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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Description: Effective group learning is synonymous with effective group communication and high performance. Language Hunting is a group learning methodology developed to save endangered languages through the tools of accelerated learning. Willem Larsen, President of Language Hunters, will lead participants in an experiential understanding of how accelerated team learning works.

Bio: Willem has worked in community education for the past 15 years—at the Oregon Zoo, OMSI, Tryon Creek State Park, and the Eddy Foundation Land Trust. He was a founding partner of Cascadia Wild! and a founding member of TrackersNW. Through his work in environmental education and local natural history, Willem came to realize that endangered indigenous languages are storehouses of priceless ecological knowledge, and this led to the development of Language Hunting.

Willem has presented Language Hunting at many Agile gatherings such as AgilePDX, Agile 2011 in Salt Lake, Agile Games 2011 in Boston, as well as being hosted at Agilistry Studios and the SolutionsIQ Agile Training Center.

Willem believes that languages, traditions, and skills are treasures that communities hold as a whole—only by learning together can we create the rich lives we want for each other.

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

This is an open discussion on all things about agile software development. This month:

At Renewable Funding, we recognize that a successful agile team depends on the ability to constantly inspect and adapt its practices to changing circumstances and new information. Over the past couple of years, our team has made several notable changes to our process. Some were good ideas, while others didn't work out as well; but we've managed to learn from these experiences and grow as a team.

Several members of the Renewable Funding team will reflect on a few of our "noble experiments"---such as our feature-branching release process and 90-minute iterations---in a round-table discussion that will touch both the merits and drawbacks of these approaches and demonstrate the collaborative effort we use to chart our course.

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

This month we’ll be talking about what we learned at Agile Open Northwest in Seattle. See "Session Notes" at http://agileopennorthwest.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

If you attended AONW, please come Friday. Please come also if you didn’t attend! Those of us who went will try to share the wealth with you.

This will be the second meeting of the AgilePDX planning group. Our meetings are open to anyone and range from people just learning to industry experts with years of agile product management experience. Our stated mission is to discuss relevant topics related to product planning for agile development while enjoying cold beer!

This next meeting is open discussion with the goal of identifying future topic areas.

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.

It’s AgilePDX downtown pub lunch time again this Friday. This month the starting topic is ALM’s—Agile Lifecycle Management tools. We have regular attendees in this group who use Team Foundation Server, there are Version One and Rally users, and some folks have experience Jira. Does anyone use ScrumWorks? Are there other promising tools emerging?

Some folks believe the best way to manage an agile project is manually—post it notes, flip charts and planning boards on the wall. Some are willing to tough it out with Excel. What’s your preference and why?

Look forward to seeing you all there.

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

THANK YOU to our sponsors: ProKarma and Agile Open Northwest!!

For any code base there comes a time when you want (or need) to change it. If your changes are extensive, it’s easy to get lost in a jungle of dependencies or on a sea of broken code. Ultimately, you might just give up and shove it away under the legacy label. Instead of doing that, use "The Mikado Method," a systematic approach to reclaim your code. The method helps you visualize, prepare, and perform business-value focused changes, while delivering, and without having a broken code-base in the process. It enhances team communication, collaboration and learning, and helps individuals stay on track.

http://mikadomethod.wordpress.com/book/

For: Lead developers, architects, programming coaches, or anyone who wants to get some serious hands-on practice on how to work their way out of messy code while keeping the delivery frequency and business value focus.

Join Ola Ellnestam, founder of Agical.se and author of The Mikado Method, as he leads the group through exploring techniques for restructuring difficult-t0-work-with code. Ola 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. http://ellnestam.wordpress.com/

http://www.hanoulle.be/2012/02/who-is-ola-ellnestam/

http://www.agical.com/

Registration fee: $85 - The participation of our sponsors, (including Agile Open Northwest, ProKarma, and...you?) helps us to keep the fee as low as possible.

For more information, or if you'd like to sponsor this event, contact dlarsen [at] futureworksconsulting [dot] com

Have you noticed or felt the need for a difference in the way your lead, follow, or are led since agile methods came into your organization? Do you think you need to see a change in leading or following in order for your organization or team to become more truly agile?

AgilePDX planning group meetings are open to anyone and range from people just learning to industry experts with years of agile product management experience. Our stated mission is to discuss relevant topics related to product planning for agile development while enjoying cold beer!

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

We’re meeting again this Friday at Ringlers on Burnside. This month, in preparation for a more in-depth discussion of metrics next month, we’ll discuss perhaps the most common metric (some would debate whether it’s a metric at all): velocity. To get an interesting perspective on the topic, you might want to read "Velocity is Killing Agility!" a blog post by Jim Highsmith (http://jimhighsmith.com/2011/11/02/velocity-is-killing-agility/).

Is he right or wrong? Do agile teams need metrics at all? What kinds of issues with or needs for metrics do you find where you work?

Looking for a new job opportunity? Help keep ThoughtWorks weird!

Join us June 9th and 10th for a 2 day hiring event!

Polyglot programmers, QA's, Interaction and UX Designers join ThoughtWorks June 9th and 10th for your chance to be the next generation of ThoughtLeaders. If you are interested in meeting us, but don't see your exact title here, we would still love to speak with you!

Saturday, June 9th: 9am interactive sessions about what it's like to be a ThoughtWorker. We'll also discuss the work and patterns that have emerged from the Technology Radar created by luminaries here at ThoughtWorks.

12:30pm: Jeff Wishie, our Director of ThoughtWorks' Social Impact Program . Jeff, who is hot off his latest trip to East Africa, will be sharing our company's experiences and endeavors towards creating socially-meaningful software. Specifically, he'll describe the efforts we're making with mission-driven clients like UNICEF, Democracy Now!, and the Grameen Foundaiton.

1:30pm: After lunch, come check out our Open Source Code jam - and for good reason, because for every person that commits code during this session, ThoughtWorks will make a donation to Free Geek Portland! This is the chance to meet up and learn from fellow geeks as well as get your hands dirty in some code for a good cause.

Not technical or interested in code jamming? No worries - we'll still be hosting talks from different ThoughtWorkers and doing interviews throughout the afternoon. We're eager to hear your story and to share ours with you. Come join us and hear what the ThoughtWorks revolution is all about!

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.

Agile methods are empirical methods, designed to adapt and improve based on data. So why do many experienced team members recoil at the very mention of metrics? What makes a good metric? How can practitioners avoid using good data to do bad things? July's pub lunch meeting will frame a discussion around selecting and implementing useful metrics for agile work systems.

This month’s roundtable discussion topic is tools, tips, and techniques for engaging effectively—and even happily--with project managers in an Agile environment.

The project management role has been with us for some time and, in the Agile community, has a certain reputation. While Agile has emerged strongly, the project management role remains, and in many organizations, is metamorphosing along with Agile while in others remains much as it was 5 to 10 years ago.

Predictive and adaptive approaches to getting work done do not always coexist happily. How does an Agilist work well with a project manager who may constrained to function from a more traditional management perspective? It can and does happen; there are models.

Come this Friday to Ringler’s on Burnside and bring your stories, your problems, and your PM friends. Beer is available.

It’s that time again! And, based on discussion on the list earlier this month, we are going with the topic of the recent Agile 2012 conference. If you attended the conference, please come and tell us what you saw and what we should know.

Looking forward to seeing you all at Ringlers!

"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.

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.

IMPORTANT: Space is limited to 150 participants, so please register to reserve a spot. The event is free, but a donation is suggested.

CITCON, the Continuous Integration and Testing Conference, is a world-wide series of free Open Spaces events for developer-testers, tester-developers and anyone else with an interest in Continuous Integration and the type of Testing that goes along with it.

CITCON provides a forum to connect with other people on topics you care about, to learn from their experience and share your own. Past topics include:

• What is Continuous Integration?
• What CI Tools can learn from the Rubber Chicken
• What Is The One True Language For Writing Tests?
• The Future of Build Languages
• BDD is not TDD
• How Far is End-to-End?
• Fit for Fun and Profit
• Overcoming Barriers to Adoption

It’s that time again, and this month we return to the topic we tabled last month in favor of discussing the recent big agile conference. This month, we’re talking about the business analyst role on the Agile Team?

“What?! A business analyst on an Agile Team?” you may say. Yes, many companies explicitly call out this role on the Team to support the Product Owner or draw from a pool of BA’s to fulfill the Product Owner function. The questions before us are many:

Is this a good idea? What are the costs and benefits? When does it make sense? What about role boundaries? Doesn’t this institute them? How come the BA would be on the Team? (some actually report into a product management function along with the PO’s.) Why doesn’t my Team do this? Isn’t this anti-Agile?

Well you might ask. Come down and ask it of a bunch of colleagues primed with questions and answers of their own.

Same bat time; same bat place: noon on Friday at Ringler’s (not Ringler’s Annex, keep heading east) on Burnside. Good food. Good beer. Good, straight talk.

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)

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.)

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.

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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.

This month, we’re talking about QA's role on the Agile Team.

Fresh from a successful ATONW (Agile Testing Open Northwest) we will delve deeper and discuss what QA's role is on agile teams.

Same bat time; same bat place: noon on Friday at Ringler’s (not Ringler’s Annex, keep heading east) on Burnside. Good food. Good beer. Good, straight talk.

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’s topic is how to build trust with executives when you’re working with immature teams. This is likely to raise questions such as: • What is an immature Team? • What do we mean by “immaturity?” • How do you help a Team move toward greater maturity? • When we say “executives” do we mean anyone beyond the first level of supervision? Anyone in management? Anyone outside the Team? • Is Team immaturity a valid excuse for missing commitments, and does the responsibility lie with the Team?

