McMenamins Ringlers Pub

You have a big idea, maybe even a co-founder. Now you're ready to Pitch for a Beer and get frank and fast feedback from Portland Seed Fund managers, investors and alums!

How it works: No sign-up required. First 12 entrepreneurs to arrive will get 5-min power sessions with PSF managers Jim Huston, Angela Jackson and Jenn Lynch. Ringler booths will be filled with PSF alumni founders and mentors, so additional rotations give you extra feedback. Everyone gets pizza (and a beer!)

Event capacity - 50 people.

Questions? [email protected]

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/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.

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/

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/

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/

For many years, AgilePDX has been an informal meetup led by a small core team. Over the years, the PDX Agile community has grown and diversified and so has AgilePDX's public education and community development offerings. As Portland and the local Agile community continue to evolve, the AgilePDX Coordinating Committee is moving forward to create AgilePDX as a nonprofit to ensure sustainability of the organization as costs rise and the need for programs continues to grow steeply.

At this informal happy hour (much like the Downtown Pub Lunch and Westside Cafe) we are seeking feedback from the community about the governance model you would like to see in the bylaws, whether you seek influence as a formal member helping to lead the community or whether you are happy for a small core group to go forward as a leadership team making strategic and tactical decisions on behalf of the community.

There will be two happy hours--one on the east side and one on the west side--to accommodate schedules and commutes. Please turn out and be part of the discussion. This is your chance to listen, learn about governance options, speak up, or simply look on as history is being made.

Practicing Team Learning: What team and team member learning practices does your team and org support? Which has worked well for you?

Continous learning is essential for successful agile practitioners, teams, and organizations. We voted and the people have spoken. We want to know what works well with regards to continuous learning and how to model that personally, professionally, and organizationally.

Bring your experience, your thoughts, your questions, and your appetite to McMenamins Ringlers to enjoy great conversation, great food, and beer! Invite your friends and co-workers, plenty of space for everyone.actice and learn from each other. Also, we get to eat great food and drink beer!

Follow the link to our meetup to RSVP!

We learn through doing. Sometimes that means failing. Some of our greatest lessons come from learning what not to do or failing to deliver something important. This is in line with the motto "Fail Fast" which we hear often.

How do we, as agilists, build organizations that embrace the whole of failure as a way of learning? What does it take to allow the team and people to fail, with clear feedback that supports growth and development? How do we make it safe to fail, but still have consequences, because without consequences failure is meaningless?

Bring your collective experience with this, share your challenges and fears, and bring your questions to Ringlers where we get to build our community of practice and learn from each other. Also, we get to eat great food and drink beer!

Follow the link to our meetup to RSVP!

So Agile is all about learning, right? But how do people--particularly the kind of people who use Agile methods--learn?

We pair, share accountability for code quality, do hackathons, dev days, and Coderetreats. We retrospect and introspect. We Spike. We Increment and Iterate. We experiment and evaluate. We dialogue and converse.

But, isn't there some method, some theoretical underpinning? And have we learned anything new in the last twenty years about how people learn?

Bring your friends, your teams, you unconvinced managers to Ringlers where we will do what we do: dialogue, converse, share, eat pub grub and drink beer. You know you want to be here!

Okay, you've got your team formed, but, wait, something's wrong. How come some people are always the ones to save the day? How come some people are always burning the midnight oil? Are they afraid of the Stack Ranking Monster?

Okay, you've got your team formed, but, wait, something's wrong. How come some people are always the ones to save the day? How come some people are always burning the midnight oil? Are they afraid of the Stack Ranking Monster?

Worse, yet, if it's your job to supply HR with "the list," how do you feel about this?

What techniques have we found to help HR understand why stack ranking negatively impacts productivity? And didn't the guy who started this all have something to say about that? Thanks, Jack.

Teamwork is critical to agile methodologies and our lunch discussion topics show it. The March pub lunch will focus on what healthy team norms are.

Team norms can help members understand how to interact with each other and how to conduct the daily business. This can include interpersonal items like respect, agreed tool usage, or company objectives such as time for cross-training and continued learning. What would you consider norms for a "healthy" team? As a team member, what have you experienced that you like (or that didn't work)? As a facilitator, what have you seen work well? How should such a team agreement be manifested and documented? And who should contribute to the content?

Share your experience about teams creating their norms and standards, and listen to others offering their experiences how creating a team agreement can help and how to go about it.

Have you ever been part of a team where people just didn't seem to be working together? Maybe you didn't even know each others' names? Perhaps you report into different parts of the organization and get pulled in different directions?

Good news! There's plenty of research about the characteristics that indicate a group is a team.

Come on down to Ringlers' next month to tell your stories and troubleshoot your situation with your agile friends at the pub!

We start on time and end on time. You're welcome to come early and stay late to chat. Feel free to order when you come in so we don't slam the kitchen. RSVP's are preferred but not required.

