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The Round Foundry

Mark Stringer

In this talk I examine the powerful reasons why most projects are perceived to be late and over-budget and suggest, possibly controversially, that this is probably going to be the default state for most software projects for a long time to come. 

I then go on to suggest some strategies for continuing to deliver value to customers on late and over-budget projects whilst at the same time easing the stresses and pressures on developers and project managers and allowing them to feel they are doing a good job.

Overtime and Overbudget

Agile project management methodologies and agile project management books give the impression that if you follow their recommendations and implement their practices your projects will be on-time and to budget. However, my own experience is that most projects, even if they are good examples of Agile project management practice, are still perceived by most of the people involved, and especially by customers and stakeholders, to be late and over budget.

Why should this be? Why does being late and over-budget feel so bad? What can we as developers, project managers and even customers do to make the situation better? 

2009 November Meetup

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Rachel Davies 

Unruly is the leading global platform for social video marketing. Founded in 2006, we now have 11 offices and employ over 125 people globally including Germany. We've been applying eXtreme Programming (XP) from the start and that's still a core part of how we develop our software products. As our company and customer base has grown, we've had to figure out how to shape user stories and make plans with stakeholders spread across US and Europe. We also have grown our tech team so we can continue to develop new product offerings with rich user-experience while improving our underlying infrastructure to handle a growing amount of traffic and data. Come to this session to hear about how we use XP and where we've had to make adjustments to adapt to scale.

XP @ Unruly

 Ray Edgar

This is a fresh look at implementing Agile/Lean at an Enterprise level - why we should be using this approach, what we need to address and understand, and how it can be delivered successfully. This understanding is specifically necessary now in the wake of the proliferation of Agile scaling frameworks - SAFe, LeSS, DaD, VDD etc, all generally deriving from attempts to make Agile ""stick"" in organizations, usually after implementation within software development- successful or failed. With reference to the new BCS Agile Practitioner certification and many gems from experts in the field, we will re-examine the key ideas of Agile/Lean, and how focusing on them can deliver measurable benefits and success to the Enterprise overall. Bring along your inquiring mind, forget that we all know the benefits of agile, don't try to memorize the manifesto again, and don't be relying on any comfort with the iron triangle. It may not exist when we have finished!

Implementing Agile/Lean Software Delivery at Enterprise Level

Industry fads and fashions continue within agile guidance. From Scrum to Kanban to DSDM and now SAFe jostling for attention and certification spending. Extreme Programming still stands, almost uniquely, as a guiding light untainted by a business model. There is no XP Alliance, Lean XP University or Scaled XP Academy. Making use of XP ideas is simply down to practice and so is demonstrating proficiency. How old fashioned! This month we welcome Rachel Davis back to Agile Yorkshire to talk about how she has been using XP in her current role at Unruly. As a practised and in demand speaker Rachel is not to be missed.
During the first half of the evening Ray Edgar will also touch on the guidance theme and explore some code threads within some old and new agile frameworks. Many of you will know Ray as a regular attendee and supporter of Agile Yorkshire now turned contributor and speaker.

2014 March Meetup

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Ethar Alali

Agile development has been around a long time now. One of the key concepts in reliably and consistently delivering software and crucially, realising it's value, has been the flow of stories through the delivery chain, however big the organisation. 

In this talk, Ethar presents his view on why it works, how Kanban works at scale, what always worked before agility, how to spot value delivery and crucially, the limits to employing particular practises. All Illustrated with Lego and Monopoly money.

What’s Wrong With Estimates?

Martin Woodford

This will explore who the product manager is, who the product manager isn't, what a good product manager should be, from the type of character to the output.

The Product Manager

Welcome back. The summer is passing, the kids are back to school and our traditional December lightening talks competition is only three months away. We have two great speakers this month covering predictable delivery and the roll of the Product Manager. 

With both speakers plucked from within our northern agile community. Read on for details and see you all next week.

2015 September Meetup

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Platform

David Turner

David will talk about his time in the software industry. On the lessons he learned through XP, via his founding of the extreme programming club (that later became Agile Yorkshire) to setting up a company that is passionate about delivery rather than simply the process used to deliver. David will talk about what parts of Agile are important to him and what parts of Agile he believes have been misunderstood, mis-represented or just plain abused. Based on his experience, he will talk about what he has learned of delivery in large organisations and how this compares and contrasts with delivery in smaller set-ups (such as start ups).

An Agile Journey (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Change!)

