Friday, December 1, 2006
How Does It Feel To Be In An Agile Process? - Dr. Malcolm Currie
Abstract
This session revolves around a simulation of an Agile Process, emphasizing the incremental development of a system in concert with the prioritized needs of the customers. Participants will play the rolls of developers or customers in applying some of the principles of an Agile Processes http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html behind the Agile Manifesto http://agilemanifesto.org.
The term Agile processes was coined at a February 11-13, 2001 meeting at The Lodge at Snowbird ski resort in the Wasatch mountains, Utah, of seventeen people to talk, ski, relax, to explore some common ground for their development processes, and of course, to eat. What emerged was the Agile Software Development Manifesto. Present at this meeting were representatives from Extreme Programming, SCRUM, DSDM, Adaptive Software Development, Crystal , Feature-Driven Development, Pragmatic Programming, and others sympathetic to the need for an alternative to documentation driven, heavyweight software development processes.
The session will include a short presentation of the Agile Process, emphasizing aspects that are illustrated in the simulation. At the conclusion of the simulation, in which all those attending are the session are expected to participate, a retrospective will be conducted that includes feedback on the experience of each of the participants. This experiential training is designed to be of the same type that is presented at sessions at the AYE Conference. http://www.geraldmweinberg.com
Your Presenter: Dr. Malcolm Currie is a Systems Engineer, specializing in software intensive system. He has performed contract services for over 25 years including experience in systems analysis, requirements discovery and development, and system design and development; primarily in control systems, navigation, and guidance, as well as communications and software engineering. He has performed trade-studies/simulations to define and quantify requirements, to support design decisions, and to allocate functions to system hardware and software components. He has experience in the development of distributed intelligent control applied to commercial elevator controls and their interfaces with building security systems.
Dr. Currie has first hand experiences with various development processes, for software and/or for systems with software. He is knowledgeable of the Spiral Development Process, Unified Process (including RUP), and CMM/CMMI, in their various interpretations and variations. He has followed the evolution of such processes as Extreme Programming and Adaptive Software Development Processes, and their commonalities as captured in the Agile Processes umbrella. He is an advocate of adoption by Systems Engineers of many of the concepts in processes that were originally designed for software development. These concepts include incremental development, iterations of development disciplines within increments, and planning to throw away at least one.
Dr. Currie was privileged to attend the experiential session of Jim Highsmith at the 2004 AYE (Amplify Your Effectiveness) Conference produced by Gerald Weinberg ( GeraldMWeinberg.com ). He has now gotten permission from Jim to reproduce that experiential session for the SPIN.
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Logistics
Location:Northrop Grumman E2 Presentation Center (in tall building off of Entrance 2), Redondo Beach, CA (formerly TRW) - 2299 Marine Ave., Redondo Beach, CA 90278
Directions: Take the 405 Inglewood exit (southbound it's the exit after Rosecrans East, northbound it's the exit just after Hawthorne) and go north on Inglewood Avenue (southbound, turn left at the end of the ramp, northbound, turn right). Turn left at Marine. Go west under the freeway past the railroad tracks and Redondo Beach Avenue to Entrance 2 at Mettler Drive. Turn left into the parking lot . E2 is the tall building to your right. (See page 733 A5 of the Thomas Brothers Guide.)
Time: 9 a.m. – 12:00 noon
Admission: Free
SoCal SPIN is sponsored by:
and co-sponsored by:
