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

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

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

In today’s business environment, Information Technology (IT) is not an option. The outsourcing of IT infrastructure is quickly becoming a critical decision for many businesses that are challenged to reduce costs, while maintaining their competitive advantage and planning for the future.

Companies such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft are building massive data centers to provide for the needs of most businesses. While some of this is work in progress, today there are already many choices available to outsource your IT infrastructure.

This course will give you the most practical, vendor-neutral perspective to make decisions on what is right for your business now and in terms of future choices for hosting your computing infrastructure externally.

The New Communicators is a three-day series of events exploring the ways we communicate with each other. It is an open forum for discussion, education and inspiration, free of charge. * * * In 2007 Alex Linsker walked up to strangers in New York City’s Union Square Park and said, “I’ll give you $5 if in five minutes or less we can’t figure out what to do about an upcoming situation you aren’t looking forward to.” It didn’t cost him too much to develop a set of questions. As a radio interviewer summarized, “Exciting Strengths that you find in one area of your life can then be extrapolated to all areas of life, and we can use them in really any project or goal we’ve created.”

In this workshop, we’ll apply strengths to what’s important to you at work or in life. We will walk through exercises, practice asking the questions and grow the way we think.

Join us on Thursday to explore your exciting strengths and take home a new approach to dealing with challenges and situations that cause anxiety.

RSVP to [email protected] or 503 468-3950

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

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

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

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

The Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference wants you to speak at our conference! We want hear from you about what you're working on. We're accepting abstracts now for speakers for October's conference, and want to work with you to speed up the application process. Come get your questions answered and have some food on us.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.]

Learn to Coach: Tech Managers & Teams is an immersive workshop that breaks down the fundamentals of coaching for managers in startup and technical environments. Over the course of the morning, we'll learn the elements of effective coaching and have time to practice, too!

This isn't your average coaching conversation - it's hands-on, no slides, and really fun (we promise - you get to build things, make stuff, and break stuff!) It's also not a leadership development class! This workshop is about actionable, real-world techniques that you can apply in your daily work immediately.

This course is designed for new and mid-level managers who have teams of 1+ people. It can also be a great tool for HR and people managers who are looking to add coaching skills to their toolboxes.

Change Management in the Startup Ecosystem is a workshop designed to help managers, teams, and leaders understand and manage change in their startups. This will be an interactive, practical session with overviews of established models, enlightening conversations, and activities for applying the models that hold strong in startups.

Let's be real, in a startup there is always a change happening! It's constant. And if employees can be more aware of the emotional and organizational implications of change, and have strategies and tools to help with these transitions, work will be smoother, and goals will be achieved quicker.

This workshop is designed for people managers of all levels, but can be beneficial for individual contributors and HR employees as well. Before the session, we'll ask you to think about a change you (and/or your team members) are actively experiencing, and come ready to discuss and work through this real-world scenario.

Only a few seats left and only a few days left to sign up for “Coaching for Results using the Agile Fluency Game” workshop in Portland OR, May 30-31. Play the simulation of 2.5 years in the life of a software team. How much benefit can you earn? Learn many ways to share the game experience with teams, product people, managers & leaders, scrum masters, and more. Register now. More details at https://afp_game_workshop_portland.eventbrite.com

Curious about the Agile Fluency Project? This is the place to start!

Learn about the Agile Fluency Model, the Agile Fluency Lifecycle, and play the Agile Fluency Game.

You’ll gain new insights into what Agile can look like in your organization and how to invest in change.

Come play the Agile Fluency Game! You’ll gain new insights into the benefits and trade-offs of adopting agile practices—and you’ll have a great time doing it.

The Agile Fluency Game authentically simulates 2½ years on a software development team. It was developed so experiments in the game lead to new insights about your real-world options. As you play the game, you’ll make decisions about which agile practices to adopt. Of course, you have to deliver features, too! Or what’s the point?

This is a great experience for agile team members interested in learning more about their options; managers and leaders wanting to better understand agile development; and people who enjoy modern board games such as Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride.

“Saved us money on our agile transition effort by getting a preview in 90 minutes!” —Director, Agile Center of Excellence

“Makes the need for best practices come to life.” —Manager

“Played first game and beautifully painted ourselves into a corner through the same mistakes real teams make. How’d that happen? Powerful teaching.” —Senior Learning & Development Manager

“[Our leadership team] experienced 20 years of agile learning in 4 hours!” —Director, R & D

“The shift from playing the game gave new focus to our discussion of leadership challenges.” —VP, Product Management

Doors open at 6pm. We’ll start playing at 6:30. Be sure to arrive before then: the building is secured at 6:30 and no further entry is allowed.

To learn more about the game, visit https://www.agilefluency.org/game.php.

