Agile Florida

On Tuesday, May 26th, RubyJax will be having a session on pair programming. Even better, it will be at the Hashrocket offices.

This month’s Tampa.rb meeting has a special guest speaker - Robert Dempsey, CEO of the (Rails) web development shop Atlantic Dominion Solutions, organizer of Acts as Conference and creator of expens’d. The Agile Tampa group will be changing their schedule meeting to encourage everyone to come out - and I encourage you to do the same!

For all the details, see the Tampa.rb meeting info

If you’ve been pondering going to the excellent Lean Kanban Confererence in Miami starting May 6th - the special deal extended to the Florida User Groups ends April 13th. To get the deal, head over to the Florida User Group sign up page, and secure your slot today!

If you haven’t already, be sure to join the Agile Florida mailing list. We have some exciting things coming up, plus an exclusive offer for early registration for an exciting conference coming up in February only to people on the list. Be sure to hop on today!

Sorry for the late post. Thought someone else had this announcement up.

Join the Orlando and Tampa agile users groups this Wednesday, Nov 12 at 6:30pm for a set of lightning talks (short 10 minute presentations) from some key thought leaders in agile. Our guest speakers bios are right here!

Linda Rising has a Ph.D. from Arizona State University in the area of object-based design metrics. Her background includes university teaching as well as work in industry in telecommunications, avionics, and strategic weapons systems. She is an internationally known presenter on topics related to patterns, retrospectives, and the change process. Linda is the author of numerous articles and has published four books: Design Patterns in Communications, The Pattern Almanac 2000, and A Patterns Handbook. Her latest book, written with Mary Lynn Manns, is titled Fearless Change: Patterns for introducing new ideas. Her web site is: www.lindarising.org

Johanna Rothman consults, speaks, and writes on managing high-technology product development. She enables managers, teams, and organizations to become more effective by applying her pragmatic approaches to the issues of project management, risk management, and people management. She’s the author of “Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management,” the coauthor of “Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management,” the author of “Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets and Science of Hiring Technical People,” and coauthor of “Corrective Action for the Software Industry.”

Mary Poppendieck started her career as a process control programmer, moved on to manage the IT department of a manufacturing plant, and then ended up in product development, where she was both a product champion and a department manager. Mary tried to retire in 1998, but instead found herself managing a government software project where she first encountered the word “waterfall”. She wrote the award-winning book “Lean Software Development” to explain how the lean principles from manufacturing could be applied to software development. Mary found retirement elusive as she lectured and taught classes with her husband Tom. Based on their on-going learning, they wrote a second book, “Implementing Lean Software Development.” Mary continues to be a popular writer and speaker as she brings thought-provoking insights to the world of software development

Location

WYCLIFFE USA HEADQUARTERS
11221 John Wycliffe Blvd.
Orlando, FL 32832

We are please to host the Orlando and Tampa Scrum/Agile group. Our location is in south Orlando approximately 15 min. from the international airport. The meeting will be held at the activity center. This building is a separate building from the Wycliffe Corporate offices but is just past the main office building (instructions follow).
To get to the main office (address above) via Google Maps,
View Larger Map

Written directions to main office:
From Interstate 4 take Route 528 (Beachline) east. Exit at Narcoossee Road (Exit #13 - Route 15). Turn right onto Narcoossee Road and go 2 ½ miles south to Moss Park Road. Turn left onto Moss Park Road and go 2 miles. You will see the Wycliffe sign directing you to turn left on John Wycliffe Blvd. The main office building is on your left. We will me meeting in the Activity center which is a separate building on the left just past the main office building. It’s at the next cross street on the corner of John Wycliffe Blvd. and Translation Way. Parking is behind the building (turn left on Translation Way) you will see the parking lot on your left)

Please RSVP to chad@orlandoscrum.org

If you have any questions about the meeting place, you can contact Chad at the email above, or f you need to call while in route, contact Mark Kilby at 407-687-3350 or Paul Rabenold at 407 963-1379.

