Agile 2016 | July 25 – 29 Atlanta, GA

The Agile 2016 Conference in Atlanta is right around the corner! The forecast for July 25 is … 95 degrees with high humidity and maybe some rain. It’s a good thing I’ll be inside, where it’s air conditioned, and enjoying the amazing lineup at this year’s conference. I’ve been using my blog to post my recommendations. I’ve shared my stories and thoughts on each day, if you missed them check out: Monday, July 25 ; Tuesday, July 26 and Wednesday, July 29.

Now, on to Thursday, July 28:

Agile Clinical Decision Support Development (Vaishnavi Kannan, DuWayne Willett)

Looks like a deep-dive on a complex data-focused topic!

Agile Economics: Budgets, Contracts, Capitalization (Pavel Dabrytski)

Changing the way we handle funds is a common challenge to Agile transformations – and I’m glad it’s getting some attention at this conference.

Ghostbusting User Stories – Uncovering hidden users (Alan Parkinson)

I heard good things about this session from my friend, Lisa Crispin – so I intend to check it out at this conference!

Avoiding Test-Driven Damage (David Bernstein)

I’ve had great conversations with David over several years and can highly recommend this session. His new book, Beyond Legacy Code: Nine Practices to Extend the Life (and Value) of Your Software, is also really good!

Technical Debt: OK, It’s Bad. Now What Do We Do About It? (Tom Grant, Declan Whelan)

Paying down technical debt is a very important aspect of improving agility, and doesn’t get enough attention, IMHO.

Hacking getKanban v2.0: Advanced Game Mechanics to Illuminate Lean & Create Real Change (Cheryl Hammond)

I’ve had a great time playing the getKanban board game and would like to start using the online version in my client work. I like this session’s focus on how to make it really useful for team learning.

Domino Game: Pair-Coaching to increase Self-Efficacy (Victor Bonacci, Brett Palmer)

I caught the tail-end of this session at the Scrum Gathering earlier this year and it looked really interesting. The whole room seemed very engaged in the exercise.

Moose on the table: Enabling you to use LEGO techniques to improve your retrospectives (Mike Bowler, Ellen Grove)

Ellen Grove was a wonderful host for the 2016 Scrum Gathering Open Space. Lego Serious Play is a hot topic these days!

A Complete Acceptance & Test-Driven Development Example (Don McGreal)

Very cool!

Architects in an Agile World (Thomas Nedwek)

“Agile development practices require innovative ways of looking at the contributions architects make, as well as the ways in which they make them.”

Coaching the Agile Enterprise: The Integral Agile Transformation Framework ™ Comes Alive (Michael Spayd, Michael Hamman)

I have taken several courses from Michael Spayd and I have participated in early roundtables based on his developing book. I respect his deep knowledge in this area as well as his ability to communicate with a variety of audiences. Besides, he’s one of the most serene people I’ve ever met – it’s quite an experience to learn from Michael.

Emergent Architecture – Just Enough Just in Time (Michael Vincent)

I’m so glad to see several sessions on emergent/agile architecture at this conference!

Agile at the Intersect of Mobile, Cloud, and the Internet of Things (Don MacIntyre)

Don is a colleague of mine at The Cutter Consortium and we meet bi-weekly to discuss Agile topics.

How an Expedite Request Sunk the Titanic (Daniel Vacanti)

“Chances are you have always intuitively known that interrupts are what makes your process unpredictable. This talk will give you to tools you need to quantify that impact and give you strategies on how minimize their negative effects.”

Now It’s Your Turn:

Help Agile Analytics readers know which sessions you’re attending and why! Leave your recommendations in the comments section. Thanks for helping our community!