Aug

08


2017

To the Left to the Left, Everything I Test in a Box to the Left

Tue (05:00 PM - 06:00 PM)

Summary

Software product design and engineering is an area rich in opinions and historic working practice. Also the modern agile methods prescribe many practices which may work for you if followed carefully but can just as easily lead to "cargo cult" activities that deliver no real business benefit. Going back to first principles and understanding some of the economics of software product development and understanding HOW Scrum, Kanban or <insert favourite method here> can deliver more value for the same cost is liberating. It unlocks a new ability to adapt popular practices to any circumstance and ensure the business benefits in the way expected. Adam Mitchell brings his knowledge and experience to this months meetup to explain some of the mysteries of product development economics. Chris Warren will also share his experience of shifting focus to the "left of the board" when building a top performing test strategy.

Programme

We Lost How Much Money?
Cost of delay should be the biggest factor when deciding what order to queue work - yet it is very rarely used and not properly understood by most business's. This interactive session will go through what we mean by value, how we perceive it and how to best use it in prioritising work. I was lucky enough to spend a couple of days with Don Reinertsen, probably the leading authority on product flow alive today. This session talks through some of his learnings and puts them into a practical context that you can use tomorrow with your teams.
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Adam Mitchell
I stumbled across agile and lean working about 15 years when I was a developer - it was love at first sight. The transparency, the focus on value and the autonomy all seemed to make so much sense ...so why weren't companies adopting it! I've spent the last 5 years as an enterprise agile coach helping clients throughout Europe, UAE and Asia with their digital transformation programs. I do a mix of agile coaching, consultancy and training. I'm badged with Scrum Alliance, a trainer for Scaled Agile and a proper kanban geek - agile is a broad church that welcomes all. My most important areas of focus are; empathetic change that will last, growing lean leaders and creating highly motivated autonomous teams of teams. Any spare time that the family and Bauer the dog don't consume is focused on triathlon.
To the Left to the Left, Everything I Test in a Box to the Left
I would like to tell my story about how I started focusing my attention on the right side of the board but slowly started to shift to the left. The journey starts with me picking up work in the ‘Test’ column without much involvement earlier in the process and continues today with me spending most of my time testing the requirements in an Analysis stage and working with the team to ensure testing is baked in throughout the process.
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Chris Warren
I’ve been a software test consultant for nearly 8 years working in a variety of sectors across numerous roles mainly in performance and automation. My current engagement is for a consumer finance company who want to give their major platform a facelift. I’m part of an alleged scrum team tasked with breaking down the businesses epics and turning them into working software.