digging into this from several perspectives, and they want to dig more. Grab a shovel and come along. Better, yet, grab your PO or PM and come along. We’ll get this figured out over lunch. You'll find us in the back. RSVP's welcome, but not required, at [email protected].

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This month the group will select agile-related topics / issues and have time boxed discussions. All attendees are encouraged to bring their burning agile-related topics, issues and questions for discussion/debate/brainstorming.

Take the elevator to the 7th floor and follow the signs (Room 714).

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

Thanks to OHSU for their support.

A Certified ScrumMaster® helps project teams properly use Scrum, increasing the likelihood of the project's overall success. CSMs understand Scrum values, practices, and applications and provide a level of knowledge and expertise above and beyond that of typical project managers. CSMs act as "servant leaders," helping the rest of the Scrum team work together and learn the Scrum framework. CSMs also protect the team from both internal and external distractions. To earn your CSM certificate, you must take a CSM course from a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) or Endorsed Scrum Trainer (EST) and demonstrate your progress through our online CSM test. The first step toward your CSM is familiarizing yourself with Scrum. Then attend an in-person, two-day (16 hour) CSM course taught by a Scrum Alliance Authorized Trainer. After successfully completing the course, you will need to pass the CSM exam. To get a passing score, you must correctly answer 24 of the 35 questions. You will be eligible for 16 Scrum Education Units (SEUs) upon completion of this course. After you pass the CSM exam, you will be asked to accept the License Agreement and complete your Scrum Alliance membership profile. This 2 day (16 hours) course fulfills the classroom requirement to become a CSM.

10% of PROCEEDS WILL GO TO CHICK TECH PORTLAND https://portland.chicktech.org/

We’ve always known the art and craft of software development was frustratingly fun, potently world-driving, and part of an ever-expanding set of skills important to living in the modern world. But, now, there’s a field of study and experimentation that appears to show that the consciousness of the teams that develop software inform the software itself.

And, there is software that is designed to heighten our consciousness. What if we used software to heighten the consciousness of software developers to build better products? And why do agilists care? Well: throughput, quality, humane work environments—and things like that. Our panelists will speak to these and related issues of interest to the co-hacking community.

Jean Richardson is a member of the AgilePDX Coordinating Committee, an Agile coach and consultant, developer of the Pervasive Leadership theory, and co-author of “Technical Practices as a Hack on Consciousness: Why to Hack Yourself” published on InfoQ on September 1, 2016. In the course of her nearly 30 years in software development she has progressed through the software development specialties of user and technical documentation, field-based ethnographic usability research, testing, instructional design, business analysis, project management, and spent a stint as the Director of Customer Learning for a small healthcare company. Her client lists include such local luminaries as Cambia Health Systems, Portland General Electric, the City of Portland, the Oregon Department of Human Services and Oregon Health Authority, Intel, and Tripwire. azuregate.net @JeanAtAzureGate

Julie Nelligan is a personal development coach and psychologist in North Portland. Julie started her career as a coder in the early 90’s focusing primarily on managing large databases before transitioning into coaching. She is also the founder of the Portland Chapter of Consciousness Hacking, a new movement to explore the use of technology in facilitating the process of elevating consciousness. Julie brings a scientific, analytical approach to considering the interface between technology and consciousness. Her work with entrepreneurs combines neurofeedback and coaching to empower them to achieve their goals and aspirations as business owners and individuals. cohack.life eeginfo.com

Aaron Vannatter works as a senior software development consultant with Axian Inc. near Portland, OR. With a decade of professional experience, Aaron has found his niche in full stack .NET web development. He is passionate about championing Purpose-Driven Development, an emerging way of developing software that seeks to be more integrated and life-affirming and to foster the human spirit within the domain of information technology. This work is inspired by Aaron's transformational experiences after a decade of training in the tools, practices and techniques offered by The Way of the Heart™, an international organization dedicated to empowering personal and collective life mission. purposedrivendevelopment.org aaronvannatter.com thewayoftheheart.com

We’re betting a few westsiders will be as excited as we are about this announcement… Westside Café lunches are brownbag sessions facilitated by AgilePDX at the Nike Evergreen campus cafeteria (20540 NW Evergreen Pkwy, Hillsboro, OR 97124) on the fourth Friday each month from 12p to 1p.

Join us on 3/24 to discuss Finding the Optimal Footprint Between Product Owners and their Teams. Teams fall into many categories when it comes to time and attention with their Product Owners: 100% dedicated, 50/50 balance between team and clients, always fighting fires in the field, split between 2+ teams, and many combinations in between. What is the optimal footprint? Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, Devs, QA, etc. bring your Product Owners along, so we get to hear from all sides on the ups and downs of the various levels. We will find some best practices on balancing client needs and expectations with feedback and direction to the teams. Some combinations might surprise you!

We strongly encourage you to arrive early, buy\bring a lunch, and settle in by noon. We start on time and end on time in a format very similar to our popular downtown pub lunches!

You know what we mean: Those people who have "just a quick question" or who "only need the team for an hour or so -- 30 minutes might do it." We're talking about the drive-by executive check-ins on sprint progress, the performance review paperwork that (oops!) has to be done by tomorrow, the security training that someone forgot to announce--until it's due according to a regulatory standard.

And, what about you? Do you ever find yourself being a distraction to the team?

In Agile circles, management is famous for mucking up the works. How do you as a conscientious agilist deal with this? What has to change?

Come on down to Ringler's and bring a manager or two to let them sound off. We'll be your pub lunch therapists sharing what we've learned and what we're still trying to figure out. Bring us your toughest conundrums and your pummeled agilist hearts. Together we'll cogitate and commiserate until you feel ready to face the workplace again.

You know where to find us: We'll be in the back. RSVP's not required but very much appreciated at [email protected]. It helps us alert the pub to staff appropriately. We start on time and end on time. We encourage you to do so, as well.

The PMI Agile Round Table provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This month the group will select agile-related topics / issues and have time boxed discussions. All attendees are encouraged to bring their burning agile-related topics, issues and questions for discussion/debate/brainstorming.

Take the elevator to the 7th floor and follow the signs (Room 714).

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

Thanks to OHSU for their support.

The tech industry has a contentious relationship with diversity. Despite years of highly publicized initiatives aiming to improve diversity in our field, reports show only marginal improvement in the most well-intentioned workplaces. On the contrary, the recent news is full with fresh accounts of issues in tech companies. So, if we care so much about diversity, what’s holding us back from making real progress? Why do we often have such homogeneous teams, and where does this selection start? And what actually makes up a diverse team?

Drawing from his experience as a hiring manager, Dennis explores the biases hidden inside our own hiring practices that can screen out high-quality job candidates. Covering case studies, he shares what the building blocks are for a diverse team, and why we would want to strive to create (or join) one. Dennis’ own non-traditional background made him aware how valuable diverse teams can be, where people with different perspectives collaborate in unique ways to generate novel solutions.

Come bring your questions and an open mind, and join this important discussion. All of us are responsible to recognize where people are marginalized and excluded, especially in the current climate. Being agile means finding better ways to implement things. Let’s be agile about diversity.

BIO: Dennis, a native Portlander, began his career in L.A. working in Film and TV. Four years ago he returned to Portland and joined the software development world, migrating through the different levels to management and agile coach. His focus now is on hiring and coaching successful (and diverse) development teams.

What are the characteristics of team health? How do you know if your team is happy? Are there metrics for this? Yes!

Come on down to Ringler’s and sit in with the Pub Lunchers while they talk about team health and happiness, what metrics they’ve found useful, and whether you should even use metrics to measure health and happiness. (Happiness? Metrics?)

You know where to find us: We'll be in the back. RSVP's not required but very much appreciated at [email protected]. It helps us alert the pub to staff appropriately. We start on time and end on time. We encourage you to do so, as well.

The PMI Agile Round Table provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This month Jean Richardson lead a discussion on PMI's "Pulse of the Profession 2017" for Agile (please download and read the report prior to the round table).

The report can be downloaded here: https://www.pmi.org/learning/thought-leadership/pulse/pulse-of-the-profession-2017

We will meet at: Paddy's Bar & Grill - Irish Pub 65 SW Yamhill St, Portland, OR 97204 (No host lunch if you wish to order from Paddy's menu)

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

Want to learn how to take your projects to the next level Practical, Hands-on Training for Scrum

Join us for an all day Scrum workshop on May 13th, 2017; hosted by the IBEA featuring Suzanne Ward MBA MEng PMP CSM CSPO PSM CSP, a Scrum Master & Agile Coach/Trainer from Intel. Our world is changing fast. Markets and consumers are demanding faster, cheaper and better products. Demands for quicker turnaround on new product development and innovation have only increased. How do companies like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Apple keep up? They practice agile techniques, in particular they utilize scrum to manage their projects. Scrum has the power to transform project management across every industry, every business, and even across your personal life. By using Scrum, you’ll become more agile, discovering how to react more quickly and respond more accurately to the inevitable change that comes your way. By staying focused, collaborating, and communicating with customers and your team, you can accomplish what truly needs to be done — successfully. Come get a taste of the future of project management and learn about the Scrum process. This one day classroom training with exercises will cover the material from scrum introduction certification class and Product Owner role in the Scrum Process.

STRUCTURE OF EVENT: Day 1 – Learn about the Scrum Process, Learn what a Scrum Master is responsible for, come away with insights on how to manage your next project

BENEFITS Retain more information because of our unique hands-on approach; based on the latest research into brain science Be entertained by stories from our real-world experienced and knowledgeable instructors Maximize investments already made by gaining valuable Professional Development Units (PDUs) Increase your personal worth within your company and in the marketplace Network with people from Intel Corporation and other software companies

Additional for Audience: SW Engineers: eXtreme Programming, Test Driven Development, Pair Programming Project Managers: Bridging the Gap between Project Management and Scrum

WHO SHOULD COME? People whose work is completed through projects and through teams; Software Engineers, Marketing Professionals, Project Managers, Technology Professionals.

ADDITIONAL BENEFITS? FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: PLEASE CONTACT US AT [email protected]. THERE WILL BE FOOD AND COFFEE!

The Scaled Agile Framework has become a strong force among enterprises pursuing agility. And with it have come strong opinions—in some cases, almost armed camps. This makes no sense. So, in the pursuit of sense, AgilePDX will host a panel of four experienced agilists all with different perspectives on SAFe, from the relatively naïve, to the roundly and soundly certified, to the confirmed skeptic. Come join us. This ought to be a ball!

Come prepared to hear four distinct viewpoints and bring your questions. We have experts!

Jean Richardson (panel facilitator), like many of our panelists, is a member of the AgilePDX Coordinating Committee. She is a coach providing support and guidance for agile-aspiring organizations and leaders in transition grappling with models that function to support agility and navigate complexity. Her background includes depth in traditional and agile project management, formal mediation, and training. Her client list ranges from large (Intel, State of Oregon, City of Portland, Portland General Electric, and Cambia Health Systems) to small (Idealist and Thug Interactive) organizations. Her background in SAFe includes many years of observation and some training (SAFe Agilist certification) with a dip in the pool to test the pH. She was a reviewer on the Enterprise Agile track for the Agile Alliance 2017 conference.

Dave Gipp is currently supporting agile teams on a large SAFe transformation in Portland as a part of the agile coaching cohort at Slalom consulting. Over ten years ago, he began his agile journey dealing with issues of scaling while with Laika Animation Studios as the lead agile coach for their software R&D division. Since that time Dave has worked with dozens of large organizations, such as Cisco, DreamWorks, Marvel, Lattice, and Nike, helping them build and scale their agile fluency. Dave is a SAFe Program Consultant (SPC4), Certified Facilitator/Coach (icAgile ATF), Certified Scrum Practitioner (CSP) and Certified Scrum Master (CSM). Dave is also fluent in organizational transformation and is Prosci® Change Management certified.

Lorie Gordon has a background in Software Engineering, leading teams for the past 10 years in a three-fold role of Software Development Manager, Scrum Master, and Project Manager. Working for four global organizations, Lorie has led several distributed teams with members in North America, APAC, EMEA, and Armenia. Her first team lead a successful grassroots initiative to bring Agile-scrum into the software development practice and across the organization. Once the framework was proven, she guided the continued adoption of Agile-scrum partnering and reducing silos within co-located offices and across the globe.

Lorie focuses on coaching and practicing scrum within a team-oriented framework as a dedicated Scrum Master. Her recent introduction to SAFe is teaching her a formal enterprise level planning method that is partially implemented in teams she works with. She volunteers with AgilePDX and attends local gatherings including AONW, ProductCamp, and PNSQC.

Adam Light helps technology leaders use Lean and Agile methods to deliver results and build innovative high-performing organizations. As a consultant to enterprise clients, Adam focuses on pragmatic techniques that increase organizational capacity by improving leadership capability. Adam has more than 20 years of technology experience. He began his career as a software developer before becoming a manager of projects and people. Adam first experienced the power of Lean and Agile methods when he implemented them as Director of Planning and Program Management at TransUnion and has run his own consulting practice since 2008.

Adam is a founding member of the Agile Fluency Project, which helps coaches, consultants, and change agents put the insights of the Agile Fluency Model into practice. The Agile Fluency Project envisions a world where Agile is done well in every organization, where all teams practice effectively to sustain continuous improvement, and where each team performs at a level of fluent proficiency that is fit to purpose.

Rhea Stadick applies leading edge techniques to accelerate business results across complex, global organizations. She's driven by the need to do the right things right and ensure healthy workplaces that support diversity of thought and encourage continuous improvement and learning. Over the last 10 years she's led grassroots efforts and initiatives to establish improved ways of working that focus on fast value delivery and sustainable development. As one of the early adopters of Agile at Intel Corporation, Rhea helped to foster other change agents in this space and cleared a path to enable Agile to be an accepted and embraced way of working across 100,000+ people and over 60 countries. As a systems engineer, she has developed an expertise in Complex Adaptive Systems and applying practical methods to work in dynamic contexts. Rhea is a TEDx speaker and keynoter on topics including new approaches for modern business and thriving in changing environments. She currently consults on large Agile transformations.

Level up your skills, network with peers, and learn to accelerate stakeholder value delivery with this unique workshop from nuCognitive.

The first Agile principle is "Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software." However, in practice this does not seem to be true nearly as often as it should be. Teams often fail to provide early, frequent delivery of stakeholder value. Instead, they focused on spikes, class libraries, infrastructure, and other inward-focused work, without an understanding of their stakeholders and what they value. As a result, many teams start with what is most familiar, easiest, or most convenient for them rather than what stakeholders value most.

Why do teams often become focused on (or even obsessed with) feature development and maximizing development velocity? Without explicit focus on value, the association between velocity, feature development, and value-delivery is weak - perhaps even non-existent. At best, these projects are conducted sub-optimally. Frequently, they fail when stakeholders remove funding because they perceive a lack of value add.

Value-driven delivery is achieved using the answers to three simple, but not at all easy, questions: 1. Who are your stakeholders? 2. What do they value? 3. What are you doing in the next two weeks or less to provide value to them?

Teams often have many more stakeholders than they first realize. Value-driven Delivery ensures those stakeholders are made explicit, and that the list of stakeholders is kept current throughout the project.

Value-driven delivery captures and maintains stakeholder values in a quantified, verifiable way. This ensures that teams can know the real effects of each stakeholder value delivery, and prevents work based on an outdated understanding of value.

