Enterprise Agility Is Not an Oxymoron - Workshop by Steven Borg & Cheryl Hammond
This pre-conference workshop (additional registration required) provides a full day covering Enterprise Management of the Software Process by industry expert Steven Borg, principal consultant and cofounder of Northwest Cadence and Cheryl Hammond, ALM Consultant for Northwest Cadence.| Who should attend | As a leader managing the enterprise software development process, you want to identify the right techniques and principles to improve your teams’ practices and adopt them incrementally so that you can dramatically and measurably accelerate delivery of customer value without creating unnecessary risk or disruption in your organization. |
Workshop Abstract
Every enterprise wants to develop software better, but adopting a methodology which fails to take into account your organization’s context, culture, and regulatory or legacy obligations is usually too risky. Too radical a change too quickly, or the wrong change too forcefully, can drive a wedge between engineering and business. Complete or partial process failures compound themselves by demoralizing teams.Whether you’ve tried and stalled before, or you’re just getting started and apprehensive about the road ahead, this workshop is for you. Learn a better, safer, and ultimately more effective path to an agile adoption that will stick.
All of the popular Lean and agile methodologies offer valuable insights and are backed by real success stories, but no methodology can work when it is carelessly or dogmatically applied. In the enterprise, it isn’t enough to follow someone else’s playbook. You need a deeper understanding of the “why”—the theory behind the methodology—so you can identify and address the real impediments to agile in your environment, and craft targeted solutions with confidence.
This workshop exposes the practices and measures that drive continued improvement, and how they can be introduced gently to the organization. Not just technically: we’ll show you how to bring “the business side”, executives, even sales fully on board with agile—and how to make real progress while you are waiting for them to come around.
Real improvements are easily accomplished without the need for radical changes, using the tools taught in this workshop. We will explore ideas from Lean, Kanban, the Theory of Constraints, and of course, agile principles, XP, and Scrum, all with the perspective you need to identify and put in place the right practices for your organization.
Workshop Goals
Attendees will gain an understanding of the differences between team and enterprise agility, and the essential agile and Lean principles needed above the team level. Be able to map an enterprise Kanban structure suitable for their organization, and definitions of done at various levels of the hierarchy. Know how to effectively communicate an economic decision-making framework to support self-organization across multiple teams and products.About the Presenters
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Steven Borg is the Co-Founder and Principal ALM Consultant of Northwest Cadence. He has been a Microsoft ALM MVP since product inception in 2005, speaks regularly at software development and Visual Studio conferences and has authored Microsoft courseware and white papers on Team Foundation Server, regulatory compliance in software development, Scrum and lean. Steven has helped hundreds of organizations, both large and small, adopt Visual Studio ALM tools to improve their software development process, reduce costs, increase quality and speed delivery dates. His expertise lies in bringing successful lean and agile adoption to companies currently using traditional project management techniques. Steve also holds several other credentials including MCP, MCSD, MCT and Certified Scrum Master (CSM). |
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Cheryl Hammond is an ALM Consultant at Northwest Cadence and has more than 14 years’ experience as a software developer in the private and public sectors. She previously led her team’s successful adoption of Scrum in on a mission-critical regulatory compliance project under multi-agency state and federal government oversight, so don’t tell her it can’t be done. |
More about Northwest Cadence
Northwest Cadence is a national leader in Microsoft ALM and Software Process solutions. Recognized by Microsoft as a Gold ALM Partner, Northwest Cadence focuses exclusively on Application Lifecycle Management with clients across the globe. With experience providing consulting services on Microsoft ALM Tools dating back to product inception (VSTS 2005), Northwest Cadence has actively worked with clients and Microsoft on product development, implementation, and process incorporation. Northwest Cadence has a solid commitment to honesty and excellence. This commitment coupled with the vast experience means Northwest Cadence clients know to expect an exceptional experience every time.Quotes from past workshop attendees
- “Probably the single most useful part of the entire conference for me.”
- "Excellent session with very applicable content.”
- “This was an excellent session. Not about the tools, but about the processes, and how to go back to our organizations and begin to implement some of the move towards agile processes. It really helped me understand how to begin the transition, just one step at a time. I've been facing the insurmountable task of making a huge change, but now understand better how to begin in small steps to effect change.”
- "The session was really informative with emphasis on ALM and a lot of real world examples…”
- "This session was able to boil: Lean, Six Sigma, Agile, and Scrum into one simple and easy to understand format that can be used as a starting point for any one new to Agile, or a stepping block for those that want to move it to the next level…”
