COHAA Presents The Path to a·gil·i·ty 2011

Central Ohio Agile Association Presents

The Path to a·gil·i·ty

Conference 2011

www.thepathtoagility.org

Featured Speakers

Ken Schwaber

Michael Mah

Kelly Allan

The Path to a·gil·i·ty conference was developed to further COHAA's mission to promote the use of Agile practices and principles.  COHAA has engaged a number of national and regional Agile thought leaders to provide session content focused on a mix of business, technical, and/or management topics.  Whether you are well along the path or just starting out, this conference will help guide you in the right direction.  Register now and begin to plan YOUR path to agility.

Conference Schedule

7:00am to 8:00am - Registration & Breakfast

8:00am to 9:30am - Morning Keynote

9:30am to 10:00am - Break

10:00am to 11:15am - Session 1

11:15am to 11:45am - Break

11:45am to 1:00pm - Lunch Keynote

1:00pm to 1:30pm - Break

1:30pm to 2:45pm - Session 2

2:45pm to 3:15pm - Break

3:15pm to 4:30pm - Session 3

4:30pm* to 8:30pm - Retrospective, Conference Giveaways, & IT Martini Hour at Cantina 

*Trolley Service will be available from Arena Grand to Retrospective (IT Martini Event at Cantina)

Registration Fee Includes

1)  Conference Pass (Includes Parking, Breakfast, Lunch, and Drinks)

2)  Trolley Service

3)  IT Martini Hour Registration & Pass

4)  Professional Development Credit Hours (5)

Ken Schwaber "Scrum Enterprise Adoption Strategies"

Organizations use Scrum as a tool to become agile. They became more productive, produced higher quality products, and were able to take advantage of opportunities with higher value products.  To take full advantage of the opportunities, the organizations had to change their culture, management style, expectations, and reward systems.  Ken Schwaber describes how he and Scrum.org have engaged with organizations, top-down and bottom-up, to realize these benefits.  He will discuss opportunities, requirements, and constraints.

Ken Schwaber developed the Scrum process with Jeff Sutherland in the early 1990’s and has gone on to test and popularize its use. Ken was a signatory to the Agile Manifesto in 2001, and has founded the Agile Alliance and Scrum Alliance. Ken has been a software developer for over 30 years, from hacked to procedural to object, from bottle-washer to cook.

Michael Mah "Ugly Teams"

Ugly teams are ones that break down and fail - regardless of whether they're implementing Agile or about managing offshore teams. In the rush to be faster, better, cheaper, or super-innovative, it's possible to become trapped in organizational dysfunction, even to the extent whereby good medicine won't work. What are common sources of dysfunction today? How do you manage these difficult conversations?

In this presentation, Michael Mah will show examples of companies that have overcome barriers to success, plus a few who didn't. You'll learn how systems theory plays a role in software development, why complex communication and expert thinking are the penultimate challenges facing knowledge workers today, and how accurate and reliable metrics are key to revealing patterns so that managers can find the right path through their software development jungle.

As managing partner at QSM Associates Inc. based in Massachusetts, Michael Mah teaches, writes, and consults with technology companies on estimating and managing software projects, whether in-house, offshore, waterfall, or agile. He is the director of the Benchmarking Practice at the Cutter Consortium, a Boston-based IT think-tank, and served as past editor of the IT Metrics Strategies publication. With over 25 years of experience, Michael and his partners at QSM have derived productivity patterns for thousands of projects collected worldwide across engineering and business applications. His current work examines time-pressure dynamics of teams, and its role in project success and failure. His background is in physics and electrical engineering, and he is a mediator specializing in conflict resolution for technology projects. Michael lives in the mountains of western Massachusetts with his two children. He can be reached at www.qsma.com.

Kelly Allan "Deming, Systems Thinking and Agile"

Join Kelly for a lively discussion about how the work that W. Edwards Deming did with Toyota relates to Agile Software development. Many teams practitioners and even coaches are trying to force-fit tools from the Toyota Production System or "lean" to the work of software, but without the context of what Deming and Taiichi Ohno were trying to accomplish with those systems. Kelly will provide a link back to the principles and systems thinking to help all of us in the software world understand how to make the best use of the ideas that worked so well in manufacturing.

Kelly L. Allan is a Senior Associate of Kelly Allan Associates, Ltd., a company with 24+ associates that has been in business since 1974.  Kelly has published articles, commentary and letters in a variety of journals, including Business First, Fast Company, Personnel Journal, Marketing News, Business Marketing Association News, Nature Conservancy, Harvard Business Review, and The Wall Street Journal.  Has has been featured in Fast Company, The Columbus Dispatch, Sam's Club The Source, Tanning Trends, Quality Progress, The Masterful Coaching Fieldbook, The Knowing-Doing Gap, and Abolishing Performance Appraisals.

In 1999, poor health forced Peter Scholtes (The Team Handbook, and The Leader's Handbook) to retire from conducting seminars and consulting.  Peter asked Kelly to continue the seminars and consulting practice.  Scholtes says, "There is much to appreciate about Kelly.  His exceptional ability to combine theory with real world implementations is perhaps what clients appreciate the most."

In 2004 Kelly was 1 of only 12 people selected by the W. Edwards Deming Institute to conduct Dr. Deming's famous "Four Day Seminars."  Kelly is also a member of AMA and ASQ.

Session Speakers

The conference website contains a full list of the sessions (abstract and bio) so you can develop YOUR path to agility!  Each session will have six (6) presentations/panels to choose from (a mix of business, technical, and management topics).

Gold Conference Sponsors

ICC

Improving Enterprises

Pillar

Quick Solutions, Inc.

Rally Software

Scrum.org

Silver Conference Sponsors

CareWorks Technologies

DiscountASP.Net

IBM

Manifest Solutions

Sophisticated Systems, Inc.

Telerik