Have our facilitation skills and available remote team tools improved enough to have successful remote agile teams?

Up until now we've preferred co-located teams for agile development. One of the principals behind the agile manifesto is:

The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

In our zooming, facetiming, skyping world is this still true?

Join us Friday January 5th at Ringlers Pub for a face-to-face conversation about how the improvements in video conferencing and team collaboration tools changes our approaches to pursuing agility.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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] .

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].

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!

Have you ever wondered why some approaches work well in one context and not so well in others? In order to improve our chances for success, we need to understand the nature of the situation we are working with in order to take appropriate action. Failing to recognize the nature of the situation at hand results in misinformed decisions with potentially catastrophic consequences.

Cynefin is a sensemaking framework that helps people understand their context and situation in order to take appropriate action.

In this meetup we will review the basics of the Cynefin framework and discuss other options for continued learning.

Optional Pre-Work:

A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making https://hbr.org/2007/11/a-leaders-framework-for-decision-making

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.

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.

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].

You have a big idea, maybe even a co-founder. Now you're ready to Pitch for a Beer and get frank and fast feedback from Portland Seed Fund managers, investors and alums!

How it works: No sign-up required. First 12 entrepreneurs to arrive will get 5-min power sessions with PSF managers Jim Huston, Angela Jackson and Jenn Lynch. Ringler booths will be filled with PSF alumni founders and mentors, so additional rotations give you extra feedback. Everyone gets pizza (and a beer!)

Event capacity - 50 people.

In our last meeting we started talking about moving across Cynefin domains. Let's continue the conversation a dive into a common pattern of working between complex and complicated. This is where Agile scrum operates at most times.

Here are a couple of leading questions to get the conversation started:

• What does moving between Cynefin domains actually mean? What is moving?

• How do we move things between domains? How is this managed?

• Do you have any examples of moving from Complicated to Complex and vice versa?

Interpersonal conflicts, talking past one another, and friction within teams are a few symptoms people experience in the disordered domain of the Cynefin framework. Let's explore this domain in our next meetup.

-How do you know if you are in the domain of disorder?

-What are the characteristics of this domain?

-What heuristics are appropriate?

This is still a fairly new group, so other topics of interest related to Cynefin or complex adaptive systems are welcome. Feel free to invite others that may be interested.

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.

A Leader's Framework for Decision Making - The Cynefin Framework

How do you make sense of situations in order to make decisions appropriately?

Proposed Agenda: • We will cover the basics of situational-based decision making. • What has changed since the 2007 HBR Article? • Discuss the latest changes to the framework

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5689229_A_Leader%27s_Framework_for_Decision_Making

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.

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.

We created this group to build a community of practitioners interested in exploring the Cynefin framework, its implications and applications. If you would like to learn more about Cynefin, or if you are just curious, please join us.

For more information on the Cynefin framework watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7oz366X0-8

Pre-reading https://hbr.org/2007/11/a-leaders-framework-for-decision-making

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].

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].

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]

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.

We’ve been hearing about it for years. GROW is the new new thing. DevOps builds on Agile and is the new new thing. Hybrid is bad, and Agile only works if you follow the book—right? You got that book? Are we ineffective, tired, fighting back, plodding on, or something else?

Has the practice of what we think of as Agile changed? Can we not be Agile without first being Lean? What about Agile/Lean? When even signers of the Agile Manifesto speak up against Agile, what’s an agilist to think?

Or is agile SAFe and sound and the Agile brand has developed a stink? Too many forced marches to agility? Do we need to start calling “agile” “nimble” in order to make progress? And, frankly, how much do we care about what’s in the press?

The Downtown Pub Lunchers care enough to have voted this topic in last month with a participating attendance of 40 pub grub munching agilists. Come on down and help us sort this one out. You probably have the answer. There’s beer, and we’ll be in the back.

RSVP's not required but much appreciated at [email protected]. It helps determine whether to move the furniture and ask for additional servers.

We’ve been hearing about it for years. GROW is the new new thing. DevOps builds on Agile and is the new new thing. Hybrid is bad, and Agile only works if you follow the book—right? You got that book? Are we ineffective, tired, fighting back, plodding on, or something else?

Has the practice of what we think of as Agile changed? Can we not be Agile without first being Lean? What about Agile/Lean? When even signers of the Agile Manifesto speak up against Agile, what’s an agilist to think?

Or is agile SAFe and sound and the Agile brand has developed a stink? Too many forced marches to agility? Do we need to start calling “agile” “nimble” in order to make progress? And, frankly, how much do we care about what’s in the press?

The Downtown Pub Lunchers care enough to have voted this topic in last month with a participating attendance of 40 pub grub munching agilists. Come on down and help us sort this one out. You probably have the answer. There’s beer, and we’ll be in the back.

RSVP's not required but much appreciated at [email protected]. It helps determine whether to move the furniture and ask for additional servers.

The 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.

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.

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.

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.