Value-driven Delivery also challenges teams to sequence deliveries so that they deliver the most valuable things first. This can have tremendous benefits, generating early business results and reducing the time required for the team to get into a positive Return on Investment for the project.

Value-driven delivery makes a natural overlay for Scrum, but does not require Scrum's use to be effective. Value-driven delivery does not ignore features and velocity, but it explicitly places value delivery above those things as the top priority.

Two other advantages to Value-driven Delivery worth mentioning: First, it is not limited to software, but applies to all aspects of an organization, including the executive suite, human resources, finance, IT, and product teams. Second, it is not focused on or limited to any particular scale. In fact, it is scale-free, working on small teams and teams of more than 500 engineers in a 100K-person company.

Learning Outcomes: -The definition and nature of value -The principles and practices of Value-driven Delivery -How to use Evolutionary Delivery to manage value-driven work, alone or in concert with Scrum -Fundamentals of several disciplines and models that aid value-driven work, including the Kano Model, elements from Diffusion of Innovations, UX Proof Points, and the HEART Framework -Attendees will gain enough understanding to begin using Value-driven Delivery in their own work if they desire. -Additional sources of information will be provided for continued learning.

Who should attend: Product management, product owners, product developers, service designers, architects, product managers, engineers, business development, business strategy, marketing, planners, project managers, software developers

This month, the Agile Practitioners Book Club meets to discuss Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love:- by Richard Sheridan

The book looks at the workplace and how designing spaces with joy in mind influences the organization. May of you have probably had experiences (hits and misses?) with designing with the team health and happiness in mind. Come share your ideas on the book and the topic in general - over a beer with your Agile peers.

We'll be meeting at Lucky Lab on Hawthorne and hope to see you there!

What do we really expect from an agile team? Are they expected to just deliver what they're told? Participate in deciding what to deliver? Or, are they really supposed to be focused on delivering value? Does any of this have to do with their maturity and the extend to which they are caught in a web of constraints and impediments?

We have opinions. How about you?

Come down to Ringler's and join in the fun. There's food, there's beer--and you and us!

The PMI Agile Round Table provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This month the group will select agile-related topics / issues and have time boxed discussions. All attendees are encouraged to bring their burning agile-related topics, issues and questions for discussion/debate/brainstorming.

We will meet at: Paddy's Bar & Grill - Irish Pub 65 SW Yamhill St, Portland, OR 97204 (No host lunch if you wish to order from Paddy's menu)

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

At AgilePDX Downtown in June, Paul Wynia is facilitating a fun interactive workshop with us!

Teams are tricky things, they get even trickier when a team fails to come together as a cohesive group of individuals. One of the steps to getting through the Forming/Storming phases and onto the Performing stage is creating a set of team values and defining how those values translate to behaviors. In this fun, interactive session we'll explore team values with LEGO Serious Play. Using these methodologies, we ensure that all team members are engaged, have a voice, and can influence the final outcome while at the same time reducing the stress and conflict that can occur.

Speaker Paul Wynia is an Agile Coach, Consultant, and Trainer with 20 years of software industry experience. Paul is also a Licensed Trainer of the Lego® Serious Play® methodologies http://www.strategicplay.com/ and uses Agile Games and simulations to incorporate collaboration, creativity, and innovation into teamwork. He is co-host of the http://agilegamespodcast.com/ and co-chair of the annual http://agilegameswest.com/ conference.

Join us for an all day Scrum workshop on June 24th, 2017; featuring Suzanne Ward MBA MEng PMP CSM CSPO PSM CSP, a Scrum Master & Agile Coach/Trainer from Intel.

Our world is changing fast. Markets and consumers are demanding faster, cheaper and better products. Demands for quicker turnaround on new product development and innovation have only increased. How do companies like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Apple keep up? They practice agile techniques, in particular they utilize scrum to manage their projects.

Scrum has the power to transform project management across every industry, every business, and even across your personal life. By using Scrum, you’ll become more agile, discovering how to react more quickly and respond more accurately to the inevitable change that comes your way. By staying focused, collaborating, and communicating with customers and your team, you can accomplish what truly needs to be done — successfully.

Come get a taste of the future of project management and learn about the Scrum process. This one day classroom training with exercises will cover the material from scrum introduction certification class and Product Owner role in the Scrum Process.

STRUCTURE OF EVENT:

Day 1 – Learn about the Scrum Process, Learn what a Scrum Master is responsible for, come away with insights on how to manage your next project

BENEFITS

•Retain more information because of our unique hands-on approach; based on the latest research into brain science •Be entertained by stories from our real-world experienced and knowledgeable instructors •Maximize investments already made by gaining valuable Professional Development Units (PDUs) •Increase your personal worth within your company and in the marketplace •Network with people from Intel Corporation and other software companies

Additional for Audience: SW Engineers: eXtreme Programming, Test Driven Development, Pair Programming Project Managers: Bridging the Gap between Project Management and Scrum

WHO SHOULD COME? People whose work is completed through projects and through teams; Software Engineers, Marketing Professionals, Project Managers, Technology Professionals.

SPEAKER'S CAREER ACCOMPLISHMENTS: •Product, Brand, and Marketing Management in diverse range of markets and industries, with P&L responsibilities up to $100 million annual sales. •Quick Learner of new industries/product offerings with results-oriented achievements. Created excitement around a static accessories category in condensed timeframe. Created full line of support, educational, training, and presentation materials. Impact of efforts increased sales from $16.4M to $37.2M in 24 months. •Program management for multiple high tech/electronic development projects, averaging $3 million annual budget. Serve in project manager and product manager capacities. Two successful worldwide launches in 3 years. $1M annual OEM/B2B sales and $10M annual sales. •Combine demonstrated product management leadership experience with strong hands-on technical background. Equally comfortable delving into product requirements with hard-core engineers as well as presenting to executive level decision makers. •Uniquely skilled at fostering new ideas, building successful cross-functional teams, and nurturing a culture of consumer-driven product development and user experience innovation. Experience working in and managing cross-functional, cross-division, cross-geographic and multi-cultural sales, marketing and engineering organizations. •International program management, sourcing, engineering, OEM/ODM management/development experience. Overseas work assignments in EU and Asia with extended stay in Asia.

SUZANNE WARD'S CERTIFICATIONS: •PMP, Project Management Professional, Project Management Institute •PSM, Professional Scrum Master, Scrum.org •CSM, CSPO, Certified Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Product Owner, Scrum Alliance •CSP, Certified Scrum Professional, Scrum Alliance

ADDITIONAL BENEFITS?

THERE WILL BE FOOD AND COFFEE! FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: PLEASE CONTACT US AT [email protected].

How do we measure success? How do we measure success without data??

Many teams forget to collect data about the work. In the heat of battle, data collection seems so much less important than getting the code cut and the customer satisfied. Folks, we need all kinds of help here.

How do you collect data? Is it passive? Does it just happen as you work? How much data is laying around in your workplace just waiting to be scoped up, looked at, talked about, and learned from? How much better would your life be if you had real data to base your improvement plans and your problem solving on?

Please come with your pointers, and stories, and techniques for collecting and using data with low pain and high value outcomes. Okay, tell us about the high pain and low value data collection experiences, too. After all, there's beer.

We'll be in the back. We start on time and end on time. Please try to do likewise. RSVP's welcome but not required at [email protected].

The PMI Agile Round Table provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This month the group will select agile-related topics / issues and have time boxed discussions. All attendees are encouraged to bring their burning agile-related topics, issues and questions for discussion/debate/brainstorming.

We will meet at: Paddy's Bar & Grill - Irish Pub 65 SW Yamhill St, Portland, OR 97204 (No host lunch if you wish to order from Paddy's menu)

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

The Professional Scrum Master (PSM) course is a 2-day course that covers the principles and empirical process theory underpinning the mechanics, rules and roles of the Scrum framework. Advanced tools for servant-leadership are provided to increase a Scrum Master’s effectiveness. These tools relate to behavioral shifts, working with people and teams, coaching and facilitation techniques, and addressing the organization. Students learn through instruction and team-based exercises, and are challenged to think in terms of the Scrum principles to better understand what to do when returning to the workplace.

Professional Scrum Master is THE cutting-edge course for effective Scrum Masters and anyone supporting a software development team’s efficiency and effectiveness.

Stephanie is one of two Professional Scrum Master (PSM) Curriculum Stewards. She works with the trainer community and Ken Schwaber to continuously evolve the course.

This course will be limited to 12 people to enable a high-touch experience. Sign up early to reserve your spot. Check out the registration page for more details.

Have you ever wondered why some Agile concepts work well in one context and not so well in other contexts? With so many tools, techniques, models, methods, practices, and principles available, how do you decide which ones are appropriate for a given situation?

Agile methods, practices, and principles are successful primarily because they are effective heuristics. Heuristics are anything that provide a plausible aid or direction in the solution of a problem. All heuristics work by exploiting the structure of an environment, so heuristics work well in some environments and less well (or not at all) in others. We need to understand why and where Agile methods and practices work - and where they don’t - in order to adopt, tailor, use, and improve them.

Cynefin is a sensemaking framework that helps people understand their context or situation in order to take appropriate action. The Cynefin framework can be used to select Agile heuristics appropriate for the environment (e.g. use Scrum here, and Kanban there) rather than defaulting to a single, recipe-based approach for all situations. Agile heuristics are especially important and useful for complex and complicated environments, where practitioners must work continuously to understand their context, and then respond quickly and flexibly to meet rapidly-changing needs.

Agile in Context helps practitioners understand not only how, but also why Agile methods and practices work across different contexts. Understanding Agile in context increases the chances for successful adoptions and highlights areas where new methods need to be developed or repurposed from other disciplines. Treating Agile as a set of heuristics will also reduce recipe-based, dogmatic approaches that are fairly pervasive in the community at large today.

Learning Outcomes: By the end of the session, participants should be able to: -- describe what heuristics are and why they work -- describe the Cynefin Framework -- use the Cynefin framework to identify and select heuristics to improve Agile development -- find additional information for continued learning

Optional Pre-Work: A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making https://hbr.org/2007/11/a-leaders-framework-for-decision-making

About the Speaker:

Dan Walsh is a Founder and Principal of nuCognitive (www.nuCognitive.com). He has over a decade of expertise in accelerating product development, driving culture change, and transforming organizations. As a recognized leader in Lean Startup, org transformations, and complex adaptive systems, Walsh helps clients to resolve complex, intractable problems resistant to traditional methods. He is an advocate for the integration of learning with work, the cultivation of cultures where people thrive, and the application of heuristics to deliver holistic solutions to customer problems.

Dan Walsh has a BS and an MS in Chemical Engineering from Texas A&M. He also has an MS in Systems Engineering and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO) is a 2-day course that provides the knowledge needed to work with Scrum in a highly practical way. The course is a combination of instruction and team-based exercises where students experience how the Scrum framework improves product development efforts.

Over the 2 days, students will develop and solidify their knowledge of being a Product Owner through instruction and team-based exercises. The breadth of the role’s responsibilities in delivering a successful product will become more clear from an Agile perspective. Metrics are identified to track the creation of value and the successful delivery of the product to the marketplace.

Scrum.org selects only the most qualified instructors to deliver this course. Each instructor lends his or her individual experience and expertise to the course, but all students learn the same core content. This improves their ability to pass the Professional Scrum assessments and use Scrum in the workplace.

This course will be limited to 12 people to enable a high-touch experience. Sign up early to get your spot.

Okay, so there you were agilitating along smoothly when someone dropped a fixed date smack in the middle of things? Who hasn’t had this experience? And, yet, we cope, and we strive to preserve all possible agility. But how?

This topic came up at last month’s pub lunch. In August we’ll be reconvening to share war stories, strategies and solutions for dealing with fixed dates in an agile environment.

You'll find us in the back room. RSVP's appreciated, but not required, at [email protected] .

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 PMI Agile Round Table provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This month Daniel Ackermann will cover the topic: “Scrum, Kanban, ScrumBan for software development?” - presenting the different methods and explore some benefits and drawbacks of each, and under which situations each method can be used. Daniel will speak for about 30 minutes followed by a group discussion on the ideas presented.

We will meet at: Paddy's Bar & Grill - Irish Pub 65 SW Yamhill St, Portland, OR 97204 (No host lunch if you wish to order from Paddy's menu)

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

About Daniel : Daniel is a Project Management and Agile consultant with over 25 years’ experience in the software development and technology industry. He has a master’s degree in Project and Program management from Boston University and obtained his PMP certification in October 2001. He is a Certified Scrum Master and hold the PMI-ACP certification. His main area of interest is the translation of skills from traditional project management to the Agile world and how the two worlds can co-exist in an enterprise

Do you have a burning question? Do you need a little group consultation? Do you have a nut you just can’t crack in your processes or team dynamics?

Taking a break from speakers this month to encourage you to take the stage! The ever-popular Lean Coffee agile group discussion format has been a consistent hit in the past so we’re flying the Lean Coffee flag again. To learn more about the format, read here: http://leancoffee.org/

Come bring your friends and your questions. The bigger the turnout the more tables we’ll have going simultaneously.

Pizza and pop generously provided by PNSQC (pnsqc.org). RSVP's appreciated, but not required, at [email protected] .

A Certified ScrumMaster® helps project teams properly use Scrum, increasing the likelihood of the project's overall success. CSMs understand Scrum values, practices, and applications and provide a level of knowledge and expertise above and beyond that of typical project managers. CSMs act as "servant leaders," helping the rest of the Scrum team work together and learn the Scrum framework. CSMs also protect the team from both internal and external distractions.

To earn your CSM certificate, you must take a CSM course from a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) or Endorsed Scrum Trainer (EST) and demonstrate your progress through our online CSM test. The first step toward your CSM is familiarizing yourself with Scrum. Then attend an in-person, two-day (16 hour) CSM course taught by a Scrum Alliance Authorized Trainer. After successfully completing the course, you will need to pass the CSM exam. To get a passing score, you must correctly answer 24 of the 35 questions. You will be eligible for 16 Scrum Education Units (SEUs) upon completion of this course. After you pass the CSM exam, you will be asked to accept the License Agreement and complete your Scrum Alliance membership profile.

This 2 day (16 hours) course fulfills the classroom requirement to become a CSM.

10% of PROCEEDS WILL GO TO CHICK TECH PORTLAND https://portland.chicktech.org/

Last month, the Downtown Pub Lunchers decided to focus on a key principle behind the Agile Manifesto in September:

Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.

How much focus do you put on this principle in your work group? How far up the chain does it go?

Most people forget the NOT part of that principle. Do you think you have done that? How did you catch it?

Come on down to Ringler's for lunch with your friends and bring a few folks with you. What tips do you have for us about satisfying this essential principle?

You know the place. You know the time. We'll be in the back. We start and end on time.

Agilists from across the Pacific Northwest will converge at the Nike World Headquarters for a career changing day. This is a one-day conference with 3 keynote speakers (Richard Sheridan, best-selling author of Joy Inc., Gene Kim, founder and CTO of Tripwire, and Mamie Jones, SVP of Product Development at Intuit) as well as 20 workshops on Leadership, Product, Technical Enablement, Leadership, Innovation, Agility and much more.

