You heard it here:

http://www.agilecambridge.net/ac2012/programme.php

Keynotes from Dan North and Dave Snowden.

30 sessions from experienced practitioners.

I’ve just launched the Call for Speakers for this year’s Agile Cambridge conference.

As is usual accepted speakers pay no fees.

CALL FOR SPEAKERS -
Submission Deadline Friday 15th June 2012

We are seeking high-quality session proposals covering any aspect of agile software development.

Hands-on sessions, experience reports, tutorials, panels and other interactive sessions are particularly encouraged although more theoretical sessions are also welcome.

In addition to free entry for the conference, being a speaker gives you a unique opportunity to present your viewpoint to our audience and get noticed.

Visit the Agile Cambridge website for more information.

We’ve just announced Dan North and Dave Snowden as conference keynote speakers for this year’s Agile Cambridge conference.

Dan North writes software and coaches teams and organisations in Agile and Lean methods. He believes in putting people first and writing simple, pragmatic software. He believes most software problems come back to communication and feedback, which is why he puts so much emphasis on “getting the words right”, and why he is so fascinated by systems thinking, communication and how people learn. He has been working in the IT industry for over 20 years, and he occasionally blogs at dannorth.net.

Dave Snowden is the founder and chief scientific officer of Cognitive Edge. His work is international in nature and covers government and industry looking at complex issues relating to strategy, organisational decision making and decision making. He has pioneered a science based approach to organisations drawing on anthropology, neuroscience and complex adaptive systems theory. He is a popular and passionate keynote speaker on a range of subjects, and is well known for his pragmatic cynicism and iconoclastic style. His paper with Boone on Leadership was the cover article for the Harvard Business Review in November 2007 and also won the Academy of Management award for the best practitioner paper in the same year. He has previously won a special award from the Academy for originality in his work on knowledge managment.

The conference takes place September 27-28 at Churchill College. Cambridge. Visit the Agile Cambridge event website for more information.

With its lack of up-front activity, short iterations and emphasis on minimum-viable products, Agile approaches can seem to be the antithesis of a considered approach to User Experience.

However, the Agile Manifesto does value qualities that UX practitioners also value: an emphasis on customer collaboration, individuals & interactions and uncovering better ways of developing software. So, is a perceived problem with Agile and UX more to do with the way either is implemented in practice, more to do with the personalities involved or is the problem organisational?

I’m helping put together a new 1 day workshop to explore how Agile and UX can best co-exist.

The workshop will draw together people from the Agile and UX communities to share experiences, problems and solutions to enable UX to have a happy marriage with Agile approaches. The workshop will be facilitated but participants should come prepared to play an active role in the session and to discuss their particular context.

Visit http://www.agilecambridge.net/ac2011/workshops.php#agileux for more information.

We’re trying an experiment at this year’s Agile Cambridge conference by running a bunch of pre-conference tutorials.

Kanban – Successful evolutionary change for your technology business – with David J. Anderson 27-28th September:
http://www.agilecambridge.net/ac2011/tutorials.php#kanban

Mastering the Product Backlog – with Roman Pichler 28th September
http://www.agilecambridge.net/ac2011/tutorials.php#backlog

Hands-On : TDD at the System Scale – with Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce 28th September:
http://www.agilecambridge.net/ac2011/tutorials.php#tdd

Visit the Agile Cambridge 2011 website at:
http://www.agilecambridge.net/ac2011/index.php

Early-bird booking discounts now available.

The keynote speakers for this year’s Agile Cambridge conference have just been announced.

We are very pleased to introduce our keynote speakers David J. Anderson (@agilemanager) and Jurgen Appelo (@jurgenappelo). Full details of their keynote talks will appear here shortly.

David Anderson

David J. Anderson leads a management consulting firm focused on improving performance of technology companies. He has many years management experience leading teams on agile software development projects. David was a founder of the agile movement through his involvement in the creation of Feature Driven Development. He was also a founder of the APLN, a non-profit dedicated to improving management and leadership in technology companies. Recently David has been focusing his attention on business agility and enterprise scale agile software transitions through a synergy of the CMMI model for organizational maturity with Agile and Lean methods.

David will also run a pre-conference tutorial on 27-28 September:
“Kanban – Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business”.

