Speakers

Mary Poppendieck

Website

Leadership and Self-Organizing Teams - Incompatible or Synergistic?

Abstract

If you had the choice, would you rather be on a team or a committee? A  camel, it is said, is a horse designed by a committee.  And a team becomes a committee when it starts designing camels.

Committees can suffer from several problems: procrastination, undesirable compromises, groupthink, a feeling of entitlement – to name a few. What keeps teams from experiencing the same problems? In a word: purpose.  A team is a group of people who have committed to each other to work together to achieve a common purpose.

The question is – what is the best way for a team to define and achieve its purpose? Is a leader necessary? Desirable? Optional? Never appropriate? This discussion will range from cultural differences to competitive influences and will consider the question: What makes software development different? Possibly we are just as good at designing camels as anyone else.

Bio

Mary Poppendieck has been in the Information Technology industry for over thirty years. She has managed software development, supply chain management, manufacturing operations, and new product development. She spearheaded the implementation of a Just-in-Time system in a 3M video tape manufacturing plant and led new product development teams, commercializing products ranging from digital controllers to 3M Light Fiber™. Mary is a popular writer and speaker, and coauthor of the book Lean Software Development, which was awarded the Software Development Productivity Award in 2004. A sequel, Implementing Lean Software Development, was published in 2006. A third book, Leading Lean Software Development, will be published in late 2009.

Keynotes

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Elisabeth Hendrickson

Website

Done Includes Tested: Resolving Impediments to Testing for Agile Teams

Abstract

Even experienced Agile teams can have great difficulty testing stories within an iteration. In order to declare success, teams sometimes call stories "Done" when they've been implemented and meet basic acceptance criteria. More in-depth system-level testing then happens later, resulting in late-breaking surprises. The predictable result is that the team finds themselves in bug triage meetings making hard decisions about whether to fix or defer bugs, and having to balance late-stage rework with implementing more features from the backlog. In this talk, Elisabeth Hendrickson examines common impediments to testing on Agile teams and offers possible solutions to move testing earlier.

Bio

has over 20 years software industry experience and has been working with Agile teams since 2004. She is a Certified Scrum Master, a respected thought leader in Agile Testing, a former member of the board of the Agile Alliance, and co-organizer of the Agile Alliance Functional Testing Tools program. Her Google Tech Talk on Agile Testing has received rave reviews.

Keynotes

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Bjarte Bogsnes

A Journey Beyond Budgeting - "because the future ain't what it used to be"

Abstract

StatoilHydro is Scandinavia's largest company. In 2005, triggered by an increasingly dynamic and unpredictable business environment, the company decided to abolish traditional budgeting. Budgets were seen as a time-wasting and inflexible barrier to good performance, and were replaced with a fundamentally different leadership approach and management process. Project manager Bjarte Bogsnes, who led a similar project in the European petrochemicals company Borealis twelve years ago, will cover the following issues in his presentation:

       • Why traditional management no longer works
       • The new leadership model - more than a change in finance processes
       • SCRUM and Beyond Budgeting - challenging the same management myths
       • The implementation journey - practical advice from Borealis and StatoilHydro

Bio

Bjarte Bogsnes has a long international career in the oil and gas business, both in Finance and HR. As Group Controller for the petrochemicals company Borealis he lead the abolishment of budgeting in this company in the mid nineties, and he has been advocating the "Beyond Budgeting" principles ever since. He is currently heading up StatoilHydro's Beyond Budgeting project. StatoilHydro is Scandinavia's largest company, with operations in 40 countries and a turnover of 70 bn USD.

Beyond Budgeting shares many of the same beliefs found in the Lean and Agile principles, and Bjarte is involved in StatoilHydros own Scrum initiative. He has also been heading up a large IT project, vigorously fighting "waterfall" thinking already in the late eighties.

Bjarte is Chairman of the Beyond Budgeting Round Table in Europe (BBRT). He has just published the book "Implementing Beyond Budgeting - Unlocking the Performance Potential", where he writes about his experiences from Borealis and StatoilHydro, and why traditional leadership and management practices no longer works in today's competence organisations operating in a business environment more complex, dynamic and unpredictable than ever.

