Agile 2008 Program Announced

Posted by Mark Levison on Jun 10, 2008

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The program for Agile 2008, Expanding Agile Horizons has just been announced. As of this writing there are still a number of spaces at the early bird rate (save a $100). This year the program was features a number of stages (i.e. tracks) from which attendees can sample:

• Main Stage - has sessions of mainstream interest including introductory sessions.
• Research - following its successful introduction at Agile 2007 the research stage returns with a new crop of papers and workshops.
• Breaking Acts - Agile at the rock face - leading edge ideas including: applying usability concepts, to source code, managing projects using real options etc.
• Questioning Agile - Experience reports and Points of view that challenge the mainstream Agile thinking.
• Customers & Business Value - What to build and what not build, why should we build it? Presentations include: Money for Nothing and Your Change for Free: Agile Contracts with Jeff Sutherland and Stop confusing my customer! with Angela Vinci.
• User Experience - "If you're working on software that has users, whether you know it or not, you're a user experience person."
• Developer Jam - has three main components: Tuneup Clinics (TDD, Clean Code, Agile Architecture), Tutorials and Programming with the Stars - your chance to pair program on stage with a legendary Agile Programmer.
• Tools for Agility - tools can both help and hinder (limiting our world view) us, presenters demonstrate new tools and highlight limitations.
• Committing to Quality - focuses on a belief that high Quality is cheaper in practice, that it improves team morale. But are we right? And what is Quality?
• Legacy Systems - Faced with the challenge of existing code that has been developed over many years without an adequate test base - what do you do?
• Designing, Testing, and Thinking with Examples focuses on examples as a method of learning, teaching, communicating, testing, designing, coding. The sessions tend to be group oriented and with active participation (hands and feet - not just talking).
• Agile & Organizational Culture - "An agile initiative doesn’t take place in a vacuum, it has to interface with the existing (organizational) culture, ... This is a process of mutual adaptation"
• Distributed Agile - Distributed or Dispersed, how do we organize teams when members are spread across to or more locations. How do we conduct retrospectives, mentor and collaborate?
• Leadership & Teams - Do self organizing teams need managers? What role do Agile Leaders have to play?
• Learning & Education - What are effective ways to teach and learn Agile Practices? How do we coach? teach? mentor?
• Live Aid - help work on a real agile project: Mano a Mano a charity that "creates partnerships with impoverished Bolivian communities to improve health and economic well being".
• Open Jam - is the place to talk about items and issues that didn't make it into the main conference agenda.
• Chansons Françaises - "proposera des activités spécifiques (comme des sessions en Français, l’assistance de traducteurs, des discussions en Français pour d’autres sessions animées en Anglais) destinées à attirer les francophones qui seraient restés chez eux sinon."
• Musik Masti - new this year, Muzik Masti is an open music festival after the end of the conference day.

This years keynote speakers are James Suroweicki, author of "The Wisdom of Crowds", Bob Martin, Object Mentor and author of Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices and Alan Cooper, among many other things author of "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum".

Other notable sessions include:

• Expanding Agile Horizons: The Five Dimensions of Systems - Mary Poppendieck
• Leadership Success Recipes for Agile in the 21st Century - Jean Tabaka
• Scale Back: Small is Beautiful - Tobias Meyer
• Resistance as a Resource - Dale Emery

To get an idea of what last year's event was like use the Agile 2007 tag to view presentations and interviews available only at InfoQ.

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   Agile 2008 on friendfeed, an experiment

   by Vladimir Blagojevic

   To make the experience of Agile 2008 even more enjoyable for everyone,
   we have created a room on friendfeed.com, one of the latest
   social aggregators, a kind of twitter on steroids.
   
   friendfeed.com/rooms/agile-2008
   
   The idea is to create a live feed of the conference where we can share
   our thoughts, comments, photos, questions, organize get togethers, whatever.
   
   You are welcome to join. See you in Toronto.

   Reply

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   Re: Agile 2008 on friendfeed, an experiment

   by Vladimir Blagojevic

   The link: friendfeed.com/rooms/agile-2008

   Reply

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