As well as: • Just how do you “build trust,” anyway? • Is building trust even possible if there is no trust to begin with? • How much of my job is about trust building?

Come stumble in after your holiday revels and have lunch and a beer with like-minded colleagues. Someone please bring an “executive” along so we can hear their point of view, as well.

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.

Estimating stories, sprint commitments, and releases--estimating in general--remains a real bugaboo for all teams. Agile teams have different approaches to estimating. What's worked best for your team?

Has your team come to consider estimating "waste?" How do you make that work in your environment? What's your rationale and how does it test out in practice?

Come share your techniques, tactics, strategies, and war stories with colleagues over lunch. Same bat time, same bat station. See you there.

And, hey, we're about to bust our seams again. If you ping [email protected] or the AgilePDX list that you're coming, it can help us help the restaurant to provide fast service and the best possible layout for the tables. RSVP's appreciated NOT required.

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

Format: Panel discussion and Q&A

Mark Lawler on Why He Loves and Hates Agile

One of our local madmen is coming to talk to AgilePDX at Puppet Labs on February 20 at 6:30p. Having clawed his way up from the ranks of programmer, Mark Lawler now sits on top of 40 agile teams at Cambia Health Solutions (formerly Regence Blue Cross/Blue Shield). Barreling his way through yet another enterprise agile transition the last couple of years, Lawler occasionally shouts out the world what he loves and hates about agile to any of us who are willing to listen. Carrying around the title of Chief Technical Officer for one of the largest employers in the Portland metro area doesn’t slow him down one bit. Come prepared to listen to an agile executive talk about why agile is the best way to drive an organization to thrive.

As Lawler says on his blog, “I love Agile; I also hate Agile. I love how it can free teams to truly delight customers while delivering high quality products on time. I hate how Agile zealots can use the Tower of Agile Babble to confuse the heck out of teams trying Agile on for size. My goal is to help new teams actually embrace and become Agile without having to learn all of the pomp and circumstance in one big fat swallow.”

Mark Lawler is the VP and Chief Technology Officer of Cambia Health Solutions, responsible for transformative IT strategies, technologies and efforts for its portfolio companies. With over 30 Agile teams the group delivers and supports solutions across the business spectrum, including award winning products that are sold and hosted in a SaaS model to other leading health insurance payers. A Portland, Oregon based technology executive with over 20 years of experience of delivering software products, Mark believes strongly in the mantra of delivering high quality products on time while delighting customers.

You can find Mark sharing his opinions on technology, software development and quality, as well as Agile methodologies as @mark_lawler on Twitter and through his blog at: http://markslawler.wordpress.com/

About Cambia Health Solutions Cambia Health Solutions is a nonprofit total health solutions company based in the Pacific Northwest/Intermountain region, serving consumers and communities for nearly 100 years. Cambia companies provide a wide range of products and services, including health care information technology and software development, retail health care, health insurance, life insurance, pharmacy benefit management, consumer engagement and wellness.

Over the last decade, agile practices continued to gain a foothold in many companies. Many of the practices were first tried on a smaller scale, and tailored to green-field projects. But, as agile practices are adopted at multi-site, larger companies, with complex back office projects, they bring with them additional and unique challenges. Take for example, Cambia Health Solutions, a not-for-profit, health Solutions Company. Cambia has a relatively large IT group, which develops its own software solutions and integrates software from other vendors. It has a distributed workforce that spans four states with many work-at-home employees. Cambia’s mainline business is regulated by various state entities and national agencies. Many of Cambia’s projects are large, mandated compliance projects that have a fixed time box and a set scope. Missing either the deadline or scope could potentially mean losing a significant portion of its business or facing monetary penalties. Can agile practices work and scale to solve business problems facing the company? What if you also operate within an IT organization that is structured with functional silos? And what if you have reluctant business partners who define software requirements and perform final verification of software solutions? To tackle these challenges, Cambia organized an Enterprise Transition Community to lead the transition from a patchwork of agile practices to a large-scale agile implementation. Find out how we carried out this transition, what we have learned along the way, and how that might help organizations of all sizes take on a similar challenge.

Aashish co-presented a related paper with other Cambia staff at last year's PNSQC. You can find the paper here by searching on Aashish's name on the page: http://www.pnsqc.org/past-conferences/2012-conference/paper-and-presentations/#papers

Aashish Vaidya is a Technology Manager leading Specialized Teams at Cambia Health Solutions. He is a founding member of Cambia’s Enterprise Transition Community, and other Best Practices Exchanges. He also serves as an internal coach on Agile and QA practices. Aashish has over 20+ years working in technology development and leadership positions for companies such as Compaq, Intel, and Kronos Incorporation. In 2012, Aashish was a Co-Author and presenter at PNSQC. In 2011, Aashish was a panelist on Technology Association of Oregon’s panel discussion: QA’s Role in Agile. He is a graduate of Texas A&M University, with a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering.

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

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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

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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

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).

This month we'll be revisiting the ever popular topic of tools to manage our work. What are they? How well do they work? How expensive are they? Are they worth it? Do we need anything more than a good wall and a never ending supply of post it notes and pens?

This topics packed out our previous venue at Paddy's last year. Come and bring your friends. We have more space now, and even more beer and pub grub.

See you there! Oh, and hey, if you're coming it helps if you ping me at [email protected] so I can warn the pub to bring on wait staff reinforcements if we're going to be a horde. This gets you your food faster and adds minutes, if not years, to my lifespan.

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.

Well-functioning agile teams often reach a point where continued improvement requires change in the organization beyond their team. As a team member or change agent, how can you best engage with key figures in the larger organization?

Adam Light will lead a dialog that examines agile from the perspective of various roles outside the agile team including the CIO (or other IT leader), the leader of Product Management, and the leader of the PMO. Our discussion will consider each role in turn, discussing what people in that role see, hear, and think about, how best to engage the role, and what specific protocols can be effective in each case. Read his related blog post at http://www.sotechadvisors.com/resources/chasing_the_constraint/

Adam Light is Management Consultant and Principal at SoTech Advisors where he helps managers and teams apply lean and agile methods to unlock greater value from software development. Adam works with enterprise clients to adopt and scale agile methods, design and operate agile work systems, plan and deliver critical projects, and build the knowledge foundation necessary to sustain continuous improvement.

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.

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

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

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

Description: To facilitate the highest levels of team performance, your practices need to transcend the ordinary. This includes performance review practices. When you use team-based performance reviews, rather than individual-based, you boost collaboration and coherence in a team, which leads to higher performance. Join us for a discussion on how one Fortune 500 Information Technology group used these practices to help solve complicated technical challenges.

The Speaker: Jackie Barretta is a successful business change agent. She’s built groundbreaking organizational cultures as a Fortune 500 executive, she’s won a reputation as a leading edge thought leader with her writing and speaking, and, as the Founding Partner of Nura Group, she’s pioneered new ways to conduct business through consulting and training. She is the author of an upcoming book, Primal Teams, which describes the emotional energy of elite teams and helps readers create it in their own teams. She is the former senior vice president and chief information officer for Con way Inc.

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

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

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

The program starts at 7:00 pm.

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

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

After months of speakers, we agreed last month that it would be nice to do a round table discussion again, the format on which this group was founded.

So, bring your thorny problems, your triumphs, and your favorite soapbox on down to Ringler's on Burnside this Friday at lunch. Each month we fill the room with expert pontification, moral support, and agilista vibe fit to refuel your depleted vim.

We'll oil the conversational joints with a discussion of an upcoming Agile PDX special event designed to help us figure out if we've lost our way or are appropriately breaking new ground.

Quite a bit is happening with agile in Portland as the pub lunchers know. But where are we going with all this agile experimentation, this retrospecting and iterating? Are we making progress, stuck in a rut, evolving new forms of agility?

On 8/21 the evening Agile PDX gathering will be all about the future of Agile PDX and what we hope for the future of agile in Portland. This month the pub lunchers will be talking about whether we’re getting what we hoped for out of agile principles and practices, whether we’re getting what we need from Agile PDX, and what we hope for the future. Whether you plan to be at Puppet Labs on 8/21 or not, come this Friday and have your say.

We’ll also open by polling the group for special issues anyone needs help with or connections anyone is trying to make.

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!

This month we'll do a roundtable of current issues. Our starting topic will be "what is required to make Portland an agile software development mecca?" All agile-related topics are welcome.

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.

It’s first Friday again, so the AgilePDX downtown pub lunchers will be meeting, eating, drinking, and talking about DevOps for Agile teams. This topic was chosen by attendees at last month’s pub lunch, and it seems we’ve hit a nerve. DevOps is never easy but definitely critical. In an Agile environment some people think it’s particularly hard while others believe they have it all figured out.

Apparently, it’s so gripping a topic that it generated a novel: The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr and George Spafford.
Anyone read this, yet? (Anyone realize that TAO Executive Leadership Exchange is bringing Gene Kim to a podium to talk on 10/22 to talk more about DevOps?)

Please RSVP to the Agile PDX list or [email protected] so we know whether we have to rearrange the furniture and so we can give the restaurant a head’s up on numbers.

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.

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.

What is the role of QA team members on Agile teams? Should they be full team members and take on non-testing tasks? Can it work well if they're "loaned out" from a central QA organization? Should they be there on Planning Day?

Or, should there be specialized QA team members, at all? Is it more responsible if everyone tests? Is automated testing more costly than it's worth?

What do you look for when recruiting for QA skills on an Agile team? And where are all those Agile testers, anyway?

This Friday, 11/1, we'll be hashing this out over beer and pub grub at the usual time and place. Be there and bring along your Agile QA buddies.

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?

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.

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.

PLEASE NOTE DATE CHANGE FOR DECEMBER.