Keynotes

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Petri Heiramo

Scrum from the Customer Point-of-View

Abstract

This presentation takes a look at Agile and Scrum from customer point of view. What are they key benefits a customer organization can expect to gain from Scrum? How does it change the way they should buy software projects? How does an Agile project “behave” differently in the larger scheme of things? What are the key success criteria and how can a customer track what’s going on? How can they evaluate the different vendors and detect “smells” that indicate everything isn’t necessarily as it should be?

This presentation is primarily aimed at people who buy software projects or manage product development work, but is also useful for product owners and Scrum masters who want to understand the bigger picture of things.

Bio

Petri Heiramo has been focusing strongly on Scrum and Agility since 2005. He has been working at Digia since 2000, and has gained a lot of experience in different kinds of projects both in Agile and traditional way. For the last 5 years he has been responsible for the improvement of the software development processes in the company. Petri was the first Finn to be approved as Certified Scrum Trainer by Scrum Alliance in late 2008.

Keynotes

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Ola Ellnestam

Website

Context over dogma

Abstract

If you fail using a method, the answer is usually along the lines: "You weren't doing it right". When, in fact, you where probably doing the best you could. So, is the problem the method? Or is it something else?

Bio

Ola Ellnestam came in contact with Agile in the year 2000 after reading Extreme Programming Explained. At the time he didn't know what kind of impact that particular book would have on him and the software industry. Fueled by many new thoughts he began his Agile journey which later led him to start a company specializing in XP and Scrum.

Today he is working with clients that are working with or would like to be working with Agile methods. This often puts him in situations where he has to defend, promote and question the values and practices behind Agile which he has become very familiar with. Ola is also one of the driving forces behind 'Agile Sweden', Sweden's biggest Agile network.

James O. Coplien

Website

Why Lean and Agile are in conflict, and how to resolve the conflicts

Abstract

Agile is a value system inspired by anecdotal evidence from the past few decades of software. Lean is a set of disciplines proven over more than 75 years with strong balance sheet and market results from companies in the Toyota group. Modern "agile" practice, particularly in Scrum, draws on both of these traditions. Most practitioners see these formalisms through the eyes of the Scrum or XP frameworks and miss out on the deep principles found in each of them. In fact, Lean and Agile contradict each other on key points — yet, it is wise for software projects to heed both lineages. In this seminar we explore this apparent paradox and recommend concrete practices that can help software projects balance the tension between Lean and Agile.

This workshop asks attendees to explore contrasts between widely accepted principals of Agile and Lean — two approaches that are widely misrepresented as different sides of the same coin, or as one being the means to another.

Bio

Jim ("Cope") Coplien is a Software Architecture and Agile Consultant at Gertrud & Cope in Denmark. He has a 25-year history as an "early adopter" and innovator behind several strategic innovations in software: his C++ Idioms book was one of the major sources for Design Patterns; his work on Organizational Patterns was one of the foundations of the structural components of XP and was the inspiration for Scrums. His books cover areas as diverse as C++ programming, software design, and organizational design. His forthcoming book "Lean Architecture and Agile Software" will be published by Wiley. His current professional focus areas include Lean software architecture, highlighting the challenges of test-driven development, and Scrum process improvement using Organizational Patterns. His current day-to-day work includes architecture reviews, coding, and helping organizations work more effectively in lean economic conditions through process improvement and reduction of waste. His current hobby is creating advanced (housing) architecture CAD tools based on pattern languages. He lives with his wife and son in Mørdrup, Denmark. When he grows up, he wants to be an anthropologist.

Keynotes

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Maarit Laanti

Scaling Agile - Towards the Agile Enterprise

Abstract

To have working scrum teams is a good goal, but we fail miserably in meeting the business promises if agile teams are left alone to decide the priorities. How can we scale from the scrum team level up to the project level and further? Can the agile principles we applied work on a larger scale, so that we reach the enterprise level, and how would that kind of an Agile Enterprise look like?

