Presentation: TweetBusiness: It's all about the People

Trust( )in(g) Teams / 13:20 - 13:35

Prerequisite attendee experience level: beginner

Ever worked in a team where people seemed to play ball, but you could feel undercurrents pointing in the opposite direction? Lack of trust between team members or between the team and “the outside” is corrosive to motivation and detrimental to team-moral and productivity.
Learn to recognize the symptoms of trust issues and get a handle on how to start addressing them. Even if you are “just a grunt”.

by Marjan Venema

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Changing the Face of a Business: An Experience Report / 13:40 - 13:55

Prerequisite attendee experience level: beginner

In the consulting world, people are our business. ThoughtWorks has been in the consulting business for over twenty years and has had a breadth of experiences in all types of software consulting. However, in the not so distant past, we realized that the people who make us the business didn’t always match our growth initiatives or reflect our core principles. As a company, we are constantly working to be better so globally we’ve done many different things to try and get closer to our goals. This lightning talk will be about some of the things we’ve done and continue to improve in order to change the face of ThoughtWorks (and IT).

by Molly Dishmann

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Perform like an Olympian / 14:00 - 14:15

Prerequisite attendee experience level: beginner

What can software professionals learn from Dutch Elite Swimmers? Certainly not how to produce software, but definitely how to perform.
Since you already know a lot about software development, you might suffer from diminishing returns on your investment. In that case swimmers would have adjusted the stimulus. This talk will demonstrate how everyone can adjust the stimulus and prevent plateauing.

by Rick Beerendonk

Presentation: TweetWork Smart, Not Hard: Tradeoffs & Techniques for Post Agile Teams

What does a team do after mastering agile? This talk is centered on the technical tradeoffs and choices teams face in order to progress from what is currently considered 'agile'. The agile manifesto has helped many realize that there is a better way to work. However, this software development lifecycle was founded fifteen years ago. How does that influence decisions and determine outcomes today?

Today, teams are faced with a growing number of decisions and tradeoffs. When do you go to the cloud (and which cloud)? What levels of tests do you need? How do you continuously deliver software (and which tools)? Should we build a native, a responsive or some sort of hybrid-like application? The complexity and breadth of software decisions have skyrocketed.

This talk will focus on the aspect of how technical people need to change, though it will address development processes in general. First we'll start with what to stop doing. Too many authors discuss what best practices are, but not enough cover what you'll encounter as you pursue best practices. How do you know if you're on the right track or if you are veering the wrong direction? Next we'll consider how to and what to prioritize focusing primarily on technical choices. With the complexity of software development growing, you must ensure you are aware of the potential consequences when you make or postpone decisions. Finally we'll talk about what lines need to be blurred. How do the many new technologies, techniques and frameworks that have been introduced since the manifesto fit into your organization? For example, how does "DevOps" fit? Overall, the goal is to help technical people understand how to move from today's agile into something that works with the reality and complexity of today's software development.

Prerequisite attendee experience level: advanced