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Development Practices and Craftsmanship

Code is at the center of all software development. We literally don’t have software if we don’t have code. The way that we create it, grow it, and tend it matters.

We are looking for submissions that outline testing, design and development techniques, along with research and experiences related to them. Attendees should leave each session with practical guidance for keeping software healthy over its lifetime in our organizations.

DevOps

Across industries, companies are trying to get better at software. Where to start? Many teams adopt DevOps practices to deliver better software, faster. We’ve learned, however, that DevOps requires a different approach, and a different toolset. These teams take ownership of their product lifecycle and focus on getting valuable changes deployed quickly. But this automation-centric approach requires new technology to be successful.

We are looking for submissions that offer guidance for incorporating DevOps-friendly technologies, that walk through real-world examples of adoption and introduce the audience to the patterns and practices that leading companies employ to make DevOps a reality. The target audience includes developers and system administrators. Attendees should leave each session with a handful of practical next steps for kick-starting their DevOps transition.

User Experience

What does it mean to do User Experience design and implementation in an Agile way in 2018? This topic area covers all areas of UX including interaction design, visual design, Information architecture, accessibility and usability.

We are looking for submissions that explore the intersection between UX and modern practices that embody the principles expressed in the Agile Manifesto with a focus on emerging agile practices and new uses of established agile practices in any area of UX work, including planning, execution and evaluation. The target audience includes technical team practitioners and / or their immediate managers. Attendees should leave each session being able to try a new practice and with an understanding of its potential impact.

Cloud Computing

On-demand access to global computing resources changed everything. It changed what we build, how we build it and where we deploy it. Within minutes, you can stand up a virtual server in Germany, or provision a geo-redundant relational database. But with this new capability, comes a whole new set of challenges.

We are looking for submissions that focus on real stories, technologies and patterns that companies rely on to successfully use cloud to solve business problems and that introduce key technologies, compare and contrast architectural options and share lessons learned. The target audience includes developers, operators and architects.  Attendees should leave each session with ideas and examples that will help them effectively use cloud technologies in their organization.

Interaction Skills

The technically oriented, delivery focused, Agile Manifesto signers chose “Individuals and Interactions” as the beginning value. Why? One twitter pundit described a need for ‘permanent skills’ for individuals and teams. These include skills involved in effective team collaboration, intra-team feedback, building trust with the business, group learning, and so forth. Collectively, skills for life. While technologies evolve, new programming languages and frameworks come and go, and platforms alter and spread…the skills of creating great working relationships remain core to humans and human systems.

This track will focus on the skills that make development teams seek delivery greatness. We’ll explore the improvements that are within teams’ direct control and how they are discovered. We will share stories about what real teams have found that really works, with themes like the following:

• How your team learns together to build capability and skillful, routine, ease in good practices
• What techniques and formats have helped the team make conflict more creative and constructive
• How have you improved your meetings to better fit their purposes
• What working environment you’ve created that enhance interactions
• How your work systems and processes center on creating insanely great teams
• How have you helped team members overcome the challenges of diversity (including neuro-diversity) to collaborate and benefit from their differences
• When did interactions fail, what were the consequences, and how did you (and/or the team) respond

Sessions will avoid theorizing, and instead tell us about teams real, lived experiences. We will share stories with a beginning (what was the problem/situation), middle (what happened, who was involved), and current state of working (not the end, but where software development teams are headed now).