Thanks to our wonderful speakers (in running order)
Chris Young and Elco Spong
[icon name=icon-twitter] @worldofchris
Session details: “The customer is always right”
OR “Business value is a multi-dimensional risk problem where fitness for purpose is determined by the customer.”
In this simulation of creative knowledge work teams will compete to deliver a product that meets the fitness criteria of the customer who happens to be my eight year old son.
He has asked for a ‘catapult’ that will lob missiles at a target.
His fitness criteria include:
– Distance
– Accuracy
– How good does it look
– How soon can he have it
In order for this to take place at the camp site we will also need to add some compliance and health & safety constraints.
It will be up to the teams to assess the importance of these criteria and work out how they can build something that provides the best fit in the time available.
In software development we rarely start from scratch, just so in this simulation a number of parts and ‘off the shelf’ solutions will be provided for the teams to use and/or adapt.
Chris’ Bio: Chris has been leading engineering teams since 1999. He was pivotal in the BBC’s adoption of Agile in 2000-2001 using it to deliver the pioneering Multi-Screen Wimbledon Service for Sky.
Since then he has worked for broadcasters and platform owners including Dish Network in the US and Deutsche Telekom in Europe.
Most recently he led the development team for the YouView Set Top Box User Interface and headed up engineering for YouTube’s largest Content Network outside the US; Base79 (now Rightster)
He is an active member of the Lean/Agile community speaking at conferences across Europe.
Elco’s Bio: My name is Elco Spong and I am eight years old. At school I am in year three. Each Wednesday I go swimming with my class mates and on Thursday I go to Multiskills. On Monday I go to cooking club. On Friday I go to chess club. I have won a medal in a chess tournament. I have a little brother called Louie and he goes to Puddleducks Nursery. I want to become an inventor when I grow up.
Ilona Brannen
[icon name=icon-twitter]@ilona_brannen
Session details: Teaching and learning in this complex technological world. About how the speed of technology is faster than our ability to learn and how we can improve our learning skills by changing the narration in our heads.
Bio: Former teacher and passionate learning enthusiast, Ilona now spends her time between the tech and education worlds to find the perfect mix of learning, interaction and fun.
Rifa Thorpe-Tracey
[icon name=icon-twitter] @rifa
Session details: Meditation and mindfulness – working in teams of developers and designers while using techniques I’ve learned from Tibetan Buddhist monks in Nepal and Indian gurus.
Bio: Founder of Refigure, Meditation Teacher, SheSays Brighton organiser and freelance Digital Project Manager since 1998.
Cara Bermingham
[icon name=icon-twitter] @bermsville
Session details: How testing assumptions with users can improve your products
An exercise to highlight the importance of user testing and how validating assumptions with users can drastically change and improve the end product.
Bio: Cara is an Agile Coaches at ustwo. She loves working with cross functional teams to build amazing products that users love.
Adian McGuire
[icon name=icon-twitter] @amcguire62
Session details: Better data collaboration is vital for every organization. For the UN’s Humanitarian division it is particularly hard-they work in hundreds of countries, in emergencies and natural disasters. This talk describes the Humanitarian Data Exchange. How do you measure the success of a data collaboration platform? How an agile approach was essential to ensure that vital data was available in direct response to the ebola crisis and the Nepal earthquake.
Bio: Aidan oversees all of Humanitarian Data Exchanges (HDX) technical development, he also founded ScraperWiki with Dr Julian Todd and raised seed and series A funding with Channel 4 and Enterprise Ventures respectively
The Humanitarian Data Exchange
https://data.hdx.rwlabs.org/group/nepal-earthquake
https://data.hdx.rwlabs.org/ebola
Christina Ohanian
[icon name=icon-twitter] @ctohanian
Session details: In the agile world the word ‘manager’ almost always sets off a storm of frustration, anger, confusion and at times conflict, especially when you put words such as project, delivery or test before it.
It’s dawned upon me that unfortunately, ‘managers’ are associated with a negative stereotype and are frowned upon as the ‘evil’ people that tell you what to do every second of the day.
Where I work, I choose to break this stereotype. My title says ‘manager’, but I choose to be a coach, to be a leader, to be a motivator and to facilitate people, teams and disciplines.
You may be thinking ‘well that just makes you an agile coach, right?’ Possibly! But my title has the word ‘manager’ in it.
So where does that put me on the axis of evil?
You decide.
Bio: With 6 years of practicing software testing, my expertise lies in agile software development focused on many different aspects of the testing space, specifically in the practice of Behaviour Driven Development. My current core work is focused on building teams and individuals, helping people elevate themselves, learning to become the forefront of the paradigm shift and continue the agile movement.
Dan North
[icon name=icon-twitter] @tastapod
Session details: why obsessing about Features is killing agile planning, and that there are other things we should be considering as first class work too
Bio: Dan North uses his deep technical and organisational knowledge to help CIOs, business and software teams to deliver quickly and successfully. He puts people first and finds simple, pragmatic solutions to business and technical problems, often using lean and agile techniques. With over twenty years of experience in IT, Dan is a frequent speaker at technology conferences worldwide. The originator of Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) and Deliberate Discovery, Dan has published feature articles in numerous software and business publications, and contributed to The RSpec Book: Behaviour Driven Development with RSpec, Cucumber, and Friends and 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts. He occasionally blogs at http://dannorth.net/blog.
Dan Ashby
[icon name=icon-twitter] @DanAshby04
Session details: The communication game, an interactive game that highlights how difficult communication is. It’s onne of the things that is key to a good project, but it’s also one of the things that can cause major difficulties for a project.
Bio: Dan has been a software tester for over 10 years, testing a huge variety of software ranging from printer drivers to mobile apps and mobile sites, to web based applications (and everything in between). He is an advocate for context driven testing and utilizes an Exploratory Testing approach along with SBTM.
Organisers
David Lowe
[icon name=icon-twitter] @bigpinots
[icon name=icon-linkedin] linkedin.com/in/davidjlowe
Bio: An agile and lean coach, who runs the London Agile Discussion Group, Agile on the Bench and London Lean Coffee. Writes on scrumandkanban.co.uk
Emily Webber
[icon name=icon-twitter] @ewebber
[icon name=icon-linkedin] linkedin.com/in/emilywebber
Bio: An agile and lean coach with a passion for learning and communities. Classic scooter rider, mini owner, co-writer of the minimum viable book, former Head of Agile Delivery at GDS. Blogs at emilywebber.co.uk.