Ash Winter

Tests. Gotta have em. They give you a warm and fuzzy feeling as you refactor, make iterative change to your functionality or upgrade your platform. The problem with having them is that they need to be tended, pruned, encouragingly whispered to and, at times, just shouted at. Each test you create is an investment. And investments can depreciate as well as appreciate. So, what happens when your tests become golden handcuffs? I have a tale to tell which is unfortunately not all that tall. Being at a startup and finding the right level and intensity of testing is quite a tough ask, as we discovered. Testing became a contentious talking point which was revisited in conversation and in ceremonies repeatedly, never quite reaching a point where we could all move on and get stuff done. Do not lose heart though. Perhaps you can hear what I've learned and save yourself from drowning in a sea of meaningless checks. Experience has taught me a few lessons in the last year, so I'm going to share. I'm good like that. Lets turn those tests into joyful creatures of freedom, helping you get on with what we are here for, generating value.

Tested to Death

2016 January Meetup

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Clarke Ching

How to deliver 95% of YOUR software projects on time or early, without bloating estimates, cutting quality or crossing your fingers


Rock Solid Promises

Tim Chisholm

A hands-on approach to show the problems when building big projects and how smaller is better.

The pipeline to build nirvana (breaking down the monolith)

Join us at Agile Yorkshire for a practical and engaging session on mastering project delivery. Ever wondered how to deliver 95% of your software projects on time or even early, without inflating estimates, sacrificing quality, or relying on sheer luck? We’ll dive into tried-and-tested strategies to do just that. Plus, we’ll take a hands-on look at the challenges of building large-scale projects and reveal why, when it comes to Agile, smaller is often better. Expect plenty of real-world insights to help you streamline your projects and deliver with confidence!

2016 April Meetup

Kev McCabe

Learning the basics of TDD with Lego. In this fun session, you will learn the basics of Test Driven Development (TDD) through the use of LEGO bricks. We will create failing tests, make them pass and refactor. No code will be written, we will be using LEGO bricks. By working with our hands, the technical concepts that can be tricky to get your head around will be simplified. This session is good for techies and non-techies alike - No Code, No Computers Just play old Lego! What you will learn: Basics of TDD, how to think about design, simple is better than complex, why refactoring is important"


 An evening of TDD with Lego

Join us at Agile Yorkshire for a playful and insightful session where you'll learn the basics of Test Driven Development (TDD) using LEGO bricks! In this hands-on workshop, we’ll skip the code and computers and instead use LEGO to build and refine our understanding of TDD. You’ll experience the process of creating failing tests, making them pass, and refactoring—all without writing a single line of code. Whether you're a techie or a non-techie, this session promises to make complex concepts like design, simplicity, and the importance of refactoring both accessible and fun. Embrace your inner child and join us for some hands-on learning with everyone’s favourite building blocks!



2016 May Meetup

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Mike Burrows

What is Servant Leadership? Is there more to it than "unblocking all the things and getting out of the way"? We will look afresh at this classic leadership model and show Servant Leadership's present-day relevance to the challenges of Lean-Agile transformation.

Servant Leadership Unneutered

Allan Kelly

Who has not heard the rules of prioritisation?
- Prioritise by business value
- Do the highest value work first
Easy eh?
In this interactive presentation Allan Kelly will demonstrate how doing the lowest value story first can increase value and he will demonstrate how value correlates with frequency of delivery. And if time allows he will show how projects destroy value.

 Adventures in Value

Join us at Agile Yorkshire for an insightful and interactive exploration of leadership and prioritisation in the Agile world. We’ll kick things off by revisiting the concept of Servant Leadership—it's more than just "unblocking all the things and stepping aside." You'll discover how this leadership style remains vital in today’s Lean-Agile transformations. Then, Allan Kelly will challenge conventional wisdom on prioritisation, showing how sometimes tackling the lowest value tasks first can actually increase overall value. He’ll also explore the fascinating link between value and delivery frequency—and, time permitting, how projects can sometimes destroy value altogether!

2016 June Meetup

Ian Ellison

Ian will share insights from his doctoral research, which utilised a novel research technique to qualitatively explore two contemporary 'knowledge work space' case-settings - one 'traditional' workspace and one 'co-working' workspace. He will encourage attendees to consider the difference between 'workspace' and 'workplace', and indeed what matters to them personally, and for their own organisations. The session will conclude with a collaborative exploration of 'agile' - a term with different connotations in the workplace and software development arenas - is there some sort of overlap, and what might the implications be?

What matters to people about workspace?

Nick McKenna

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is the most popular of the Agile scaling methods. McKenna Consultants have been implementing SAFe with several clients over the last 18 months. This short presentation is the "war story" of implementing SAFe for a high-profile new Android product development. We will tell you all about the triumphs and perils of implementing Agile at scale!

SAFe Experiences

Join us at Agile Yorkshire for an engaging exploration of workspaces, agility, and scaling Agile. Ian will dive into his doctoral research, comparing traditional and co-working environments, and challenge us to rethink the difference between 'workspace' and 'workplace.' What really matters to us, and how does it impact our organisations? In a collaborative discussion, we'll also tackle the meaning of 'agile' in different contexts—workplaces vs. software development—and consider any potential overlaps. Then, McKenna Consultants will share the highs and lows of implementing the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) for a major Android project, giving us a real-world look at Agile at scale!