Bio

Maarit Laanti has been working in software industry for 20 years, and has more than 10 years experience in leading software projects and teams. In the year 2000, she converted her software project into incremental mode, and in 2004 she started to study "turbulent project management" which she found then later to be close to agile. Since then she has written several publications on agile. Maarit holds a M.Sc. Engineering degree from Helsinki University of Technology, and she has been leading the agile deployment at Nokia since Jan 2007. 

Keynotes

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Karl Scotland

Website

Five Steps to Kanban

Abstract

A Kanban System for Software Development provides an alternative means of creating an Agile Development process using Lean Thinking.  Creating a Kanban System is not as simple as adopting a previously defined process as a starting point. Instead, a team needs to come up a model of its own process which will form the basis for further continuous improvement. This talk will introduce 5 steps that a team can use to create their own Agile process using a Kanban System for Software Development.

Bio

Karl Scotland is a versatile software practitioner with over 15 years of experience covering development, project management, team leadership, coaching and training. For the last 10 years he has been successfully applying Agile methods, and most recently has been a pioneer and advocate of using Kanban Systems for software development. Currently a Lean and Agile Coach with EMC Consulting, Karl has previously championed Agile and Lean Thinking with the BBC and Yahoo!

Karl writes about his latest ideas on his blog at http://availagility.wordpress.com/

Keynotes

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Marc Evers

Website

Story Testing

Abstract

This workshop is hosted in cooperation with Willem van den Ende.

As a developer, I want to know story testing frameworks and practice one of them, so that I can test stories using the examples the product owner writes together with me.

As a product owner, I want to understand the process of testing stories and practice specifying acceptance criteria using example scenarios, so that I can help developers develop what I want.

Learn and practice writing automated tests for stories, based on examples, using a story testing framework (like Cucumber or JBehave). Learn about specification by example; tools for testing user stories; hands on writing and improving story tests using example scenarios.

Keynotes

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Willem van den Ende

Story Testing, workshop with Marc Evers

Keynotes

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Pascal van Cauwenberghe

Website

The Toyota Way management principles to sustain Lean and Agile

Abstract

This talk is presented with Portia Tung

Bio

Pascal Van Cauwenberghe
Nayima

Pascal Van Cauwenberghe is a consultant based in Brussels who tries to solve more problems than he creates. To do this, he uses Agile, Lean, Theory of Constraints and Systems Thinking techniques.

He’s one of the founders of the Belgian XP group and one of the organizers of XP Days Benelux. He co-creates fun learning games (like the XP Game, the Business Value Game and the Bottleneck Game) with Vera Peeters and Portia Tung. They’ve learned that games are an ideal way to learn. Since then he tries to transform work into play…

Keynotes

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Portia Tung

Website

The Toyota Way Management Principles, presented with Pascal van Cauwenberghe

Bio

Keynotes

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Mattias Skarin

Website

How do you get Agile benefits in support and technical operations?

Abstract

Work is typically reprioritized daily, team work is hard due to intence specialisation. Platform, stability, performance problems require shared solutions with developers but abilities to work together are often limited. This is a case study of how Kanban was used to improve life at technical operations.

Bio

Sun Tzu once said the ultimate responsibility of generalship is manou    ver into a position of success. You need to do that.

I help companies stay competitive and overcome challenges. Because silver bullet solutions doesn’t apply, I serve and challenge management and developers. I help them overcome challenges and build necessary self confidence to walk on by their own.

With me, I carry 10 years of experience of software development in Gaming, Finance and Insurance. I have helped development teams feel the magic of ”one click deploy” and an IT department of 10 teams to scale agile and restore it’s trust.

Keynotes

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Harri Kiljander

Agile is good for developers, but software and products should be good for users. How to deliver a good user experience through agile?

Abstract

The agile software engineering movement was kicked off by a group of visionary software thinkers wanting to improve the ways software is being developed. Likewise, human-centered design - sometimes called user experience design - is a movement and philosophy that was kicked off by cognitive scientists and product designers to make the world a better place for people using the products and software created by these designers and developers. Both of these approaches are seen as silver bullets in creating appealing and usable interactive products and services effectively and efficiently by modern, business-driven product development organizations. However, the approaches have been formulated from fundamentally different origins; the other one is promoting rapid, iterative development by more or less autonomous engineering teams, while the other one is emphasising the (sometimes tedious) involvement of users throughout the design and development process. Is it possible to bridge these two approaches, or are there fundamental, built-in conflicts between them? In this talk, Harri Kiljander examines the approaches and learnings in Nokia's Maemo Devices unit from establishing a cross-disciplinary human-centered agile UX design and software development process. What are the positive learnings the Nokia team has found to work and what are the pitfalls to be avoided?

