Presentations

Agile 2011: Agile 2.0 – Rebooting a Raccoon in an Imperfect World

/ Craig Smith / 2 Comments

My presentation from Agile 2011 that I delivered with Greg Smith called “Agile 2.0: Rebooting a Raccoon in an Imperfect World” is available on Slideshare.

On this 10th anniversary of agile, our community is struggling to address the issue of how to take experienced agile practitioners to the next level, while still providing training and tools to support those who are beginning their journey. With the “agile” word getting so overloaded, the challenge is to continually innovate without assigning labels. In this talk we will discuss how to use the best of traditional, lean and agile methods to suit any team and showcase numerous patterns that demonstrate the best process to use is often a mixture of traditional practices and new innovations.

Some of the comments on Twitter included:

@teradee: watching @smithcdau speak on “rebooting the racoon. Craig has this stuff nailed. A bright spot in our community #agile2011

@teradee: Listening to @smithcdau talk a on the Oath of Non-Allegiance via @TotherAlistair Thinking this needs more shine #agile2011

@theagilepirate: Look up the manifesto manifesto – we have enough manifestos Kumquat, raccoon is a community #agile2011

@codingbynumbers: @smithcdau gives birth to #racoon at #Agile2011 (but we know it was conceived on @codingbynumbers)! http://t.co/CyvgOer

Agile 2011: The Speed To Cool – Agile Testing & Building Quality In

/ Craig Smith / 1 Comment

My presentation from Agile 2011 that I delivered with Adrian Smith called “The Speed To Cool: Agile Testing and Building Quality In” is available on Slideshare.

Ensuring that the approach to testing and quality is understood and appropriately valued in an agile world can be a struggle for many organisations, especially when resources are limited and our customers are expecting business value in a timely manner. In this session we will define what quality means and share a number of tools for measuring it, discuss approaches to improving the skills, empowerment and role of testing in the organisation and share why testing is the coolest role on the team and why it is everyones responsibility.

Some of the comments on Twitter included:

@BrianGress: We tend to test only what we can see. #agile2011 @adrianlsmith

@tonyrockyhorror: @smithcdau Speed to Cool was best talk I’ve seen all week. It will take a mighty effort to top it. #agile2011

Adrian also posted about the talk on the Ennova blog.

Agile Australia 2011: The Speed to Cool – Valuing Testing & Quality in Agile Teams

/ Craig Smith / 5 Comments

Agile Australia 2011My presentation from Agile Australia 2011 called “The Speed to Cool – Valuing Testing & Quality in Agile Teams” is available on SlideShare.

Ensuring that the approach to testing and quality is understood and appropriately valued in an Agile world can be a struggle for many organisations, especially when resources are limited and our customers are expecting business value in a timely manner. In this session Craig Smith will define what quality means, share a number of tools for measuring it as well as discussing approaches to improving the skills, empowerment and role of testing in the organisation and share why testing is the coolest role on the team and why it is everyone’s responsibility.

Some of the comments on Twitter included:

@AgileAcademy: Good luck today with your presentation at 11.30am on The Speed to Cool: Valuing testing and quality in Agile teams @smithcdau #agileaus

@vivierose: Waiting for room to fill at @smithcdau was standing room only last year! #agileaus

@adrianlsmith: #agileaus @smithcdau Software is a crime – Testers are detectives

@vivierose: Testers think ‘Everything is guilty until proven innocent’ @smithcdau #agileaus

@adrianlsmith: #agileaus @smithcdau discusses increasing technical skills of testers http://t.co/WPhbDsV

@mrembach: seeing an excellent talk by @smithcdau at the qualityInn #agileaus

@vivierose: Everyone likes to be seen as valuing quality, just like they love kittens, but it’s the 1st thing to be dumped #agileaus @smithcdau

@stephlouisesays: #agileaus loving @smithcdau challenging how well we apply the manifesto to testing. Card wall stages look remarkably like a waterfall… Hmm

@adrianlsmith: #agileaus @smithcdau applies agile manifesto to testing practices – great analogies

@AgileRenee: @smithcdau use the quality assessment tool now avail on the @AgileAcademywebsite http://lockerz.com/s/111080989

@stephlouisesays: #agileaus acceptance test development = specification by example… Beats heavy documentation any day @smithcdau

@timechanter: Fabulous presentation by Craig smith on agile testing. Liking the specification by example stuff. #agileaus

@stephlouisesays: #agileaus awesome session by @smithcdau quality and testing – relevant content, interesting slides (love the pics!) and fab speaker #newfave

@SMRobson: #agileaus @craigsmith finally!! Well done!

@AgileAcademy: 150+ watching great talk by @smithcdau on Valuing testing & quality in Agile teams. Terrific energy & passion. #agileaus #yam

@AgileAcademy: A tester is like Robocop – part man/woman; part machine but all tester! @smithcdau #agileaus #testing #quality #yam

@AgileAcademy: Thanks for the mention about the Agile Quality Practices sheet on our website. @smithcdau agileacademy.com.au #agileaus #yam

@seat_paul: #agileaus very good talk by Craig smith. As he says testers can be very cool!!