This next month, we’ll be meeting on the second Friday. The hot topic that emerged last month is what to do with managers—or what are managers to do—when the team and the organization—goes agile. There are people who are in favor of assigning the Scrum Master role to functional managers. (I’m not sure any were in attendance last month.) There are people who believe that, now that we’re agile we don’t need any managers. Some folks have spent a fair amount of time explaining what managers should do to maintain the organization around the team, and those arguments sometimes raise the specter of bureaucracy and hierarchy. But, it’s also true that large organizations are drifting toward agile, and therein tend to be lots of layers and policies to be maintained and reporting up and rolling up and down to be done.

Some people believe there’s an entirely new role for managers—stronger on leadership and vision/context setting and lighter on “following up” and controlling individual actions. Some managers—even those who are agile advocates—struggle with where their job went when the teams get a shot of “empowerment.”

This next month’s topic looks like it will be juicy, doesn’t it? So, on Friday, December 13, link arms with your favorite manager and toddle on down to Ringler’s on Burnside under the Crystal Ballroom. We’ll be in the backroom and the beer will be flowing. We start at 12p and end at 1p, but you can stay as long as you want afterward to debate (I mean “dialogue”) about the nature and virtues of authoritarianism and whether a benevolent monarchy is the best form of government for humankind.

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.

This is a deepening of the conversation we had last month on "The Manager's Role in an Agile Environment." We're focusing this month on how agile-aligned managers currently working in non-agile-aligned organizations can best function to help move agile forward. Last month, the following references were cited:

--- /The Future of Management/ by Gary Hamel --- /Management 3.0/ by Jurgen Appelo --- /The Leader's Guide to Radical Management/ by Stephen Denning --- /Wiki Management/ by Rod Collins

If you are such a manage, expect great (and occasionally irreverent) support in this discussion group. If you know one, bring him or her along. "Your people are at Ringler's on January 3rd."

We start at 12p and end at 1p. Strive to be on time: we do. RSVP's appreciated but not required.

Since we're back on the first Friday, we should be able to be back in the back room.

See you there!

Adopting, improving, and scaling agile practices often calls for building a broader understanding outside of the development team(s), particularly in organizations where other approaches are well accepted. Agile advocacy covers a range of activity that can be used to help facilitate organizational change and support agile as a means to deliver value.

How can we increase support and facilitate effective engagement with agile development? What models are there for effective advocacy and what are some common pitfalls? When and how do we engage with organizational leadership and other stakeholders? Is this always necessary – and are there times when advocacy is not the right approach? And what about advocacy within the technical part of our organizations – when is this needed or warranted?

This topic will be handled as a group discussion supported by presentation notes to encourage thinking and dialogue. Attendees are encouraged to bring examples or questions from their own experience and to think about scenarios where advocacy is effective.

Jim Ure will serve as facilitator for this discussion. Jim has a diverse background in IT leadership and project management and has served in roles in three organizations where he made the decision to adopt agile practices. His real world experience reflects circumstances where agile advocacy was both effective and times where advocacy encountered unanticipated challenges. “I am one who was strongly attracted to the agile approach and believe that it can be utilized in powerful ways to help organizations create and add value. But I have also learned (sometimes the hard way!) that implementing good agile practices can be difficult. It takes planning, commitment, and a keen awareness of situational factors and people.”

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.

In February, due to popular demand, we are revisiting retrospectives with our local (and noted international) authority on the topic, Diana Larsen.

Retrospectives improve any project or process--building on a team’s immediate past experience of success and failure. Smart teams and organizations hold Retrospectives iteratively, throughout the work cycle and at important milestones. In Retrospectives, teams systematically evaluate their own performance, explore their lessons learned, expand their capacity and capability, and forge ways to continuously improve their work and deliverables. Teams can’t truly call themselves Agile if they don’t include Retrospectives among their regular work practices.

However, over time as Retrospectives become routine, they can also become stale and boring, delivering less value to the team. Or teams may hold pro forma Retrospectives that don't result in real improvements. How can you prevent this? Keep your Retrospective practice fresh through a renewed emphasis on team learning, collective analysis, and collaborative decision making. Bring new activities and group processes to the meeting that will stimulate better thinking and improvements. In this session, Diana Larsen will introduce the Flexible Framework for Retrospectives and how to incorporate the Five Rules for Team Learning in your Retrospective designs. She'll lead a discussion of new team activities to enlarge your repertoire, so bring your favorites to share.

Bio: Diana Larsen, founding partner of FutureWorks Consulting, is considered an international authority in the areas of Agile software development, team leadership, and Agile transitions. Diana works with organizations around the world to design work systems, improve project performance, and support Agile leaders and enterprises. 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, Quickstart Guide to Five Rules for Accelerated Learning, and articles about the Agile Fluency model at www.agilefluency.com and http://www.infoq.com/articles/agile-fluency-fit-purpose Follow Diana on Twitter (@DianaOfPortland).

We’ll be waiting for you at Ringler’s under the Crystal Ballroom on Burnside but will start on time at 12p and end on time at 1p. We’re in the back room. If you miss this opportunity, you miss an opportunity to learn, network, and drink McMenamin’s beer in the middle of day with new friends.

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.

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!

Postponed because of weather last month, we have rescheduled this event.

Description: Being an agile organization was always the goal (right?). The idea of "business agility" is certainly older than agile software development and many of us have struggled with the pain of an agile development team in an organization that doesn't understand how we work. Finding ways to scale agility from development to the rest of the organization has been a bit of a rocky road so far. Many development teams use Scrum and I'm not sure that's a good fit for some business areas -- I for one wouldn't want HR time-boxing the hiring of a new developer, delivering the best one they could find in 2 weeks. So just scaling what development does to a larger, different audience isn't the answer.

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) provides, er, a framework for how the larger organization can operate more effectively together. Rather than provide new ways of working, it synthesizes important aspects of Scrum, XP, Lean, Product Development Flow and other agile notions into a sensible fabric for organizational effectiveness, optimizing the whole. The list of companies finding value in SAFe continues to grow.

In something under an hour, I plan to deliver enough information about SAFe that you can have a reasonable elevator conversation about it and leave with an understanding of how much more you want to learn (and where to go find that information). Even if you don't work for a large organization with multiple levels of program and portfolio management, the concepts SAFe is built on and how they interact should spark ideas for how you can grow agile ways of working within your own environment.

Bio: After deciding against a career in journalism halfway through college, Millard Ellingsworth has been developing software ever since. He currently works for IBM and was part of a small team of facilitators that led IBM Software Group's agile transformation efforts, training many teams, serving them as an agile coach and working as a scrum master within his own development organization. He has presented on agile topics at internal and external IBM conferences and has written a variety of articles for IBM developerWorks where he is a contributing author and a member of the steering committee. You can follow him on Twitter as @millard3 (https://twitter.com/millard3) and on Google+ (https://plus.google.com/u/0/+MillardEllingsworth). He happily accepts invitations to play golf and talk tech.

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.’

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!

Our Speaker, Andrew Premvardhan will use a presentation to talk about his experiences and encourage discussion among the participants.

He will cover the Characteristics of a Scrum Master

o Servant Leader

o Communicative and social

o Facilitate

o Assertive

o Situation Awareness

o Continual improvement

o Attitude of empowerment

o Conflict resolution

o Attitude of transparency

Andrew Premvardhan a Certified Scrum Master, has 20+ years of experience in the software industry and has worked in multiple IT roles as a consultant. He has been with GE Healthcare - APS for the last four years and has worked in the role of scrum master for a performance improvement scrum team. Andrew believes that "agile truly empowers teams and the scrum master is central to that empowerment."

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.

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!

Have you ever tried to negotiate the priorities of multiple stakeholders into a workable sprint release schedule, while at the same time satisfying technical prerequisites and maintaining potentially shippable increments?

Come join us at Agile PDX­Westside and help refine a new facilitation technique that has proven successful. This will be an active, on-your-feet activity! You'll be assigned a role on the project team (no experience required) and will help to build a release plan for a fun, hypothetical product that will be revealed during the session.

Hosts: Dave Gipp, Subeer Sinha, Eric Chen and Omar Ali

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

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.

In September, 2012 Banfield Pet Hospital implemented a Kanban system for software development. The system has been a great success and has resulted in substantial value for the business. Learn about the decision making leading to the implementation; how Lean-Agile principles and practices were used to guide the development of the Kanban system; lessons learned and successes. This talk will also cover real metrics analysis including cycle time, lead time, wait time, and an analysis of the all-powerful Cumulative Flow Diagram (CFD).

Speaker: Rob Ferguson

“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.

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.

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.

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).

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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].

"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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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].

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].

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.

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.

"[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.

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!

Let's kick off the new year and dig down in some great discussion around Agile topics! Last month we voted to discuss "Why a scrum master is not a secretary! (what a scrum master does and does not do)"

Have you ever known a Scrum Master who is the secretary to a team? Maybe even yourself? While this can save other team members time initially and may create a sort of glue or thread for the team, is it positive energy for the team or can it be detrimental? Does it affect our goals to guiding self-organized teams? Bring your stories and experiences, positive or negative. Help other teams, and your own, identify possible problems with Scrum Master implementations and solutions for them.

Katherine Radeka walks us through how the Rapid Learning Cycles framework has emerged as a repeatable method for adopting Agile Development practices for tangible products. It overcomes many of the challenges that companies have had when they have tried to adopt Agile Development, by addressing the mismatches between the software / IT development environment and the challenges faced by scientists and engineers when the product involves physics, chemistry and/or biology.

The Rapid Learning Cycles framework is a synthesis of Agile Development and Lean Product Development practices that works within a company's existing phase gate PDP. It is concrete and actionable for program managers, technical leads and their sponsors so that they can use the framework with confidence after a small amount of training and coaching.