2016 July Meetup

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Futurelabs

Geoff Watts

An agile coach is not the same as a professional coach...or are they? Geoff will explain why his book The Coach's Casebook - a book that doesn't mention agile once - is relevant to those looking to be successful in being agile and why agile coaching as the term is currently understood possibly needs redefining. 

What really is agile coaching?

Join us at Agile Yorkshire for a thought-provoking evening as we explore the intriguing question: is an agile coach really any different from a professional coach? Geoff, our speaker, will dive into this topic, drawing from his book The Coach's Casebook—a book that doesn’t mention agile once, yet is packed with insights that are surprisingly relevant to anyone aiming for agile success. He'll challenge our current understanding of agile coaching and suggest that it might be time for a redefinition. Expect to leave with a fresh perspective on what it truly means to be an agile coach.


2016 October Meetup

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David Oakes

All about building and developing trusting relationships.

Do You Trust Your Dog ?

Andy Burgin

This is the humerous tale of when the support scammers picked on the wrong guy. I'll explain how on two occasions I spent over an hour winding up a fake support company. I'll explain many of the petty and annoying techniques I used to cause the poor "support" team to despair at my self imposed inept abilities and why they resorted to calling me a "monkey". But there is a serious side to this and hopefully you'll take the "funnies" from this and share it with those who might be at risk.

Hello, this is Windows support desk...

Tom Crane

Different types of failure

Adam Mitchell

Why Triathlon is better than football

Steve Trapps

The problem with Agile is...

Ethar Alali	

MonsterLith Inc: A Tale of two Ditties

Dave Livesey

Geospatial for dummies - why mapping matters

Daniel Drozdzewski

Why does your browser think #chucknorris is a color?

Naeem Sarfraz

You built what I asked for, it's not what I needed

Every year around Christmas we host the annual Agile Yorkshire Lightning Talk Competition. It's an Xmas tradition to make the December 13th meeting a celebration of community speaking, with prizes to boot. If you haven't been before then you've definitely missed out on a quite a bit of fun and an opportunity to be inspired.

2016 Christmas Lightning Talks Competition

The dichotomy between agile teams and traditional management has plagued my world for the past few years. I look at scenarios you might come up against and how I've tried to deal with them to allow companies to transform into an agile way of delivery.

 Hello... I'm Your Project Manager!

Agile is about teams and people, and the success of any project will depend on it team(s). Team fluency is more than the capabilities of the team members. There is also the management structures, relationships, and company culture, as well as the tools, practices and technologies that the team use. Many agile teams have plateaued, while we all know that continuous improvement is a foundation of agile, many teams has stopped making these improvements. They lose the benefits that can be had for themselves and the company. The Agile Fluency Model will help guide a pathway through many of these issues and work with the wider business to incorporate them into the agile process.

The Agile Fluency Model

Join us at Agile Yorkshire for an evening where we tackle the often tricky balance between agile teams and traditional management. Our speaker will share real-world scenarios and practical strategies that have helped companies successfully transition to an agile way of delivery. We'll explore the importance of team fluency, which goes beyond just the skills of team members to include management structures, relationships, company culture, and the tools they use. If your agile teams have hit a plateau, this talk will introduce the Agile Fluency Model—a roadmap to reignite continuous improvement and ensure your teams and business reap the full benefits of agile practices.


2017 January Meetup

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Dr Oliver Shaw

In this talk Oliver describes what "Doing TDD" is and, importantly, what it isn't. He will make the ethos of TDD very clear and show you how to do TDD via a live coding demo. He touches on mocking, the testing pyramid and finishes by doing a fanaticism check with the audience.

Test Driven Development, the most misused term in software development?

Keith Williams

What is abstraction, and when should you use it? How much is too little, and how much is too much? Why are we even bothering anyway? If you get it right, you might just make your life much easier; get it wrong and you might end up wishing that you never bothered.

In this talk, we’ll examine what abstraction (and, more specifically, dependency injection) is, what it does, and how it can make your code more testable and reliable, as well as being a key factor in enabling continuous delivery.


Dependencies, Injection and Abstraction for Fun and Profit

It's a while since Agile Yorkshire had an entire evening of content that was firmly planted in agile engineering but for February we're back to our roots. 

We're still building our calendar for 2017 so watch out for new announcements and get in touch if you know someone with a story to tell.

Test Driven Development - The Most Misused Term in Software Development?

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Amy Thompson

No-one seems to talk about velocity anymore. I want to talk about velocity. And Harry Potter a bit. I mean I like Harry Potter, but I like stable velocity a fair bit more. I'm going to talk about why velocity is so important to me, why it should be so important to you, and how its possible achieve predictable delivery when you catch the Golden Snitch of Scrum. 

