Girl Geek Dinners Ottawa

Truthfulness, consultative decision-making and constant learning.  Simple concepts to understand but so hard to implement! Who doesn’t want to work in an environment where opportunities and challenges are always out in the open, where challenges are overcome as a team and where lessons are  applied the next time around?

Guest speaker Ellen Grove shares information on Agile principles and practices.

These Agile principles and practices is what our speaker, Ellen Grove, came to talk to us about….in 30 minutes. So here are some of the highlights and links for you to get the full story:

• Agile is highly collaborative in nature
• Work can get started with just enough information, there is no need  to predict all the changes up front
• Work is prioritized by the customer and priorities can change from one iteration to the next
• Openeness with the customer is not only OK, it is expected
• Agile is a rich method for collecting data and feeding it back into your processes
• When an iteration is two weeks, what’s the risk of trying something out?
• Agile methods are great at exposing impediments

Additional links:

• http://www.openagile.com
• http://wiki.openagile.org
• Scrum in 5 minutes
• InfoQ’s Agile Stream

All this being said, you’ve read our event summary, reviewed the above links and see the value Agile implementations offer.  The issue is you’re not in a position to change your company’s project delivery methodology.  How can you become more Agile as a team member? Ellen recommends two things:

1. Use a task board – it’s a great way to visualize work and expose bottlenecks.
2. Nothing beats a team face-to-face sanity check. Not an hour long status meeting, just a quick (15-minute time boxed) way to update one another on work accomplished, work coming up and to expose any roadblocks standing in the way of completing the work.

More questions? You can find Ellen on Twitter and LinkedIn, you can send her an email or you can access her bookmarks for more information.

So there you have it.  Go out and be Agile!

p.s.: We’re already planning our next event so stay tuned.  We plan these events for the GGD Ottawa community so please send any topic or speaker suggestions or general feedback our way.

Join us Tuesday, May 25 as our guest speaker Ellen Grove, an experienced Agile coach and software tester, discusses how to apply Agile principles and practices to all kinds of endeavours, from software development to social change.

Ellen will present OpenAgile, a non-software-focused approach to Agile work that emphasizes truthfulness, consultative decision-making and constant learning. OpenAgile enhances the ability of individuals, teams, and organizations to deliver value to their stakeholders by developing human capacity, improving processes, and, most importantly, encouraging rapid and deep learning.

Event Details

• When: Tuesday, May 25 at 6 p.m.
• Where: Johnny Farina – 216 Elgin Street, between Lisgar and Cooper

To join us, please register here.

Hey students!

Thanks again to generous sponsorship from Joe Thornley of Thornley Fallis, we can offer six student spots to this event. If you are a student wishing to attend, please leave a comment below indicating why or what you want to learn about Agile. The first six students to respond will receive complimentary registration and dinner (up to $25).

A little bit about Ellen

Ellen Grove helps teams make better software through coaching them to create the circumstances in which they can work most productively and effectively. Her Agile coaching practice is founded in over 10 years experience leading software testing, development and implementation teams in global enterprises, a passion for exploratory software testing and user-centered design, and a background in community organization.

She uses team-building and facilitation approaches to support the transition to collaborative Agile work practices at the team, managerial and corporate level, and has conquered the challenges of extending Scrum roll-outs to off-shore development partners and multi-site project teams.

Outside the office, Ellen applies her coaching talents and creativity to keeping her household menagerie of husband, children, dogs, cats, goats, snakes, spiders and birds happy and healthy. Ellen blogs at Mastering the Obvious.