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.

Note: This event is FREE, however space is limited so please RSVP.

Learn how to get the most out of your IT help desk while enjoying a complimentary taco bar by Qdoba!

We will be having lunch with representatives from LANDesk Software who will show us the power of LANDesk Service Desk!

Plus free giveaways courtesy of LANDesk!

RSVP to [email protected] Space is limited so please sign up early.

Questions? Call us at 503-644-3434.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Here's the abstract:

Agile Still Sucks.

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

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

Details and Pizza:

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

The program starts at 7:00 pm.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

What's the best way to collaborate as a team to move code from development to production? What tools are available that really work? And how do you get your team on-board to use them?

Join us September 24 for Teamwork Best Practices between Development, Test, and DevOps! During this event industry practitioners will share practical experience, different models to use and best practices associated with DevOps, Development and Testing. They are also prepared to discuss insights into the new advances in this area.

Panelist: Andrew Blew, Manager - Service Reliability Engineering at iovation Jim Dewson, DevOps Manager at HealthSparq *Lisa Davis, QA & DevOps Engineering Manager at Columbia Sportswear

Moderator: Randy Pelligrini, Software Quality Assurance Manager at Healthsparq

Event Details: Date: September 24 Time: 5:30-8:00 pm Where: Kells Irish Pub Cost: Members $25 | Non-members $45

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/

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.

Be Bold! Rappel for her: the strong, smart, bold girls in our community on August 2-3rd at 200 Market Street, Portland. Spots are limited. Grab yours today by registering to raise $1,000 for Girls Inc. PNW!

Girls Inc. of the Pacific Northwest inspires girls ages 6-18 to be Strong, Smart, and Bold. Every day, we push our girls out of their comfort zones through our gender-specific and research-based curricula. Now, in honor of the 2,200 girls that we serve annually, we are asking our community to be bold as well by rappelling 17 stories down the 200 Market Street building! The event is 100% safe, and being hosted in partnership with our friends at Over the Edge USA.