Community Reflections
David Hussman
SGF Software, USA
The agile community/movement is growing and changing faster every day.
As the initial agile flavors blend, the community continues to reach
out, gathering new ideas from other communities and disciplines. One
such practice, retrospectives/reflections, is an example of the agile
community embracing an idea that harmonizes with the core principles of
agile. As retrospectives and reflections are now a mainstay for many
agile communities, this session is a way for the community to share in
this practice. Using the fishbowl format, the session will start with a
discussion among long time players in the agile community. Once the
conversation is rolling, anyone interested may join the discussion,
sharing their experiences or opinions. The moderator will be gathering
questions for the fishbowl and keep the conversation flowing through
the many topics present at the conference and during the session. Over
all, this is a place for the community to meet and reflect on where we
have been, what we have learned, and discuss topics and paths for the
future.
To Certify or Not To Certify
Angela Martin, Rachel Davies, David Hussman, and Michael
Feathers
One of the
problems the agile community is currently facing is how
do we encourage the things that are agile and discourage those that are
not? As
agile software development has grown in popularity we discover that
some
people claim to “do agile” and yet “do
not”, and no one calls them on it. The
principles of the Agile manifesto and the practices within each of the
methods
becomes diluted and lost. Is certification the answer? Tom DeMarco
comments that “though the rationale for certification is
always societal good,
the real objective is different: seizure of power.
Certification is not something we implement for the benefit of the
society but for
the benefit of the
certifiers”. So certification is clearly a complex and
interesting area and ripe
for debate. This panel brings together industry practitioners with
differing
perspectives and experiences of certification; the audience should come
prepared to both ask and answer questions.
Learning more about “Software Best
Practices”
Steven Fraser, Scott Ambler,
Gilad Bornstein, Yael Dubinsky,
Giancarlo Succi
What constitutes a software best-practice and what are the best
strategies to become aware, learn, adopt and adapt such practices? This
fishbowl will bring together seasoned professionals who will meld a mix
of academic and industry perspectives with an agile flavor.