David Hussman - Agility Instructor/Mentor

David has been creating software for more than 15 years in a variety of domains: digital audio, digital biometrics, medical, financial, retail, and education to name a few. For the past 7 years, David has mentored and coached agile teams in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Russia, and Ukraine. Along with presenting and leading workshops / tutorials at conferences in the U.S. and Europe, David has contributed to several books (“Managing Agile Projects” and “Agile in the Large”), and worked on agile curriculum for The University of Minnesota and Capella University. David is currently writing a book for the Pragmatic Programmer series and he is the Assistant Chair of the Agile 2007 conference and Conference Chair for Agile 2008. David co-owns SGF Software, a software development group based in Minneapolis, MN. SGF Software is a software development company keenly focused on promoting agile development, both in practice and as mentors. SGF provides seasoned leaders that strive to pragmatically match technology, people, and solutions to create software that makes people happier and more productive. SGF provides agile services, product development services, and a host of quality software development consultants and contractors. For more information, check out the SGF website www.sgfco.com

• Agile Immersion
• Getting Agile Planning and Tracking Up and Running
• Creating Agile Requirements
• Coaching Agile Projects: Finding Your Groove
• Executable Documentation

Agile Immersion
Have you heard about SCRUM or XP but never done it? If you want to give it a try, this session will allow you to participate in planning and executing several agile iterations. A working knowledge of either XP or SCRUM will be helpful but not mandatory.

After a brief introduction, we will assume roles, create a simple backlog, roadmap, and complete several iterations, finishing with a short retrospective.

Getting Agile Planning and Tracking Up and Running
If your company is using agile or thinking about it, this session will show you how to plan and tracking an agile project. Examples projects will be discussed, including the glory and horrors. Various planning tools that help distributed teams will be presented as well as a collection of lo-fi tools which truly help find and address the issue that plagues so many projects: “when are we going to complete this project”.

From using markers and post it notes to go faster tools, this session will examine ways to get agile going in various situations (e.g. small projects, large projects, or distributed projects). A variety of techniques and tools will be shown and discussed along with the pros and cons of each. Most importantly, you will come away with a variety of ways to start planning and tracking agile projects, so you can choose a path which fits best within your company.

Creating Agile Requirements
Successful project communities balance written requirements with a healthy amount of discussion. This is at the core of requirements that could be deemed “agile”. Many agile projects choose to use user stories, but others may be using use cases or other forms of written requirements. This session is for anyone wanting to improve their requirements, including the creation of good requirement and the presentation styles that help people focus on creating great software products, and stop focusing on documents.

The session will focus on finding the people who are best suited to create and communicate agile requirements. We will examine how to ensure agility for user stories, use cases, and several other common forms of requirements. Without regard to the document type, we will show how to smoke out what needs to be captured in written form when, challenging the age old notion that more detail in requirements produces better software.

Coaching Agile Projects: Finding Your Groove
Is someone asking you to lead an agile project? There are many ?how to be agile? books, but the coverage of skills and techniques for leading are a bit on the light side. Whether you are a manager, tech lead, or a non-stop inspiration for your fellow developers, this session will provide you with new insights into the how and whys associated with coaching / leading an agile project or an agile transition.

This session will focus on the skills and tasks that help agile projects succeed and last. Topics covered will range from coaching to communication to tracking to addressing problems and problem people and more.

Executable Documentation
Why is so much documentation worthless? Wouldn’t is be nice if your documentation actually reflected what your system does? One way to do this is through is by creating “executable documentation. If you are struggling with ambiguous requirements, lack of contact with the business, or a chasm between development and testing, this session is for you.

What is executable documentation? Simply put, instead of adding more details to requirements, capture the desired system behavior in acceptance testing tools which are accessible to the entire project community. The session will focus on FIT, but it may include other tools for creating ED. History has shown me that ED - requirements that have two states (green and red) - helps project communities consistently create better software, faster!