You have a big idea, maybe even a co-founder. But you'd like a second opinion before you sever all ties to paid employment, loved ones and regular meals. Time to Pitch for a Beer and get frank and fast feedback from Portland Seed Fund managers!

How it works: First 50 to arrive get in free with an elevator pitch to the bouncer. Those who want to pitch PSF simply drop their names in a hat. 12 names will be drawn for 5-min power sessions with PSF managers Jim Huston, Angela Jackson and Jenn Lynch. Ringler booths will be filled with other PSF alumni and mentors, so you will garner additional feedback from great sources even if your name didn't get drawn. Everyone gets a beer ticket (and pizza).

No RSVP required. Doors will be closed after first 50 in.

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.

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.

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.

Last month the pub lunchers pointed back to a perennially sticky topic. We know retrospectives are a key aspect of continuous improvement and progressive agility. Most of us do retrospectives regularly. Many of use use the standard references like Derby and Larsen's /Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great/. And, many, if not all of us have had the experience of nothing the team agreed to change during the retrospective actually being changed. My personal favorite was a recent retro where the team rescinded all agreements made during the retro within 90 minutes of making them. In fact, within about 5 minutes of facing the Product Owner in the planning meeting.

So, is it a lack of resolve? Is it poor facilitation on our part? Is it taking on too much? Is it not taking on doable things? What the heck?

But, sometimes things go well. Sometimes teams dig in and use their retrospectives to improve something every sprint. Sometimes team members eagerly take on facilitating their own retrospectives and teams look forward to the next retrospective even as they are planning the current sprint. Sometimes they summarize data showing the existence of organizational impediments, for a task force, and take their data to executive leadership with a viable plan for change--which is actually accepted.

What can we spot about retro's that do NOT result in change so we can call out those smells when we scent them, so we stop a sterile retro in its tracks and turn things around? Or, ensure that we develop a pattern of potency in our retrospectives?

Join us Friday, 9/4, from 12p to 1p for pub grub, beer, conversation, commiseration and a few smashingly good ideas to help you or others turn your retrospective experience around once and for all.

We'll be in the back room. Show up a few minutes early to chat with the friends and colleagues you haven't seen all summer and hang around as long as you like after to make new friends.

RSVP's to [email protected] are welcome but not required. It helps know how and whether to move the furniture, which saves us having to do it after the discussion has begun.

This June Cotten Blackwell's Agile team started a 3-month pilot adoption of pair programming and TDD – almost exactly as practiced during Coderetreats (http://coderetreat.org/facilitating/structure-of-a-coderetreat), which they used to kick off their pilot and can’t recommend strongly enough.

So exactly how did they get management and team approval (and active support) for TDD/pair programming?

Well, they are definitely blessed with Product Managers (and Directors) who are very big-picture, and highly open to persuasive business cases grounded in data and metrics. But, they think that how they made the business and technical case for pair programming and TDD is worth sharing – and that much of it might be highly applicable to your team.

Bio: Cotten Blackwell is an engineering manager, Agile champion and Swift developer with over 15 years experience leading, coaching and mentoring software development teams. For the last four years he’s been doing that at Huron Consulting Group, where he’s known for his focus on improving team health and employee development and retention. Cotten has driven continuous improvements in Huron’s mastery of Agile and Lean Startup fundamentals, and has leveraged multiple software teams to more consistently, more deeply engage in risk identification, analysis and mitigation.

RSVP's to [email protected] very welcome but not required.

Is being an "outstanding Servant Leader" a contradiction in terms? How does someone who facilitates the success of others see progress along a desirable career trajectory? How do you know whether you're being the best Servant Leader you can be? Where can you learn more?

The Pub Lunchers chose this topic as an evolution of the discussion on managers and power.

The Scrum Guide identifies Servant Leadership as the model that Scrum Masters should use, and this approach to leadership is considered desirable among Agilists whether or not they are Scrum Masters. But, what is servant leadership?

Come on down to Ringlers on Burnside on 7/10 (NOTE CHANGE TO ADJUST FOR JULY 4th) and talk it through with people who have been there, done the homework, have the stripes to prove it or want to be there do that and get the stripes.

We'll be in the back starting promptly at noon to wrestle with this perennially attractive topic.

RSVP's to [email protected] are very welcome but not required.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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].

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.

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.

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!

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!

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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

Come meet Managing Directors Jim Huston and Angela Jackson and give them your best elevator pitch for a free beer* on Portland Seed Fund. We are always looking to meet new companies and this is a great opportunity to start building a relationship with the fund. Founders of PSF portfolio companies will be on hand to have a few beers and meet you as well.

Please RSVP: https://psfpitchforabeer.eventbrite.com/

*Each attendee is limited to one drink ticket.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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’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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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?

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?

Come out to rant, rave, engage and connect with fellow Interaction Design practitioners and people interested in Interaction Design. We meet up bi-monthly to network with each other and become inspired together.