Teams that use the Rapid Learning Cycles framework exhibit the desired changes that people want from Agile Development: fast cycles of development, early engagement from customers and other stakeholders, the ability to respond to change in a dynamic environment, and adapt as new information develops.

They also build scientific knowledge to make better decisions instead of running through build-test-fix loops, capture knowledge real-time instead of reinventing solutions, and make better decisions up front instead of getting stuck with late-found defects and schedule delays.

Session Learning Objectives:

1) What the Rapid Learning Cycles framework is, and how it fits in with Agile Development.

2) What practices from Agile Development get used in the Rapid Learning Cycles framework.

3) What makes the Rapid Learning Cycles framework spread within a product development organization, even one that is resistant to Agile, or seems to be a poor fit.

Bio:

Katherine Radeka has a rare combination of business acumen, scientific depth and ability to untangle the organizational knots to remove the barriers to change. Since 2005, Whittier Consulting Group, Inc. has helped some of the world's leading companies get their products to market faster. She currently supports more than 100 active implementations of the Rapid Learning Cycles framework through the Rapid Learning Cycles Institute (rapidlearningcycles.com)

Katherine is the author of two books. Her first book, The Mastery of Innovation: A Field Guide to Lean Product Development won the Shingo Research Award in 2014. This book contains 19 case studies of companies who have used lean product development to get their ideas to market faster.

Katherine's second book is The Shortest Distance Between You and Your New Product: How Innovators Use Rapid Learning Cycles to Get Their Best Ideas to Market Faster. This book summarizes Katherine's ground-breaking work to integrate Agile Development and Lean Product Development into the Rapid Learning Cycles Framework, a proven method for accelerating innovation.

Katherine has climbed seven of the tallest peaks in the Cascade Mountains and spent ten days alone on the Pacific Crest Trail until an encounter with a bear convinced her that she needed a change in strategic direction.

Do you see your organization confusing velocity with value? Is velocity being emphasized while value is not scrutinized? Do you find teams under pressure to execute against a rigid backlog and when they ask questions about value--there just aren't any answers?

This may appear to be a subtle problem, but some would say the ramifications are significant and far reaching.

Due to the freezing rain forecast for tomorrow, we at AgilePDX have decided to move our Pub Lunch to a virtual meeting. This will allow everybody to stay safe and still participate. Link arms with your Product Owner or Product Manager and login to our virtual, ice free meetup.

Please RSVP via meetup here: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/236954772/

Effectively conveying information and knowledge to others is a critical skill. But how do we, as humans, learn best? When do people start to lose focus on our message? How can you as a coach, facilitator, trainer, teacher (one who wants to help others learn), or presenter use the latest in brain-based learning to help those you are teaching to learn? This brief overview of the content in Sharon Bowman's Training from the Back of the Room! is an invitation to see who is doing the most talking, moving, and writing in all of your communications. You will also get a glimpse of the 6 learning principles and 6 memory vehicles that you might use in your next presentation, training, or coaching session. This interactive session is an invitation to look at how we traditionally teach and how we naturally learn. It expresses the evolution of training from the traditional hierarchical norm to an emergent partnership norm.

Christine Brautigam presents this opportunity to learn how you can be most effective when transferring knowledge to others!

PRE-WORK

This is an opportunity to PRIME your brain by doing a little pre-work in preparation for our time together.

Click below for Sharon's write up on the 4C's = Connections, Concepts, Concrete Practice, Conclusions:

THE 4CS MAP: A BRAIN-BASED INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN AND DELIVERY MODEL

Check this out also as you will be learning about Sharon's famous six learning principles (slideshare):

THE SIX TRUMPS: Six Learning Principles that Trump Traditional Teaching

Also check out a primary body of research upon which Sharon Bowman draws her content and inspiration = John Medina's BRAIN%20RULES

Bio

Christine Brautigam founded Inspired Agility (inspiredagility.com) in 2015 to offer training programs for meaningful work and healthy environments.  Her extensive career experience has been focused on the software industry and is now evolving to bring Agile practices to other industries.  Her current path is through brain-based learning techniques, mindful change management, and deliberately developmental organizations. Christine is a dynamic trainer dedicated to your development. Christine's focus is on tealforteal.com and responsive.org and her education includes: MS in Information Technology Management from Carnegie Mellon University • BS in Industrial and Operations Engineering from University of Michigan • Certified Scrum Master (CSM) • Certified Integral Embodied Practitioner (EPC1).

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].

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.

Book summary: https://pragprog.com/book/dblegacy/beyond-legacy-code

We read technical and business books to educate and improve ourselves. But learning goes through many stages and deepens as we explain our learning to each other, analyze our thinking, evaluate our understanding and apply our learning.

Beyond Legacy Code provides practical information and valuable insight for both engineers and non-engineers. And, don’t skip a good discussion and beer if you’ve just started reading the book or had to put it down. Since this isn’t a who-done-it mystery, a discussion won’t spoil the ending.

Come join us for a lively conversation. Share your thoughts and new ideas with like-minded folks. Meet new smart people and old friends you never knew were so smart! Deepen your understanding and hear new arguments and observations through this book discussion.

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 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.

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!

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.

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].

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.

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 :)

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] .

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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?

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

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/

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!

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.

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/

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.

Enter WTC Building One at its second floor lobby (ADA access; ground floor elevator). Take an elevator to the 9th floor (press '9' outside the elevators and use the indicated cab). Follow signs to the Cayuse lobby and sign in for the event.

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.https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/254966471/

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.

Topic: Agile thinking: Compare Scrum, Lean, Kanban, XP and any other methodologies you have used. What has worked? What hasn't? Maybe one methodology is better suited for certain situations or work efforts. Or you have seen great success going beyond frameworks and methodologies. Join us and tell us about the spices in your kitchen, and let's compare notes!

Please RSVP at our Meetup event and get the zoom connection info: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/254946132/

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/)

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.

Seating is limited. Please RSVP here: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/255398925/

"At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly"

Great! We can get a lot of juice and improvement tuning and adjusting our behavior within the team. And then....

• We get pressure to share our results outside of the team and as soon as we do the team clams up.
• We hit an impediment that is in the soup - outside of our ability to address within the team.
• We start to see patterns across teams.

Whether you are a master at organizational change or just starting out, join us in what's bound to be a lively discussion. We'll all walk away with something new to try.

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/

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: Value Stream Mapping: this Toyota technique is often associated with lean manufacturing - and it can be a powerful tool applied to agile software development processes: Visualizing your workflow and inspecting it for "waste" to delivery more value fluently. But there are many questions: what is the definition of waste (or value)? When is this technique best applied? Join us to talk about your experience mapping value, and hear how others have worked with this process to what effect.

Please RSVP at our Meetup event and get the Zoom connection info: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/255678927/

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.

NOTE: we are relocating to Cayuse! Enter WTC Building One at its second floor lobby (ADA access: ground floor elevator). Take an elevator to the 9th floor (press '9' outside the elevators and use the indicated cab). Follow signs to the Cayuse lobby and sign in for the event.

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.

Seating is limited. Please RSVP here: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/256078889/

How do you get started with Sprint 0?

Wait what? Don't you mean the first sprint?

Nope. At this special 3rd Friday edition of the Westside Cafe we will dig into Sprint 0. What is it? When is it appropriate? Who should be involved?

Not a fan of Sprint 0? Great! Join us and help us flesh out the pros and cons. Have you participated in an inception sprint that set the team up for success. Yay! We could use your lessons learned.

Join us for what promises to be a lively discussion about the hows and whys and wherefores of Iteration Zero.

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.

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.

Directions: Enter WTC Building One at its second floor lobby (ADA access: ground floor elevator). Take an elevator to the 9th floor (press '9' outside the elevators and use the indicated cab). Follow signs to the Cayuse lobby and sign in for the event.

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.

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 at our Meetup event and get the Zoom connection info: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/256511527/

Has traffic or location prevented you from joining an agile discussion group? Not close to PDX or SEA 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 week's topic:

Agile Tools: what are the best "agile tools"? Our world is filled with apps and programs to help us with our jobs, from work management, communication, white-boarding, prototyping, source control, IDEs, to virtual pairing systems and beyond. Some are very useful, ensuring we communicate and work effectively. And sometimes tools are in the way, and we get stuck in a labyrinth of features & functions.

Our agile tool discussion will lead with the manifesto value of "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools." Join the discussion to tell us what your favorite tools are to support individuals & interactions. Come and hear what your colleagues think and share your own experiences with tools that have supported you. We are not endorsing any specific tools as part of this chat, but likely many different ones will be discussed.

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/257540633/

Join us for a hands-on workshop experiencing Mob Programming!

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.

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?

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.

Seating is limited. Please RSVP here: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/257353604/

Join us for a comparison of different agile methods. We'll be talking about real life methods that our members actually use. What are the pros and cons? What have you changed? What still needs to be tweaked?

If you are new to agile this will be a great conversation to help you pick a method that will work for your organization. If you have been around agile for a while I'll bet you'll find a tweak to steal.

We will be back to our normally scheduled date and time, January 25th at noon. See you soon

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/258102491/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

How do you define trust? When organizational culture fosters trust, what does that look like and how does it benefit the org? When trust is missing, what are the consequences? Why is it critical for executives and development teams to have relationships based on trust and how do we go about establishing and fostering trust between the two?

Regardless of how you define trust, it’s a critical pillar in thriving, innovative organizations.

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 at our Meetup page and get the Zoom connection info: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/258628474/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your space for another attendee.

"Live from Agile Open Northwest - it's Virtual Pub Lunch!"
This month we will join our virtual discussion from a session at the annual Open Space conference of Agile Open Northwest http://www.agileopennorthwest.org/.

