McMennamins Ringler's

Now here's something we don't talk about often enough: prioritization skills. Yet, our inability to prioritize--at every level of the organization--easily trips us up. The liquor of urgency inebriates us until everything looks equally important. And then, we are paralyzed or dashing off in all directions at once and getting nothing done . . .

Fear not! Help is on the way.

On January 8th Lorie Gordon will lead us in a discussion centered around the notion of a prioritization score card, a tool she regularly uses in her work. Bring your friends. Bring your Product Owner. Bring your prioritization conundra, and join your colleagues in a rousing discussion of the perils of prioritization.

Same place. Same time. We'll be in the back.

RSVP's not required but gratefully accepted at [email protected].

What kinds of helpful roles can managers of all types play in relation to Agile teams? And, do they play these roles, or does something else happen?

This month, the AgilePDX Downtown Pub Lunchers consider how different kinds of power operate within Agile, what it can feel like for a manager to encounter an "empowered" Agile team, and what reactions can come up.

Bring your war stories and questions on down to Ringlers where we will solve the Agile world's problems with regard to managers, power, and empowered Agile teams over beer and pub grub from 12p to 1p.

RSVP's to [email protected] are welcomed but not required. It's nice to know who many tables to push together!

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

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

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

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

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

We frequently encounter Agile teams struggling within larger organizations that are not Agile. The resistance to Agile frequently centers around predictability. Executives feel pressure to report to the Board of Directors what software will be delivered in the coming year. Product Owners are asked to work out long-term strategies and priorities. Sales is working with customers who want to know what features are coming and when. And Marketing departments are pulling together advertising campaigns for the coming year.

In each of these cases, there would be real and undeniable benefit in knowing what the future holds...but we don't. Agile is very clear on this point--software development is not predictable. And development teams are often hesitant to offer any form of prediction out of fear that the prediction will be taken as a "promise".

This AgilePDX Pub discussion is an attempt to imagine what an Agile team would offer in the way of predictions if we did not have that fear, if we were to give the best information we can devise about the future of our projects (in an Agile fashion). As a starting place, it pulls together a lightweight process for estimating size from the book "How to Measure Anything" by Douglas W. Hubbard, along with, recent research into common human biases that impact our assessment of risks.

Michael Kelly has been thinking about this a lot (see the thread he launched on the AgilePDX Yahoo Group in October), and he'll set context and get the discussion going for you.

Michael is a veteran of numerous software development campaigns. He has built software for power companies and banks, for the trucking industry and education, for internet start-ups and established companies, for his own companies and for others. Throughout, he has worked hard to master the craft of writing software and delve to the mysteries of Agile. Currently, he is working with the excellent folks at DAT Solutions, leading a team developing the next generation of software for the trucking industry.

As usual, look for us in the back of the pub. RSVP to [email protected] if you can. We nearly swamped the wait staff in October, and we'd like to provide a little warning if that may happen again. However, don't let lack of ability to RSVP keep you from showing up.

Bring your questions, your objections, your burning issues around agility and predictability. Bring your Product Owners and executive staff and THEIR burning issues.

Usual pub grub. The beer never stops flowing. See you there!

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

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

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

Working on a startup? Have an interesting business idea that's going to disrupt the market?

Come enjoy pizza and beer on us and pitch that idea to Portland Seed Fund, a professionally managed early-venture fund with 46 seed and early stage investments.

You'll have two minutes to pitch PSF alumni, fund managers and mentors, with one tough question served up by a panel of Portland Seed Fund portfolio founders. There will also be time for you to learn more about becoming a Portland Seed Fund company from the alumni who've been through it.

Space is limited and exclusive to those pitching; pre-registration required: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/portland-seed-fund-pitch-for-a-beer-tickets-12401072943

When: Monday September 8, 2014

Time: 5:00pm-7:30pm

Where: McMenamins Ringlers Pub (NOT Annex)

1332 W Burnside St, Portland, OR 97209

Questions? Please email us at: [email protected]

Learn more about Portland Seed Fund: http://www.portlandseedfund.com

This event is a lot of fun, don't miss it!