Seven Lean Principles
(from Poppendieck's Lean Software Development...)

  1. Eliminate Waste
  2. Amplify Learning
  3. Decide as Late as Possible
  4. Deliver as Fast as Possible
  5. Empower the Team
  6. Build Integrity In
  7. See the Whole

Toyota's Secret —
A seven digit number...
(from M.E.May's The Elegant Solution...)

"One million... new ideas... Toyota... implements every year. These ideas come from every level of the organization--from the factory floors to the corporate suites."


You Will Learn

What “Agile” is all about.
What you can do to improve both productivity and effectiveness. How people factors, communication, and process are as important as computer languages, toolkits, development environment or other technical factors.

Most importantly, you will learn from experts – hear the story behind the approach, including strengths, weaknesses, pitfalls and best practices. You will have the chance to ask questions, to learn more about the items that interest you, and to interact with your peers and the speakers.

A two day deep dive into Agile:
Scrum, Extreme Programming(XP) and Lean
steps to software development success.

When: April 28 and 29th, 2007
Where: MIT Tang Center/E51-345, Cambridge, MA
Cost:

$495 before April 13th
$600 after April 13th
$650 on day of conference.
Special group rates - see registration page.



Why Agile?

What has been your experience with software projects?  Have you generally been successful?  Or do most projects fail to meet predictions for time, cost or functionality?  To be blunt, do your projects deliver solid business value and happy and productive users?

Agile: Scrum, Extreme Programming(XP) and Lean.   In the late 1990's several methodologies began to get increasing public attention. Each had a different combination of old and new ideas. They all emphasized close collaboration between cross-functional development teams and business experts; face-to-face communication; iterative, incremental and rapid delivery of new deployable business value; tight and self-organizing teams. Further, developing ways to manage requirements, craft and test the code so that the inevitable requirements churn was not a crisis. In this seminar, leading experts in Agile Development will show how to transform your software development process to reliably deliver applications that meet the users' needs and delight the funder.

This seminar is designed for anyone who is responsible for developing and delivering software products and projects. It is especially valuable for teams who have mastered their languages, tools and technology and now know that their greatest need is to work together effectively, to succeed "one step at a time", and to take an approach that allows them to succeed in the face of changing requirements and demands.

Seminar Topics

Saturday

Welcome/Sign-in (8:00am-9:00am)

Get your badge, enjoy a continental breakfast, pick out a seat and take advantage of the opportunity to meet people facing the same challenges you are.

Introduction - Common Sense and The Professionalism Fallacy (9:00am-9:10pm)

Jay Conne
Methodologies:  Why has the software development industry continued to practice what has so consistently failed them?  There has been an unquestioned standard of professionalism which we need to question.

The Plan is the Problem (9:10am-10:30am)

Jeff Sutherland
"Much of present-day software-acquisition procedure rests upon the assumption that one can specify a satisfactory system in advance, get bids for its construction, have it built, and install it. I think this assumption is fundamentally wrong." (Fred Brooks. Author of The Mythical Man Month.) Iterative and incremental development, an alternative approach, grew from the 1930's work of Walter Shewhart, was vigorously promoted by Edward Deming, father of the Japanese quality revolution, and found its way into Scrum through best Japanese practices. The difference between plan driven development and value driven development will be discussed.

Break (10:30am-11:00am)

"Show me the Software" (11:00am-12:30pm)

Ron Jeffries
Perhaps the most profound difference between Agile methods and the rest is this: the Agile methods focus on delivering real software, week in and week out. We'll explore what that means to management, and to the development team itself.

Lunch (12:30-1:30pm)

Lunch is provided, so you can sit with your fellow attendees and discuss the morning's topics.

Scrum Basics (1:30pm-2:10pm)

Jeff Sutherland
Scrum has:
   - Three roles: Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Team
   - Three ceremonies: Sprint Planning, Daily Meeting, Sprint Review
   - Three artifacts: Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, and Burndown Chart
How many ways can new teams screw up?

Sample Burndown (2:10pm-2:20pm)

Jay Conne
Real data with real lessons learned...and not.

XP Basics (2:20pm-3:00pm)

Ron Jeffries
How extreme?
   - If code review is good, why not do it continuously?
   - If testing is good, why not do it continuously?
   - Hyper-productivity with a Safety-Net?
   - Continuous simplification - refactoring

Break (3:00pm-3:30pm)

User Stories Done Right: Requirements (3:30pm-5:00pm)

Ron Jeffries and Jeff Sutherland
Whether you call them features, backlog items, or stories, all the Agile methods focus on the cyclic delivery of increments of software in which the product owner sees value.  We'll explore some alternative ways to break a big project down into bits that can be done in a few weeks -- or a few days.

Evening Activities

You are invited to join the speakers, leaders of the GBC/ACM and your fellow students for an optional dinner at a local restaurant (walking distance). Time and location will be announced at the seminar. (Note: price of dinner is not included in seminar; everyone is responsible for their own charges.)

Sunday

Welcome/Sign-in (8:00am-9:00am)

You should still have your badge from Saturday, but you can enjoy a continental breakfast, pick out a seat and take advantage of the opportunity to talk with others.

Roots of Scrum: Toyota and Lean (9:00am-10:30am)

Jeff Sutherland
Scrum derives from best practices in Japanese lean product development. Lean is revolutionizing manufacturing worldwide and Scrum is revolutionizing software development.

Break (10:30am-11:00am)

Test-Driven Development Demo (11:00am-12:30pm)

Ron Jeffries
Delivering software every week or two means that things are changing all the time. One of the key techniques for managing the rate of change is Test-Driven Development (TDD), where every line of code is written in response to a test that shows the line is needed. We'll use a little live demonstration of TDD as a foundation for discussing this practice.

Lunch (12:30pm-1:30pm)

Sunday lunch is also provided, so you can sit with your fellow attendees and discuss the morning's topics.

Putting Scrum and XP Together Successfully (1:30pm-3:00pm)

Ron Jeffries and Jeff Sutherland
You don't see high performing Scrum teams without XP engineering practices.  It is difficult to scale XP teams without Scrum and Scrum solves the management interface issues for XP.  Be careful about doing pieces of anything and calling it Agile.

Break (3:00pm-3:30pm)

Panel and Wrap-up (3:00pm-5:00pm)

Jeff Sutherland, Ron Jeffries, Jay Conne
We'll end with a freewheeling conversation between the speakers and the audience.

| ©2007 Greater Boston Chapter of the ACM