This agile lunch discussion is a collaborative effort between Seattle and Portland agile minds, and we're hoping it won't stop there.
Tips: 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 or comment in chat and our hosts will try to work it in.

This weeks topic:
Agile in Agencies: building an agile iterative process with in-house teams and stakeholders is a challenge. But how do you tackle the challenge of a client wanting to sign a contract with specified cost, scope, and deadlines? The Agile Manifesto states: Customer collaboration over contract negotiation. So where does the agile effort start in an agency. And can a grass-roots effort rise in such an eco-structure? Join us to share your stories and insights, as a developer, manager, or even end customer. Join in to spitball possible (and impossible) ideas, and have fun!

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/258129669/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

Join us for a hands-on workshop experiencing Mob Programming!

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.

Directions:

The building you are looking for is on 2nd and Taylor (look for the Starbucks on the ground floor). Take the escalators on the 2nd St. entrance to the WTC Building One second floor lobby (ADA access: ground floor elevator). Take an elevator to the 9th floor (press '9' outside the elevators and use the indicated cab). Follow signs to the Cayuse lobby and sign in for the event.

Facilitator Bio:

Jeff Patterson is a software quality engineer at Jama Software, language agnostic, quality evangelist, and non-traditional CS grad. He has facilitated Global Day of Code Retreat, founded a peer group to support Community College CS students transferring to University, and is often heard saying, "Software is made of people!"


Please RSVP at our Meetup page and get the Zoom connection info: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/258272777/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your space for another attendee.

AgilePDX is providing a forum for Agile Project Managers, Agile Facilitators, and Scrum Masters to gather online once a month and discuss all things project, program, and portfolio related. Please join us for a Lean Coffee style event facilitated by experience Agile PM's and instructors in the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner prep program.

You'll be dialing in from your desktop with your favorite early morning brew. Please join with your camera on. The Zoom URL will be provided to confirmed attendees. Feel free to post questions to this meetup prior to the event.

We welcome divergent opinions and experience reports. Bring your challenges for groups feedback and support. Plan to join 15 minutes early for coffee clatch chat and networking or stay 15 minutes for the same networking experience.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/bxvdmqyzdbwb/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

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?

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 reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/257682731/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

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?

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 reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/258138240/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

So you’re learning Agile! You get excited because you discover something and bring it to work and - POOF - someone discards your ideas like they’re useless! Or someone comes to you and wants to “coach” you about what you “should” be doing in agile/scrum/Kanban teams. How do you share your most exciting thoughts and receive the thoughts of others?

Both Kat and Kathey (Kat’s inner critic) will be presenting. Join Kat/Kathey on her journey from curious newby, to “fake expert” to “Newby Thought Leader” and back again…and again. Kathey will discuss self-doubt, blame, living behind the walls of our assumptions. Using those defense mechanisms, Kat will share how she has been able to rewrite some bad internal dialogs to develop channels that have allowed her to passionately share often valuable insight with those around her, and to be recognized for doing so. She will also share her failures, and how she was able to apply them differently in subsequent exchanges. (50 min with optional facilitated networking to follow)

Key Results:

> Recognize what Agile Bullying is: when you see it and when you do it.
> Learn some methods to deliver value or extract it from others without bullying.
> Gather some tools that can help you self-brand and develop your own inner expert
> Activities that can help you develop as a thought leader in your own skill expertise
> Hands-on coaching and networking exchange activity within small groups: Practice the skills we discuss and network with your agile community.
> Laughter

Kat Daugherty's Bios:

Kat Daugherty is a practicing Enterprise Transformation Agile Coach at Slalom Portland, with 2k+ LinkedIn followers and a cornucopia of speaking, training, publishing and facilitation learning and accomplishments. She’s passionate about mentoring, reconfirming our biases, empathy-centric leadership, and personal branding.

“Kathey Daugherty” is Kat’s inner critic who often wonders if she is really as good as those she views as more accomplished, more intelligent, smarter or better than she is at agile, speaking, and life in general.

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 reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/258451821/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

We've probably all been on teams that argued about the smallest possible things. Or perhaps a team where a key members didn't listen. And I'm sure you remember fondly that team that just seamed to click. Where curiosity was the norm and you could safely bring your whole self.

On Friday Feb 22 we'll talk about how to support a great team or help a hurting team by bringing in emotional intelligence (EQ). What can you do to optimize the emotional intelligence of the team itself? How can you coach individuals on the team about and with emotions?

Join us on the Westside at lunchtime for what is sure to be an interesting and colorful discussion.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/258083478/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

A coding-filled day focused on Conway's Game of Life. We will code in 1-hour iterations, with 15 minutes of retrospective and break. This is a safe place to experiment with code without deadlines and learn a trick or two! Yes, it’s woman-focused, and everyone is welcome.

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

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

Come early and meet other attendees for a leisurely chat over coffee!

More details and handouts will be posted as we near the event, so watch this space and manage your RSVP so we have an accurate food and coffee headcount. This space is cozy, so seats are limited.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/258499895/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

In Organizing Genius, Bennis declares that the age of the empowered individual has ended: what matters now is "collaborative advantage" and the assembling of powerful teams. Drawing from six case studies that include Xerox's PARC labs, the 1992 Clinton campaign, and Disney animation studios, Bennis and coauthor Patricia Biederman distill the characteristics of successful collaboration, showing how talent can be pooled and managed for greater results than any individual is capable of producing.

Join us to talk about what Bennis’ insights on teams can tell us about practicing agile. Looking forward to discovering what our own collaborative discussion will uncover!

We are so grateful to The Toffee Club for hosting us free of charge. Please enjoy a beverage and/or food to thank them, if you can!

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/259111691/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

As organizations scale, they necessarily add personnel and processes. Change, both good and bad, is inevitable as we grow. But must this result in dilution of culture and loss of agility? How do we scale responsibly while seeking to preserve beneficial cultural ideals and principles, tactfully challenge and improve the organization, and maintain agility to thrive in a rapidly changing world?

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/257561551/

Feedback is an essential part of learning. Scrum masters, coaches, managers, and each coworker likely face the need to provide feedback within their community. Many enjoy giving positive feedback, though some are uncomfortable receiving it. And, what about feedback that suggests a change? How do we deliver feedback that could be taken personally?

Join us to learn hands-on about the art of giving, receiving, and seeking interpersonal feedback, so it becomes a constructive tool for building trust and great work relationships. Agile coach Diana Larsen is leading this workshop and sharing her years of experience in giving (and receiving) feedback.

NOTE: this event has a limited capacity. We are able to offer this event free of charge to our community. Please be considerate and update your RSVP if your plans change!

Agenda: 6:00 - 6:30 Meet & Greet 6:30 - 8:30 Workshop

Facilitator Bio: Visionary pragmatist and author, Diana Larsen co-founded and collaborates in leadership of Agile Fluency™ Project. Diana co-wrote the books "Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great"; "Liftoff: Start and Sustain Successful Agile Teams"; "Five Rules for Accelerated Learning"; and the seminal “Agile Fluency Model: A Brief Guide to Success with Agile” article. Through the Agile Fluency Project’s programs for training and mentoring agile coaches and consultants, Diana shares the wisdom she’s gained in over 25 years of working with leaders, teams, and organizations.


Please RSVP at our Meetup page and get the Zoom connection info: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/259082129/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your space for another attendee.

Agile Open Northwest held their annual Open Space conference in Portland this February.

Our last lunch was live from AONW and there was a lot of curiosity, even from attendees to hear more about what they missed. Let's use this virtual lunch to hear stories, insights, and lessons learned from the conference. Join us if you missed the conference, and more so - join us if you attended AONW, and share your experience! See great coverage or blog posts elsewhere? Share links and further reading in the chat, too!

This agile lunch discussion is a collaborative effort between Seattle and Portland agile minds, and we're hoping it won't stop there.
Tips: 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 or comment in chat and our hosts will try to work it in.

We hope to "see" you for a virtual lunch!

Connect with us via Zoom!
Zoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/674417247

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/259448942/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

Join us for a hands-on workshop experiencing Mob Programming!
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.

Directions: The building you are looking for is on 2nd and Taylor (look for the Starbucks on the ground floor). Take the escalators on the 2nd St. entrance to the WTC Building One second floor lobby (ADA access: ground floor elevator). Take an elevator to the 9th floor (press '9' outside the elevators and use the indicated cab). Follow signs to the Cayuse lobby and sign in for the event.

Facilitator Bio:

Jeff Patterson is a software quality engineer at Jama Software, language agnostic, quality evangelist, and non-traditional CS grad. He has facilitated Global Day of Code Retreat, founded a peer group to support Community College CS students transferring to University, and is often heard saying, "Software is made of people!"


Please RSVP at our Meetup page and get the Zoom connection info: : https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/258535682/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your space for another attendee.

AgilePDX is providing a forum for Agile Project Managers, Agile Facilitators, and Scrum Masters to gather online once a month and discuss all things project, program, and portfolio related. Please join us for a Lean Coffee style event facilitated by experience Agile PM's and instructors in the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner prep program.

You'll be dialing in from your desktop with your favorite early morning brew. Please join with your camera on. The Zoom URL will be provided to confirmed attendees. Feel free to post questions to this meetup prior to the event.

We welcome divergent opinions and experience reports. Bring your challenges for groups feedback and support. Plan to join 15 minutes early for coffee clatch chat and networking or stay 15 minutes for the same networking experience.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/259111522/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

While our tech-based companies are struggling to find the talent needed to grow a new creative economy, our schools are still stuck in a 100-year-old model that was designed to produce workers for an industrial age. Students desperately want to be a part of the future but many are struggling to understand why they are even showing up to school each day. Here in Oregon, we have the second worst graduation rate in the entire country. Some would joke that we are the Mississippi of the West, except that Mississippi now has a higher graduation rate.