CORONAVIRUS NOTE: We've been asked if we still plan to hold this event given the concerns about Coronavirus. We DO plan to hold the event, with the following precautions:

• Attendance is limited to 16 people. (First come, first served.)
• We will not be serving food or drink or allowing food in the game room. If you bring food, we have a separate dining area where you can eat.
• Hand sanitizer and tissues will be available. Restrooms for washing hands are right across the hall.
• Do not attend if you're sick or have flu symptoms.

Cancelled due to Coronavirus.

Come play the Agile Fluency Game! You’ll gain new insights into the benefits and trade-offs of adopting agile practices—and you’ll have a great time doing it.

The Agile Fluency Game authentically simulates 2½ years on a software development team. It was developed so experiments in the game lead to new insights about your real-world options. As you play the game, you’ll make decisions about which agile practices to adopt. Of course, you have to deliver features, too! Or what’s the point?

This is a great experience for agile team members interested in learning more about their options; managers and leaders wanting to better understand agile development; and people who enjoy modern board games such as Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride.

“Saved us money on our agile transition effort by getting a preview in 90 minutes!” —Director, Agile Center of Excellence

“Makes the need for best practices come to life.” —Manager

“Played first game and beautifully painted ourselves into a corner through the same mistakes real teams make. How’d that happen? Powerful teaching.” —Senior Learning & Development Manager

“[Our leadership team] experienced 20 years of agile learning in 4 hours!” —Director, R & D

“The shift from playing the game gave new focus to our discussion of leadership challenges.” —VP, Product Management

Doors open at 6pm. We’ll start playing at 6:30. Be sure to arrive before then: the building is secured at 6:30 and no further entry is allowed.

To learn more about the game, visit https://www.agilefluency.org/game.php.

CORONAVIRUS NOTE: We've been asked if we still plan to hold this event given the concerns about Coronavirus. We DO plan to hold the event, with the following precautions:

• Attendance is limited to 16 people. (First come, first served.)
• We will not be serving food or drink or allowing food in the game room. If you bring food, we have a separate dining area where you can eat.
• Hand sanitizer and tissues will be available. Restrooms for washing hands are right across the hall.
• Do not attend if you're sick or have flu symptoms.

COVID has certainly impacted our lives in many, many ways. After positive experiences from working at home, a number of people are now looking to continue in a hybrid or remote work environment. As an employer, what are the legal implications that you need to consider in these new environments? How do you maintain your culture and sense of camaraderie? As an entrepreneur, what services/products can you offer companies to support their efforts as they struggle with these challenges?

Join us on Wednesday, December 1st to hear from three speakers who are dealing with these changes in the workplace, and learn what they are doing. You will hear from: • A labor and employment lawyer discussing the legal implications of a hybrid or remote workforce. • A Chief Experience Officer who will share culture/team building best practices and how they've changed when teams are remote and/or hybrid. • A CEO of a local, small tech company that has gone totally remote. She’ll talk about how they made that decision, and what they've done to maintain team cohesiveness.

From this Lunch & Learn, you will gain insights, tools and creative ideas on how to thrive in a hybrid or remote work environment.

Panelists

Tonie Bitseff Special Counsel, Buchalter Tonie Bitseff is a member of the Corporate Law and Labor & Employment Practice Groups in the Firm’s Seattle office. She provides advice on compensation and benefit matters, including assisting clients with design, diligence review, internal audits and many other issues involving employment law. Ms. Bitseff also serves as ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act) counsel supporting contract negotiations and business transactions such as mergers and acquisitions.

Jen Regan Co-founder and Chief Experience Officer, Morpheus XR As Chief Experience Officer, Jen Regan guides marketplace facilitation and experiences. She has over 15 years of thought leadership in change management, executive coaching, and employee engagement within the live entertainment industry working with over 120 live event venues, 20 sports teams, 10 Fortune 200 companies, 7 music festivals, and serves on the boards of 4 non-profits. Jen graduated from Willamette University and is now living in Santa Monica.

Robin Jones CEO, Monsoon Robin Jones is a startup jill-of-all-trade, having held leadership roles across a broad array of functions. She was formerly SVP Marketing & BD at Socrata, where she grew qualified pipeline coverage by 6X+. She founded and grew the OEM business unit at Esri and co-founded FonJax, which was sold to Keynote Systems. Robin has an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and a BS of from Stanford University. She serves on the BOD of TiE Oregon and TiE Oregon Foundation.

Moderator

Ernie Bootsma Shareholder, Buchalter As a shareholder at Buchalter, Ernie Bootsma has been actively representing start-up and emerging growth businesses, family businesses, and mature companies, since 1990. His legal practice encompasses company formation, finance, governance, M&A, as well as intellectual