Use this promo code, MeetAC17 for a 10% discount on registration if you register by 8/23/2017!

Rose City Software Quality Engineers hosting

A naive view of agile software development discounts the value of traditional management. Managers can play a critical role in team alignment, team member development, and cross-company coordination. Chris will share his experience along with specific tips on how to be an effective manager in an agile world.

About Chris Brooks

Chris has spent the last 25 years working in a wide variety of software development organizations. He has:

Developed simulators to research new cockpit designs for the US Air ForceBuilt software for semiconductor and electronics manufacturingLed teams in the construction and shipping of an online banking platform that served seven of the ten largest banks in the USLed an organization responsible for delivering health and wellness solutions to over 30 million users at many of the largest employers and health plans in the US

Most recently, Chris was...

VP of Engineering and CTO at Fiserv / Corillian through its growth phase, IPO, and eventual sale to CheckFree. Chris led the product engineering and product management functions for over seven years.Original CTO at TSSI / ProjectDX where he remained until its sale to Renew Financial. SVP of Engineering at WebMD Health Services

The Thermodynamics of Emotion gives us a fresh view of the human behavior we see around us. The emotions we experience create the results we get as we form teams, solve problems, and struggle for equity. Through the lens of complexity science and flow system physics, we find new tools to understand and influence the patterns of emotion that create our relationships and organizations.

http://thermodynamicsofemotion.com

Willem Larsen is the founder of Language Hunters (a non-profit organization that trains communities in the techniques of accelerated learning to revitalize endangered languages), host of the Thermodynamics of Emotion Symposium, author (and co-author) of several books including the Five Rules of Accelerated Learning, a wildlife tracker and Search and Rescue tracker, and a software engineer at Hunter Industries, home of "mob" programming, where he recently designed the Mob Programming Role-Playing game to help accelerate on-boarding and support the practice at other organizations.

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.

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!

What tools and attempts have you used to measure the value of work delivered? A strong component of team motivation is understanding the value of the work they are doing; As well as determining ROI for the business to pursue\continue a project. This is measured differently across organizations and many teams have minimal measurements in this area, if any.

Have you tried & failed to measure the value of what your team delivers? Have you had some success? Do you have a method that has proved to work across several cycles?

Come share what you know, or what you'd like to understand as the agile community discussions are engaging and leave us with new ways to think about the same problem (plus ideas to try)!

You know the place. You know the time. We'll be in the back. We start and end on time.

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This month the group will select agile-related topics / issues and have time boxed discussions. All attendees are encouraged to bring their burning agile-related topics, issues and questions for discussion/debate/brainstorming.

We will meet at:

The Standard: 900 SW Fifth Ave, Portland, OR 97204

Class Rooms 1 & 2

Meeting Rooms are on the lower level by OutTakes Cafe

Thanks to The Standard for providing space for this event

Note: PMI Certification holders can claim 1 PMI PDU for attending this event.

note: We will be reading the 2nd edition put out by Pragmatic Programmers. It is much improved from the 1st edition, even though that one was great too!

While the kickoff, launch or liftoff of a team is the first thing we do, we don't always take the time to do it well, heck, we OFTEN don't do it well. Why is that?

In Liftoff we will learn how to "launch a team with attention and intention" planning and designing our liftoff through simple and powerful steps. We'll learn about Agile chartering and how it all comes together to bring about a sense of clarity and purpose that helps teams find a clear path through the fog of the unknown that often weighs down on new teams.

We encourage you to read the book with a specific project in mind. We'll talk about it over beers and tots and we even have wall space to try our hand at Agile chartering should the mood strike us!

See you there!

The Professional Scrum Master (PSM) course is a 2-day course that covers the principles and empirical process theory underpinning the mechanics, rules and roles of the Scrum framework. Professional Scrum Master is THE cutting-edge course for effective Scrum Masters and anyone supporting a software development team’s efficiency and effectiveness.

Students learn through instruction and team-based exercises, and are challenged to think in terms of the Scrum principles to better understand what to do when returning to the workplace.

Details and registration here --> https://www.agilesocks.com/training-courses/professional-scrum-master-course-portland-october-18-19/

Feel free to contact me at [email protected] with any questions and to help you determine if this is the right fit for you.

Two Jira users walk into a bar... What do they find? Each other and a whole lot of ways to use Jira to solve problems. This month two local users will share how they use Jira and other products to collaborate and manage internal projects from technical to business. Come to learn from their successes, failures, and everything in between. Ask questions and collaborate; our hope is that you'll walk away with answers to your burning challenges, or at least feel like you have a local Bat-line to call for help.

We'll also report out on the latest from Atlassian, including announcements from Summit in San Jose. If you attended, we'd love for you to share your most-memorable moment and what you learned.

Event Details:

Date: Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Time: 5:30-7 PM PDT

Location: Centrl Office Eastside - 329 NE Couch St, Portland, OR 97232

Other things and things: Food and social lubricant provided, cheers!

We've all seen or heard of "unit" test suites that all pass but the resulting project doesn't actually work. Behavior Driven Development (BDD) can provide a higher level of confidence in a project by testing at a higher level: the project's input and output level.

In this presentation we'll look at examples of BDD implemented in cucumber, show how it can catch errors other tests can't, how it can be used not only for improving confidence in deployments but verifying deployments as well. Specifically focused on backend web services, the concepts in the presentation can be applied to other domains as well.

If you're looking for a presentation with code, but not too much, this is for you!

Bio: Matthew Mayer is an agile enthusiast, a cloud-native software engineer but mostly wishes he had more time to ride his motorcycles.

The Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO) course is a 2-day course on how to maximize the value of software products and systems. Product Ownership in Scrum today requires more than knowledge of how to write requirements or manage a Product Backlog. Professional Scrum Product Owners need to have a concrete understanding of everything that drives value from their products.

Students develop and solidify this understanding through instruction and team-based exercises. The breadth of the role’s responsibilities in delivering a successful product beco8010 N Charleston Ave, Portland, OR 97203 mes clear from an Agile perspective on product management. Metrics are identified to track the creation of value and the successful delivery of it to the marketplace. This defines the perspective from which the role of the Product Owner in the Scrum framework is taught.

Details and registration here --> https://www.agilesocks.com/training-courses/professional-scrum-product-owner-portland-2/

Feel free to contact me at [email protected] with any questions and to help you determine if this is the right fit for you.

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.

A Certified ScrumMaster® helps project teams properly use Scrum, increasing the likelihood of the project's overall success. CSMs understand Scrum values, practices, and applications and provide a level of knowledge and expertise above and beyond that of typical project managers. CSMs act as "servant leaders," helping the rest of the Scrum team work together and learn the Scrum framework. CSMs also protect the team from both internal and external distractions.

To earn your CSM certificate, you must take a CSM course from a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) or Endorsed Scrum Trainer (EST) and demonstrate your progress through our online CSM test. The first step toward your CSM is familiarizing yourself with Scrum. Then attend an in-person, two-day (16 hour) CSM course taught by a Scrum Alliance Authorized Trainer. After successfully completing the course, you will need to pass the CSM exam. To get a passing score, you must correctly answer 24 of the 35 questions. You will be eligible for 16 Scrum Education Units (SEUs) upon completion of this course. After you pass the CSM exam, you will be asked to accept the License Agreement and complete your Scrum Alliance membership profile.

This 2 day (16 hours) course fulfills the classroom requirement to become a CSM.

10% of PROCEEDS WILL GO TO CHICK TECH PORTLAND https://portland.chicktech.org/

How do you motivate a high performing team? What keeps them ticking, driving with passion, and remaining engaged?

Ideally, you are lucky enough to join a team that makes you excited to jump out of bed and come to work each day. Teams like this create amazing work often at a rapid pace. So how do we get there? How do we encourage, develop, and motivate a high performing team? On the flip side, what ideas have failed or harmed teams in our previous attempts that we may learn from and avoid?

Join us at the November Pub lunch to discuss strategies!

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This Month we're honored to have Jean Richardson present: Servant Leadership: A Grounding Discussion

Summary: For agilists, servant leadership has long been the go-to leadership model. Most agilists aren’t grounded in what servant leadership really is.

This discussion will introduce you to the founder, his initial conceptual overview of servant leadership, modern thought leaders, and common critiques of the model. You will leave with an easy way to determine whether you really are a successful servant leader.

Jean Richardson led the webinar “Intro to Servant Leadership for the Flummoxed” last month. She will set the context for a discussion on this leadership model and encourage discussion among the attendees. Jean is the author of The Preservation of the Agile Heart, an advanced discussion of agile advocacy and where agile advocates need to go from here. Learn more at agileheartinfo.com.

We will meet at:

The Standard: 900 SW Fifth Ave, Portland, OR 97204

Broadway CR (Basement - signs will show the way)

Thanks to The Standard for providing space for this event

Note: PMI Certification holders can claim 1 PMI PDU for attending this event.

This is AgilePDX's second webinar speaker. Web conferencing is allowing us to bring in speakers doing cutting edge work around the world. Come join us for this innovative discussion.

Today companies need Agile throughout. But how can they go beyond software to include even board and basic legal structure? Share and comment on the journey Jutta Eckstein and I are on to answer that question. We first generalize the Manifesto to values of: self-organization, transparency, constant customer focus, and continuous learning. Then, deepen these values by adding Beyond Budgeting, Open Space, Sociocracy. A new organigram emerges that synthesizes board, inspiration, resource support, and value center perspectives and focuses them on the customer. Finally, use Cynefin to implement company-wide Agility, and then dance!

Format: The presentation will cycle between presenting ideas, posing questions audience small groups, and providing brief moments for sharing and reflection.

Bio:

John Buck lives near Washington, DC, USA, and is a division director for The Sociocracy Group, an international foundation headquartered in Rotterdam, Netherlands.

John has led dozens of sociocracy implementation projects for a variety of organizations around the globe, ranging from schools and neighborhoods to NGOs and for-profit manufacturers and IT companies using Agile. He believes that such basic values as equality, effectivness, and transparency can make our work places dramatically more elegant and sustainable. He excels in customizing sociocracy principles to each organization’s particular concerns, work schedules, and professional areas.

John was the first person outside of The Netherlands to receive consultant certification from The Sociocracy Group in Rotterdam, Netherlands. He has translated numerous documents from the original Dutch and is coauthor (with Sharon Villines) of We the People: Consenting to a Deeper Democracy, 2007 & updated 2017. Another book, Company-Wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space, and Sociocracy, coauthored with Jutta Eckstein, is 70% complete in LeanPub.com. He also is part of a joint project with Fujitsu's Advanced Software Lab to create an app called Weaver to support meetings in-person, online, and offline.

Education and credentials

-- Master of Science degree in Quantitative Sociology, The George Washington University

-- Certified Sociocratic Consultant

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.]

What do you do if you want to use agile methods in your work and are working in a group that has always done their own thing? You learned about agile technical practices at your last job, and you really liked the results (and not getting paged at oh dark 30). What do you do to introduce agile practices when folks like what they are doing just fine?

Or maybe you are a team member who's been hearing and learning about agile practices. You'd like to bring them to your group but they are really used to doing things a certain way. What do you do?

Join us for a discussion of how to introduce agile from the inside out with a group that has always done their own thing.

It's been a fun year getting this little book club started!

We'll wrap up the year with a holiday read: The Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision Making and maybe a year-end retrospective with some participatory decision making about what to focus on in the new year?

There are several editions of The Facilitator's Guide - they appear to get more expensive as they get more current. Me, I'm planning on reading the original, because it's a) cheaper! and b) has many, many great things said about it. Feel free to bring the copy you want - they all seem good!

Hope to see you for one last read in 2017!

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This Month we'll continue on the topic of Servant Leadership: A Grounding Discussion with Jean Richardson (and possibly discuss other leadership models). Summary: For agilists, servant leadership has long been the go-to leadership model. Most agilists aren’t grounded in what servant leadership really is.

As requested by the attendees, this discussion will continue last month's topic - introduce you to the founder, his initial conceptual overview of servant leadership, modern thought leaders, and common critiques of the model. You will leave with an easy way to determine whether you really are a successful servant leader.

Jean Richardson led the webinar “Intro to Servant Leadership for the Flummoxed” last month. She will set the context for a discussion on this leadership model and encourage discussion among the attendees. Jean is the author of The Preservation of the Agile Heart, an advanced discussion of agile advocacy and where agile advocates need to go from here. Learn more at agileheartinfo.com.

We will meet at:

The Standard: 900 SW Fifth Ave, Portland, OR 97204

Tree Room (located on the Concourse Level down the escalator) (NOTE THIS IS A DIFFERENT LOCATION THAN LAST MONTH)

Thanks to The Standard for providing space for this event

Note: PMI Certification holders can claim 1 PMI PDU for attending this event.

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.

Mob programming can be used to help increase team cohesiveness, efficiently train new team members, reduce bugs, and save time in code review and testing. Expanding on the principles of pair programming, mob programming uses an entire team to create well designed and implemented code. Alexander will be going over both the good parts and bad parts of mob programming that he's come across in the last 3 years of implementation with his team. We'll discuss what everyone's role is in mob programming, when it's best to attempt it with your team, and when you might end up experiencing more headache than benefit.

Bio: Alexander Clifford found his way into programming through a somewhat circuitous route. With a background in science and cooking he discovered his love of programming almost by accident while searching for his next learning project. Seven years later he now leads the UI Apps development team on Oracle's Infinity product line as a Principle Software Engineer. When he's not programming for work, he's programming for fun by attempting to create Skynet, running around in nature pretending to be a native Northwesterner, or moving about his kitchen in an attempt to not forget all of his prior chef skills. He can be reached at https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderclifford/ or by using just the right sequence of smoke signals.

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile. This month the group will discuss The Agile Practice Guide:

"Created in partnership with Agile Alliance®, the Agile Practice Guide* provides tools, situational guidelines and an understanding of the various agile approaches available to enable better results. It is especially useful for those project managers accustomed to a more traditional environment to adapt to a more agile approach."

PMI members can download a pdf version of the practice guide at: https://www.pmi.org/pmbok-guide-standards/practice-guides/agile

Thanks to The Standard for their continued support

Note: 1 PMI PDU can be claimed for attending this event.

How do we combat the “out of sight, out of mind” mentality in virtual teams? How do we cultivate a virtual team dynamic which nourishes engaged collaboration and equitable dialog among all voices? As organizations continue to grow flatter and increasingly become more global, remote teams need to acquire new skills to build trust with one another and overcome the perceived distance in the virtual team environment. In this talk Line Mørkbak and her online colleague Sarika Kharbanda share some of their insights and tips on how to ensure that we engage all voices in our online collaboration. They will explore various tools and techniques to increase a sense of team and bring back the “human” interaction. Line and Sarika will look at the latest research on virtual collaboration, exploring the mindset needed to create a nourishing virtual work environment, and will share tools to support fluid collaboration for online teams.

Line Mørkbak is constantly exploring new methods to engage learners and develop team approaches that empower f2f and virtual collaboration. Dynamic participation, interactivity, and engagement are keywords for her workshops and learning designs. As a Global Collaboration Facilitator she divides her time between European and North American clients and her work often takes place in a virtual global environment. Line is constantly exploring and experimenting with ways to enhance the way we collaborate with our colleagues when we are not in the same physical location. As a global citizen, Line has lived and worked internationally for the past 19 years and is now based in Portland, OR. http://www.gleapconsult.com/

Sarika Kharbanda is an accomplished Lean and Agile practitioner who has worked with enterprises and diverse cultures in Poland, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Singapore, India, China, Hong Kong and the United States. Her work as an Agile Coach has enabled her clients to experience greater business agility across geographies with on-site innovative games, training, coaching and mentoring.