Title: Testing as Communication, Real-World Techniques
Location: Navigator Coffee Squadron, 7643 Gate Pkwy, Jacksonville, FL 32256 (904) 928-0048
Description: This session covers how Hashrocket, an experienced Ruby on Rails consultancy, uses a wide range of real-world testing techniques and agile methodologies every day to satisfy client customer requirements. It will describe the life cycle of our testing workflow, from story capture to customer acceptance. This includes an overview of: fine-grained requirements gathering in “user story” form; how we manage stories and communicate transparently with the client using a web-based tracking tool; how story-driven development is expressed as test-driven development; and, how we enhance client/developer communication by writing plain-text tests in the vocabulary of the customer’s domain. In this session, you will learn how to turn natural-language requirements into running code that both customer and developer alike can communicate around; how to express customer requirements at the appropriate levels of abstraction, from high-level integration tests all the way down to granular unit tests; and, how to properly employ the latest tools, such as RSpec, StoryRunner, Selenium, Webrat, and fixture factories.

More at http://rubyjax.com/2008/9/17/september-meeting
Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2008-09-30
End Time: 21:00

Title: Tampa Agile Meeting: A Better Culture Change Approach for Busy Practitioners
Location: Microsoft 5426 Bay Center Drive Suite 700 (7th Floor) Tampa, FL 33609
Description: From Michael:

Hi Folks! Just a reminder that our next Agile Tampa group meeting will be Thursday, September 18. Mike Russell from ARC http://www.arccorp.com/index.html will be graciously giving a presentation that his company presented at the Agile 2008 conference in Toronto. The presentation is entitled “A Better Culture Change Approach for Busy Practitioners”. Agile Thought http://www.agilethought.com/Pages/default.aspx will be our sponsor again supplying us with the all-important pizza, which will be available at 6pm. The talk will start at 6:30 and we will be meeting at the new Microsoft location: Microsoft 5426 Bay Center Drive Suite 700 (7th Floor) Tampa, FL 33609 Phone: (813) 281-3900 Fax: (813) 289-0034 Map If you haven’t already, please send me an e-mail at AgileTampa@live.com if you plan on attending so I can get an accurate count for pizza! Thanks!- Michael Russo

Start Time: 18:00
Date: 2008-09-18

“Leading the Agile Transition”
September 25th and 26th
Marriott Atlanta Perimeter Center
http://summit.aplnatlanta.org

For the past few years, local APLN chapters have organized and hosted regional Leadership Summits. These events have been very well received and attract fantastic speakers and exceptional local thought leaders.

This is your chance to attend an Agile conference specifically designed to address the needs of the Agile community in Atlanta and the Southeast. Our speakers will discuss topics ranging from Product and Portfolio management to Agile Architecture and Metrics. Each speaker will present two talks, one geared toward the practitioner that is looking for tools and techniques they can use on a daily basis, the other toward leaders considering, or leading, a switch to Agile.

The summit is geared toward new and seasoned Agile leaders at all levels: organizational leaders, product leaders, development leaders, and project leaders. This is your chance to spend a whole day with some of the leading experts in the area of Agile Leadership, to network with with other agile leaders, and to share your experiences and concerns with those who are in the same situation as yourself.

The Dallas and Seattle Summits were a huge success! Next up is Atlanta!

The APLN Leadership Summit format includes:

• Networking opportunities throughout the day
• Speakers addressing how to lead their organizations to become agile.
• “Think Tank” sessions on Agile Leadership with topics addressing advanced leadership tools, experiences, lessons learned, and issues yet to be resolved.
• Networking social at the end of the first day to review think tank solutions and suggestions.

The APLN Atlanta planning committee has lined up an all star group of speakers and local Agile leaders. The conference is limited to 120 participants so you need to act now. If you are in the area, or able to make a the trip, the Atlanta Summit will be well worth attending.

For more information (including speaker bios and abstracts) and information on how to register, please visit the APLN Summit home page: http://summit.aplnatlanta.org

For those who may not be able to make the Orlando Scrum meetings on the 3rd Tuesday evenings of the month, one of our members has started a Scrum Lunch discussion on meetup.com

http://agile.meetup.com/41/

Come enjoy the lunchtime agility and some great Thai food!