Informal Meetup

An Agile Ottawa informal meetup has been planned for Monday June 15th at the Clocktower Pub at 575 Bank St.  Meeting time is 7PM. Come enjoy a pint while discussing Agility in Ottawa!

May Agile Meetup: Season Retrospective

For the Agile Ottawa May meeting we will be doing some self-reflection on the season 2009-2010 season. The retrospective, like many other Agile retrospectives, will be to look back on the season ending with this meeting and look at what we did well, what we need to improve, and in this case what we want to become.

There are many Agile User Groups across the country and indeed across the globe. Some are very small and informal. Some are very (very!) organized and formal — with board of directors, membership fees, many professional speakers, training, etc.

With the broad spectrum of choice in front of us, we, as a team, would like to come up with a plan and structure for next season.

Some questions to reflect upon before arriving at the meeting:

• How formal to we want to be?
• Do we want membership fees?
• Who do we want to appeal to? New Agile people? Old hat? Both?
• What kind of organizing body should we or could we put in place to make this happen?

Over the coming couple of weeks I am sure many more questions will come to mind. Consider the above the teasers. We have an opportunity to build something new, interesting, and valuable to the Agile community.

We look forward to having a record turnout as we discuss how to build the Agile community in the Ottawa region.

Correction…

Oops — off by a week. The Agile Meetup date is Tuesday, April 28th — not on the 21st as I so exuberantly published previously. Previous post updated with correct date.

Discussing Product Owner Role at April Meeting

This month we have an experienced Scrum Product Owner joining us. Paul Relf, has helped to implement Scrum at Nortel, will discuss his experiences learning about Agile and rolling out Agile on a large distributed project. Paul has also helped train other product owners.

We look forward to seeing you at the meeting at The Code Factory. Meeting will run from 6-8PM on Tuesday, April 28, 2009.

User Group Meeting Tonight

Reminder that there is an Agile Ottawa user group meetup tonight at the Code Factory from 6-8PM. Location details on the blog.

We have two speakers tonight discussing the topic of testing in an Agile environment.

See you tonight!

March meetup: Testing and Agile

The topic for the upcoming meeting on Tuesday March 24 is Testing and Agile. We have a speaker lined up to talk about automated test in an Agile environment. We are hoping to also have a second speaker on integrating traditional test function into Agile.

Look forward to seeing you all there.

February Meetup: Introducing Agile to an Organization

The meetup for February is still on. We will be having a panel discussion on “Introducing Agile to an Organization”. We have 3 panelists lined up — with small company, large company, and contracting experience in Agile.

It’s going to be an interesting event this month! See you all there.

February 24 Event

We are actively planning the February event where the topic for the evening is “How to Introduce Agile to an Organization”. The plan is to have a panel and a number of preset questions. Following the questions there will be an open Q&A / discussion with the group.

Here is the challenge: we need four panelists and so far I can only tentatively confirm one. Drop me an email if you know of someone who would be interesting in being on the panel.

See you all soon.

Reminder: Agile Meetup January 27

We are getting together at 6PM… see you at The Code Factory. Response has been excellent for this session so arrive early to get a good seat!

When you arrive you need to buzz to get into the elevator. Patience combined with multiple buzzes will ensure success.

First Agile Ottawa Meetup of the New Year…

… is on! As previously discussed the topic for the meetup is Agile Tools. With that in mind I am happy to announce that we have a presenter for this session. Ian Kent will present on the Agile Development/Collaboration environment that he was responsible for setting up at Nortel Networks.