User Experience (UX) practitioners and agile practitioners need to understand how user-centred design (UCD) and its techniques can be applied in an agile context. We studied the role of UX practitioners on agile projects, as perceived by UX practitioners themselves. Interviewing 10 UX practitioners in a variety of settings, we identified two main themes that they perceive to be highly influential in the success of integrating UCD and agile approaches: UX practitioners’ understanding of their job role, and the need to establish, protect and communicate an overall team vision.

The increasing use of agile methods to develop UI-intensive systems has led to a need to find ways of integrating usability into agile teams—reconciling the convergence and divergent points between the two areas. Agile usability researchers at Virginia Tech have partnered with Meridium to develop and implement an integrated approach known as eXtreme Scenario-based Design (XSBD). Based on an analysis of core values and principles of both areas, and work from other agile usability researchers we identified four requirements that need to be met for an integrated approach to work effectively.

With the popularity of Scrum, ScrumMaster has become a de facto role on many agile projects.

In this thought-provoking session, we’ll explore the ScrumMaster role and its key challenges. We’ll discuss why teams end up with dysfunctional ScrumMasters, and how that hurts agile projects. We’ll explore common ScrumMaster anti-patterns, and why they occur. We’ll challenge the ScrumMaster role, compare it to other models, and address if agile teams really need a ScrumMaster.

This promises to be a lively and interactive session that may change your views on how to structure a Scrum team.

This session will describe our experience in using the Scrum process of Software Development to create complex tools for use in animated movie production. Our process evolved out of the need to keep the task of UI design at least one sprint ahead of software development. Our products are designed for the creative in-house artists who use the tools for long hours over the course of movie production. We will also share ways to capture the complexity in the artists workflow and methods to break it down into reusable components both for graphical user interfaces and for software development.

This is the story of how the Launchpad (https://launchpad.net) development team switched to a continuous integration system to increase several flows in their development process:

• flow of changes on trunk;
• flow of changes requiring database schema upgrade;
• flow of deployed changes to end users.

To switch to a buildbot (http://buildbot.net) based system meant violating a very old company taboo: risking a trunk that doesn’t pass its test suite. The risk of a broken trunk was offset by allowing each developer to run the full test suite in the Amazon EC2 cloud.

As agile coaches, we all face impediments when it comes to making agile transformations happen in an organization. Dealing with corporate bureaucracy is most times the hardest part of the transition. So, what about the federal government and all that red tape? Learn how two coaches have made it happen, leading and coaching an enterprise agile adoption (principally Scrum and FDD) at two agencies within the federal government space. Think you’ve dealt with bureaucracy? Come hear what it’s like to deal with the ultimate in corporate bureaucracy!

A splendid way to know if you will succeed at agile in the workplace is to be guided by an agile experience in a volunteer setting, where little is masked. Volunteers became volunteers because, despite jobs, families and everything else in their lives, they see a unique reward from the donation of their time and efforts. The danger of the workplace is that, rather than keeping the eye on the prize, it is too easy for someone to replace the underlying motivational reward by the paycheck. This report shows how a volunteer organization was able to experience and learn the power of agile values.

A series of cartoons depicts the terrible things that happen when agile practices aren’t followed. This session is valid for any persona, but especially for the product owner who will suffer when their product fails because they follow a process that isn’t helping their team deliver!

Leading an agile development team; what is the role, what’s important, what to do, and how to lead. This is based on my experience in leading a large (600+ people) application development organization that has been practicing Agile since 2001. Over the past eight years I’ve observed, coached, and developed Agile leaders. In my talk I’ll cover the attributes of the successful Agile leader. I will use real life examples that illustrate and validate the attributes that can help or hinder the process of leading an Agile team. Leadership versus management will also be discussed.

How do you do sprint planning meetings when you have, for example, 60 people and 8 teams working on the same product? One neat way is to get them all into the same room and do them together. This is a great way to stimulate collaboration and resolve dependencies - but there are some important practical aspects to take into consideration. Having done this with several different companies over the past few years I’d like to share some experiences and lessons learned.

I will focus on the practical aspects of getting this to work, with photographs and examples from real cases.