@mrembach: @smithcdau great talk Craig. Lots of take-aways

@smamol: Really cool #agileauspresso – beautiful slides: The Speed to Cool – Valuing Testing in Agile Teams http://t.co/1m1jwBL #in

Agile Australia 2010: Building an A-Team – I Love It When A Team Comes Together

/ Craig Smith / 1 Comment

Agile Australia 2010My presentation from Agile Australia 2010 called “Building an A-Team – I Love It When A Team Comes Together” is available on SlideShare.

High performing teams are something that all organisations aspire to, but how exactly do you turn a team from good to great? There is much discussion in the community about management versus leadership, working in a factory versus embracing a tribe and how to motivate a new generation of employees. In this presentation we will look at these topics and determine what makes a high performing team, how Agile techniques can help, what tools and techniques you can use to create this environment and how you can measure performance.

Some of the comments on Twitter included:

@benarnott: Get back to the basics, remember why we are here, we are here to deliver quality software – @smithcdau #agileaus

@benarnott: #agileaus Some of the best company’s have thrown out performance reviews – @smithcdau Sign me up!

@benarnott:#agileaus @smithcdau is talking about Fedex days, Google days and Hackathons… I like to call them “Scratch an itch day”

@benarnott:#agileaus Leaders aren’t just PMs and Mangers, they are anyone with the skills and the passion like @renemaslen on BQI – @smithcdau

@benarnott:#agileaus I don’t want to be good, I want to be awesome! – @smithcdau

@benarnott:#agileaus in the overflowing room with @smithcdau talking the A-Team

@nickmuldoon: @smithcdau talking about the A team right now. Standing room only. #agileaus awesome!

@janevlahos: @smithdcau software development pays better than gardening #agileaus

ANZTB SIGIST Brisbane: Agile Testing & How We Need To Change

/ Craig Smith / Leave a comment

ANZTBA couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to present at the ANZTB SIGIST Brisbane September meeting with my colleague Rene Maslen. Our talk was “Agile Testing and How We Need To Change” and the slides are available on Slideshare.

Some of my other colleagues also presented on the night including Ben Sullivan and Brent Acworth who spoke on BDD and some work they are doing on an open source framework for JBehave and Craig Aspinall who spoke on Automated Black Blob Testing.

Alister Scott had some nice words to say on my presentation on his blog and was also nice enough to take some pictures, which I have embedded below:

Agile 2010: I’m The Business & Agile Was My Idea

/ Craig Smith / 2 Comments
I'm speaking @ Agile 2010

I’m speaking @ Agile 2010

My presentation from Agile 2010 called “I’m The Business & Agile Was My Idea” is available on Slideshare.

Agile is often traditionally associated as being exclusively applicable to the field of software development. However, non-software development projects can take ownership and use agile values, principles and practices to great effect. In this session, I will offer some approaches, techniques and examples for introducing agile into parts of the organisation that traditionally may not have considered it such as central services like finance, HR, marketing, traditional business areas as well as other areas of IT like infrastructure and provide some real-life examples along the way.

Atlassian Summit 2010: Kaizen With GreenHopper – Visualising Agile & Kanban Storywalls

/ Craig Smith / 2 Comments

Atlassian Summit 2010My presentation from Atlassian Summit 2010 called “Kaizen with GreenHopper: Visualising Agile & Kanban Storywalls” is available on SlideShare. A video of the presentation along with the slides are also available on the Summit 2010 Video Archive.

JIRA 4 Partner Hosted Seminar

/ Craig Smith / Leave a comment

In November, Steve Dalton and I hosted a partner seminar for the launch of JIRA 4.0. Steve’s company Refactor is an Atlassian partner and I attended on behalf of the Agile Academy who sponsored the room at Brisbane Square. Atlassian provided a JIRA t-shirt for all of the attendees.

Steve kicked off with an overview of JIRA and a demo of the the new Open Social dashboard as well as the new JQL functionality.

I then gave a demo of JIRA and GreenHopper 4.0, and its usage at Suncorp. Some of the topics I covered included:

  • overview of other new Jira functionality, such as activity streams, the new menu system and the ability to create a new issue on the right hand side of the Find Issues screen
  • GreenHopper is a plugin
  • remember the difference between radiators and refridgerators when evaluating tools
  • Suncorp chose JIRA due to cost and already in use
  • housekeeping – GreenHopper administration (global and local), custom fields (story points, epics), performance
  • planning board – versions and components, new epic functionality, synchronisation, release, drag and drop functionality, statistics, print cards, user preferences and contexts, new card button, new wiki rendering
  • task board – setup, workflows, new Kanban functionality, storypoints, double click cards, subtasks
  • chart board / release board – reliance on statistics and GreenHopper functionality
  • cross project burn down and the new agile gadget

There is no video of the event, although I feel the JIRA 4 webinar covers much of the functionality we discussed quite nicely.

OSDC 2009: Experiences From Agile Projects Great & Small

/ Craig Smith / 1 Comment

My presentation from the OSDC 2009 Conference in Brisbane that I presented with Paul King called “Experiences From Agile Projects Great & Small” is available on SlideShare.

Experiences From Agile Projects Great & Small