October 6 Meeting: Seattle & Eastside Area
Software Process Improvement Network
How to Start an Agile Project, presented by Jeremy Lightsmith.
Construx Software, 10900 NE 8th St Suite 1350, Bellevue, WA
Gathering with pizza, salad, soda @ 5:45
Talk @ 6:45 with networking following
HOW TO START AN AGILE PROJECT
Imagine you've been given the go ahead to start a project from the ground up doing "Agile". Your team and your company are sold on the vague concept, but no one in your organization really understands what they've signed on for. How do you start it?
There's remarkably little that's said within the agile community about starting projects. If your organization is new to agile, this is your first and best chance to introduce agile ideas up and down the organization, build trust, get alignment, and generally start off on the right foot. Even if your organization and team are agile veterans and already gelled, you still need to generate a backlog, agree on the vision of the project, talk about risks, etc.
We'll look at practices and ideas that industry leaders are using to start projects off smoothly. The processes we'll be talking about are very collaborative and iterative and this session will be too.
BIOGRAPHY
Jeremy spends most of his time & energy building highly performant development teams.
A seasoned agile coach & facilitator, Jeremy excels at creating environments where teams can discover how they work best. He has a deep understanding of agile, and is constantly looking for better ways to share knowledge and collaborate. As a presenter, Jeremy favors interactive and group techniques and pulls from disciplines as diverse as improv and Montessori.
Though Jeremy is now an independent consultant in Seattle, most of his 11 year career has been spent at companies like ThoughtWorks and Pivotal. During his time at ThoughtWorks, Jeremy coached teams and trained facilitators; he owes much of his toolbox to the ThoughtWorkers with whom he worked. He is currently writing a book about Facilitation Patterns.