Jurgen Appelo

Jurgen Appelo is a writer, speaker, trainer, entrepreneur, illustrator, developer, manager, blogger, reader, dreamer, leader, freethinker, and… Dutch guy. Since 2008 Jurgen writes a popular blog at www.noop.nl, which deals with development management, software engineering, business improvement, personal development, and complexity theory. He is the author of the book Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders, which describes the role of the manager in agile organizations. He is also a speaker, being regularly invited to talk at business seminars and conferences around the world. Jurgen lives in Rotterdam (The Netherlands) — and sometimes in Brussels (Belgium) — with his partner Raoul. He has two kids, and an imaginary hamster called George.

Visit http://www.agilecambridge.net/ac2011/ for more information.

The Call for Speakers for September’s Agile Cambridge 2011 conference has now been launched.

The submission deadline is Friday June 17th.

We are seeking high-quality session proposals covering any aspect of agile software development. If your session proposal is drawn from practical experience we’ll consider it.

Suggested topics:

• Adopting and evolving agile approaches
• Agile product management
• Agile software development
• Software testing
• User experience and design in an agile world
• Agile technical communications
• Coaching, mentoring or otherwise supporting agile teams
• Leadership and Management
• Tool and technology adoption
• Distributed agile teams

Case studies and interactive sessions (hands-on, workshops, games…) based on any aspect of these and related topics are particularly encouraged.

In addition to paying no conference fees, being a speaker gives you a unique opportunity to share your experience and knowledge with our audience.

SPEAKER EXPENSES

Although the general policy is not to cover speaker expenses the organisers do have some money to help speakers who are personally funding their own way to Agile Cambridge – but please don’t take the piss, we would strongly prefer to direct this money to those who most need this support.

Visit the Agile Cambridge 2011 website for more information.

Agile Cambridge 2010 – has attracted leading author and software testing guru Dr. James A.Whittaker (Google Inc.) as its first keynote speaker.

Dr. Whittaker is currently the Engineering Director over engineering tools and testing for Google’s Seattle and Kirkland offices. He holds a PhD in computer science from the University of Tennessee and is the author or coauthor of four acclaimed textbooks. How to Break Software, How to Break Software Security (with Hugh Thompson) and How to Break Web Software (with Mike Andrews). His latest is Exploratory Software Testing: Tips, Tricks, Tours and Techniques to Guide Test Design

Dr. Whittaker’s keynote Test Engineering at Google described how Google releases software many times every day while maintaining the highest standards of software quality. Dr.Whittaker will talk about test methodology, tools and innovation surrounding the discipline of quality assurance at Google where testers are far outnumbered by developers. Specifically he will present how the webapp-chrome-chromium stack is tested to ensure that Google apps work well on Chrome browser and Chromium operating system. During the talk he presents how Google treats testing activity much like a hospital triages emergency room patients and how game playing metaphors have inspired the development of next generation test automation tools.

Booking for the event is now open with a discounted booking period running to 31st August. Visit http://www.agilecambridge.net/ac2010/ for more information.

I’m very pleased with the final Agile Cambridge 2010 program. We received 42 speaking proposals, a very good number considering that is a first-time event. The quality of the session proposals was also excellent, and any of them could have made it into the final cut. For our other conferences there are usually some poorly thought-out proposals, so this was a refreshing change.

Keynote speakers for AC2010 are James Whittaker (Google) and Rachel Davies (Agile Experience). James is the author of several well-known books on software testing and Rachel is the author of the recently-released Agile Coaching book. James is making the trip from the US West Coast to be at the event.

The main programme consists of around 20 sessions covering topics across the software life cycle. The focus of the event is on sharing practical experiences of agile software development and this is reflected in the speaker line-up, most of whom have been applying agile principles in industry for many years, and in the conference format, which emphasizes hands-on learning and interactive discussion.

An early-bird booking period runs until 31st August. Visit the Agile Cambridge 2010 website for more information.

Thanks to Red Gate Software, InfoQ.com and Skillsmatter for supporting the event.

I’m putting together a new conference on agile software development and I’m looking for speakers.

The emphasis of the conference is on sharing practical experiences. I’m also trying to reach the parts that other agile conferences don’t reach by looking for speakers who can lead sessions that other conferences may not cover.

Suggested topics:

* Adopting and evolving agile approaches
* Agile product management
* Agile software development
* Agile testing
* User experience and design in an agile world
* Agile technical communications
* Coaching and mentoring agile teams
* Leadership
* Tool and technology adoption
* Distributed agile teams

Case studies and interactive sessions (hands-on, workshops, games…) based on any aspect of these and related topics are particularly encouraged.

Accepted speakers pay no conference fees.

Visit http://www.agilecambridge.net/ac2010/speak.php for more information.