ALN Hiatus

ALN OC continues to be on hiatus due to my travel and efforts to involve others and share responsibility didn't work out.

In the meantime, the Agile SoCal group (previously XP SoCal) has really been going full steam the last few years, and has brought in a range of speakers that overlaps the mission of the ALN. For local agile community, check with them. You can find them on LinkedIn and on Yahoo.

APLN is now ALN - Different Focus, Different Venue

Based on the change at the national level from APLN to ALN, and the effectiveness of their new focus on leadership level roles at the Agile 2011 conference, we have decided to follow suit.

The in-person, open meetings for practicing agilists (ScrumMasters and agile team members) at KBB, AAA and Neudesic are being replaced with invitations to roundtable forums for leadership roles. This meets a need in both our community and for the agile adoption efforts as a whole.

If you are an agile practitioners, I encourage you to attend the Agile SoCal events. I have been to them, and they are well attended, well run and have great topics.

If you are or know an agile business leader/sponsor for your organization, contact me for information on how to get invited to the new ALN leadership roundtables. If you are the agile implementation leader\coach at your organization, contact me to get involved in coaching circles.

As with any agile organization, we have to continue to inspect, learn and adapt. This change is living out what we advocate.

Please contact me with any questions you might have.

February - Agile Adoption at Tribune

Shawna's presentation will take you through agile adoption at the Tribune Corporation.

She will unveil the mistakes as well as what was learned during the technical and cultural integration. Shawna will address how things that are not discussed often in the agile model (like budgeting, time tracking, resource planning, portfolio and program management) were dealt with, during this adoption process.

About your Presenter

Shawna Cullinan is a Product Owner for the Tribune Corporation. Her previous positions include Director, Project Management Office and she has also served as internal Scrum Trainer, Coach and enthusiast. Shawna has 10 years of IT experience focusing primarily on project and product management of content management systems. She received her Scrum Master Certification 4 years ago and remains an active memeber in the agile community. She has previously worked as Interactive Director for E! Online at Comcast Entertainment Group and Applications Manager at the Hallmark Channel.

January - Scrum Roles in Action

In Scrum, there are three basic roles - Team member, Product Owner and ScrumMaster. Each role is defined with some basic specific rights and responsibilities and filling in the rest of what one is supposed to do is left as an exercise for the participants. In this workshop, we will review the rights and responsibilities for the Scrum three roles (plus stakeholders) and discuss what those roles look like when preformed well.

In addition, we participate in a short simulation highlighting the common communication modes between these roles and consider what is optimal for producing high-performing teams.

About the Presenter
Carlton Nettleton has been working with Agile teams beginning in 2001. He used Extreme Programming (XP) to deliver commercial products at a number of San Diego start-ups and later became more involved with Scrum after working at a large San Diego based defense contractor. He has been bringing lightweight, Lean tools into the Agile software development community after helping to develop FDA regulated medical devices. He has nearly ten years of experience working with software products and services in both a technical and business capacity. Carlton is a respected Agile thought leader in San Diego County, forming Extreme Programming San Diego (XPSD) in 2002. He became a Certified ScrumMaster in 2005 and a Certified Scrum Practitioner in 2009.

October - Author Lyssa Adkins on Deprogramming Project Managers

Join us Wednesday, October 6th at 6 P.M. in Irvine for "Essential Deprogramming for Project Managers" with respected author, speaker and trainer Lyssa Adkins.

Lyssa Adkins is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), Project Management Professional (PMP), and Six Sigma Green Belt (SSGB). She is also a professionally trained Co-Active Coach. Adkins has over fifteen years’ project experience, and has been a large-scale program manager and director of Project Management Offices. For the last four years, she has been coaching teams in the financial services industry and coaching coaches who hail from across the Agile spectrum, from small consulting firms to large enterprises. Lyssa was a keynote speaker at the 2010 Scrum Gathering conference in Orlando, given a full-day for her deep-dive workshop on coaching. She was also a panelists on the PMO Roundtable facilitated by Jesse Fewell, founder of the PMI Agile Community of Practice. Later this year, she will be giving a full day tutorial at Agile Development Practices East Conference.

Adkins’ book, Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition was published earlier this year. It has a perfect 5 Star rating on Amazon.

September 2010 meeting

The September 2010 meeting of the APLN-OC chapter will focus on the continued utility of physical taskboards to track and communicate development project details.

We will meet Thursday, September 9 at the Automobile Club of Southern California, 3333 Fairview Rd, Costa Mesa 92626. The meeting is in the Rancho Cucamonga training room, which is a new location for us. When you see the signs for “Credit Union” and “Purchasing” on the ACSC campus, you have found the place. You may find the site map below helpful. “North” on this map is to the right, if you are as confused as I have been by this graphic. The meeting will start at 6:00 PM, doors open for refreshments at 5:30. We should wrap up by 8:30 PM or earlier.

With virtual tools proliferating, Bachan Anand will lead a discussion on physical taskboards. Why do physical taskboards remain important? How can they be used most effectively? In what other settings are physical taskboards also effective?

Taskboards help to get the team engaged, increase process transparency and foster collaboration. How can taskboards be structured to provide maximum benefit to the team? How can taskboards provide more value for other stakeholders and roles, the ScrumMaster, Product Owner and organizational management?

This session will benefit existing Agile professionals as well as current and prospective Agile team members. By setting a stake in the ground on physical taskboards, we will attempt to organize a future meeting to present and discuss how virtual taskboard equivalents and project management tools fit into the complete picture.

As an added bonus, we will be raffling off a copy of Lyssa Adkin's new book, Coaching Agile Teams to attendees In addition, a 50% discount off the normal fee for Lyssa's upcoming CSM class October 7-8 in Santa Ana will be presented to a fortunate attendee.

APLN Mtg - July 15th - Innovation Games

Next APLN meeting is on Innovation Games! On Thursday, July 15th, bring your Product Owners and Product Managers to see an exciting new way to determine the road map and features for your product. ScrumMasters and team members can get more connected to the vision and empowering their development work.

From Innovation Games site: "Innovation Games® Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play will be indispensable for anyone who wants to drive more successful, customer-focused product development: product and R&D managers, CTOs and development leaders, marketers, and senior business executives alike."

David Sheriff, Innovation Games Trained Facilitator and Certified Scrum Product Owner, will be leading the session.

More details to come!