Four years ago Innovate Oregon launched The Dayton Experiment, in Dayton Oregon, a rural community in Yamhill County where two-thirds of the students live in poverty and a third of the students are Hispanic.

This experiment explored what might happen if you took the agile mindsets, skillsets, and toolsets from our agile community and partnered with a school district to re-imagine education. Might it be possible for an entire school district to transform from a traditional teaching institution into a dynamic learning organization, one that unleashes the creative genius of their students?

Today, Dayton has a 97% graduation rate and recently sent a student design team to be showcased at MIT. It is inspiring agile cultural transformations in districts throughout the entire state.

Thompson will be sharing the story of this journey and lessons that have been learned when bringing agile to a complex ecosystem. These lessons have direct implications for companies seeking to scale agile within their organizations.

Bio

Thompson Morrison is the Founder and Chief Evangelist for Innovate Oregon, originally a strategic initiative of the TAO Foundation. For 15 years he ran a software company whose development teams embraced agile practices. He was on the Board of the TAO and chaired their strategy committee that led the transformation of the organization from its earlier manifestation as the SAO. He led the team from the TAO and PDC that developed a community-based economic development strategy for the software industry. He was a founding board member of the STEM Investment Council and co-authored Oregon's STEM Investment Plan. He is also the co-founder of both TaborSpace and the Rosewood Initiative.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/259403430/

Do you believe great teams are the key to profitable, sustainable, and joyful workplaces? If yes, how do you get started? Your actions in the first few weeks can have a big impact on the ultimate results.

Join us for a 4th Friday discussion about starting up a new team. How do you form group norms, establish clear goals, and create an environment where everyone feels motivated to contribute? If you've been part of a really good team start we'd love to hear from you. If you learned some startup lessons the hard way, please come and help the rest of us avoid the same pain.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/259994527/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

Frameworks such as Scrum are lightweight, simple to understand, and difficult to master by design. The Manifesto for Agile Software Development consists of a handful of value statements along with twelve easy to comprehend principles and yet, it sometimes seems as if we as individuals and teams may never "get there." How do we as individuals and teams continue to grow, evolve, and embrace Agile values? What successful strategies have you employed? What behaviors are beneficial? Are there metrics or other ways of measuring progress toward these ideals?

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 reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/260087586/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

Join us for a hands-on workshop experiencing Mob Programming!
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.

Directions: The building you are looking for is on 2nd and Taylor (look for the Starbucks on the ground floor). Take the escalators on the 2nd St. entrance to the WTC Building One second floor lobby (ADA access: ground floor elevator). Take an elevator to the 9th floor (press '9' outside the elevators and use the indicated cab). Follow signs to the Cayuse lobby and sign in for the event.

Facilitator Bio:

Jeff Patterson is a software quality engineer at Jama Software, language agnostic, quality evangelist, and non-traditional CS grad. He has facilitated Global Day of Code Retreat, founded a peer group to support Community College CS students transferring to University, and is often heard saying, "Software is made of people!"

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/259599634/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

AgilePDX is providing a forum for Agile Project Managers, Agile Facilitators, and Scrum Masters to gather online once a month and discuss all things project, program, and portfolio related. Please join us for a Lean Coffee style event facilitated by experience Agile PM's and instructors in the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner prep program.

You'll be dialing in from your desktop with your favorite early morning brew. Please join with your camera on. The Zoom URL will be provided to confirmed attendees. Feel free to post questions to this meetup prior to the event.

We welcome divergent opinions and experience reports. Bring your challenges for groups feedback and support. Plan to join 15 minutes early for coffee clatch chat and networking or stay 15 minutes for the same networking experience.


Please RSVP at our Meetup page and get the Zoom connection info: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/260031767/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your space for another attendee.

Missing out on roundtable discussions due to location? Try out this virtual gathering.

The topic this month is: Agile Transformation
What do we think of, when we hear these words? Do we view it as promises of high performing teams and great business success? Or, maybe the transform reaches the entire company, moving the change process from team to leadership, company culture, and customer relationships. And while the 'Manifesto for Agile Software Development' was written by software developers, we can distill its statement to all professions: "We are uncovering better ways of X by doing it and helping others do it." Is this the core of an agile transformation?

What are your thoughts? What have you experienced, good or bad? Please join us and share your story and ask questions of others. There are no sages on stages in this discussion, and your contribution will make our discussion richer. This is us, sharing our experiences, and helping each other build on it.

Connect with us via Zoom!
Zoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/674417247

Photo by Danielle MacInnes (@dsmacinnes) on Unsplash.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/260205440/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

Some Agile methodologies prescribe roles within a team. Then why can it be so hard some times to get a team aligned and firing on all cylinders throughout the course of all sprints? This presentation will call out some areas to be aware of, that we can sometimes overlook, or be completely blind to when we start a project that is agile, waterfall, or hybrid. We will then look at avenues to address these oversights to empower you and your team to better see and address how you can improve your team’s effectiveness in building deliverables, your organization, and individual team members.

Bio

Kip Davis is the Principal at Deal With The Gap LLC. He has 25+ years professional experience in and across multiple functions from software & hardware support to Director of Marketing to PMO Manager, to Product Manager, and CRM Administrator, among others. He has helped set up and manage Programs, PMOs and Portfolios. He’s utilized agile, hybrid, and waterfall methodologies as manager, consultant, contractor, and employee. He is a life-long learner and has an MBA degree, with applicable certifications of Project Management Professional (PMP), Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Prosci Change Practitioner, Illumeo Organization Development Certification, and Certified Business Architect (CBA). Through extensive research and experience he has considered and conceptually combined and bridged several relevant industry models and methodologies and established an alignment framework which he uses to help individuals and organizations understand where they are in relation to their desired outcomes, and what options they can take or create to better accomplish their goals.

Notice: This meeting may be recorded.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/260162501/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

Where there are people, there are conflicts. What do you do when the people around you are fighting? Shut the door? (Oh, open office) Hope it will go away? (Please, Please I've got a deadline) So, how do you manage conflict between two people who aren't you?

Join us April 26 to discuss constructive ways to think about, work with and maybe even help resolve the conflict around us.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/259348182/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

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?

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 reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/261027784/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

According to the Scrum Guide, the Scrum Master serves the Product Owner in several ways, including:

Ensuring that goals, scope, and product domain are understood by everyone on the Scrum Team as well as possible;
Finding techniques for effective Product Backlog management;
Helping the Scrum Team understand the need for clear and concise Product Backlog items;
Understanding product planning in an empirical environment;
Ensuring the Product Owner knows how to arrange the Product Backlog to maximize value;
Understanding and practicing agility; and,
Facilitating Scrum events as requested or needed.

That said, every Scrum Master and Product Owner are a unique person with a differing set of skills and experience. Scrum Masters may help to make sprint planning engaging, or perhaps assist with Stakeholder education. Maybe Product Owners have enlisted their Scrum Masters in helping the team focus on the product mission and vision. Product Owners could struggle with an over-eager Scrum Master constantly "improving" the backlog tool with new and changing configurations. Or perhaps your Product Owner is showing up in daily stand-ups, asking why something isn't done yet...

What have you done as a Scrum Master to assist - or perhaps mitigate an undesired impact - of your Product Owner? What have you, Product Owner, wished for in your Scrum Master? Bring your questions and your experience, and share with your community!

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.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/259229066/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

What is Coderetreat?
Coderetreat is a day-long practice event that focuses on the fundamentals of good software development and design. Developers are given the opportunity of focused practice away from the pressures of “getting things done”, allowing them to sharpen their craft and to learn new skills in a safe environment. Yes, this event is women-focused, and everyone is welcome.

(Originally developed by Corey Haines, the global webpage is located at http://coderetreat.org/ if you would like to read more about it.)

Why attend a Coderetreat?
~ Learn new skills to help you write better code
~ Learn to take risks and experiment
~ Learn to practice writing code
~ Gain collaborative experience through pair programming
~ Network and make new friends

Wait...it’s free?
Yes, Coderetreat is free. There are simply 2 requirements that will help you get the most out of a Coderetreat:
~ Show up with an open mind and learner’s attitude.
~ Bring a laptop with a working development environment and testing framework, and be prepared to use it (see below for a list of popular IDEs).

What does a full day of coding practice involve?
Coderetreat is built on a specific formula. The day consists of usually[masked]-minute iterations in which participants are presented with a specific problem that they need to code. Emphasis is NOT placed on finishing, in fact participants are not expected to finish within the given 45 minutes. Instead, the emphasis is placed on learning new skills that enable participants to write code in a different way than would normally be the case. Participants change partners with each iteration, with the goal being that everyone should pair with someone different for every iteration. Techniques such as Test Driven Development will be introduced, with exposure to core fundamentals such as the 4 Rules of Simple Design and SOLID. Breakfast and lunch are both included, with gluten free options available. This is your chance to learn something new, and to be fed while doing it.

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

Come early and meet other attendees for a leisurely chat over coffee!

More details and handouts will be posted as we near the event, so watch this space and manage your RSVP so we have an accurate food and coffee headcount. This space is cozy, so seats are limited.


Please RSVP at our Meetup page and get the Zoom connection info: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/260145145/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your space for another attendee.

The PMI-ACP is the fastest-growing PMI certification and has been for several years. Not only does it require an exam, it also requires evidence of using agile approaches. The Agile Practice Guide is a guide to the state of the practice and how you might actually use agile approaches in your organization for your specific projects. While agile approaches are not for everyone, many projects can benefit from interim deliveries of value.