Want to learn how to take your projects to the next level

Practical, Hands-on Training for Scrum

Join us for an all day Scrum workshop on January 20th, 2018; featuring Suzanne Ward MBA MEng PMP CSM CSPO PSM CSP, a Scrum Master & Agile Coach/Trainer from Intel.

Our world is changing fast. Markets and consumers are demanding faster, cheaper and better products. Demands for quicker turnaround on new product development and innovation have only increased. How do companies like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Apple keep up? They practice agile techniques, in particular they utilize scrum to manage their projects.

Scrum has the power to transform project management across every industry, every business, and even across your personal life. By using Scrum, you’ll become more agile, discovering how to react more quickly and respond more accurately to the inevitable change that comes your way. By staying focused, collaborating, and communicating with customers and your team, you can accomplish what truly needs to be done — successfully.

Come get a taste of the future of project management and learn about the Scrum process. This one day classroom training with exercises will cover the material from scrum introduction certification class and Product Owner role in the Scrum Process.

STRUCTURE OF EVENT:

Day 1 – Learn about the Scrum Process, Learn what a Scrum Master is responsible for, come away with insights on how to manage your next project

BENEFITS

•Retain more information because of our unique hands-on approach; based on the latest research into brain science •Be entertained by stories from our real-world experienced and knowledgeable instructors •Maximize investments already made by gaining valuable Professional Development Units (PDUs) •Increase your personal worth within your company and in the marketplace •Network with people from Intel Corporation and other software companies

ADDITIONAL AUDIENCE

SW Engineers: eXtreme Programming, Test Driven Development, Pair Programming Project Managers: Bridging the Gap between Project Management and Scrum

WHO SHOULD COME?

People whose work is completed through projects and through teams; Software Engineers, Marketing Professionals, Project Managers, Technology Professionals.

SPEAKER'S CAREER ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

•Product, Brand, and Marketing Management in diverse range of markets and industries, with P&L responsibilities up to $100 million annual sales. •Quick Learner of new industries/product offerings with results-oriented achievements. Created excitement around a static accessories category in condensed timeframe. Created full line of support, educational, training, and presentation materials. Impact of efforts increased sales from $16.4M to $37.2M in 24 months. •Program management for multiple high tech/electronic development projects, averaging $3 million annual budget. Serve in project manager and product manager capacities. Two successful worldwide launches in 3 years. $1M annual OEM/B2B sales and $10M annual sales. •Combine demonstrated product management leadership experience with strong hands-on technical background. Equally comfortable delving into product requirements with hard-core engineers as well as presenting to executive level decision makers. •Uniquely skilled at fostering new ideas, building successful cross-functional teams, and nurturing a culture of consumer-driven product development and user experience innovation. Experience working in and managing cross-functional, cross-division, cross-geographic and multi-cultural sales, marketing and engineering organizations. •International program management, sourcing, engineering, OEM/ODM management/development experience. Overseas work assignments in EU and Asia with extended stay in Asia.

SUZANNE WARD'S CERTIFICATIONS:

•PMP, Project Management Professional, Project Management Institute •PSM, Professional Scrum Master, Scrum.org •CSM, CSPO, Certified Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Product Owner, Scrum Alliance •CSP, Certified Scrum Professional, Scrum Alliance

ADDITIONAL BENEFITS?

THERE WILL BE COFFEE!

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: PLEASE CONTACT US AT [email protected].

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile practices.

This month the group will select agile-related topics / issues and have time boxed discussions. All attendees are encouraged to bring their burning agile-related topics, issues and questions for discussion/debate/brainstorming.

We will meet at:

The Standard

900 SW Fifth Ave,

Portland, OR 97204

Class Rooms 1 & 2

Meeting Rooms are on the lower level by OutTakes Cafe

Thanks to The Standard for providing space for this event

Note: PMI Certification holders can claim 1 PMI PDU for attending this event.

For a long time, folks (Rob included) misinterpreted Behavior Driven Development (BDD) as “Test-Driven Development done right,” as Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) with better tools, or as an umbrella term embracing both TDD and ATDD. So, how is BDD really done, and where does TDD fit in, if at all? It turns out that the real problem may lie in trying to pin down rigorous definitions for these terms, and trying to determine when to do which style of testing. Rob coaches teams to be prepared to use the BDD cycle and the TDD cycle when appropriate, and to be willing to move fluidly between these two intertwined cycles on a daily basis. Rob has witnessed significantly improved levels of communication, alignment, quality, and enthusiasm on teams -- and just in mere days, when BDD is embraced as the central activity of the whole team.

You’ll help explore why, when, and how to use both TDD and BDD together to build the most valuable and maintainable software possible.

Rob Myers is principle instructor and coach at Agile for All. He has over 30 years of professional experience with software development teams, and has been training and coaching organizations in Agile engineering practices since 1998. His courses blend fun, practical hands-on labs, "Training From the Back of the Room” learning techniques, and relevant first-person stories from both successful and not-so-successful Agile implementations. His clients have included many start-ups as well as Fortune 100 multinationals. Rob is currently working on his first technical book, Essential Test-Driven Development.

Join the Agile Practitioners' Bookclub as we kick off 2018 with Mike Cohn's Agile Estimating & Planning! Planning is a reality for businesses. As Agile practitioners, we can use Cohn's insights to help our teams and businesses succeed! We'll be at Rogue Eastside in the Barrel Room again. Join us for some beer and conversation, won't you?

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile practices.

This month the group will select agile-related topics / issues and have time boxed discussions. All attendees are encouraged to bring their burning agile-related topics, issues and questions for discussion/debate/brainstorming.

We will meet at:

The Standard

900 SW Fifth Ave,

Portland, OR 97204

Class Rooms 1 & 2

Meeting Rooms are on the lower level by OutTakes Cafe

Thanks to The Standard for providing space for this event

Note: PMI Certification holders can claim 1 PMI PDU for attending this event.

Agile Estimating and Planning deserves a second discussion. Planning and estimating projects and their costs is here to stay in our business lives, often viewed as a necessary chore. Mike Cohn's book articulates the common mistakes that come along with creating a "project plan" - and provides practices and tools to better assess and solve business problems by iteratively planning, sizing, communicating, and executing - built on agile principles. We invite you to pick a chapter in the book that is especially interesting to you to read, and provide your insights to the group.

Is your Agile implementation going slow, failing, or not sustaining? April Mills, author of Everyone is a Change Agent, will describe several common mistakes made in implementations and outline techniques you can use right away to get your implementation back on track.

Examples of the common mistakes include: trying to force people to be Agile, keeping the goal of becoming Agile vague, and not protecting the Agile people and behaviors from the status quo. Improving your Agile implementation is more within your control than you think.

April is an expert change agent and author of “Everyone is a Change Agent”. She blogs at engine-for-change.com and tweets as @engineforchange.

April will have copies of her book available for $10. Feel free to stick around after her presentation and get your book signed.

Practical, Hands-on Training For Kanban Learn how to “Stop Starting and Start Finishing”

Join us for an all day Kanban workshop on March 31st, 2018; featuring Suzanne Ward MBA MEng PMP CSM CSPO PSM CSP, a Scrum Master & Agile Coach/Trainer from Intel. Our Kanban workshop will help you adopt a value–centric system of planning and executing your work. In this one day course we cover the basics of Kanban, one of the agile processes, through a combination of theory and extensive exercises. With in-depth exercises and coaching from an experienced practitioner, participants will learn how to initiate change with Kanban and bring in process improvements by identifying and addressing bottlenecks, prioritize, and initiate collaboration.

BENEFITS:

+++ Get a thorough understanding of the Kanban method, its core principles and practices +++ Learn how to design and introduce a Kanban system into your existing work environment +++ Understand how to improve service delivery with Kanban systems and ensure better customer focus +++ Learn to maximize benefits of the Pull-based workflow, limit Work In Progress (WIP) through continuous collaboration and active, ongoing learning and improving by defining the

    best possible team workflow

+++ Learn concepts through case studies, interactive role play, exercises and discussions +++ Retain more information because of our unique hands-on approach; based on the latest research into brain science +++ Be entertained by stories from our real-world experienced and knowledgeable instructors +++ Maximize investments already made by gaining valuable Professional Development Units (PDUs) +++ Increase your personal worth within your company and in the marketplace +++ Network with people from Intel Corporation and other software companies

WHO SHOULD COME?

Kanban is one of the easiest ways to get your process and delivery under control, anyone with work that needs to get done will benefit. People whose work is completed through projects and through teams; Software Engineers, Marketing Professionals, Project Managers, Technology Professionals, CIO’s, Team Leaders, Technical Leaders, Program Managers, Department Managers, Portfolio Managers, Supply Logistics Professionals.

SPEAKER'S CAREER ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

Product, Brand, and Marketing Management in diverse range of markets and industries, with P&L responsibilities up to $100 million annual sales.

Quick Learner of new industries/product offerings with results-oriented achievements. Created excitement around a static accessories category in condensed timeframe. Created full line of support, educational, training, and presentation materials. Impact of efforts increased sales from $16.4M to $37.2M in 24 months.

Program management for multiple high tech/electronic development projects, averaging $3 million annual budget. Serve in project manager and product manager capacities. Two successful worldwide launches in 3 years. $1M annual OEM/B2B sales and $10M annual sales.

Combine demonstrated product management leadership experience with strong hands-on technical background. Equally comfortable delving into product requirements with hard-core engineers as well as presenting to executive level decision makers.

Uniquely skilled at fostering new ideas, building successful cross-functional teams, and nurturing a culture of consumer-driven product development and user experience innovation. Experience working in and managing cross-functional, cross-division, cross-geographic and multi-cultural sales, marketing and engineering organizations.

International program management, sourcing, engineering, OEM/ODM management/development experience. Overseas work assignments in EU and Asia with extended stay in Asia.

SUZANNE WARD'S CERTIFICATIONS:

PMP, Project Management Professional, Project Management Institute PSM, Professional Scrum Master, Scrum.org CSM, CSPO, Certified Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Product Owner, Scrum Alliance CSP, Certified Scrum Professional, Scrum Alliance

ADDITIONAL BENEFITS?

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: PLEASE CONTACT US AT [email protected].

In an effort to raise the effectiveness of Scrum, the Scrum Alliance created the Certified Scrum Developer (CSD) program (AKA Agile Engineering course.) A Certified Scrum Developer is someone who has demonstrated through a combination of formal training and a technical skills assessment that he or she has a working understanding of Scrum principles and has learned specialized Agile engineering skills.

This three-day class is aimed at helping software development professionals and teams be more effective when implementing Scrum and other Agile methodologies. You will learn how to create and maintain high quality systems through industry standard practices such as Test Driven Development (TDD), Continuous Integration (CI) and common software design patterns. This class was specifically designed to deliver the core Agile Development Practices Learning Objectives of the CSD program and should prepare the participant to successfully pass the Scrum Alliance CSD Candidate Assessment.

This class focuses on automated testing, TDD (heavily covered in class), Continuous Integration, Design Concepts (Design Principles and Practices) and Extreme Programming (XP) practices. Class is hands-on, and you will participate in a project where you will build an actual feature using Agile practices and learn about the technical practices. You'll learn about how team members interact during sprints. Other topics covered include Technical Debt: Strategies & Techniques to help reduce technical debt.

In order to earn the CSD certification, the Scrum Alliance requires at least five days of formal training followed by a CSD assessment/evaluation. This class fulfills 21 of the required 35 hours and can be paired with the Certified ScrumMaster class to complete the requirement.

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This Month we're honored to have Daniel Lynn present: Technical Consulting

Summary: What Is Technical Coaching?

All the best athletes teams have coaches. Musicians and singer? They have coaches too. If you’re a top-level executive at a Fortune 500 company, chances are you have a coach too. So what about the people building your products? Should they have coaches?

Coaching has really taken off over the past decade, but somehow our teams - the people who make the products that our companies live or die by - they’ve been left behind. In this talk we’ll discuss the what a technical coach does (and doesn’t do) and how to tell if your team could benefit from one.

About Daniel:

Daniel has been developing software for nearly two decades and has been working in agile teams for the last 10 years. More recently, he has worked with agile42 coaching teams on the adoption of agile practices both in code and across the organization, but his passion is still in writing great software and helping others do the same.

We will meet at:

The Standard

900 SW Fifth Ave, Portland, OR 97204 Class Rooms 1 & 2 Meeting Rooms are on the lower level by OutTakes Cafe

Thanks to The Standard for providing space for this event

Note: PMI Certification holders can claim 1 PMI PDU for attending this event.

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WANT TO LEARN HOW TO TAKE YOUR PROJECTS TO THE NEXT LEVEL

PRACTICAL, HANDS-ON TRAINING FOR SCRUM

Join us for an all day Scrum workshop on April 28th, 2018; featuring Suzanne Ward MBA MEng PMP CSM CSPO PSM CSP, a Scrum Master & Agile Coach/Trainer from Intel. Our world is changing fast. Markets and consumers are demanding faster, cheaper and better products. Demands for quicker turnaround on new product development and innovation have only increased. How do companies like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Apple keep up? They practice agile techniques, in particular they utilize scrum to manage their projects. Scrum has the power to transform project management across every industry, every business, and even across your personal life. By using Scrum, you’ll become more agile, discovering how to react more quickly and respond more accurately to the inevitable change that comes your way. By staying focused, collaborating, and communicating with customers and your team, you can accomplish what truly needs to be done — successfully. Come get a taste of the future of project management and learn about the Scrum process. This one day classroom training with exercises will cover the material from scrum introduction certification class and Product Owner role in the Scrum Process.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

– Learn about the Scrum Process. Learn what a Product Owner and Scrum Master is responsible for. Come away with insights on how to manage your next project

BENEFITS:

Retain more information because of our unique hands-on approach; based on the latest research into brain science Be entertained by stories from our real-world experienced and knowledgeable instructors Maximize investments already made by gaining valuable Professional Development Units (PDUs) Increase your personal worth within your company and in the marketplace Network with people from Intel Corporation and other software companies

WHO SHOULD COME?

People whose work is completed through projects and through teams; Software Engineers, Marketing Professionals, Project Managers, Technology Professionals, Students in MBA or undergrad business programs.

SPEAKER'S CAREER ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

Product, Brand, and Marketing Management in diverse range of markets and industries, with P&L responsibilities up to $100 million annual sales. Quick Learner of new industries/product offerings with results-oriented achievements. Created excitement around a static accessories category in condensed timeframe. Created full line of support, educational, training, and presentation materials. Impact of efforts increased sales from $16.4M to $37.2M in 24 months. Program management for multiple high tech/electronic development projects, averaging $3 million annual budget. Serve in project manager and product manager capacities. Two successful worldwide launches in 3 years. $1M annual OEM/B2B sales and $10M annual sales. Combine demonstrated product management leadership experience with strong hands-on technical background. Equally comfortable delving into product requirements with hard-core engineers as well as presenting to executive level decision makers. Uniquely skilled at fostering new ideas, building successful cross-functional teams, and nurturing a culture of consumer-driven product development and user experience innovation. Experience working in and managing cross-functional, cross-division, cross-geographic and multi-cultural sales, marketing and engineering organizations. International program management, sourcing, engineering, OEM/ODM management/development experience. Overseas work assignments in EU and Asia with extended stay in Asia.

