Agile 2007 Panel Discussion, September 24, 2007

Agile Denver will be meeting on Monday, September 24 at the Tivoli on the Auraria Campus. This is our first time at this location, but it appears to be very conveniently located, across Speer from Downtown Denver and near to I-25. Please see below for further details.

We will host five panelists who attended and presented at the recent Agile 2007 conference: Lisa Crispin, Michele Sliger, Ken Goodhew, Ronica Roth and Aaron Ruhnow (bios below). They will share their experiences and what they learned, as well as fielding questions from the audience.

Coming from diverse backgrounds of Agile development, testing and management -- there will be something for anyone involved in Agile to learn. If other attendees were at the conference, we might convert to a fishbowl format to include them.

As always, our monthly meetings are free to attend and open to local software professionals, students and faculty. Feel free to pass this announcement along to your colleagues.

Panelists

Lisa Crispin co-authored Testing Extreme Programming (Addison-Wesley, 2002) with Tip House, and is now co-writing Agile Testing (Addison-Wesley, 2008) with Janet Gregory. Lisa regularly contributes articles about agile testing to publications such as IEEE Software, Better Software and Methods and Tools. She leads tutorials and workshops on agile testing at conferences in the U.S. and Europe. Lisa currently works as a tester at ePlan Services Inc. in Denver, developing web-based financial applications using XP and Scrum. For more about Lisa's work, please see her website, http://lisa.crispin.home.att.net.

Lisa helped organize Agile 2007, serving as testing track chair, assistant volunteer coordinator, and past chair of the Discovery Session track. She and Janet Gregory conducted a session on agile testing for the beginner track, a "CWAC" session on testing-related problems faced by agile teams, and a tutorial on testing called "UAT and Beyond". She would like to report on some of the hands-on sessions such as the Rails project to develop a web donation application for Mano a Mano, a non-profit.

Ken Goodhew has been involved in software development for over 20 years as a tester, developer, project manager and Director. He was using Agile practices long before they became mainstream. He is a certified ScrumMaster and a graduate of one of the first XP Immersion classes taught by Ken Beck and friends. Ken is currently a Senior Project Manager at Magpie, a software development and consulting firm in Westminster, CO. Magpie has developed a reputation for delivering high quality code, on time and in budget using Agile methodologies. Ken also delivers Agile training to a number of Magpie clients. Ken attended a variety of presentations, panels and workshops at the conference as an interested observer.

Ronica Roth is an Agile coach and consultant with Rally Software. Her 10-year software career is rooted in facilitating clear communication and close collaboration across disciplines, resulting in software that more often met customer needs. She has extensive experience discovering, evolving and managing software requirements, which provides Product Owner expertise and a deep understanding of the customer side of Agile software development. Her passion for helping people work together creatively and efficiently led her to embrace Agile practices. She has guided many organizations -- from small, private firms to large government agencies, from technology companies to internal software development groups -- "through successful adoption of Agile principles and best practices. Ronica is a Certified ScrumMaster-Practitioner and Certified JAD Facilitator and holds a Master of Science in Journalism (MSJ) from Northwestern University.

At Agile 07, Ronica ran two discovery sessions: "Can Agile Improve Employee Engagement?" (a session run jointly with a colleague from The Gallup Organization), and "From Analyst to Owner"

Aaron Ruhnow has been a developer since 1993, and started seriously working with Agile in 2005. Aaron became a CSM in 2006. He'd been a "process cynic" most of his professional life, but Agile changed that. At the conference, Aaron presented an "adoption story" of their first team's transition to Agile. His office is transforming to using Lean processes, which is keeping them plenty busy.

Michele Sliger has extensive experience in agile software development, having worked in both XP and Scrum teams before becoming a consultant. As a self-described "bridge builder," her passion lies in helping those in traditional software development environments cross the bridge to agility. Along with co-author Stacia Broderick, their forthcoming book "The Software Project Manager’s Bridge to Agility" will focus on that topic, helping PMI-trained project managers make the transition. Michele is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and a certified Project Management Professional (PMP). If you have a question, or would like help with your agile adoption, Michele can be reached at michele@sligerconsulting.com.

At Agile 07, Michele contributed with the "An Alternative to Consensus - Individual Decision-Making in Agile" Discovery Session, the "Learning to Say No" with Stacia Broderick, Discovery Session and presented "Agile in the Waterfall Enterprise".

Location

The September 2007 meeting will be held in the Tivoli Student Union (TV) building, in Room 320AB on the third floor.

The Tivoli is located on the Auraria Campus, within walking distance of Downtown Denver via Larimer Street crossing Speer. Driving in from I-25 south take the Colfax exit. Coming from I-25 north, the Speer exit is most convenient.

Please review or print out the parking map for reference.

Parking on site costs $5 to attendees of our event and there should be parking available in the lots off of Auraria Parkway and Ninth Street. Be sure to mention that you are attending an on campus event otherwise they might assume you are there for a sports event.

Sponsors

	Mountain Goat Software is a Colorado-based process and project management consultancy and training firm. Offering Certified ScrumMaster, agile estimating and planning, user story, Certified Scrum Product Owner, and other courses to help companies adopt and improve their use of agile processes and techniques in order to build extremely high performance development organizations.
	Net Objectives' vision is to help you achieve effective software development without suffering. Net Objectives assists companies in maximizing the business value returned from their efforts in software development and maintenance. They do this by providing quality training, coaching, and consulting that both directly assists and empowers you to create and sustain this ability.
	Our on campus sponsor is The Games Club, a tri-institutional (MSCD, UCD, and CCD) club that seeks to unite the campus and provide a closer-knit college community to Auraria Campus. The Funds raised by the games club through sponsorship of events like Agile Denver is used to help fund scholarships to club members and to encourage participation in the Homeward Bound project.