CRAFTING AGILE ADOPTION STRATEGY FOR YOUR ENVIRONMENT

Agile software development is steadily gaining adopters and helping teams and organizations improve the way they build software. At the same time there are many failed or ineffective teams practicing ‘Agile’. Being Agile is not the goal. Building better software that meets and exceeds the true needs of its users is. Your needs and environment are different than many others, so the Agile practices that will give you the most bang for your buck are different also. Join us to get an introduction to Agile software development and incremental techniques to start an Agile adoption strategy tailored to your environment.

Join us for an executive information session to learn more about Agile Software Development.

February 15, 2008

8:30 am to 11:30 am

Corporate Education & Training, Hauppauge Industrial Training Center

131 Hoffman Lane, Islandia, NY 11749

Please call or email to reserve your seat: 631.632.8347 or sbucet@stonybrook.edu

There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution. Adopting full methods such as XP or Scrum may be useful, but they do not allow a focused addressing of business goals and easily flounder because there are no goals to be met. Maturity models, which are efforts at setting a common framework for adoption, are hopelessly flawed because they fail to focus on the business values and their priorities of each organization. These efforts offer a blanket solution and implicitly assume, falsely, that there exists a common context among organizations.

Agile adoption is a different beast than agile methods; for a successful adoption a group must choose the correct practices and frequently adapt those practices to fit their environment. Which practices do you adopt first? When should you adapt them? When should you drop them?

Who should attend:

This session will be of benefit to executives looking at ways to improve the value and focus of their development teams, customers of software development and IT organizations, and all members of software development teams.

Why:

Have you heard of Agile development? Do you want to get beyond the hype and understand what Agile software development is and how it can help you and your organization build better software? Or, perhaps, you already know about Agile and are considering adopting one or more practices in your environment. Attend this session to get an introduction to Agile software development and how you can incrementally adopt the practices in your organization.

This information session will:

• Provide you with a brief understanding of some of the most common Agile practices such as Test Driven Development (TDD), Stand Up Meetings, and Retrospectives.
• Enable you to tie the different Agile practices to your organization’s goals.
• Give you an overview of several patterns of Agile practice adoption.
• Allow you to learn how many others have successfully and unsuccessfully adopted and adapted Agile practices to meet their goals and fit their environment.

You will come away with a deeper understanding of what the different Agile practices can deliver and an initial plan for an Agile adoption strategy for your particular environment.

Gemba Systems

Gemba Systems are in the business helping IT organizations improve their software development tools and techniques. Gemba systems are software practitioners who understand that building software involves clarity of goals, excellent communication, technical skills and the right development tools to get the job done. They help businesses acquire new skills and improve their existing ones through classroom training, onsite workshops focused on their problems, and team coaching and individual mentoring.

Gemba Systems have skilled instructors, coaches, and mentors who have ‘been there, done that’ leveraging Agile software development using Object Oriented languages and frameworks in both the Java and .NET worlds to build and maintain enterprise applications.