SUZANNE WARD'S CERTIFICATIONS:

PMP, Project Management Professional, Project Management Institute PSM, Professional Scrum Master, Scrum.org CSM, CSPO, Certified Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Product Owner, Scrum Alliance CSP, Certified Scrum Professional, Scrum Alliance

CERTIFICATIONS FOR THIS TRAINING:

This workshop is meant to introduce professionals and students to the Scrum methodology, though the material we cover will give you the knowledge and material covered in the exam for the Professional Scrum Master (PSM) certification. https://www.scrum.org/. Our students have gone on to take this test after the event, and passed.

ADDITIONAL BENEFITS?

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: PLEASE CONTACT US AT [email protected].

***P.S. Location might change due to size of class. If this is the case; we'll be using a different venue in the downtown Portland Area.

This time we dive into the people side of Agile. Best practices are necessary and valuable, and will build your foundation for success. But what if your team's agile journey to greatness is stagnating?

Let's read Gil Broza's The Human Side of Agile and talk about how we can foster our teams to excellence. Join us to discuss concrete takeaways to tackle these kinds of "soft" problems that can be so hard to overcome. We hope to see you there and hear your insights about this book!

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile.

This Month we're honored to have Adam Light facilitating: Change is Hard! Lessons Learned from Enterprise Agile Transformation

Fast moving SAAS businesses use agile methods natively. The recently-published PMI Agile Practice Guide shows there is broad understanding of agile practice fundamentals. Yet agile transformation continues to struggle in traditional organizations. What lessons can we draw after 15 years of mainstream experience? Come share your own experiences and gain a higher-level perspective on the difficult work of leading Agile change in an established company.

Your guide for this conversation will be Adam Light. Adam led his first agile transformation as the director of a traditional PMO. His experience made him a believer in Agile. And he has since spent nearly ten years helping technology leaders lead change and overcome challenges to make their traditional organizations more productive, innovative, and humane.

Thanks to The Standard for providing the venue and to Adam for leading this discussion

Note: Register here for the pizza and pop headcount, please: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/250147486/

Why maps? Conceptual maps allow for visual strategic analysis: for executives, managers, PMs, consultants - and anyone seeking situational awareness for better decision making. Join us to hear Scott Henderson introduce the concept of Wardley Mapping, created by Simon Wardley. A community is growing around the use and understanding of this tool. Scott hopes by sharing his understanding with us, more can add their voices and insights to the conversation.

Simon Wardley is a researcher with Leading Edge Forum and creator of Wardley mapping. He developed the tool to address his concern about his strategic initiatives. Since 2005, he's used it in government, police, pharmaceuticals, high speed rail, immigration... but the benefits are best introduced in his own words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G9dK55wpvw

Scott Henderson is a senior agile coach and has previously served as CIO, Director of Operations, Director of Client Services, and Senior Program Manager. An advocate for community engagement, he’s founded a co-working space based on the agile manifesto, hosted StartUp Weekends here and abroad, Laid Off Camp for older workers and Coder’s dojo for kids. He’s spoken to groups on Open Source, Education, Entrepreneurship, and Enterprise Lean product flow. While grateful for all he learned at Ohio State University, the University of Philippines, and Musicians Institute, it’s his perspective as orphan, exchange student and up-close observer of revolutions which has led to a varied and nuanced understanding of the power dynamics of the world. He's enthusiastic about complex ideas but when asked, he’d say he’s pretty simple himself and aspires to be a good dad and husband.

Intro to Scaled Agile Framework Agilist (SAFe) Training Two Days Training

Join us for a two-day Scaled Agile Framework workshop on June 09th, 2018 and June 16th, 2018; featuring Jay Mittal PMP, CSM, CSPO, SA, SPC; an experienced Project and Product Manager, whose client list include many of the Fortune 500 companies, including Nike and Standard insurance in Portland, OR. Jay is a certified trainer for SAFe Scrum Master, SAFe Product Owner, and SAFe Agilist courses.

Blockbuster. Kodak. Tower Records. Nokia. Taxi Industry. Compaq. These companie were all iconic market leaders that couldn’t adapt to new business models and technology innovations ahead of their competitors. Our world is changing fast. Markets and consumers are demanding faster, cheaper, and better products. Demands for quicker turnaround on new product development and innovation have only increased. Enterprises must learn how to adapt quickly to these changing technologies and economic conditions or they will become extinct, no matter their size, smarts, or strength. This holds true even for businesses that don’t consider themselves Information Technology (IT) or software companies. Professional services, financial services, healthcare institutions, and government entities are all highly dependent on their ability to produce new technology-based products and services. How do companies like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Apple keep up? They practice agile techniques.

Come get a taste of the future of management and learn about SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework). This two day classroom training with exercises will cover the material from SAFe Agilist (SA) Certification program and is for executives, managers and Agile change agents who are responsible for leading a Lean/Agile change initiative in a large software enterprise.

FAMOUS LAST WORDS:

IBM: "There will only ever be a need for 100 computers." DEC: "No one would ever buy a personal computer." Blockbuster: "People don't want to watch films over the internet." Novell: "Our technology is much more sophisticated than Microsoft." Bookstores: "People want to pick up and handle the books, not read them on the computer." SONY: "Beta technology is far superior to VHS." LOTUS: "Our spreadsheet is far superior to Microsoft even if it is complicated." NOKIA: "Our phones are the world standard, even if they are proprietary." TOWER RECORDS: "People want to own their own music, not rent it online." BlackBerry: "Our security is what companies want, they won't let Android or iPhones on their network, even if our stuff costs more." Kodak: "People will always prefer film cameras, even if we invented digital ones."

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

– Learn about the Scrum Process. Learn what a Product Owner and Scrum Master is responsible for. Come away with insights on how to manage your next project – Learn about the Scaled Agile Framework for enterprises. Learn what a Product Owner and Scrum Master is responsible for. And how large organizations like Intel, Nike, Google, and Apple are implementing Agile techniques in Scaled environments. Come away with insights on how to manage your next projects.

BENEFITS:

• Retain more information because of our unique hands-on approach; based on the latest research into brain science
• Be entertained by stories from our real-world experienced and knowledgeable instructors
• Maximize investments already made by gaining valuable Professional Development Units (PDUs)
• Increase your personal worth within your company and in the marketplace Network with people from Intel Corporation and other software companies

WHO SHOULD COME?

People whose work is completed through projects and through teams; Software Engineers, Marketing Professionals, Project Managers, Technology Professionals, Students in MBA or undergrad business programs.

JAY MITTAL’S CAREER ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

• Highly skilled professional with over fifteen years of experience, Jay has extensive experience in diverse software and hardware platforms providing management, leadership, analysis, design, development, migration to implement business technology solutions.
• Experienced in complete life cycle of software development projects in both Waterfall and Agile frameworks including working as Project Manager, - Product Manager, Scrum Master and Agile coach.
• Consulting experience with Standard Insurance, Anthem Insurance, Nike, Michelin Tire, Novelis, WebMD.
• Experienced in different Industry Verticals including: Retail, Life & Health Insurance, Manufacturing, Advertising, and Banking.
• Worked as Project and Product Manager with Fortune 500 companies. Client list include Nike, Standard Insurance, Michelin Tire, and WebMD.

JAY MITTAL'S CERTIFICATIONS:

• Implementing Scaled Agile Framework - SAFe 4.5 Program Consultant (SPC)
• Leading Scaled Agile Framework - SAFe 4.5 Agilist (SA)
• Scaled Agile Framework for Teams - SAFe 4.5 Practitioner (SP)
• Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Master (CSM)
• Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)
• PMI certified Project Management Professional (PMP)
• Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP - MS Project 2010)

CERTIFICATIONS FOR THIS TRAINING:

This workshop is meant to introduce professionals and students to the Scrum methodology, though the material we cover will give you the knowledge and material covered in the exam for the Professional Scrum Master (PSM) certification. https://www.scrum.org/. Our students have gone on to take this test after the event, and passed.

ADDITIONAL BENEFITS?

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: PLEASE CONTACT US AT [email protected]. P.S. Location might change due to size of class. If this is the case; we'll be using a different venue in the downtown Portland Area.

RSVP Now: http://bit.ly/agiletraining2018

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile practices.

This month the group will select agile-related topics / issues and have time boxed discussions. All attendees are encouraged to bring their burning agile-related topics, issues and questions for discussion/debate/brainstorming.

We will meet at:

The Standard

900 SW Fifth Ave,

Portland, OR 97204

Thanks to The Standard for providing space for this event

Note: PMI Certification holders can claim 1 PMI PDU for attending this event.

Chad Dickerson (Former CEO of Etsy) says: "If you only have one book on product management, this is the one."

He is talking about the book 'INSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love' by Marty Cagan. This book, now as a second edition, provides stories and information on how companies release a technology product that does not simply deliver a solution - but something customer love and rave about.

Review the book description to see if this is something you want to dive into, and join fellow product and development agile readers for a discussion. Oh, and for the listeners of the modern "reading" age, this book is available in audio.

Need more inspiration? Jeff Patton says of the book: "When I was a product leader, I experienced a fair bit of accidental successes and puzzling failures. Marty's writing has helped me understand how product managers and product organizations really should work. I wish I'd had this book years ago."

Visit our Meetup link to RSVP to the gathering. Thanks!

Note: Register here for the pizza and pop headcount, please: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/250826458/

Agile methods such as Scrum and eXtreme Programming have been effective for single-team companies, but guidance and experience about how to scale them has been mixed. In this session, Michael James examines patterns seen in dozens of organizations and whether or not they have been effective.

Michael James's Bio: I help businesses learn to develop software effectively, without the usual pain and anxiety. I train you and your employees through fun group activities (and little or no PowerPoint), then facilitate small and large group discussions to resolve organizational impediments. My work is quoted in several bestselling Agile books, my articles have been translated by enthusiastic volunteers into Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Portuguese, and Vietnamese. Thousands of people use my animated e-learning modules each day. Fun fact: I have 100+ recommendations from Clients on my LinkedIn profile.

Want to learn how to take your projects to the Next Level

Practical, Hands-on Training for Scrum

Join us for an all day Scrum workshop on June 23rd, 2018; featuring Suzanne Ward MBA MEng PMP CSM CSPO PSM CSP, a Scrum Master & Agile Coach/Trainer from Intel.

Our world is changing fast. Markets and consumers are demanding faster, cheaper and better products. Demands for quicker turnaround on new product development and innovation have only increased. How do companies like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Apple keep up? They practice agile techniques, in particular they utilize scrum to manage their projects. Scrum has the power to transform project management across every industry, every business, and even across your personal life. By using Scrum, you’ll become more agile, discovering how to react more quickly and respond more accurately to the inevitable change that comes your way. By staying focused, collaborating, and communicating with customers and your team, you can accomplish what truly needs to be done — successfully.

Come get a taste of the future of project management and learn about the Scrum process. This one day classroom training with exercises will cover the material from scrum introduction certification class and Product Owner role in the Scrum Process.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

– Learn about the Scrum Process. Learn what a Product Owner and Scrum Master is responsible for. Come away with insights on how to manage your next project

BENEFITS

Retain more information because of our unique hands-on approach; based on the latest research into brain science Be entertained by stories from our real-world experienced and knowledgeable instructors Maximize investments already made by gaining valuable Professional Development Units (PDUs) Increase your personal worth within your company and in the marketplace Network with people from Intel Corporation and other software companies

ADDITIONAL FOR AUDIENCE

SW Engineers: eXtreme Programming, Test Driven Development, Pair Programming, Project Managers: Bridging the Gap between Project Management and Scrum

WHO SHOULD COME?

People whose work is completed through projects and through teams; Software Engineers, Marketing Professionals, Project Managers, Technology Professionals, Students in MBA or undergrad business programs.

SPEAKER'S CAREER ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Product, Brand, and Marketing Management in diverse range of markets and industries, with P&L responsibilities up to $100 million annual sales. Quick Learner of new industries/product offerings with results-oriented achievements. Created excitement around a static accessories category in condensed timeframe. Created full line of support, educational, training, and presentation materials. Impact of efforts increased sales from $16.4M to $37.2M in 24 months. Program management for multiple high tech/electronic development projects, averaging $3 million annual budget. Serve in project manager and product manager capacities. Two successful worldwide launches in 3 years. $1M annual OEM/B2B sales and $10M annual sales. Combine demonstrated product management leadership experience with strong hands-on technical background. Equally comfortable delving into product requirements with hard-core engineers as well as presenting to executive level decision makers. Uniquely skilled at fostering new ideas, building successful cross-functional teams, and nurturing a culture of consumer-driven product development and user experience innovation. Experience working in and managing cross-functional, cross-division, cross-geographic and multi-cultural sales, marketing and engineering organizations. International program management, sourcing, engineering, OEM/ODM management/development experience. Overseas work assignments in EU and Asia with extended stay in Asia.

SUZANNE WARD'S CERTIFICATIONS

PMP, Project Management Professional, Project Management Institute PSM, Professional Scrum Master, Scrum.org CSM, CSPO, Certified Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Product Owner, Scrum Alliance CSP, Certified Scrum Professional, Scrum Alliance

CERTIFICATIONS FOR THIS TRAINING

This workshop is meant to introduce professionals and students to the Scrum methodology, though the material we cover will give you the knowledge and material covered in the exam for the Professional Scrum Master (PSM) certification. https://www.scrum.org/. Our students have gone on to take this test after the event, and passed.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: PLEASE CONTACT US AT [email protected]. P.S. Location might change due to size of class. If this is the case; we'll be using a different venue in the downtown Portland Area.

Come for an noon hour of dialogue with Diana Larsen, author, coach, consultant, speaker, startup founder, visionary pragmatist, chief relationship builder, and sojourner in the many various fields of Agile.

There will be no prepared slides or lecture, just spontaneous dialogue with you and your colleagues about real challenges you face today. We'll focus on your specific, real-time questions, challenges, dilemmas and issues about retrospectives, teams, agile, adoptions, liftoffs, managing, leadership, complexity, learning, the Agile Fluency™ Model, and more. Invite her to discuss whatever is top of your mind! We will collect and aggregate your questions, sort them into topic areas, and invite the questioners to join Diana in a time-boxed conversation.

We'll get through as many topic areas as possible between networking and close. Join us!

Bio:

Diana Larsen co-founded and directs the Agile Fluency™ Project and leads the practice area for Agile software development, team leadership, and Agile transitions at FutureWorks Consulting. Diana is author of Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great; Liftoff: Start and Sustain Successful Agile Teams; Five Rules for Accelerated Learning; and co-originator of the Agile Fluency™ Model. Find out more about Diana at http://www.agilefluency.org/about.php

We will meet at:

The Standard 900 SW Fifth Ave, Portland, OR 97204 Main Level - Atrium

Thanks to The Standard for providing space for this event

Note: PMI Certification holders can claim 1 PMI PDU for attending this event.