Bio

Harri Kiljander is a human-centered product design leader with 20 years experience in software and mobile communications industry. He is currently the Director of User Experience Design with the Maemo Devices unit at Nokia, leading a global team of user experience designers working to create appealing and usable mobile computers powered by Nokia's Linux-based Maemo operating system. Prior to this role, Harri has been responsible for Nokia's corporate user experience strategy, and working in various UX design management and research positions in Nokia's internet service, research and development, and brand management teams in Finland and in the USA. Harri has been driving various UX design and development process improvement activities in the company, a key focus area over the last couple of years being the bridging of agile software development with human-centered design in the fast-paced product creation effectively and efficiently. Harri holds a Master's degree in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Interactive Digital Media from Helsinki University of Technology, and he is an editor of the book "Mobile Usability: How Nokia Changed the Face of the Mobile Phone". When not designing mobile products Harri can often be found exploring architectural creations, photographing, or sailing.

Keynotes

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Jurgen Appelo

Website

What (Else) Can Agile Learn from Complexity?

Abstract

Agile development has taken a number of concepts and principles from the study of complex adaptive systems. But since the birth of the Agile Manifesto, the study of complexity has not stopped. In this talk I give a number of ideas copied from complexity experts, and I will review what fitness landscapes, patches, power laws, and incompressibility could mean for agile software development.

Bio

My name is Jurgen Appelo. I am Chief Information Officer at ISM eCompany, rated (a while ago) as the #1 fastest growing technology company in The Netherlands.

I am primarily interested in software engineering, quality improvement and complexity theory, from a manager’s perspective. I am trying to write a book about this, and I keep track of it on my blog. I am a writer, having published a number of papers and articles in several magazines, like Dr. Dobb's, Software Quality Professional, Methods & Tools, The Software Practitioner, StickyMinds, Software Development Network, Computable and Automatisering Gids.

I am also a speaker, being regularly invited to talk at seminars and conferences about agile software development, project management, process improvement, and development management. People tell me I'm quite good at doing presentations. I don't know why. I only show them pretty pictures while making fun of myself. But that seems to help.

I live in Rotterdam (The Netherlands) -- and sometimes in Brussels (Belgium) -- with my partner Raoul. I have two kids, and an imaginary hamster called George.

Keynotes

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Arto Eskelinen

Website

The Art of Coaching Agile Teams

Abstract

When teams move towards Agile the need for coaching is evident and well-recognized. However, the role, methods and tools of a coach are not as clear, not even for coaches themselves.  Having a systematic approach can help a coach in achieving sustainable improvement.

We will discuss the goal of coaching. Only giving answers and proposing solutions is not coaching. Without the coachee’s ownership over the issue and the solution, the change will not sustain.

A skillful coach will use tools that help the coachee in understanding the problem and intrigue him to explore possible solutions. An important tool of a coach is effective questions. We will discuss the qualities of good questions and describe a frame through which we can use questions in coaching.

In most situations a coach is external to the team and called in only for a certain period of time. What happens when the coach leaves? Who should do coaching when the external coach is gone? We have an idea and we’d like to share it with you.

See you in the session!

Bio

• Agile Coach at Reaktor Innovations
• Certified Scrum Trainer
• Coaches develpment teams and management in Agile transformations
• 20+ years of experience in software development

Keynotes

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Sami Honkonen

Website

The Art of Coaching Agile Teams, presented with Arto Eskelinen

Bio

• Agile Coach at Reaktor Innovations
• TDD trainer and coach
• 3+ years of experience on Agile transformations
• 5+ years of developer background

Keynotes

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David Harvey

Website

Agile Development - lighting the fire of organisational change

Abstract

Large enterprises find the transition to Agile notoriously difficult. Practices which are readily and energetically adopted by individuals, teams and small organisations run up against any number of obstacles when an attempt is made to scale them to larger groups. In these circumstances, agile adoption is organisational change. Not only the practices, but the mindset around agile adoption needs to change substantially when working at this level.

