January 2012 Agile Thursday Meetup – The Survival Guide For New Agile Coaches

The next Agile Thursday meetup will be held on January 26, 2012 with “The Survival Guide for New Agile Coaches”. (Please note that this session applies to ScrumMasters as well, and in fact anyone who is involved in Agile projects or product development!)

You know Agile Software Development reasonably well, using it on a few projects. You’ve now moved on to a new group or company, and they want to “go Agile”. Since you’re the local expert, you’ve been volunteered to be the Coach. Congratulations! But what now? This session assumes that you know Agile already, and won’t delve into the minutiae of the principles and practices unless warranted by the example at hand. It uses the metaphor of our progression through the stages of life to provide a backdrop for a team’s journey towards Agility, and your journey as a Coach.

This will be the last North American presentation of this talk before Dave Rooney presents it in February at Agile India.

The venue is Benbria/Toushay at 390 March Road, Kanata, on the Mitel campus and can be reached from Carling Avenue just before March or the first right turn on March after Carling. 390 March is the building to the right of the Microsemi tower.

Networking begins at 6:00 and the main event starts at 6:30.

RSVP requested but not required at The Agile Ottawa meetup group.

Slides from January 2012 – Agile Goes Way Beyond Software

Thanks again to Dan Murphy for his presentation last night!

Dan’s slides are now available for download (PDF 1.2 MB).

See you all on January 26th for Agile Thursday… details to follow.

January 2012 Meetup: Agile Goes Way Beyond Software

** NOTE ** This is the rescheduled November 2011 event that had to be canceled last minute

Date: Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Time: Networking 6:00-6:30PM , Meeting 6:30-8:00PM

Location: The new Agile Tuesday location is Mercury Grove on 738A Bank St. between First & Second Ave.

RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/Ottawa-Scrum-Users-Group/events/44942252/(Requested by not required, Free)

Agile Methods have been used for some time to develop software applications with a great deal of success, however, this presentation focuses on its application for infrastructure projects, IT project management, and service and product development initiatives.

Our speaker, Dan Murphy, has had considerable success using this approach within the Federal Government to develop new IT services as it relates to the development of IT Shared Services, and believes a more global enterprise approach is required making Agile a much more transformational element within the GC and other large public and private sector organizations.

Mr. Murphy, President of DJM Systems, is a leader in Government of Canada Information Technology strategy. While at Cisco Systems  in the late 1990’s he led the development of the “Shared Services” concept and pushed it into existence at the political level.

More recently, as an advisor  to the Senior ADM of  Transformation at Shared Services Canada, he has spearheaded the movement toward cloud computing in the Canadian Federal Government through the implementation of benchmarking programs, Agile implementation approaches and competitive marketing techniques.

Lightning Talks

Date: Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Time: Networking 6:00-6:30PM , Meeting 6:30-8:00PM

Location: Momentous, 26 Auriga Drive, Ottawa, ON Canada K2E 8B7

RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/Ottawa-Scrum-Users-Group/events/16291877/ (Requested by not required, Free)

Note that a hot meal will be provided! While we say registration requested but required it will help with food planning if you keep your meetup status up to date.

This month Agile Ottawa is hosting Lightning Talks. These are 5 minute talks. Topics are all around “agile”… but expect some to drift into many related topics around teams and teamwork, collaboration, values, and principles. Of course some of the lightning talks will be covering the core agile topics, but surely with a twist and a great story (there are many stories and many great story tellers that have been attending!)

The only condition for standing up for 5 minutes is that you are in the room. Want to get practice speaking? How about a report on what your organization is doing with agile and how its going? Perhaps you just read something about agile and you want to give commentary. Maybe you just want to listen and hear what others are thinking about in the agile community… come on out. Who knows you may get engaged in the dialog!

We look forward to the opportunity to learn from each other.

IMPORTANT: November 8, 2011 Meetup Cancelled

Due to some unfortunate circumstances, we will have to postpone the meetup scheduled for Tuesday, November 8th.  We apologize for the short notice, but we only found out ourselves this afternoon.

We will try to rescheduled Dan Murphy’s talk, Agile Goes Way Beyond Software, for later in the season.