Note: Register here for the pizza and pop headcount, please: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/252388669/

The AgilePDX mission statement is: Create a vibrant and successful Agile community of practice in the greater Portland metropolitan area by sharing real-world experience, distilled wisdom, and innovative ideas for Agile done well.

The vision statement is: We see Portland as a world-class leader technology, business agility, and the broader creative economy. By “World Class” we mean profitable, sustainable, and joyful.

What does this mean to you? Do we have it right? Are we as a community and in our organizations fulfilling our mission and vision?

Come learn about Lean Coffee from skilled facilitators, explore the mission and vision, and talk with colleagues about what Portland could be like as a leading Agile community in the nation.

This event will be led by our new Lean Coffee in the North facilitator, Neal Peterson!

Practical, Hands-on Training For Kanban

Learn how to “Stop Starting and Start Finishing”

Join us for an all day Kanban workshop on August 04th, 2018; featuring Suzanne Ward MBA MEng PMP CSM CSPO PSM CSP, a Scrum Master & Agile Coach/Trainer from Intel. Our Kanban workshop will help you adopt a value–centric system of planning and executing your work. In the one day training we cover the basics of Kanban, one of the agile processes, through a combination of theory and extensive exercises. With in-depth exercises and coaching from an experienced practitioner, participants will learn how to initiate change with Kanban and bring in process improvements by identifying and addressing bottlenecks, prioritize, and initiate collaboration.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

      * Understand how to make prioritization, sequencing and scheduling decisions based on economic factors instead of hunches.

      * Learn how to forecast single and multiple work items (releases, sprints) and be able to answer the questions like "When will the work be finished?" accurately instead of guessing due dates.

      * Acquire skills to avoid emotional objections to changes in general and to Kanban WIP limits introduction in particular.

      * Enabled by seven Kanban cadences, be able to introduce continuous learning and improvement process by implementing organizational feedback loops.

      * Familiarize with Kanban Risk Management approaches, service orientation, asymmetrical commitment and rollout phases for a Kanban initiative.

      * Increase Kanban knowledge to manage, sustain and scale evolutionary improvements in their organization.

BENEFITS:

      * Get a thorough understanding of the Kanban method, its core principles and practices.

      * Learn how to design and introduce a Kanban system into your existing work environment.

      * Understand how to improve service delivery with Kanban systems and ensure better customer focus.

      * Learn to maximize benefits of the Pull-based workflow, limit Work In Progress (WIP) through continuous collaboration and active, ongoing learning and improving by defining the best possible team workflow.

      * Retain more information because of our unique hands-on approach; based on the latest research into brain science.

      * Be entertained by stories from our real-world experienced and knowledgeable instructors.

      * Maximize investments already made by gaining valuable Professional Development Units (PDUs).

      * Increase your personal worth within your company and in the marketplace.

      * Network with people from Intel Corporation and other software companies.

      * Learn concepts through case studies, interactive role play, exercises and discussions.

WHO SHOULD COME?

Kanban is one of the easiest ways to get your process and delivery under control, anyone with work that needs to get done will benefit. Kanban works across multiple functions of an organisation, from senior managers looking to adopt Lean Management to members of delivery teams willing to improve their working practices. Who should come? People whose work is completed through projects and through teams;

      * Senior Managers

      * Program and Project Managers

      * Product Managers, Product Owners and Business Analysts

      * Scrum Masters, Team Leads and Change Agents

      * Product & Software Developers & Testers

      * Software Engineers, Marketing Professionals, Project Managers,

      * Agile Coaches & Practitioners (Scrum, XP, DSDM, AgilePM, etc.)

      * Portfolio Managers, Supply Logistics Professionals.

      * Other roles such as HR and Finance professionals

SPEAKER'S CAREER ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

      * Product, Brand, and Marketing Management in diverse range of markets and industries, with P&L responsibilities up to $100 million annual sales.

      * Quick Learner of new industries/product offerings with results-oriented achievements. Created excitement around a static accessories category in condensed timeframe. Created full line of support, educational, training, and presentation materials. Impact of efforts increased sales from $16.4M to $37.2M in 24 months.

      * Program management for multiple high tech/electronic development projects, averaging $3 million annual budget. Serve in project manager and product manager capacities. Two successful worldwide launches in 3 years. $1M annual OEM/B2B sales and $10M annual sales.

      * Combine demonstrated product management leadership experience with strong hands-on technical background. Equally comfortable delving into product requirements with hard-core engineers as well as presenting to executive level decision makers.

      * Uniquely skilled at fostering new ideas, building successful cross-functional teams, and nurturing a culture of consumer-driven product development and user experience innovation. Experience working in and managing cross-functional, cross-division, cross-geographic and multi-cultural sales, marketing and engineering organizations.

      * International program management, sourcing, engineering, OEM/ODM management/development experience. Overseas work assignments in EU and Asia with extended stay in Asia.

SUZANNE WARD'S CERTIFICATIONS:

      * PMP, Project Management Professional, Project Management Institute

      * PSM, Professional Scrum Master, Scrum.org

      * CSM, CSPO, Certified Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Product Owner,   Scrum Alliance

      * CSP, Certified Scrum Professional, Scrum Alliance

ADDITIONAL BENEFITS?

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: PLEASE CONTACT US AT [email protected].

*** P.S. Location might change due to size of class. If this is the case; we'll be using a different venue in the downtown Portland Area.

Ever struggled to get to a downtown or West side location to join a lunch discussion? Then a virtual "pub lunch" may be the answer!

This agile lunch discussion is a collaborate effort between Seattle and Portland agile minds, and we're hoping it won't stop there. The event is held on a zoom conference line. It is modeled after the AgilePDX Downtown Pub Lunch, which is an open round table with discussion topics sourced from the participants. Towards the end of each lunch discussion we will ask for topic suggestions and vote which one to pick for our next meeting. And we'll close out the discussion with a quick review feedback - so we can learn what works and what doesn't.

For this kick-off meeting, we will borrow the AgilePDX Downtown Pub Lunch topic about Hiring: What qualities do you hire for? Technical skills, learning attitude, team fit, emotional intelligence,... and to what extent does your search focus on building team diversity? These questions are only the beginning.

Join us in this new experiment and connect with the greater community of the Pacific Northwest. Visit our meetup page to RSVP and get the zoom conferencing information: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/252496023/

Want to learn how to take your projects to the Next Level

Practical, Hands-on Training for Scrum

Join us for an all day Scrum workshop on August 11th, 2018; featuring Suzanne Ward MBA MEng PMP CSM CSPO PSM CSP, a Scrum Master & Agile Coach/Trainer from Intel.

Our world is changing fast. Markets and consumers are demanding faster, cheaper and better products. Demands for quicker turnaround on new product development and innovation have only increased. How do companies like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Apple keep up? They practice agile techniques, in particular they utilize scrum to manage their projects.

Scrum has the power to transform project management across every industry, every business, and even across your personal life. By using Scrum, you’ll become more agile, discovering how to react more quickly and respond more accurately to the inevitable change that comes your way. By staying focused, collaborating, and communicating with customers and your team, you can accomplish what truly needs to be done — successfully.

Come get a taste of the future of project management and learn about the Scrum process. This one day classroom training with exercises will cover the material from scrum introduction certification class and Product Owner role in the Scrum Process.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

– Learn about the Scrum Process. Learn what a Product Owner and Scrum Master is responsible for. Come away with insights on how to manage your next project

BENEFITS

Retain more information because of our unique hands-on approach; based on the latest research into brain science Be entertained by stories from our real-world experienced and knowledgeable instructors Maximize investments already made by gaining valuable Professional Development Units (PDUs) Increase your personal worth within your company and in the marketplace Network with people from Intel Corporation and other software companies

ADDITIONAL FOR AUDIENCE

SW Engineers: eXtreme Programming, Test Driven Development, Pair Programming, Project Managers: Bridging the Gap between Project Management and Scrum

WHO SHOULD COME?

People whose work is completed through projects and through teams; Software Engineers, Marketing Professionals, Project Managers, Technology Professionals, Students in MBA or undergrad business programs.

SPEAKER'S CAREER ACCOMPLISHMENTS

 * Product, Brand, and Marketing Management in diverse range of markets and industries, with P&L responsibilities up to $100 million annual sales.
 * Quick Learner of new industries/product offerings with results-oriented achievements. Created excitement around a static accessories category in condensed timeframe. Created full line of support, educational, training, and presentation materials. Impact of efforts increased sales from $16.4M to $37.2M in 24 months.
 * Program management for multiple high tech/electronic development projects, averaging $3 million annual budget. Serve in project manager and product manager capacities. Two successful worldwide launches in 3 years. $1M annual OEM/B2B sales and $10M annual sales.
 * Combine demonstrated product management leadership experience with strong hands-on technical background. Equally comfortable delving into product requirements with hard-core engineers as well as presenting to executive level decision makers.
 * Uniquely skilled at fostering new ideas, building successful cross-functional teams, and nurturing a culture of consumer-driven product development and user experience innovation. Experience working in and managing cross-functional, cross-division, cross-geographic and multi-cultural sales, marketing and engineering organizations.
 * International program management, sourcing, engineering, OEM/ODM management/development experience. Overseas work assignments in EU and Asia with extended stay in Asia.

SUZANNE WARD'S CERTIFICATIONS

 * PMP, Project Management Professional, Project Management Institute
 * PSM, Professional Scrum Master, Scrum.org
 * CSM, CSPO, Certified Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Product Owner, Scrum Alliance
 * CSP, Certified Scrum Professional, Scrum Alliance

CERTIFICATIONS FOR THIS TRAINING

 * This workshop is meant to introduce professionals and students to the Scrum methodology, though the material we cover will give you the knowledge and material covered in the exam for the Professional Scrum Master (PSM) certification. https://www.scrum.org/. Our students have gone on to take this test after the event, and passed. 

ADDITIONAL BENEFITS?

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: PLEASE CONTACT US AT [email protected]. P.S. Location might change due to size of class. If this is the case; we'll be using a different venue in the downtown Portland Area.

Note: Register here for the pizza and pop headcount, please: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/252527226/

How is your knowledge of Agile Engineering Practices? New CSM and A-CSM learning objectives ask Scrum Masters to be able to list and explain the benefits of engineering practices that help teams succeed with Scrum and Agile. This talk provides an overview of both the mechanics and value of practices including Pair Programming, Test-Driven Development, and Continuous Integration.

Want a quick taste of the material, try out the matching exercise at:

http://www.technicallyagile.com/technicalpractices

Daniel has been developing software for nearly two decades and has been working in agile teams for the last 10 years. More recently, he has worked with agile42 coaching teams on the adoption of agile practices both in code and across the organization, but his passion is still in writing great software and helping others do the same.

In addition to writing software and coaching, Daniel maintains a podcast of short 5-minute topics of agile problems that impact the team at technicallyagile.com .

Join us for coffee/tea or beverage of your choice and fun discussions about how to overcome challenges we face or to share about Agile-inspired and other topics we agree or disagree with. This event is aimed at getting people in the North and NE areas of Portland together to facilitate discussions. It's not exclusive to people that live in the North and NE, just closer to those parts of the city to make it easier to get there.

We'll spend the first few minutes gathering discussion ideas, then roll right into the smooth easy cadence of the lively chatter.

New to Lean Coffee? It's a great way to have real, focused dialogue and we often discuss matters of agile, lean and such - but anything goes. Read more about this event on our meetup page: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/kjcjbqyxlbzb/

Please note: this event has a limited number of spots, please visit RSVP on meetup!

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) is an in-depth two day immersion into the world of Scrum. The class is full of practical, real world techniques that can be implemented immediately at your workplace. This class will allow your organization to enjoy the many advantages Scrum has to offer. Hands-on exercises demonstrate key concepts and let you experience the benefits of Scrum firsthand.

Class Learning Objectives As a Certified ScrumMaster class participant, I want…

To explain Lean, Agile and Scrum so that I can better understand Scrum’s relationship to the Agile Manifesto To describe the Scrum framework, so that I can clearly comprehend the Scrum process To describe the roles and responsibilities in Scrum, so that I can understand who does what To do a deep dive into the ScrumMaster role so that I can clearly understand the breadth and depth of my role To experience Scrum, so that I know what it feels like when I start doing it for real To explain how to seed a product backlog, so that I can assist the Product Owner with creating one To demonstrate how to write user stories, so that I can clearly articulate the who, what, and why behind a backlog item To teach team members how to relatively size backlog items, so that the product owner can make better prioritization decisions To explore the Sprint construct, so that I can coach my team on the importance of good Scrum practices To list and explain the key events in Scrum, so that I know what is happening, before, during, and after each sprint To explore some additional concepts, so that I can support a Scrum implementation in my organization

Benefits Learn while not being bored and having fun Retain more information because of our unique hands-on approach; based on the latest research into brain science Be entertained by stories from our real-world experienced and knowledgeable instructors Maximize investments already made by gaining valuable Scrum Educational Units (SEUs) and Professional Development Units (PDUs) Increase your personal worth within your company and in the marketplace

WHO SHOULD ATTEND? IT Professionals (Architects, BAs, DBAs, Developers, Testers, etc.) IT Leadership (Managers/Directors/VPs/CIOs/CTOs) Project Managers Anyone interested in learning the benefits of Scrum

TAKE AWAYS Easy to use reminders of Scrum Printed class manual Scrum reference card Copy of the Braintrust book Scrum for the Rest of Us 16 SEUs/16 PDUs Two-year membership to the Scrum Alliance Fulfill one of the requirements for the Certified Scrum Developer (CSD) certification

Another month another chance to build our Community of Practice! Since 2001 the Manifesto has been known, and in those intervening years an industry has grown up around codifying frameworks and methodologies for 'doing' Agile. Scrum, XP, Crystal, SAFe, Nexus, Grows, etc... The list goes on and on.

What practices, methods, ceremonies or other aspects of this development philosophy are emerging? What are practitioners doing? Do framework certifications matter (e.g. Scrum Master).

Join us for this exciting topic, a chance to converse with various members of our community of practice, and to eat delicious food and drink beer in Downtown Portland!

Please follow the link to RSVP!

https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/ljvwcqyxmbkb/

Mob Programming is a software development practice with many benefits - it raises code quality, removes knowledge silos, minimizes mental fatigue, and more. In practice it feels more like a bulldozer than a racecar - unstoppable and thorough. The core of mob programming is pointing many pairs of eyes on a single problem, pushing all the code through a single keyboard. Each month we'll explore different methods for learning to mob well and reaping the rewards of this practice as soon as possible on your own team.

We may choose to head over to McMennamin's Kennedy School for food, drink, and talk afterwards.

Facilitator Bio:

Willem Larsen is a senior software developer at Hunter Industries. He has been speaking at Agile conferences on improving collaboration since 2009. He is the creator of accelerated team learning tools such as the Mob Programming role-playing game and Code Cooking (with Emmanuel Gaillot), author of the Language Hunter's Kit, co-author of 5 Rules For Accelerated Learning, founder of Language Hunters (a non-profit organization dedicated to improving communities of learning in technology, language, science, and music), and both a wildlife tracker and Search and Rescue tracker.

The PMI Agile Roundtable provides a forum for exchanging ideas, techniques and real world experiences (good and bad) in managing agile projects. This round table alternates between speakers and specific topics (watch Twitter and LinkedIn for details), traditional brainstorming and voting on 2 to 3 focus topics from the group, and a new online Lean Coffee format we are eager to try out.