Why do so many organisations find the first flush of Agile adoption easy, then fall at the next fence? This workshop will explore change at an individual, team and organisational level. We'll look at how organisations have approached change in the past, and examine the poor record of organisational change initiatives. Using more recent thinking about how and why individuals and groups resist change we'll provide tools to help participants recognise what sort of change is needed when Agile adoption at scale is under way. Participants will have the opportunity to reflect on their own experiences of change, to consider specific changes that are needed to help Agile work at scale in their organisations, and to identify ways of increasing the chances that the change will succeed.

Bio

David Harvey has over twenty years experience in software - as a developer, manager, technical architect, CTO, coach, trainer and consultant. In the 1990s he helped numerous organizations adopt best practices in object-oriented design and implementation: in investment banks in the 2000s he was responsible for defining, designing and implementing large-scale infrastructure for complex and changing businesses. From 2004 to 2008 he was CTO of Sibelius Software, bringing two significant versions of the world's leading music notation program to market. He is now helping companies throughout Europe realize the benefits of Agile development, and as partner in CATeams is helping bring powerful ideas about social complexity and group dynamics into the way software teams work.

Keynotes

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Martin Von Weissenberg

Website

Agile Development - lighting the fire of organisational change, presented with David Harvey

Bio

Martin von Weissenberg has a M.Sc. (Eng) in computer science and ten years of professional experience in software development and software processes. Having experienced the pain of executing traditional software projects, Martin became interested in software processes and the ways we work. This led to a careful study of Agile methods, what makes an Agile team tick and - most importantly - what makes an organization truly Agile. Martin is currently working for Nokia, deploying Agile methods and principles in the large and the small in one of the most complex business environments in the world.

Keynotes

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Artem Marchenko

Website

The Business Value Game

Abstract

The Business Value Game. How do you prioritize your features and stories? Agile teams want to deliver maximum business value. That's easy if the Onsite Customer assigns business value to each story. But how does the Customer do that? How can you estimate business value?

This workshop is run as a game, where teams have to make tough business decisions for their "organizations". Teams have to decide which orders to take and what to deliver first in order to earn more. The session gives the participants basic business value estimation techniques, but the main point is to make people live through the business situation and to help them feel the consequences of various choices.

Bio

Currently a Product Manager in Nokia, Artem Marchenko has over a decade of software development under the belt. Artem was working for a number of Ukrainian and Finnish companies, experienced various methodologies, processes and leadership styles. He got acquainted with Agile in 2005, liked the ideas and immediately started applying them in his projects within Nokia.

Artem's main interests are Scrum and the ways of establishing productive communication between the customer and development sides. Artem pursues both practice and theory. He was a practicing Scrum Master, now as a Product Manager he is playing a Product Owner role for a vastly distributed team. He is doing his PhD studies on Agile Project Management and consults and coaches various organizations on the topics of effective software development.

Artem also maintains and regularly writes on agilesoftwaredevelopment.com.

Keynotes

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Ari Tikka

Website

Understanding Power

Abstract

Power is about what we choose to do. Power is central in everyday life. We have an intuition of it. This session intends to give understanding and tools to observe, think and converse about power. It will help you to be more empowered, and empower others at everyday interaction.

We will introduce a few useful concepts and discuss how they fit in our everyday (or extreme) experiences. The concepts are useful in recognizing and making sense in what is going on at interaction situation or wider organizational pattern.

Becoming conscious of power helps to decide and find new ways to act. This is helpful if you are powerful, empowered and self-organizing. And it is helpful if you are going to be that. Or if you are supporting people becoming that. This fits any organizational setting agile or not.

We will touch:

• What is power
• Power in relations
• Power basis
• Complexity theory perspective
• Language, mental images and the effect of power/authority to individuals, even brain research
• Empowerment

Bio

After the MSc degree 1986 I practiced mathematical engineering and SW development.

