Join us for the April 2013 meeting

User Stories: Across the 7 Product Dimensions

User stories are a powerful technique agile teams use to communicate requirements. Yet all too often, stories are poorly written or even incomprehensible.  Some stories are too big and travel across delivery cycles. Some are too small and don't deliver sufficient details for developers or value to customers. Others are not yet “ready” to be specified with acceptance criteria. Join Paul to learn the 7 Product Dimensions—the 7 D's—which yield “just right” stories that users and product owners can write and developers understand. You'll see how to use the 7 Dimensions: User, Interface, Action, Data, Control, Quality, and Environment as the basis for conducting “structured conversations” in which you explore options and evaluate them again value considerations so you can assemble them into cohesive user stories. Leave with a practical, collaborative framework for discovering the right—and “just right”—stories worthy of specification and delivery.

Paul R. Reed, Senior Associate with EBG Consulting, has led Agile teams working on complex products in companies of all sizes. He excels at helping companies transition to Agile by leveraging an adaptive rollout strategy. Paul is author of two books with Addison-Wesley, Developing Applications with Java and UML and Developing Applications with Visual Basic and UML, and speaks at a variety of industry conferences. A practicing Certified Scrum Master, Paul offers hands-on experience in bringing real-world, sound architecture into the product life cycle. He is also highly sought-after to troubleshoot projects that are struggling to adopt Agile practices. Paul's workaday experience, coupled with his talents in business analysis and design using a variety of application life cycle approaches, contributes to his ability to get projects back on track to deliver business value.

Meeting Location

Sysco Corporation

1390 Enclave Parkway - Houston, Texas - 281-584-1390

PARKING: Please park in front of either Sysco building (1370 & 1390 Enclave Parkway).

If front lots are full, park on the street along Forkland Drive and walk around to the front entrance of 1390.

Join us  for the March 2013 meeting

This meeting is free

Meetings are from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (Networking 6:00pm - 6:30pm)

The Timelessness of Lean Management?  Lessons from the Field

Sanjiv Augustine is an industry-leading agile and lean expert, author, speaker, management consultant and trainer.  He is the President of LitheSpeed, an agile consulting, training and product development company.  For over 12 years, Sanjiv has assisted leading clients adopt Agile including:  HCA Healthcare, General Dynamics, The Capital Group, Nationwide Insurance, Comcast, Capital One, CNBC, and the Motley Fool.  He is the author of the book Managing Agile Projects (Prentice Hall 2005) and several publications including Transitioning to Agile Project Management: A Roadmap for the Perplexed, The Lean-Agile PMO: Using Lean Thinking to Accelerate Agile Project Delivery; and the founder and moderator of the Yahoo! Agile Project Management discussion group.  Sanjiv was also a founder and advisory board member of the Agile Leadership Network (ALN), and an organizing member of the PMI’s Agile Community of Practice. As an in-the-trenches practitioner, he has personally managed agile projects varying in size from five to over one hundred people, trained thousands of agile practitioners via workshops and conference presentations, and coached numerous project teams.

Meeting Location

Sysco Corporation

1390 Enclave Parkway - Houston, Texas - 281-584-1390        

PARKING:  Please park in front of either Sysco building (1370 & 1390 Enclave Parkway).

If front lots are full, park on the street along Forkland Drive and walk around to the front entrance of 1390. 

Thanks to our event sponsor:  

Join us  for the February 2013 meeting

This meeting is free

Meetings are from 6:00pm to 8:00pm (Networking 6:00pm - 6:30pm)

Stop Starting, Start Finishing

David Hawks is an Agile Coach and Trainer in Austin and CEO of Agile Velocity. Prior to that he was a senior technical lead/ manager/ director in multiple companies implementing agile practices. David is the Education Chair of Agile Austin and holds the following certifications: CSM, CSP, PSM, and PMI-ACP.

Meeting Location

Sysco Corporation

1390 Enclave Parkway - Houston, Texas - 281-584-1390        

PARKING:  Please park in front of either Sysco building (1370 & 1390 Enclave Parkway).

If front lots are full, park on the street along Forkland Drive and walk around to the front entrance of 1390. 

Join us  for the January 2013 meeting

This meeting is free

Meetings are now 6:00pm to 8:00pm (Networking 6:00pm - 6:30pm)

Values of the Fittest

Time is of the essence. You have limited funds and need to deliver a product quickly to stay afloat. Opponents are capitalizing while your team wages civil war. Can your team find a common direction to deliver a better product in less time?  Allen Hurst and Chris Weldon from "Improving Enterprises" ill drive you through this workshop to expose the values of the fittest.

Allen Hurst is a Principal Consultant at Improving Enterprises. Since graduating from Texas A&M, he has spent his career consulting with clients, first as a Java and .NET developer, and most recently as an Agile coach and project manager. In 2007 he joined Improving Enterprises and led projects in their College Station office until 2012, when he relocated to lead Improving’s consulting business in Houston.

Allen has a passion for helping customers improve through agile values and practices, rapid delivery of quality software and most of all, identifying ways that technology can make their business more effective. When not delivering for clients, he enjoys making new friends around town, and speaking at user groups and conferences. Allen has spoken at a variety of conferences including Agile 2012, Houston TechFest, and AgileDotNet. He’s also the leader of the Aggieland .NET Users Group and a producer of Improving Podcasts. To learn more about Allen Hurst, visit his personal website atahurst.com

Chris Weldon is constantly committed to delivering high value on agile teams. Since 2007, Chris has been reading, loving, living, leading, and mentoring agilists and agile teams to build high quality, high value software. Throughout the year, Chris regularly carries the roles of developer, scrummaster, and mentor. Sharing his knowledge by speaking at user groups, universities, conferences, and one-on-one with others is a passion. Chris has been a speaker for several Aggieland user groups, tech fests, AgileDotNet, and other conferences and technology groups alike. Chris is also the leader of the B/CS PHP Users Group, blogs athttp://www.chrisweldon.net, and is an occasional contributor to Improving Podcasts.

Meeting Location

Sysco Corporation

1390 Enclave Parkway - Houston, Texas - 281-584-1390        

PARKING:  Please park in front of either Sysco building (1370 & 1390 Enclave Parkway).

If front lots are full, park on the street along Forkland Drive and walk around to the front entrance of 1390.