Johanna Rothman, co-chair of the first edition of the Agile Practice Guide, will deliver a short presentation of when agile approaches might work for you and answer your questions. Johanna and the APG are agnostic about which agile approach to use and when. Both Johanna and the APG focus on principles, not practices. Join us for what will be a spirited discussion of your possible use of agile approaches and the Agile Practice Guide.

Meetup Description: AgilePDX is providing a forum for Agile Project Managers, Agile Facilitators, and Scrum Masters to gather online once a month and discuss all things project, program, and portfolio related. Please join us for a Lean Coffee style event facilitated by experience Agile PM's and instructors in the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner prep program.

You'll be dialing in from your desktop with your favorite early morning brew. Please join with your camera on. The Zoom URL will be provided to confirmed attendees. Feel free to post questions to this meetup prior to the event.

We welcome divergent opinions and experience reports. Bring your challenges for groups feedback and support. Plan to join 15 minutes early for coffee clatch chat and networking or stay 15 minutes for the same networking experience.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/260920083/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

Join us for a hands-on workshop experiencing Mob Programming!
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.

Directions: The building you are looking for is on 2nd and Taylor (look for the Starbucks on the ground floor). Take the escalators on the 2nd St. entrance to the WTC Building One second floor lobby (ADA access: ground floor elevator). Take an elevator to the 9th floor (press '9' outside the elevators and use the indicated cab). Follow signs to the Cayuse lobby and sign in for the event.

Facilitator Bio:

Jeff Patterson is a software quality engineer at Jama Software, language agnostic, quality evangelist, and non-traditional CS grad. He has facilitated Global Day of Code Retreat, founded a peer group to support Community College CS students transferring to University, and is often heard saying, "Software is made of people!"

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/261043167/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

One of the keys to effectiveness is to know yourself and show yourself the Goldilocks amount. How do you avoid TMI (Too Much Information)? And, at the other end of the spectrum, how do you keep from being too reserved to share much of anything with other people?

If you know yourself well enough, you can share relevant information to improve communication and connect with others. And the more expert communicators you have on your team, the more potential you have to build trust in a professional way.

One tool to help you on this journey is the Johari Window. Created by psychologists Joseph Luft (1916–2014) and Harrington Ingham (1916–1995) in 1955, the Johari Window helps people understand what they show and what they hide from the world; what they don't see and what they don't even know about themselves.

Neal first learned about the Johari Window in one of his leadership training sessions, and it piqued his interest as a facilitation tool. We are excited to have Neal share his insights about how to use the Johari window to help teams connect on a deeper level without oversharing. And for those interested, we'll have an opportunity for hands-on exercises.

Bio
Neal Peterson is a business consultant who helps businesses utilize the full capacity of their systems and processes. His goal is to enable businesses and people to do more with less, more efficiently and effectively. As a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), Six Sigma Lean Black Belt Professional (LBBP), and self taught agile coach, he collaborates across the functional departments of an organization to enable continuous measurable improvement of end to end value chain processes. He has done this for companies in the healthcare, financial services, retail, government, software, semi-conductor, transportation, shipping, and manufacturing industries. He seeks to share the agile mindset with others in the community via conversations and facilitated sessions that enable learning in a collaborative environment.

Notice: This meeting may be recorded.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/259859953/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

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?

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 reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/259745618/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

Join us for a beer (or beverage of your choice) and a snack at the Rogue Eastside Pub to discuss The Age of Agile by Stephen Denning. (Our poll tied twice, so I flipped the coin, as promised. If you want to read Start with Why by Sinek, we'll do that next time!)

Here's the book in a nutshell from the book flap: "The Age of Agile unpacks the groundbreaking ideas and practices that are remaking the very foundations of business. Reporting from the front lines, Denning takes you deep into the Agile management revolution. Denning demystifies Agile by providing three “laws” that make it practical and clear:

• The Law of the Small Team shows how to operate in a “VUCA” world (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity). Using this law, difficult problems are split into manageable batches and performed by small cross-functional, self-governing teams, working iteratively in short cycles, with fast feedback from customers and end-users.

• The Law of the Customer flows from the epic shift in power in the marketplace from seller to buyer, and the need for firms to radically accelerate their ability to make decisions and change direction in light of unexpected events and new customer demands. It amounts to a Copernican revolution in management.

• The Law of the Network (the linchpin of Agile) illustrates what’s involved in making the entire organization Agile."

Let's ponder and talk about how his "Laws" help us or hinder us on our agile journeys.

Join the #reading channel in our AgilePDX slack workspace to share your thoughts & ideas about this and future reads. Not part of AgilePDX slack? Send a request to [email protected] and we'll invite you.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/260954070/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

In-the-real-world, what does making a difference as a Scrum Master look like?

We know what the scrum guide says about Scrum Masters; what you are supposed to do. And we know that in practice, all kinds of other things happen. :) You want to make a difference.

So what does making a difference look like? Who do you need to be? What would be happening around you? What would you be doing that is different than standard scrum?

Bring your questions and your opinions and join a discussion that hopefully will inspire you to go out in the world to do great things.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/261482826/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

Our community of practice wants to explore the evolution of Agile.

We acknowledge that the manifesto and principles were developed to address the unique needs for software engineering and development. Over the years we have seen Agile frameworks, both formal and informal, emerge and be embraced by different people and organizations. These frameworks are now being leveraged outside of software development. We see some of these tools being applied across many different industries and disciplines.

I believe we all share a view that iterative and incremental value delivery is a powerful tool. Self reflection and a commitment to continuous improvement is more than just a practice, it is a value to be lived.

Have we gotten to a place where it is time to have the conversation about (A)gile as a set of engineering practices, where (a)gility is how to empower people and teams to do valuable work in a different way regardless of the industry or product being delivered?

Events are made possible by the AgilePDX community and our sponsors, including platinum sponsor ProFocus Technology: https://www.profocustechnology.com/.
Learn more about our sponsors at https://agilepdx.org/sponsorship.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/260412479/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

You asked to talk to people who use Lean and Agile methods in government, and we found you John Dickson. What’s his biggest secret for success in using Lean and Agile? It’s all about respecting people and their opinions and never use the words Lean or Agile—and definitely never think of agile as a noun. John’s experience in Washington State and Spokane County government has made the papers—literally. And his Lean chops come straight out of Boeing.

Come hear John set context for a meaty discussion on doing what we do every day—successfully and in some of the toughest places to do it. Listen carefully, and be prepared for a hands-on, cheerful, conflict-welcoming style as you pose your questions and question your assumptions about how government services get delivered.

John has been an executive in private industry, state and now county government. He’s successfully led very large organizational transformations in each sector, giving him a unique perspective on how to effectively inspire people in any industry to willingly improve their processes to obtain better results.

Since March 2013, John has been Spokane County’s Chief Operations Officer. He’s leading significant operational improvement activities within county government and across the region focused on more efficient, effective and affordable processes. Since 2014, over 500 improvement projects have been initiated and run by county staff. And by collaborating with many local government and business leaders, several regional law and justice reform projects are successfully being implemented.

Previously, John worked for the military side of Boeing for over 20 years and had senior leadership roles on the Sea Launch, B-2 bomber, and F-22 Raptor programs. He left Boeing in 2006 to become Berg Integrated System’s General Manager, a start-up company in Plummer, ID, that fabricated large fuel bladders and expandable shelters for the US Army. His government career began in 2010 when he became WA State Employment Security Department’s Regional Area Director overseeing the WorkSource Spokane Employment Center. John has also been a Dale Carnegie leadership trainer since 2003 and has been ranked as high as their #2 trainer worldwide.

Meetup Description:
AgilePDX is providing a forum for Agile Project Managers, Agile Facilitators, and Scrum Masters to gather online once a month and discuss all things project, program, and portfolio related. Please join us for a Lean Coffee style event facilitated by experience Agile PM's and instructors in the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner prep program.

You'll be dialing in from your desktop with your favorite early morning brew. Please join with your camera on. The Zoom URL will be provided to confirmed attendees. Feel free to post questions to this meetup prior to the event.

We welcome divergent opinions and experience reports. Bring your challenges for groups feedback and support. Plan to join 15 minutes early for coffee clatch chat and networking or stay 15 minutes for the same networking experience.

Events are made possible by the AgilePDX community and our sponsors, including platinum sponsor ProFocus Technology: https://www.profocustechnology.com/
Learn more about our sponsors at https://agilepdx.org/sponsorship


Please RSVP at our Meetup page and get the Zoom connection info: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/261248175/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your space for another attendee.

Missing out on round-table discussions due to location? Try out this virtual gathering.

The topic this month is: Patterns of Resistance
Agile implementations introduce change, in processes and in mindset. And change raises concern, fear, and - resistance! As you've experienced organizational change (perhaps agile transformation), what have you observed as patterns of resistance? What is obvious, and what sneaks up? Where do they come from? And how can we apply agile principles of collaboration, iteration with inspection, and direct communication to help mitigate these patterns, and help people identify and grow into new opportunities?

You are always welcome to join our community of practice. Bring your questions or stories to learn from and share!

Connect with us via Zoom:
Zoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/674417247

Events are made possible by the AgilePDX community and our sponsors, including platinum sponsor ProFocus Technology https://www.profocustechnology.com/. Learn more about our sponsors at https://agilepdx.org/sponsorship.

Photo by Alex Rodríguez Santibáñez on Unsplash

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/tjcbbryzjbvb/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

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.

Events are made possible by the AgilePDX community and our sponsors, including platinum sponsor ProFocus Technology: https://www.profocustechnology.com/. Learn more about our sponsors: https://agilepdx.org/sponsorship.

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 reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/262003435/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

Join us for a hands-on workshop experiencing Mob Programming!