The Agile Ottawa Team

CANCELLED!!! November 2011 Meetup: Agile Goes Way Beyond Software

Date: Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Time: Networking 6:00-6:30PM , Meeting 6:30-8:00PM

Location: Adobe Ottawa, 343 Preston Street, First floor (Enter by Starbucks and go up one floor)

RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/Ottawa-Scrum-Users-Group/events/38774062/ (Requested by not required, Free)

Agile Methods have been used for some time to develop software applications with a great deal of success, however, this presentation focuses on its application for infrastructure projects, IT project management, and service and product development initiatives.

Our speaker, Dan Murphy, has had considerable success using this approach within the Federal Government to develop new IT services as it relates to the development of IT Shared Services, and believes a more global enterprise approach is required making Agile a much more transformational element within the GC and other large public and private sector organizations.

Mr. Murphy, President of DJM Systems, is a leader in Government of Canada Information Technology strategy. While at Cisco Systems  in the late 1990’s he led the development of the “Shared Services” concept and pushed it into existence at the political level.

More recently, as an advisor  to the Senior ADM of  Transformation at Shared Services Canada, he has spearheaded the movement toward cloud computing in the Canadian Federal Government through the implementation of benchmarking programs, Agile implementation approaches and competitive marketing techniques.

Video/Slides from Creativity for Agile Team Meetup

Video: http://my.adobeconnect.com/p4vu8yxu64g/

 

Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/mlevison/creativity-for-agile-teams

Enjoy!

October 2011 Meetup: Creativity for Agile Teams

Date: Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Time: Networking 6:00-6:30PM , Meeting 6:30-8:00PM

Location: Adobe Ottawa, 343 Preston Street, First floor (Enter by Starbucks and go up one floor)

RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/Ottawa-Scrum-Users-Group/events/36609312/ (Requested by not required, Free)

Creativity can manifest in several ways including creation of something new, refinement of something that exists and problem solving. How do we support, enable and enhance the creative abilities of Agile teams? There are many ways to shape the work environment for greater creativity. We will describe how creativity happens and can be enhanced by providing a safe, nurturing environment, enhancing group interactions, pacing activities that utilize different sensory modes and trusting in the power of subconscious integration.

Mark Levison will lead this reprise of his and Roger Brown’s joint Agile 2011 conference session.

We look forward to the dialog with you as we build a strong Agile community here in Ottawa!

September 2011 Meetup: Season Planning Session

Date: Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Time: Networking 6:00-6:30PM , Meeting 6:30-8:00PM

Location: Adobe Ottawa, 343 Preston Street, First floor (Enter by Starbucks and go up one floor)

RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/agile-ottawa-canada/events/32750722 (Requested by not required, Free)

Have you ever wondered how Agile principles and practices could help you and your organization achieve goals? Perhaps you want to understand the basics of some of the Agile practices? Why does iterative and incremental help? How can we plan our releases better?

If you have some of these questions, then please come out and help the open Agile Ottawa community group  put an agenda in place for this season. By coming out you can get your burning questions and topics onto the backlog.

Bryan Beecham and Ellen Grove will lead an Agile Ottawa planning session. Leveraging Agile/Scrum techniques the evening aims to build a backlog of topics that are of interest to the community. This session is meant for newcomers and experienced alike.

We look forward to the dialog with you as we build a strong Agile community here in Ottawa!

One-day Open Source Conference in Ottawa: Saturday August 27, 2011

Members of Agile Ottawa may be interested to attend the Open Source conference happening here in Ottawa on August 27th. What a great opportunity to meetup with some of the open source luminaries of the software industry.

Details and registration here: http://www.fosslc.org/drupal/sc2011

Excerpt from their web site:
FOSSLC in partnership with IEEE will be hosting our 4th annual conference on Saturday, August 27th, 2011 from 10am to 5pm. FOSSLC avec IEEE accueillera notre conférence annuelle le samedi 27 août 2011 de 10h à 1700h.
This year’s theme is software development. Talks will cover the best of software development technologies and communities demonstrating outstanding practice in software development.