Keynotes

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Dave Snowden

Website

Leadership, self-organisation & metaphor

Abstract

Its never sufficient simply to copy something that works without understanding the why as well as the how.  Even when you know the how and the why, it is still necessary to create measurement systems to detect success or failure.  We also need to secure and then retain the commitment of senior management to new ways of working. If we take the how, to be the various AGILE methods and practice, then the why can be derived from complex adaptive systems theory and the various cognitive sciences.  However we need to understand that human organisations cannot take on models from biology, chemistry or even model based simulation without major change.

Bio

David Snowden is the founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge. His work is in the area of naturalising sense-making, seeking to base social science research and practice in the natural science. He is generally considered to be a pioneer in the application of complex adaptive systems theory to a range of social issues, and in the development of narrative as a research method.

Cognitive Edge is an independent organisation that manages an open source approach to consultancy method as well as software development and research. His work extends across government and industry in a variety of fields including knowledge management, strategic planning, conflict resolution, weak signal detection, decision support and organisational development.

Snowden holds a variety of academic positions. He is a visiting professor at the Universities of Canberra, Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Pretoria and is a visiting fellow at Warwick University, Nanyang University, the Universita' Cattolica in Italy and the Singapore Management College. He was Director of the EPSRC (UK) research programme on emergence in 2006 and was appointed to the NSF (US) review panel on complexity science research in 2007. He is also on the editorial boards of several Knowledge Management journals and is an Editor in Chief for Emergence, Complexity and Organisation. His HBR cover article with Mary Boone A leader’s framework for decision making was selected as the 2007 Best Practitioner-Oriented Paper in Organizational Behavior by the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management.

Keynotes

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James Cooper

Website

Architecture in Agile - 30 Practices Every Architect Should Follow

Abstract

Software Architects traditionally have been expected to be well versed in the technologies and software platforms on which their organization run, as well as the businessses they serve. Software Architect's need to balance both sides of this coin: business and technology.

Today traditional ways in which architects engage with development groups often conflict with Agile methods. This presentation explores best practices for architects working in an Agile world and ways in which Agile methods might benefit architects. Additionally it attempts to address some of the concerns that many architects express about Agile, and attempts to provide practical ideas as to how architects and agile development teams can become allies.

It is my intention to cover 30 Best Practices with a view that these best practices do not contravene the Agile Manifesto. Specifically an architect can attempt to provide the 1,000ft view on behalf of the development team who in effect are the domain experts and the ultimate custodians of a product's architecture. That said the following best practices could be used to provide a unified view of the longer-term evolutionary path and the processes by which it could be more easily obtained. Today Architect's should not sit in their ivory towers armed with UML modeling tools and interaction charts, instead they have an opportunity to provide coaching and leadership and ensure projects match their objectives both today and tomorro  

Bio

James Cooper is the Lead Platforms Architect with F-Secure Corporation, one of Europe's leading Intrusion Detection and Malware Prevention companies and is currently based out of Helsinki Finland. A keen technologist, his professional interests include Cloud Computing, Web Application Security, Federated Identity management; Grid based services and Asynchronous I/O usage patterns.

Keynotes

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Pekka Klärck

Website

Executable Requirements in Practice

Abstract

Executable requirements neatly combine two important XP practices: user stories and acceptance testing. They enhance communication, ease following the number of "running tested features" during an iteration, and work as regression tests in future iterations. This workshop doesn't only give an introduction to this important process, but also shows how it is used in developing a real system in front of the audience. Willing participants can even join the fun and get real hands-on experience.

Bio

Pekka Klärck is a tester-developer and software contractor who works through his one-man-company Eliga Oy. He has a decade of testing and test automation experience and he has spent the latter half of that decade in agile environments. Pekka is the lead developer of Robot Framework, and the original framework concept is based on his Master’s Thesis.

Keynotes

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Juha Rantanen

Website

Executable Requirements in Practice (with Pekka Klärck and Janne Harkonen)

Bio

Juha Rantanen works as an agile testing consultant at Reaktor Innovations, developing Robot Framework and helping customer teams in organizing their test automation efforts. Juha has also studied acceptance test driven development in his Master’s Thesis.