Although sponsored by PMI, all roles and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to participate / debate. We value the variety of perspectives and levels of experience with agile practices.

This month the round table is in transition to a virtual forum that will provide more flexibility for attendees. As a group, we'll be discussing what we want from from a forum such as this; we'll look at the Lean Coffee Table tool for managing lean coffee sessions and (if time is available) selecting agile-related topics / issues.

Come join us and help us create and develop an agile community focused on providing value.

Note: PMI Certification holders can claim 1 PMI PDU for attending this event (email address and name needed for PMI verification)

AgileCamp is a 1-day conference held in four cities across North America, including the Northwest, New York Metro area, Dallas and the San Francisco Bay Area! AgileCamp brings together the Agile community for a day filled with learning about Organizational Transformation including Business Strategy, Agile Practices, Lean Startup and Design Thinking. This year, we will feature 3 Keynote speakers and 20-24 session Tracks, packed with rich and valuable content and presented by Agile experts and thought leaders. Our objective is to bring together Agilists, from novice to expert, to advance Agile knowledge in the community.

Have traffic and work schedules prevented you from joining an agile event on a topic which could help you or your teams? Then a virtual "pub lunch" may be the answer!

This agile lunch discussion is a collaborative effort between Seattle and Portland agile minds, and we're hoping it won't stop there. The event is held on a zoom conference line. We've learned using video is best, and you might consider your environment before joining -- find a quiet space where you won't be interrupted or feel self conscious. We're monitoring chat as a back channel, so if you can't find a spot in the discussion, add your question in chat and our hosts will try to work it in.

This weeks topic: Agile Outside of Engineering! The tech industry has collaborated for some time now to find new and better ways to tackle complex problems and deliver value to our stakeholders. And it seems companies have taken notice and agile "good practices" or "lessons learned" are being adopted outside of engineering groups. Methods like limiting your work in progress, planning & working in smaller increments, daily updates & coordination, review & adapt sessions are popping up in other departments and disciplines. Invite your friends to share stories and insights of such agile practices outside of software teams and IT departments. We can all learn from each other and would love to see new voices join, sharing unique challenges and solutions.

Please RSVP at our Meetup event and get the zoom connection info: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/254179707/

Join us for coffee/tea or beverage of your choice and fun discussions about how to overcome challenges we face or to share about Agile-inspired and other topics we agree or disagree with. This event is aimed at getting people in the North and NE areas of Portland together to facilitate discussions. It's not exclusive to people that live in the North and NE, just closer to those parts of the city to make it easier to come out. (If you want something other than tea or coffee, you'll have to bring it with you. We'll have hot water and cups available.)

Percipio Consulting Group is opening up their offices to host this event. Percipio is a business consulting firm that helps companies identify opportunities for improvement and successfully implement meaningful changes. That means more efficient processes, shored-up controls, a technology solution that really works for you, or all of the above. They have helped many companies, both Fortune 500 and mid-sized, navigate complex projects by truly understanding business needs and defining up front what success will look like.

Parking: Use the Gotham Building Parking lot on the corner of N Page St and N Borthwick Ave.

Building Entry: Entry to the building is best through the door by Little Gotham Coffee. We'll have someone meeting on time attendees at the door. For those that run a few minutes late due to traffic or other reasons out of your control, there will be directions at the door on how to contact someone to let you in.

We'll spend the first few minutes gathering discussion ideas, then roll right into the smooth easy cadence of the lively chatter.

New to Lean Coffee?

It's a great way to have real, focused dialogue and we often discuss matters of agile, lean and such - but anything goes. As far as the mechanics, here's the format we'll follow:

Step 1: Everybody writes down proposed topics on stickies, placing them in the center of the table. Take as much time as needed, but typically takes only 3-5 minutes (or whenever coffee is ready).

Step 2: Each topic is briefly described by its writer to get a flavor for the subject (15-30 seconds typically per sticky).

Step 3: Each person gets five votes which they indicate by marking the voted-for sticky with their Sharpie. Mark with a plus + if you agree with the topic and want to discuss it, or a minus - if you disagree and want to discuss it, mark it with a dot if you want to hear the discussion and maybe join in. You can put all votes on one, one across many, however you feel. Each mark counts as one vote.

Step 4: The top vote-getting stickies are placed in the ToDo column, ordered by the stickies with the most votes at the top. In an Agile fashion, we'll use groupings of ToDo, Doing, Done and Lessons learned.

Step 5: Each of these stickies are discussed for 5 minutes, most votes first. The facilitator takes a quick "Cesar" (thumbs up/down) vote at the five-minute timer, and she moves on for three more minutes if the discussion still has majority interest. When complete, move the sticky over to the Done column. Rinse and repeat.

Step 6: wrap-up thoughts at the end - what one idea or person did you most enjoy, then break for home/drinks/cover.

Join us for a beer (or beverage of your choice) and a snack at the Rogue Eastside Pub to discuss Patrick Lencioni's book "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team". If you work with teams and team success, this book may be an interesting addition to your library.

Lencioni tells the story of a troubled Silicon Valley firm and the new CEO faced with uniting and guiding a team of leaders with the aim of making the company a success. Through this business fable, Lencioni highlights the common dysfunctions that he claims can cripple any team: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, and inattention to results. He offers ways to assess a team and provides actionable steps on how to overcome each of the 5 dysfunctions.

Food for thought:

• This book tells the tale of a CEO refashioning the dynamic of an executive committee. Do fables apply to everyone?
• Is Lencioni right? Does he name the most important dysfunctions that challenge the teams you work with?
• What can we learn from this representative tale about development teams? Where can we add our own wisdom to Lencioni's model?

We look forward to learning what Agile mindsets bring to the table! Tip: It's worth reading some online book reviews for critical perspectives.

Please visit our Meetup link to RSVP:

https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/253824910/

Note: Register here for the pizza and pop headcount, please: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/252527226/

Learn about an experiment in using Open Space as a way to dynamically form teams around work. The group meets every two days and holds a marketplace to decide what needs to happen next. People sign up for the story where they feel they can add the most value.

It's like a continuous hackathon! Not only is it working, people love it.

Ron Quartel will tell you his life purpose is to "unleash the human spirit in the workplace." He loves all things software and nurturing--business/development harmony in particular.

Practitioners of agile Unite! It's that time again, to gather our community of practice and get together for conversation and yummy food (and maybe beers!)

We have a team and they are high performing. We need to bring on someone to join us. How do we do it?

We want to know how teams bring on new talent, replace old members, and how do we introduce and inspire our team philosophy to these new people in a way that allows them to inspire and contribute.

Join us for this exciting topic, a chance to converse with various members of our community of practice, and to eat delicious food and drink beer in Downtown Portland!

Please follow the link to RSVP!

https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/254961608/

Note: Register here for the pizza and pop headcount, please: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/255230595/

Ever had a project go very, very badly? Ever had a team completely fall apart? Ever suddenly discover that the underlying assumptions, attitudes, beliefs, and aspirations of the group weren't what you thought?

Rest assured, you're not alone. Welcome to the world of complex systems. Every one of these things (and more) have happened to the presenter of this talk. Join Michael as he shares his own journeys and the journeys of other adventurers, in an attempt to devise better tools for managing our (mis)adventures.

Speaker Bio:

Michael is a veteran of numerous software development adventures. He's built software for power companies and banks, for the trucking industry and education, for internet start-ups and established companies. Some have been spectacular successes...others, not so much. He's currently delving into the intersection of complexity theory and cognitive science, as seen through the lens of wilderness adventuring, in an attempt to improve our chances of survival. (See: https://survival.intuitious.com/)

The DevOps simulation experience is a role-based workshop, focused on the software development and deployment lifecycle. The simulation is highly realistic, and leverages game dynamics to empower cross-functional teams with a shared vision of successful DevOps practices. Participants from a variety of disciplines are immersed into a simulated environment whereby they are challenged to release new products while internal and external forces continually change. This realistic approach delivers a level of tension and excitement that creates an ‘A-HA!’ moment for all involved.

WHAT YOU'LL EXPERIENCE

Accelerated understanding of the benefits of DevOps best practice to large audiences

Rapid familiarization with DevOps terminology and Agile, Lean and ITIL v3 processes

Understanding of how DevOps best practice can facilitate alignment of IT to business objectives

Understanding of DevOps practices that can be executed with immediate effect

Join us for coffee/tea or beverage of your choice and fun discussions about how to overcome challenges we face or to share about Agile-inspired and other topics we agree or disagree with. This event is aimed at getting people in the North and NE areas of Portland together to facilitate discussions. It's not exclusive to people that live in the North and NE, just closer to those parts of the city to make it easier to come out. (If you want something other than tea or coffee, you'll have to bring it with you. We'll have hot water and cups available.)

Percipio Consulting Group is opening up their offices to host this event. Percipio is a business consulting firm that helps companies identify opportunities for improvement and successfully implement meaningful changes. That means more efficient processes, shored-up controls, a technology solution that really works for you, or all of the above. They have helped many companies, both Fortune 500 and mid-sized, navigate complex projects by truly understanding business needs and defining up front what success will look like.

Parking: Use the Gotham Building Parking lot on the corner of N Page St and N Borthwick Ave.

Building Entry: Entry to the building is best through the door by Little Gotham Coffee. We'll have someone meeting on time attendees at the door. For those that run a few minutes late due to traffic or other reasons out of your control, there will be directions at the door on how to contact someone to let you in.

We'll spend the first few minutes gathering discussion ideas, then roll right into the smooth easy cadence of the lively chatter.

New to Lean Coffee?

It's a great way to have real, focused dialogue and we often discuss matters of agile, lean and such - but anything goes. As far as the mechanics, here's the format we'll follow:

Step 1: Everybody writes down proposed topics on stickies, placing them in the center of the table. Take as much time as needed, but typically takes only 3-5 minutes (or whenever coffee is ready).

Step 2: Each topic is briefly described by its writer to get a flavor for the subject (15-30 seconds typically per sticky).

Step 3: Each person gets five votes which they indicate by marking the voted-for sticky with their Sharpie. Mark with a plus + if you agree with the topic and want to discuss it, or a minus - if you disagree and want to discuss it, mark it with a dot if you want to hear the discussion and maybe join in. You can put all votes on one, one across many, however you feel. Each mark counts as one vote.

Step 4: The top vote-getting stickies are placed in the ToDo column, ordered by the stickies with the most votes at the top. In an Agile fashion, we'll use groupings of ToDo, Doing, Done and Lessons learned.

Step 5: Each of these stickies are discussed for 5 minutes, most votes first. The facilitator takes a quick "Cesar" (thumbs up/down) vote at the five-minute timer, and she moves on for three more minutes if the discussion still has majority interest. When complete, move the sticky over to the Done column. Rinse and repeat.

Step 6: wrap-up thoughts at the end - what one idea or person did you most enjoy, then break for home/drinks/cover.

SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager Training

Join us for a our SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager workshop on Saturday, October 27th, 2018; featuring Jay Mittal PMP, CSM, CSPO, SA, SPC; an experienced Project and Product Manager, whose client list include many of the Fortune 500 companies, including Nike, Columbia Sportswear, and Standard insurance in Portland, OR. Jay is a certified trainer for SAFe Scrum Master, SAFe Product Owner, and SAFe Agilist courses.

Blockbuster. Kodak. Tower Records. Nokia. Taxi Industry. Compaq. These companies were all iconic market leaders that couldn’t adapt to new business models and technology innovations ahead of their competitors. Our world is changing fast. Markets and consumers are demanding faster, cheaper, and better products. Demands for quicker turnaround on new product development and innovation have only increased. Enterprises must learn how to adapt quickly to these changing technologies and economic conditions or they will become extinct, no matter their size, smarts, or strength. This holds true even for businesses that don’t consider themselves Information Technology (IT) or software companies. Professional services, financial services, healthcare institutions, and government entities are all highly dependent on their ability to produce new technology-based products and services. How do companies like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Apple keep up? They practice agile techniques.

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

IBM: "There will only ever be a need for 100 computers." DEC: "No one would ever buy a personal computer." Blockbuster: "People don't want to watch films over the internet." Novell: "Our technology is much more sophisticated than Microsoft." Bookstores: "People want to pick up and handle the books, not read them on the computer." SONY: "Beta technology is far superior to VHS." LOTUS: "Our spreadsheet is far superior to Microsoft even if it is complicated." NOKIA: "Our phones are the world standard, even if they are proprietary." TOWER RECORDS: "People want to own their own music, not rent it online." BlackBerry: "Our security is what companies want, they won't let Android or iPhones on their network, even if our stuff costs more." Kodak: "People will always prefer film cameras, even if we invented digital ones."

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

You’ll learn how to apply Lean thinking to write Epics, break them down into Features and Stories, plan and execute Iterations, and plan Program Increments. Finally, attendees learn about the Continuous Delivery Pipeline and DevOps culture, how to effectively integrate as Product Owners and Product Managers, and what it takes to relentlessly improve the ART. In addition, you'll learn;

 * Learn about the Scrum Process.
 * Learn what a Product Owner/Product Manager is responsible for.
 * Come away with insights on how to manage your next project
 * Learn about the Scaled Agile Framework for enterprises.
 * Learn what a Product Owner for in large organizations like Intel, Nike, Google, and Apple are implementing Agile techniques in Scaled environments. Come away with insights on how to manage your next projects.
 * Apply SAFe in the Lean enterprise
 * Connect SAFe Lean-Agile principles and values to the PO/PM roles
 * Collaborate with Lean Portfolio Management
 * Explore continuous value with Program Increment Planning
 * Execute the Program Increment and deliver continuous value
 * Articulate the Product Owner and Product Manager roles
 * Create a role action plan

BENEFITS

 * Retain more information because of our unique hands-on approach; based on the latest research into brain science
 * Be entertained by stories from our real-world experienced and knowledgeable instructors
 * Maximize investments already made by gaining valuable Professional Development Units (PDUs)
 * Increase your personal worth within your company and in the marketplace
 * Network with people from Intel Corporation and other software companies

WHO SHOULD COME?

People whose work is completed through projects and through teams; Software Engineers, Marketing Professionals, Project Managers, Technology Professionals, Students in MBA or undergrad business programs.

JAY MITTAL’S CAREER ACCOMPLISHMENTS

 * Highly skilled professional with over fifteen years of experience, Jay has extensive experience in diverse software and hardware platforms providing management, leadership, analysis, design, development, migration to implement business technology solutions.
 * Experienced in complete life cycle of software development projects in both Waterfall and Agile frameworks including working as Project Manager, Product Manager, Scrum Master and Agile coach.
 * Consulting experience with Standard Insurance, Anthem Insurance, Nike, Michelin Tire, Novelis, WebMD.
 * Experienced in different Industry Verticals including: Retail, Life & Health Insurance, Manufacturing, Advertising, and Banking.
 * Worked as Project and Product Manager with Fortune 500 companies. Client list include Nike, Standard Insurance, Michelin Tire, and WebMD.

