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.