Dublin (Ireland)

9:30-10.45

Colm O’hEocha – Agileinnovation

What's Agile got to do with Testing?

In this tutorial we'll explore some of the different practices and responsibilities of Testers in an Agile team. From working with product owners to define acceptance criteria, to test automation and various Test First paradigms, the Testers role becomes more proactive in 'building in quality'. And this redefined role requires a different mindset and some new skills to work effectively in an agile environment.

11:15 – 12:30

Rajeswari Pandyaram & Kevin Coughlan – Test Triangle

Jira-Agile for your Agile Implementation

Our experts will be presenting a practical demonstration of the Jira-Agile tool, it will cover an end to end demonstration of the agile-scrum functions within Jira-Agile.

9:30-10.45

Frederic Oehl – Smartbox

Quick ramp up on Agile Methods

This session will briefly introduce the philosophy behind the agile movement. This will be followed by a review of some agile approaches, to give the audience a basis to fully benefit from the afternoon sessions.

11:15-12.30

Fran O’Hara – Inspire Quality Services

Scrum – lessons from the trenches

With the ever increasing adoption of Scrum as the most popular agile framework, we are seeing not only the repetition of earlier mistakes but unfortunately many new ones as well! Whether you are a recent adopter or more mature in your agile implementation, there will be challenges to overcome and pitfalls to avoid.

Fran will ask participants to prioritize their most puzzling Scrum problems, and then through group exercises/discussions help find ways to solve them. Come with your list of burning issues, and leave with practical suggestions to address them.

13:30-14:05

Paul Conroy – Square1.io

Jumping off the waterfall - watch out for the rocks below!

As agile adoption grows, more and more companies are finding themselves trying to transition from a waterfall-based product development approach to a more agile one. Success stories are easy to find from the great companies who get it right first time, but for most us that won't sound like our story. We'll take more than a few stumbles along the path and wonder what it is about us or our specific situation that means we're finding it so hard.

Having led this transition within some of Ireland's busiest websites, we did parts of it well, but I'm going to be focusing more on the stuff we got very wrong - decisions we made that at the time seemed like both the smart and low risk thing to do but ended up being neither! It'll hopefully be a useful guide to potential pitfalls along the route if you're starting out on the same journey. And if you've already been through it, you may recognise more than a few of the rocks we hit along the way!

14:10-14:45

Clodagh Doherty – Ocuco

Ocuco’s experience in taking the best of what we can from Lean, Agile and PM processes while preparing to embark on pure Agile in our upcoming change of architecture.

13:30-14:05

Jack Strong – Leankit Europe

Creating a Continuous Improvement Culture within your organization

The Deming Cycle - Plan, Do, Check, Action (PDCA), sometimes called the problem solving cycle, is the bedrock of continuous improvement in Japanese Manufacturing and Lean thinking. The beauty of PDCA is in its simplicity and rigour – it is common sense. It can be applied to just about any problem or opportunity in all sectors and all departments at all levels. As well as delivering sustained continuous improvement it engenders team working and shared learning. It becomes a common language used by everyone. In this session you will learn PDCA and how to apply it, including simple easy to learn techniques for team building, brainstorming and prioritisation.

14:10-14:45

Siobhain Maughan – Integrated Thinking

Addressing the Product Manager vs. Product Owner Dilemma

1) Key challenges impacting product management when supporting an agile development process

2) Benefits and challenges associated with splitting the Product Manager (outward/commercial focus) and Product Owner (inward/engineering focus) functions

3) Tips and approaches to ensuring good communication between the product manager and the product owner

4) Key learnings from implementing this approach in a large software company

15:15-15:50

Augusto Evangelisti – Paddy Power

Lean software development: Tips and tricks

The last couple of years in PaddyPower Business Systems Development have been an exciting ride. Our agile and lean transformation was challenging and rewarding at the same time. In this session I will share with you some practical lean “tips and tricks” I learned in the process. Some are very quick and can be implemented easily, some are complex and require more work but all of them can help you eliminate waste.

15:55-16:30

Claudio Perrone – Agile Sensei

Evolve or Die: A3 Thinking and Popcorn Flow in Action

The conditions found in many organisations can be very hostile to people who try to introduce change. Yet, improvement without change is impossible.

And while these companies glorify and reward the unsustainable acts of very visible firefighters and autocratic leaders, they invariably expose themselves to disruption in the marketplace. But what if people discovered how to develop insanely good habits of thinking, learned how to prevent and eradicate problems, and managed to systematically bring to the surface not only what they accomplished, but also what they learned as they did it?

Perhaps they would get the recognition they deserve and make meaningful progress in their lives and careers.

In this session, Claudio will illustrate how A3 Thinking (a management approach originated from Toyota) and Popcorn Flow (a new Lean Change method he invented) can bring "learning streams" to the surface, dramatically accelerate the rate of change through ultra-rapid experimentation, and form the conditions for teams and individuals to flourish and bring the best of their work to the world.

15:15-15:50

Tomás O’Flaherty – CSGI  

Transitioning an Iron Triangle bound Services organisation to an Agile delivery model

Transitioning any organisation from a waterfall based delivery model to an agile one can be daunting. However when you impose initial constraints that are in themselves waterfall, this can turn a daunting task into a monumental one and deter even the most ambitious advocate. To others this is merely a challenge and in itself provides an opportunity for iterative success.

CSG International, like many multinational organisations that evolved through a series of acquisitions, mergers and subsequent rationalisation of services and offerings, is a diverse organisation with an array of product offerings. The primarily focus is serving the cable TV industry in the US and the telecoms industry globally with significant infiltration into other verticals.

In 2012 an appetite for change which was being encouraged by the parent organisation began to emerge and take hold in the EMEA region for many of the reasons that organisations often look to change or adjust their delivery methodologies or simply try something new. This appetite was by no means unanimous nor was it a foregone conclusion that it meant a change towards agile would even be attempted. So one may ask the questions. How do you initiate this transition without the willingness to commit to upfront investment for the transformation of processes and tool-sets? How does an organisation

· Identify the change agents

· Encourage the people to want to try

· Sufficiently train people

· Support people as the required mind-set change occurs

· Prove success to sponsors

The answers to this and more are iterative, are by no means easily learned and are the focus of this presentation.

15:55-16:30

Cian Bracken – Bank of America  

The specification challenge

In this session we will investigate practical ways of overcoming some of the challenges which agile teams may face on a daily basis regarding the definition of specifications. The concept of 'Specification By Example' will be introduced showing us how we may collaboratively derive acceptance criteria from user stories.