JAY MITTAL'S CERTIFICATIONS

 * Implementing Scaled Agile Framework - SAFe 4.5 Program Consultant (SPC)
 * Leading Scaled Agile Framework - SAFe 4.5 Agilist (SA)
 * Scaled Agile Framework for Teams - SAFe 4.5 Practitioner (SP)
 * Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Master (CSM)
 * Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)
 * PMI certified Project Management Professional (PMP)
 * Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP - MS Project 2010)

CERTIFICATIONS FOR THIS TRAINING

This workshop is meant to introduce professionals and students to the Scrum methodology, though the material we cover will give you the knowledge and material covered in the exam for the Professional Scrum Master (PSM) certification. https://www.scrum.org/. Our students have gone on to take this test after the event, and passed. In addition for more information with SAFe certification. www.scaledagile.com

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION: PLEASE CONTACT US AT [email protected].

Join us for coffee/tea or beverage of your choice and fun discussions about how to overcome challenges we face or to share about Agile-inspired and other topics we agree or disagree with. This event is aimed at getting people in the North and NE areas of Portland together to facilitate discussions. It's not exclusive to people that live in the North and NE, just closer to those parts of the city to make it easier to come out. (If you want something other than tea or coffee, you'll have to bring it with you. We'll have hot water and cups available.)

Percipio Consulting Group is opening up their offices to host this event. Percipio is a business consulting firm that helps companies identify opportunities for improvement and successfully implement meaningful changes. That means more efficient processes, shored-up controls, a technology solution that really works for you, or all of the above. They have helped many companies, both Fortune 500 and mid-sized, navigate complex projects by truly understanding business needs and defining up front what success will look like.

Parking: Use the Gotham Building Parking lot on the corner of N Page St and N Borthwick Ave.

Building Entry: Entry to the building is best through the door by Little Gotham Coffee. We'll have someone meeting on time attendees at the door. For those that run a few minutes late due to traffic or other reasons out of your control, there will be directions at the door on how to contact someone to let you in.

We'll spend the first few minutes gathering discussion ideas, then roll right into the smooth easy cadence of the lively chatter.

New to Lean Coffee?

It's a great way to have real, focused dialogue and we often discuss matters of agile, lean and such - but anything goes. As far as the mechanics, here's the format we'll follow:

Step 1: Everybody writes down proposed topics on stickies, placing them in the center of the table. Take as much time as needed, but typically takes only 3-5 minutes (or whenever coffee is ready).

Step 2: Each topic is briefly described by its writer to get a flavor for the subject (15-30 seconds typically per sticky).

Step 3: Each person gets five votes which they indicate by marking the voted-for sticky with their Sharpie. Mark with a plus + if you agree with the topic and want to discuss it, or a minus - if you disagree and want to discuss it, mark it with a dot if you want to hear the discussion and maybe join in. You can put all votes on one, one across many, however you feel. Each mark counts as one vote.

Step 4: The top vote-getting stickies are placed in the ToDo column, ordered by the stickies with the most votes at the top. In an Agile fashion, we'll use groupings of ToDo, Doing, Done and Lessons learned.

Step 5: Each of these stickies are discussed for 5 minutes, most votes first. The facilitator takes a quick "Cesar" (thumbs up/down) vote at the five-minute timer, and she moves on for three more minutes if the discussion still has majority interest. When complete, move the sticky over to the Done column. Rinse and repeat.

Step 6: wrap-up thoughts at the end - what one idea or person did you most enjoy, then break for home/drinks/cover.

Every community needs to reflect occasionally to consider where it is now and where it wants to be in the future regarding size, shape, and services. AgilePDX hasn't had a community retrospective in too long! Now's your chance to update our collective understanding of who we are and who we want to be as a community. Our host, New Relic, is graciously providing a large event space with beautiful views. We are planning a 2 1/2 hour World Cafe event with opening remarks from the current Coordinating Committee which will provide you with some background about our current governance and breadth of services. Please help us get the word out! This event is not just for our usual attendees. We are hoping to reach out to people who have never attended AgilePDX events, people who are new in town, as well as people who have been with us every month for many years.

Please RSVP at meetup: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/251971253/

AGENDA 5:30 -- Food, drink, and networking 6:00 -- Coordinating Committee Remarks 6:15 -- World Cafe 8:00 -- Summary, Closing, and Actions

It's that time again, Portland! We continue to grow our community of practice for all things Agile. This month we have an exciting topic.

In-groups and out-groups in an organization. We tend to congregate in clusters. These clusters can be along team, department, and division lines. But they can also be along race, gender, political, religious, etcetera lines. How do we manage this clustering in order to keep everyone happy and productive in achieving the goals of the organization?

This is a timely conversation in a world that seems more starkly divided betweens blues and reds, ups and downs, lefts and rights. These differences are something that can drive us apart or even bring us together?

Join us for great food, great company, and great conversation at a great location.

Please follow the link to RSVP!

https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/255619157/

Join us for coffee/tea or beverage of your choice and fun discussions about how to overcome challenges we face or to share about Agile-inspired and other topics we agree or disagree with. This event is aimed at getting people in the North and NE areas of Portland together to facilitate discussions. It's not exclusive to people that live in the North and NE, just closer to those parts of the city to make it easier to come out. (If you want something other than tea or coffee, you'll have to bring it with you. We'll have hot water and cups available.)

Percipio Consulting Group is opening up their offices to host this event. Percipio is a business consulting firm that helps companies identify opportunities for improvement and successfully implement meaningful changes. That means more efficient processes, shored-up controls, a technology solution that really works for you, or all of the above. They have helped many companies, both Fortune 500 and mid-sized, navigate complex projects by truly understanding business needs and defining up front what success will look like.

Parking: Use the Gotham Building Parking lot on the corner of N Page St and N Borthwick Ave.

Building Entry: Entry to the building is best through the door by Little Gotham Coffee. We'll have someone meeting on time attendees at the door. For those that run a few minutes late due to traffic or other reasons out of your control, there will be directions at the door on how to contact someone to let you in.

We'll spend the first few minutes gathering discussion ideas, then roll right into the smooth easy cadence of the lively chatter.

New to Lean Coffee?

It's a great way to have real, focused dialogue and we often discuss matters of agile, lean and such - but anything goes. As far as the mechanics, here's the format we'll follow:

Step 1: Everybody writes down proposed topics on stickies, placing them in the center of the table. Take as much time as needed, but typically takes only 3-5 minutes (or whenever coffee is ready).

Step 2: Each topic is briefly described by its writer to get a flavor for the subject (15-30 seconds typically per sticky).

Step 3: Each person gets five votes which they indicate by marking the voted-for sticky with their Sharpie. Mark with a plus + if you agree with the topic and want to discuss it, or a minus - if you disagree and want to discuss it, mark it with a dot if you want to hear the discussion and maybe join in. You can put all votes on one, one across many, however you feel. Each mark counts as one vote.

Step 4: The top vote-getting stickies are placed in the ToDo column, ordered by the stickies with the most votes at the top. In an Agile fashion, we'll use groupings of ToDo, Doing, Done and Lessons learned.

Step 5: Each of these stickies are discussed for 5 minutes, most votes first. The facilitator takes a quick "Cesar" (thumbs up/down) vote at the five-minute timer, and she moves on for three more minutes if the discussion still has majority interest. When complete, move the sticky over to the Done column. Rinse and repeat.

Step 6: wrap-up thoughts at the end - what one idea or person did you most enjoy, then break for home/drinks/cover.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to receive the latest updates: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/256717559/

As we navigate our work environments we encounter conflict. There are many ways we find conflict. Conflict between team members, conflict within the team, conflict between teams.

What we want to explore is how is conflict good, and when it should be embraced, and when is conflict bad, and should be avoided.

What techniques do we have in our collective toolboxes to deal with conflict, address it head on, or work with our teams to avoid the conflict for everyones benefit.

Everyone is invited, and you can share your ideas if you want to. You are always welcome within our community of practice. Please join us at Ringlers Pub for great food, great conversation, and good beer.

RSVP: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/256215771/

Join us for a beer (or beverage of your choice) and a snack at the Rogue Eastside Pub to discuss "Flat Army" by Dan Pontefract. He says he has the strategy to solve the challenges of unhappy and uncommitted employees, and it's based on empowerment:

"Your people are your most valuable asset, and if you want them to excel (and your profits to soar), you'll need to abandon your traditional command-and-control management style and adopt a collaborative, open leadership approach―one that engages and empowers your people. While this isn't a particularly new idea, many leaders, while they may pay lip service to it, don't really understand what it means. And most of those who do get it lack the skills for putting it into practice. In Flat Army you'll find powerful leadership models and tools that help you challenge yourself and overcome your personal obstacles to change, while pushing the boundaries of organizational change to create a culture of collaboration."

Let's discuss the pros and cons of his approached and compare it to our real-world experiences and experiments.

We look forward to your creative insights!

Tip: It's worth reading some online book reviews for critical perspectives.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to receive the latest updates: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/kfcvlqyxqbvb/

Join us for coffee/tea or beverage of your choice and fun discussions about how to overcome challenges we face or to share about Agile-inspired and other topics we agree or disagree with. This event is aimed at getting people in the North and NE areas of Portland together to facilitate discussions. It's not exclusive to people that live in the North and NE, just closer to those parts of the city to make it easier to come out. (If you want something other than tea or coffee, you'll have to bring it with you. We'll have hot water and cups available.)

Percipio Consulting Group is opening up their offices to host this event. Percipio is a business consulting firm that helps companies identify opportunities for improvement and successfully implement meaningful changes. That means more efficient processes, shored-up controls, a technology solution that really works for you, or all of the above. They have helped many companies, both Fortune 500 and mid-sized, navigate complex projects by truly understanding business needs and defining up front what success will look like.

Parking: Use the Gotham Building Parking lot on the corner of N Page St and N Borthwick Ave.

Building Entry: Entry to the building is best through the door by Little Gotham Coffee. We'll have someone meeting on time attendees at the door. For those that run a few minutes late due to traffic or other reasons out of your control, there will be directions at the door on how to contact someone to let you in.

We'll spend the first few minutes gathering discussion ideas, then roll right into the smooth easy cadence of the lively chatter.

New to Lean Coffee?

It's a great way to have real, focused dialogue and we often discuss matters of agile, lean and such - but anything goes. As far as the mechanics, here's the format we'll follow:

Step 1: Everybody writes down proposed topics on stickies, placing them in the center of the table. Take as much time as needed, but typically takes only 3-5 minutes (or whenever coffee is ready).

Step 2: Each topic is briefly described by its writer to get a flavor for the subject (15-30 seconds typically per sticky).

Step 3: Each person gets five votes which they indicate by marking the voted-for sticky with their Sharpie. Mark with a plus + if you agree with the topic and want to discuss it, or a minus - if you disagree and want to discuss it, mark it with a dot if you want to hear the discussion and maybe join in. You can put all votes on one, one across many, however you feel. Each mark counts as one vote.

Step 4: The top vote-getting stickies are placed in the ToDo column, ordered by the stickies with the most votes at the top. In an Agile fashion, we'll use groupings of ToDo, Doing, Done and Lessons learned.

Step 5: Each of these stickies are discussed for 5 minutes, most votes first. The facilitator takes a quick "Cesar" (thumbs up/down) vote at the five-minute timer, and she moves on for three more minutes if the discussion still has majority interest. When complete, move the sticky over to the Done column. Rinse and repeat.

Step 6: wrap-up thoughts at the end - what one idea or person did you most enjoy, then break for home/drinks/cover.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to receive the latest updates: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/256753403/

Scientific thinking is a life skill that forms the basis for creativity at work and the successful pursuit of seemingly unattainable goals. The Improvement Kata (IK) is a four-step scientific striving pattern that is practiced in many business organizations. It makes scientific thinking a teachable skill that anyone can learn.

This fun, high-energy, simulation uses a simple hands-on activity to step participants through the Improvement Kata pattern. Working in a 5 person team, you'll follow the Improvement Kata pattern to (1) face a challenge, (2) measure where you are, (3) establish a next goal and (4) experiment toward that goal in three-minute iterations.

Together, we'll discover new insights for improving agile practices. As an individual you'll learn a fun activity you can repeat with your own teams in under an hour. And, there may be prizes for members of the winning team!

Adam Light's Bio:

Adam Light helps leaders deliver results and improve their organizations by combining scientific thinking with lean and agile methods. He is an experienced consultant, teacher, and coach who drives systemic transformation through a focus on leadership capabilities and practical skills. Adam began his career as a software developer before becoming a manager of projects and people; he has more than 25 years of software industry experience. Since 2009 Adam has led SoTech, a consultancy providing customized improvement solutions for organizations worldwide.

Notice: This meeting may be recorded. Also, we will not hold the event during icy or snowy conditions. Cancellations will be posted on MeetUp and Calagator 3 hours before event time.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to receive the latest updates: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/257567937/

Henrik Kniberg's Spotify Engineering Culture post outlines how Spotify sees alignment and autonomy influencing the efficiency and empowerment of teams.

Check it out here: https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-culture-part-1/

While Spotify continuously adapts and changes its model to meet new challenges, the graph still speaks to the relationship and dependency of these two organizational traits. What has your experience been in companies? How well are companies in communicating their mission to generate alignment? Have you seen work places trying to embrace autonomy only to suffer a little too much chaos? What is more important, alignment or autonomy?

Join in the discussion and offer your experience, musings, or ideas.

Everyone is invited. You are always welcome within our community of practice. Please join us at Ringlers Pub for great food, great conversation, and good beer.

Note: Cancellations will be posted on MeetUp and Calagator at least 3 hours before event time. We will not have the event in ice, or snowy conditions.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to receive the latest updates: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/257718370/

Join us for "Lean Pizza" (not calorically lean) and agile-inspired discussions as we reflect on 2018 and look forward to 2019. We will use a lean coffee-style self-organizing agenda. The first few minutes will be spent gathering discussion ideas and then we'll roll into the smooth, easy cadence of lively discussion!

While this evening is not meant to be a retrospective, feel free to share what went well for you or your Agile community, and where you want to see improvements, both personally and as an Agile community member.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to receive the latest updates: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/bxvdmqyzcbbc/

Join us for coffee/tea or beverage of your choice and fun discussions about how to overcome challenges we face or to share about Agile-inspired and other topics we agree or disagree with. This event is aimed at getting people in the North and NE areas of Portland and Vancouver together to facilitate discussions. It's not exclusive to people that live in the North and NE, just closer to those parts of the city to make it easier to come out.

We'll spend the first few minutes gathering discussion ideas, then roll right into the smooth easy cadence of the lively chatter.

If you aren't going to be able to make it, please update your RSVP so that we know how many to expect.

Parking: Use the Gotham Building Parking lot on the corner of N Page St and N Borthwick Ave.

Building Entry: Entry to the building is best through the door by Little Gotham Coffee. We'll have someone meeting on time attendees at the door. For those that run a few minutes late due to traffic or other reasons out of your control, there will be directions at the door on how to contact someone to let you in.

Weather Policy: Cancellations will be posted on MeetUp and Calagater 3 hours before event time. We will not have the event in ice, or snowy conditions.

Percipio Consulting Group is opening up their offices to host this event. Percipio is a business consulting firm that helps companies identify opportunities for improvement and successfully implement meaningful changes. That means more efficient processes, shored-up controls, a technology solution that really works for you, or all of the above. They have helped many companies, both Fortune 500 and mid-sized, navigate complex projects by truly understanding business needs and defining up front what success will look like.

New to Lean Coffee?