This workshop starts with a short discussion, then we will dive right in to mobbing on a simple programming problem that includes tests! We provide plenty of opportunities to ask questions and reflect on what we're learning.

All skill levels and software disciplines are welcome!!! The mob programming workshop is a risk free, safe space for you to learn and experiment with this energizing and effective way of creating software!

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.

Directions: The building you are looking for is on 2nd and Taylor (look for the Starbucks on the ground floor). Take the escalators on the 2nd St. entrance to the WTC Building One second floor lobby (ADA access: ground floor elevator). Take an elevator to the 9th floor (press '9' outside the elevators and use the indicated cab). Follow signs to the Cayuse lobby and sign in for the event.

Facilitator Bio:

Jeff Patterson is a software quality engineer at Jama Software, language agnostic, quality evangelist, and non-traditional CS grad. He has facilitated Global Day of Code Retreat, founded a peer group to support Community College CS students transferring to University, and is often heard saying, "Software is made of people!"

Events are made possible by the AgilePDX community and our sponsors, including platinum sponsor ProFocus Technology https://www.profocustechnology.com/. Learn more about our sponsors at https://agilepdx.org/sponsorship.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/261472603/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

Agile is part of an evolution in consciousness--in the nature of our awareness and noticing skills and our knowledge of self and other. When agile emerges in an organization, it does so within a consciousness unlike its own. Yet, our approaches to agility often impede its ability to stick where it emerges.

Agilists have used the frames of mindset and learning. But, we need to use the frames of consciousness and development in order to truly transform. In doing so, we see agile transformations are actually personal transformations. Organizations don't change, people change and then the organization adapts.

This deep dive session discusses the agile mindset and puts “mindset” in the context of “consciousness.” It speaks to advancing agilists who are trying to understand why adoptions go wrong when they have done everything "right." You are more likely to receive full value in this session if you have been pursuing agility within organisations for at least three years.

This session provides pointers on how to spot developmental as opposed to lower level learning experiences. It is based on my own practice, on research I did for my master’s thesis, and on my book The Preservation of the Agile Heart: From Mindset to Consciousness.

Learning Outcomes:

· Be able to articulate a working definition of consciousness
· Understand the difference between mindset and consciousness
· Understand how consciousness and human development align
· Understand the difference between learning and development
· Be able to spot learning opportunities that do not facilitate development
· Be able to create opportunities for personal development and self-care in the context of development

About the Presenter:

Jean Richardson is a consultant and coach with nearly 30 years of experience in software development, with half of that time spent in learning about agile and participating in the agile movement. For the last six years she has coached individuals and teams in agile-aspiring organizations. A former AgilePDX Coordinating Committee member, Jean is actively involved in helping, guiding, and coaching the agile community at the local and national levels toward a collective agile consciousness!

Notice: This meeting may be recorded.

Events are made possible by the AgilePDX community and our sponsors, including platinum sponsor ProFocus Technology https://www.profocustechnology.com/. Learn more about our sponsors at https://agilepdx.org/sponsorship.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/261504385/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

AgilePDX is excited to have been a part of the meaningful collaboration with Lean Portland, Responsive Portland, and Agile Open Northwest that launched Future of Work.

And we are proud to continue to collaborate by cross-posting the Future of Work's second annual conference in Portland https://fowpdx.com.

Future of Work is about creating safe spaces to build community and explore work-life innovation. This event is a collaborative Open Space conference to host discussions and ideations to reimagine our work spaces to create "workplaces where we can thrive and effect positive change as the world evolves."

Future of Work believes "that by coming together we are able to change the places where we work into environments where we trust and value one another; where we can integrate work with life; where we can innovate and be better humans through better companies."

We hope you will consider joining in to forward this good work for our agile community.

To RSVP, please register for the conference here:

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/262205676/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

All of our agile tools, methods, and frameworks are only successful if there is trust within the team. Join us Friday June 28th for a build-our-own-adventure discussion on building trust within the team. Model good trust building behavior and share your trust challenges. Help your agile cohorts with your hard won lessons. This promises to be a helpful and timely discussion.

Events are made possible by the AgilePDX community and our sponsors, including platinum sponsor ProFocus Technology https://www.profocustechnology.com/. Learn more about our sponsors at https://agilepdx.org/sponsorship.


Please RSVP at our Meetup page and get the Zoom connection info: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/260412485/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your space for another attendee.

AgilePDX is providing a forum for Agile Project Managers, Agile Facilitators, and Scrum Masters to gather online once a month and discuss all things project, program, and portfolio related. Please join us for a Lean Coffee style event facilitated by experience Agile PM's and instructors in the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner prep program.

You'll be dialing in from your desktop with your favorite early morning brew. Please join with your camera on. The Zoom URL will be provided to confirmed attendees. Feel free to post questions to this meetup prior to the event.

We welcome divergent opinions and experience reports. Bring your challenges for groups feedback and support. Plan to join 15 minutes early for coffee clatch chat and networking or stay 15 minutes for the same networking experience.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/262070829/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

Join us for a beer (or beverage of your choice) and a snack at the Rogue Eastside Pub to discuss Start with Why by Simon Sinek. (Our poll tied twice, and this is part two!)

Here's the book in a nutshell, according to the handy Amazon description: "In 2009, Simon Sinek started a movement to help people become more inspired at work, and in turn inspire their colleagues and customers. Since then, millions have been touched by the power of his ideas, including more than 28 million who’ve watched his TED Talk based on START WITH WHY -- the third most popular TED video of all time.

Sinek starts with a fundamental question: Why are some people and organizations more innovative, more influential, and more profitable than others? Why do some command greater loyalty from customers and employees alike? Even among the successful, why are so few able to repeat their success over and over?

People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers had little in common, but they all started with WHY. They realized that people won't truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it.

START WITH WHY shows that the leaders who've had the greatest influence in the world all think, act, and communicate the same way -- and it's the opposite of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this powerful idea The Golden Circle, and it provides a framework upon which organizations can be built, movements can be led, and people can be inspired. And it all starts with WHY."

Let's ponder and talk about how asking WHY will help us or hinder us on our agile journeys.

Join the #reading channel in our AgilePDX slack workspace to share your thoughts & ideas about this and future reads. Not part of AgilePDX slack? Send a request to [masked] and we'll invite you.

Events are made possible by the AgilePDX community and our sponsors, including platinum sponsor ProFocus Technology https://www.profocustechnology.com/ . Learn more about our sponsors at https://agilepdx.org/sponsorship.

Please RSVP on our Meetup page to reserve your spot: https://www.meetup.com/AgilePDX-User-Group-Portland-Metro/events/262235120/
If you are unable to attend, please update your RSVP to open your seat for another attendee.

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.

Events are made possible by the AgilePDX community and our sponsors, including platinum sponsor ProFocus Technology: https://www.profocustechnology.com/. Learn more about our sponsors at https://agilepdx.org/sponsorship.

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 as we explore a framework for iterative hardware-based product development. Kris Dobelstein will share insights into leveraging an Agile mindset, methodologies, and tools to envision product goals, clarify assumptions, uncover risk, align teams, and prioritize development resulting in timely, highly relevant products.

Agile practices aren't new, they're just rarely used effectively outside of software development. We'll give historical and practical examples, mostly from aviation, to illustrate some time-worn strategies for implementing Agile practices in hardware development. Most notably, an Agile product development framework for hardware products needs to:

1) Start slow to go fast 2) Delay key decisions as long as possible 3) Leverage 21st-century prototyping tools 4) Value high-bandwidth collaboration between teams, customers, and vendors over specifications, requirements, and contracts

Kris will provide an overview of a typical development cycle, highlighting how to get started with vision boarding, the product narrative, and development pre-mortem.

Then we will take a look at how to get the development ball rolling and maintain momentum in opportunity-rich environments using provisional architectures, various value lenses, customer feedback, and the all-important retrospective.

Come learn how hardware development offers unique opportunities to practice agility!

Take-aways - "Agile" product development isn't just 20 years old. In fact, highly collaborative, iterative development has been around for 80+ years. - Agile isn't about choosing a particular framework, it's about your mindset. - When you're making hardware, iterative approaches need to take the steps of designing and making tangibles into account. - Strategic communication tools help teams think about how to get started and align around a common vision so that they can learn to share iterations across disciplines. - Practical approaches for keeping hardware development modular and iterative.

About the Presenter

Kris Dobelstein has led hardware product development efforts using a variety of methodologies and techniques over the last decade. He has experimented with traditional and Agile project management methodologies and is constantly (and enthusiastically) looking for ways to evolve project management to optimize for creating products that customers love while keeping development efforts sustainable and enjoyable. He is a Pacific Northwest native and lives, works, and plays in Portland, Oregon with his family.

Notice: This meeting may be recorded.

Events are made possible by the AgilePDX community and our sponsors, including platinum sponsor ProFocus Technology (https://www.profocustechnology.com/). Learn more about our sponsors at https://agilepdx.org/sponsorship.

Additional Information:

Q: Is the space ADA accessible? A: Yes, Puppet is ADA accessible. Please knock to have the security guard help with doors.

Q: Will there be gender neutral restrooms? A: We are still checking on this.

Q: Will there be food and drinks at this event? A: Pizza is sponsored by PNSQC, and soda is courtesy of Puppet.

Q: What is the easiest way to get to the venue? A: Street parking downtown is limited, but there are parking garages in walking distance. For public transportation options, please visit https://trimet.org/ to plan your trip to Puppet at 308 SW 2nd Avenue in Downtown Portland.

Q: How do I enter the building? A: Enter the building on 2nd Avenue, and knock for security guard to open the doors. Take the elevator to the 5th floor to access Puppet's event space.