December Holiday Networking Event

It's time for the Agile Cincinnati holiday networking event!  Come join your hosts Peg Haustetter, Steve Lyle, and Stephen Wagner for an evenining of networking  and fun.  Learn more about Agile Cincinnati, talk Agile, help us understand how to become a better organization, or just come to learn more about each other and have fun!

We are having this event at Flipdaddy's Burgers & Beers in Symmes Township.  Address below.

Breaking News! Cardinal Solutions has generously offered to sponsor appetizers for this event!  Please don't forget to thank the Cardinal reps at the event!

Please register through Eventbrite so we have an idea of how many people to expect.
When: December 13, 2012  (Second Thursday).
Networking: 5:30-7:30pm
Where: Flipdaddy's - 12071 Mason Montgomery Rd, Cincinnati, OH, 45249

Peg HaustetterStephen WagnerSteve Lyle

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November Meeting: BDD in .NET with SpecFlow

A key concept of any Agile methodology is communication. It’s no longer normal or acceptable for developers to sit and develop applications in isolation from the business. To that end, developers and business domain experts have been trying to find better ways to communicate. While developers tend to speak in terms of “code and technology” most business domain experts are more comfortable communicating in terms of scenarios, workflows and business rules.

Test Driven Development (TDD) was the first step in getting these two groups to communicate in the same way. Developers could write unit tests that expressed business requirements with the hope that business users could validate that what was being tested was in fact what the desired behavior was. But, unit tests are still code and while it was better, the communication was still stilted and inefficient.

To help this communication new techniques such as Behavior Driven Development (BDD) and Acceptance Test Driven Development (ATDD) have become popular. Along with these new ideas, new tools like SpecFlow have become popular as a means to express unit tests in a way that the business can better understand and validate.

This session will demonstrate how SpecFlow can be leveraged in your BDD or ATDD practices. In this session you will learn what SpecFlow is and how to integrate it into your C# .NET project. The Gherkin language and the “Given, When, Then” paradigm will be explained. You will see how to write tests in a way that business users are not only capable of reading, but can also help you create them.

James Bender is VP of Technology at Improving Enterprises, enjoys developing software and working with other passionate technologists.

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Update on Sunday, December 23, 2012 at 6:23PM by Agile Cincinnati

Thanks to James Bender for coming down from Columbus to discuss BDD and SpecFlow with our group.The members learned a little about Gherkin syntax and how SpecFlow .NET integration enables users to write the behavior of software in a way that can be understood by both business folks and developers; as well as, generate automated tests.  This increases the chances that the software written will be both right and of good quality.

We had a good time time chatting with James after the presentation, too bad he had to get back to Columbus shortly after.

Congrats to our Pearson book winner Kevin Zamora who chose "How Google Tests Software"

October Meeting: Agile from the Top Down

I believe that executives must practice what they preach. If they want teams to be transparent and agile, they need to practice themselves and lead by example. This talk will share some Agile & Lean techniques, applied in a new way, to help organizations understand their constraints so they can transparently carry forward their journey to becoming Agile. “Seeing the Whole” includes customers, projects, applications, people, leadership, financials and Standard Work. We will propose creating a BVR (Big (I mean big) Visual Room), refactoring the PMO and suggest some practices to help support this journey. Executives are challenged to lead by example and be transparent.

Jon Stahl is the founder and CEO of LeanDog, a software engineering firm in Cleveland.  After 18 years of experience providing IT leadership in both Fortune 500 and start up organizations, Jon founded LeanDog to help companies with Agile transformation and Lean management.
 
Jon’s passion is eliminating waste; optimizing the performance of IT teams and helping organization cultures adopt Lean and Agile values. He is the CEO of LeanDog but also actively coaches senior leadership, teaches classes, and speaks at many national and international conferences each year.  He is a thought leader in the Lean/Agile and entrepreneurial communities.  He has co-founded events such as Ignite Cleveland, Cleveland Startup Weekend, and Cleveland GiveCamp for IT Philanthropy. He and his team have authored an online “Agile Discussion Guide” outlining over 35 practices they teach.

Jon is a graduate of The Ohio State University and grew up in Pittsburgh, PA.  He is married with two children and two ugly bulldogs that sit with a “lean”.

When: October 11, 2012  (Second Thursday).
Networking: 5:30-6pm.
Program: 6-7:30pm.
Where: Max Training. 4900 Parkway Drive Suite 160 , Mason (Cincinnati), OH 45040

PMP's: This event counts for 1 (one) PDU

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September Meeting: Enter the Bubblesphere - You and Your Agile Portfolio

Bubble charts, seriously? Yes! Even the best agile development teams may have yet to mind meld with a professional product portfolio manager, and vice versa. This simulation gives product managers some new agile bubbles to use when charting their portfolio performance, and provides developers with new tools for collaborating with business owners. All attendees will focus on how to maximize long- and short-term ROI for IT portfolios, along with learning to evaluate per-iteration team value delivery.

The session begins with a brief introduction to portfolio management techniques, along with a brief introduction to agile software development techniques, with an emphasis on planning for and reporting on business value.  Attendees will be divided into groups by table, and each group will be given information on the “as-is” corporate portfolio of 4 projects, along with information about the overall corporate strategy and some competitor information. In each of two rounds, the teams determine how much money to invest in each of the projects in the portfolio, and based on those decisions, they will get a report on the progress of each agile team working on the portfolio, expressed as a set of standard reports and charts. Teams will additionally get information about what has happened to competitors during the round.

At the end of the simulation, each team will have a set of charts showing how the portfolio performed over the full course of the game, and how much return they have gotten on their investment.

This workshop was held at Agile Games 2011 and Agile 2011, so don't miss this opportunity!  Elena is coming from Chicago to run this workshop for us.  Let's give her a warm Agile Cincy welcome!

Elena Yatzeck remembers most of her 25 years in IT, but she would like to emphasize that she has never coded onto punch cards nor seen a vacuum tube in use.  Today she is paid to opine about effective software delivery, large-scale organizational change management, leadership, mentoring and coaching.

When: September 13, 2012  (Second Thursday).
Networking: 5:30-6pm.
Program: 6-7:30pm.
Where: Max Training. 4900 Parkway Drive Suite 160 , Mason (Cincinnati), OH 45040

PMP's: This event counts for 1 (one) PDU

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