The Golden Snitch of Scrum

Jon Fulton

Formula 1 teams use data to fuel continuous improvement. Can agile teams do the same with Metrics? If they can, what effect can this have on people? Jon will share thoughts and experiences from using Metrics with agile teams.

Using Data Like a Formula 1 Team

Last month's two engineering based presentations received great feedback but we like to mix things up and this month it's all metrics, data and quantitative decision making. This should be the foundation and focus of any lean / agile leadership team, however this is sometimes not the case. When an organisation uses data well it knows what it's capable of and can match resources to demand, deliver predictably and react in real time to production problems before they escalate. 

Unfortunately the lagging indicator reports of old are still alive and in common use, accompanied by the familiar lurching from one crisis to the next. 
Come along this month, learn from others and don't let that happen.

The Golden Snitch of Scrum & Using Data Like a Formula 1 Team

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John Le Drew

Over 3 months John recorded over 60 hours of interviews and spoke to some of the most respected people in the industry to produce an audio documentary that attempts to answer the question “What is safety? And why is it important anyway?”.

This highly interactive talk will present the findings and guide and challenge you through a journey to understanding safety. 

This talk has grown as John created the new podcast The Agile Path. The first season on this podcast is about safety in teams. John has interviewed world renowned specialists in the field Christopher Avery, David Marquet, Jerry Weinberg, Esther Derby, Johanna Rothman, Woody Zuill and many more in over 60 hours of audio. 

This has been a fascinating deep dive learning experience for John and he hopes to explore these insights with the audience.

Swearing, Nudity and Other Vulnerable Positions

Chris Cheadle

Towards the end of last year, we decided to remove as many constraints as possible and let our let team at NHS.UK work on what they wanted for 2 weeks. 

We borrowed the idea, and the name, from GOV.UK but of course they weren't the first and won't be the last.

 This is our story. What worked, what didn't, what we will do differently next time and why we think you might want to consider one where you work.

Firebreak Tall Tales - A Break From Routine

This month John Le Drew, host of the Agile Path podcast is previewing his talk about safety - and it looks great. 

Also, Agile Yorkshire regulars Sean Craig and Chris Cheadle will be presenting an experience report on an innovation experiment they ran within the NHS. 

They'll be sharing their insight - warts and all.

Swearing, Nudity and Other Vulnerable Position

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Tony Heap

User story splitting is an established practice on agile delivery teams. But in my experience, it’s really difficult to do well.

In this presentation I’ve pulled together everything I’ve learned about story splitting. I'll talk about why, when and how to split stories. I'll present different story splitting techniques and, most importantly, I'll show you what order to use them in. I'll also explain why I think it's dangerous to play with spikes!

If you're new to story splitting, this presentation is for you. If you think you already know how to split user stories, think again!

Story Splitting for Beginners and Experts Alike

Stew Abel

Need to start a new project? Do you need to keep your hosting costs low and development time short? Does throwing everything at AWS PaaS products help? Stewart decided to try just this to find out . Here he discusses his experience, and lessons learned.

Using AWS PaaS for an MVP

Fresh from the hugely successful one day Crazy Agile Thing conference over Leeds Digital festival week we've two excellent speakers pluck from our own community this month. Tony Heap has always been very popular with his past session being amongst our most watch videos and Stew Able, long time supporter of AY is debuting as a speaker.


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Which is better: “top down”, with the challenge of overcoming resistance to change, or “bottom up”, perhaps never gathering momentum? Perhaps this is false choice? Could there be a third way, an approach to organisational transformation that is simultaneously respectful, ambitious, and sustainable?

What we know and where we must do better

Ivor Tymchak

Often, data is found that is so significant that the discoverers forget in their excitement to add a simple story to it before they try to explain it to the world. How the data is received by the public depends upon the story accompanying it.
In this talk, I'll tell you a story about a hugely important discovery, how data confirmed its efficacy but because it was lacking a good story it wasn't taken seriously for years resulting in the loss of countless lives. I'll also explain how I applied this story principle to the Tech-Off contest and came out the champion.

Tell stories, not data

Author, regular conference speaker and founder of the Agendashift network Mike Burrows is back this month to talk about the perennial topic of managing change. As many of us know through experience, any kind of change is a hard won victory. 
This is especially so in larger organisations with numerous conflicting agendas. Mike insight is always fresh and  worth listening to. This months support slot is filled by Ivor Tymchak fresh from his TechOff victory at the Leeds International Festival. 
Ivor has been running speaker workshops with Agile Yorkshire for a couple of years now and is back to tell us how he won, pass on some tips and explain the new round of workshops we're organising to help budding presenters take their stories to the next level at conferences and beyond.

2017 June Meetup

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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.


We Lost How Much Money?

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.

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