Keynotes

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Janne Härkönen

Website

Executable Requirements in Practice (with Pekka Klärck and Juha Rantanen)

Bio

Janne Härkönen works as an agile testing consultant at Reaktor Innovations, developing Robot Framework and helping customer teams in organizing their test automation efforts.

Keynotes

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Lasse Koskela

Website

Testing Your TDD (with Ola Ellnestam)

Abstract

Test Driven Development (TDD) is a simple technique that is difficult to master. While it is often easy to write a test, it's not all that easy to write a good test. In this workshop we explore how good our tests really are; how well they represent our requirements, how well they express our intent, and how disciplined we are with our TDD prowess. Participants to this session will pair up for a programming exercise, learning to judge how understandable our tests are and to improve them - and to avoid the pitfalls of ambiguous, difficult to understand and incomplete tests. Note that we need laptop computers set up with a programming environment for this session so do bring yours if you have one.

Bio

Lasse Koskela works as a coach, trainer, consultant and programmer, spending his days helping clients and colleagues at Reaktor create successful software products. He has trenched in a variety of software projects ranging from enterprise applications to middleware products developed for an equally wide range of domains. In the recent years, Lasse has spent an increasing amount of time giving training courses and mentoring teams on-site, helping them improve their performance and establish a culture of continuous learning. When not working with clients, Lasse hacks on open source projects, moderates discussions at JavaRanch, or writes about software development — most recently a book on Test Driven Development. He is one of the pioneers of the Finnish agile community and speaks frequently at international conferences.

Kristian Rautiainen

Results from Agile Research: Ten guaranteed ways to fail in agile adoption

Abstract

Why do agile adoptions fail? Agile is supposedly simple, but by no means easy. In this presentation I will walk you through experiences of failed agile adoptions and show you how easy it is to misunderstand and oversimplify agile methods.

Bio

Kristian has been teaching software processes, including agile, at TKK for 10 years. He has also worked in close cooperation with many companies while researching agile software processes for 9 years.

Keynotes

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Burak Turhan

Results from Agile Research: Unresolved issues in Test-Driven Development - Why should you care?

Abstract

Despite the popularity of TDD, our knowledge regarding its effects in practice is not only limited, but also contradictory. Therefore, this talk will focus on what we do not know about TDD and possible research directions to reveal the mysteries that lies beneath.

Bio

Burak Turhan received his PhD in computer engineering from Bogazici University. After his postdoctoral studies at the National Research Council of Canada, he joined the Department of Information Processing Science at the University of Oulu. His research interests include empirical studies on software quality, test driven development and defect prediction models.

Pekka Abrahmsson

Results from Agile Research: How agile are you? Agility beyond the Nokia Test

Abstract

Agile software has been around for more than 10 years and beyond. Still, there continues to be little consensus on what agile means to different people, teams and organizations. This has not hindered the wide-spread adoption of agile ideas in different kinds of development settings. Agile Positioning Systems (APS) stems from an idea of a GPS device. We should be able to find ourselves in the (world) map of agile transformation. Using the APS you may find yourself in China or in Finland but more importantly you understand the options that you have in front of you, and you are able to strategically steer your agile transformation to higher levels of agile capabilities. A proof-of-concept of APS has been developed in a European research project called FLEXI-ITEA2. This presentation invites you to join the APS team to discover your position.

Bio

Prof. Pekka Abrahamsson is a full professor in the department of computer science in University of Helsinki. He has researched agile software development since 2002, published actively on the topic, lead European research initiatives in the area and grown up the agile research community in Scandinavia and beyond. His most recent interests lie in understanding the Lean philosophy in complex software systems design space.

Jarno Vähäniitty

Results from Agile Research: Agilefant - open source tool support for managing an agile development portfolio

Abstract

At TKK, our team of researchers has, based on the lessons learned from a decade of industrial research collaboration, co-ordinated the development of Agilefant (www.agilefant.org), an open source support tool for backlog and development portfolio management. Our vision has been to accomplish a simple and powerful solution that can be quickly adopted by a single team for release and iteration management, but also, when needed, provide a viable alternative for heavy commercial systems for enterprise-wide adoption. This talk explores Agilefant's background, walks through its current capabilities and state of industrial adoption, and explains our plans for the near future.

Bio

Lic. Tech. Vähäniitty is a senior researcher and project manager of the ATMAN research project at SoberIT, TKK, and since 1999, a member of the Software Process Research Group headed by Prof. Casper Lassenius. His research interests lie in portfolio management and the needed tool support in the context of software development organizations striving towards a more lean/agile mode of operations. He is also the business owner of Agilefant, an open source tool for supporting backlog and development portfolio management.

Keynotes

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Pasi Kuvaja

Panel Discussion: Discussion on the status and direction of agile development

Bio

Pasi Kuvaja (Ph.L.) is Assistant Professor in Software Engineering at the Department of Information Processing Science, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland. His is research interests are software quality, software product quality, software process, software process assessment and improvement, embedded systems, mobile telecom systems and applications, and software measurement. He is one of the developers of the recent versions of the European software processes assessment and improvement methodology – BOOTSTRAP and product quality- driven software process improvement approach – PROFES.  He has been actively contributing the SPICE project and was co-editor of ISO/IEC 15504 Part 7 – “Process Improvement Guide”. He is full member of IEEE Computer Societe Technical Committee on Software Engineering and IFIP WG8.6. He has also served as International Programme and Organising Committee Member and Chair of many IEEE, IFIP, IFAC and PROFES Conferences. He has published a couple of books and over 70 articles, and is co-author of “Process Assessment and Improvement – The BOOTSTRAP Approach”.

Tiina Kiuru

Tester's life - One sprint in cross-functional team

Abstract

Testing should be an integrated part of agile development. It is included in development of each feature to build quality into the software. One of the most radical changes in testing is, that it is no longer test engineer's territory, but a shared responsibility of the whole team.

In this interactive presentation we implement and test real features in front of the live audience. We simulate one sprint including planning, development, demo and retro. The focus is in testing activities. We develop with ATDD approach and demonstrate testing tasks, such as test automation, exploratory testing and non-functional testing. The participants will learn how to apply good agile testing practices by seeing a cross-functional team in action.

The purpose is to provide answers to the following questions:

What kind of testing tasks should be included in sprint?
How developers contribute to testing tasks?
How tester's contribute to non-testing tasks?
How testers and developers communicate?
How to handle tasks beyond functional acceptance testing, such as found bugs, exploratory testing and non-functional testing?

Bio

Tiina Kiuru works as a QA specialist at Reaktor. During the seven years she has been working in software quality field she has had different roles ranging from technical test engineer to test manager. She has been a team member in several cross-functional agile teams. She also helps Reaktor's other teams to succeed in testing by training and participating in their testing activities.

Olli Nokso-Koivisto

Website

TETRAsim Agile Transformation

Abstract

TETRAsim is the leading provider of computer based training systems for the TETRA technology (equivalent of GSM for authorities). Since 2001, the company has delivered more than 70 training systems on 3 continents. This experience report concentrates on how and why TETRAsim made the transition to scrum and what experiences we have had during these 2 years. The presenter will visit topics such as organization transition, QA, automatic testing and the executive perspective on scrum R&D.

Bio

Olli Nokso-Koivisto has been working for TETRAsim since 2001 and is also an owner and a member of board. He has also is /has been a member of board for 5 small/mid-size companies, most notable is the vice-presidency for a company with balance sheet-value of 180me. He has 16 years of development experience in various languages.

Markus Hjort

Website

Tester's life - One sprint in cross-functional team, workshop with Tiina Kiuru

Bio

Methodology Specialist at Reaktor Innovations, Markus has been in the industry for over nine years with experience from various technologies. Certified Scrum Master with extensive experience on agile methods and a long-time active participant in process improvement wherever he's worked at, Markus kick-started the local Coding Dojo events in Finland back in 2005. He is one of the pioneers of the Finnish agile community, speaks frequently at international conferences.

Karri-Pekka Laakso

Website

Combining Systematic UI Design and Scrum 

Keynotes

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