Collaboration for Scrum and Agile Practitioners
Just to be clear, we are having TWO meetings this month. Notice the next two posts:
Posted in Meeting Announcements.
– January 18, 2012
When: Tuesday, Jan 24th (6:00pm – 8:00pm)
Where:
Carlos O’Brien’s Mexican Restaurant
7111 East Bell Road
Scottsdale, Arizona 85254 (Google Maps)
Agenda: 6:00 – 8:00 Talk about whatever comes up. For more information on the format of a Scrumtisch (from “Stammtisch”), click here.
PLEASE REGISTER - If you are already a member of the Phoenix Scrum User’s Group, you have already received an email about this event, just select the “Registration Link” in that email. If you’ve not received that email, please sign-up (on the right), and we’ll get it out to you!!
Posted in Meeting Announcements.
– January 16, 2012
When: Thursday, January 19th (6:00pm – 8:00pm)
Where:
Infusionsoft (Google Map)
2065 W. Obispo Ave.
Gilbert, AZ 85233
Agenda:
6:00 – Registration
6:20 – Announcements
6:30 – Begin Scrum vs. Kanban – An Introduction to Scrumban
8:00 – Closing Remarks
PLEASE REGISTER - If you are already a member of the Phoenix Scrum User’s Group, you have already received an email about this event, just select the “Registration Link” in that email. If you’ve not received that email, please sign-up (on the right), and we’ll get it out to you!!
In order to introduce Scrumban, we will provide a Scrum and Kanban overview to level set the audience. To equip every attendee with a way to clearly articulate the differences between Scrum and Scrumban, we will also highlight what they share as two agile methodologies and what they do very differently.
The goal of this presentation is to introduce Scrumban and recognize where/when it makes more sense to use something else than Scrum, while still being agile. Modifying Scrum is not ideal, it works great in it’s most simple fashion but augmented with experience. Scrumban doesn’t change Scrum, it replaces Scrum when/where it makes the most sense. It answers the question about reducing even more waste in Scrum and helping other areas of the organization be agile using a Scrum approach that works for them
Dimitri Ponomareff, Agile Coach/Trainer – offers a full spectrum of project management, from Agile to Waterfall, and a wide range of application development, from e-commerce web sites to enterprise solutions. He is consistently recognized as a very passionate and successful change agent, with a great capacity to motivate and mobilize teams on the path of continuous improvements. He is a master facilitator, as well as a very exciting presenter with overwhelming positive feedback about his energy and ability to engage an audience.
He has successfully implemented Agile at Choice Hotels International, JDA Software Group, Apriva Mobile, Arizona Early Childhood Development & Health Board.
Posted in Meeting Announcements.
– January 4, 2012
When: December 15th
Time: 6:30 PM to 8:00PM
Where: Papago Brewing (Click here for map and information)
For the December meeting, we’re NOT having a general December meeting with a speaker. However, the steering committee has committed to getting together for dinner just to talk about “anything interesting.” This is your chance to have some more specific and directed casual conversations.
Come out and enjoy the country atmosphere of Papago Brewing with the other members for discussion about…”anything interesting.” Food and drink will be available for purchase. We’ll be there as long as you want to stay or until they kick us out, whichever comes first!
The PHXSUG Steering Committee,
Alan, Ken, Derek, Richard, and Perry
Posted in Announcements, Meeting Announcements.
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– December 11, 2011
NOTE: This meeting is NOT at the regular InfusionSoft location. Many people have asked about a meeting location that is further North. This meeting is the kick-off for a group that will meet up North.
When: Thursday, November 29th (6:00pm – 8:00pm)
Where: UTI (Google Map)
16220 N Scottsdale Rd., Ste, 100
Scottsdale, AZ 85254
Agenda:
6:00 – Registration
6:20 – Announcements
6:30 – Begin “Scrum…And!”
8:00 – Closing Remarks
PLEASE REGISTER - If you are already a member of the Phoenix Scrum User’s Group, you have already received an email about this event, just select the “Registration Link” in that email. If you’ve not received that email, please sign-up (on the right), and we’ll get it out to you!!
Posted in Meeting Announcements.
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– November 23, 2011
When: Thursday, November 20th(6:00pm – 8:00pm)
Where:
Infusionsoft (Google Map)
2065 W. Obispo Ave.
Gilbert, AZ 85233
Agenda:
6:00 – Registration
6:20 – Announcements
6:30 – Begin “Get” the Concepts!
8:00 – Closing Remarks
PLEASE REGISTER - If you are already a member of the Phoenix Scrum User’s Group, you have already received an email about this event, just select the “Registration Link” in that email. If you’ve not received that email, please sign-up (on the right), and we’ll get it out to you!!
We can read or listen, understand and even agree with new concepts. And sometimes it takes experience to “get” a concept. What if you have a concept that requires a change in behavior? You bet it takes some experience to help us take on that change for good! Certain Agile and Scrum concepts are so different, so outside of how we usually think, we need to experience to believe in them. This meeting we will focus on a few key concepts and see what we learn when we experience them in action. You can then take them back with you to work to help your teams learn too!
You may have heard of the current buzz phrase “wisdom of the crowds.” Is that really true? Are crowds wise? A Scrum tenant is that we do our estimating as a team. How is that better than having the domain expert estimate? Do we really need the whole team involved? We will do a quick experiment to see one way a team might be better than a single person.
Daily Scrum (Stand-up) Meeting is not the only time you need to listen. There are other meetings, even hallway conversations and design discussions. Obviously it is not possible to collaborate without someone listening. We spend a great deal of time learning how to present, what can we do to learn how to listen? In this exercise we will inspect what it takes to listen and what might be stopping us from using this essential skill.
Agile defines that the best communication method is face-to-face. While this may be obvious, it is often a seemingly unattainable ideal as our teams are spread across campuses, countries and the world. Why should we strive for co-location? If it is not currently possible in our team, what are some the challenges we should watch for and how do we mitigate them? In this exercise we will see the effects of location and experiment with overcoming the negative issues.
Alan Dayley brings more than 20 years of software engineering experience to his Agile Coaching practice. Founder of Dayley Agile, LLC, he works with teams and management in strengthening the people side of creative work. A volunteer member of the PhxSUG steering team, he loves to help people learn and create innovation at their company and in their life.
Posted in Meeting Announcements.
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– November 8, 2011
A “stammtisch” is a usually a table reserved for regulars at a restaurant or pub, designated by a reserved sign at the center of the table. Initially, it was where the people of higher status in a small town gathered together. However in oh-so-club-minded post-war Germany, it has evolved to become a regular group of a dozen or more people who gather to talk about a particular interest or hobby. As a result, there are stammtisches for languages, stammtisches for members of the same professions, stammtisches for philosophy or politics or cooking or music or knitting. There are even stammtisches for men who like beards and moustaches.
ScrumTisch (short name for Scrum Round Table) is a great opportunity to get together with other Scrum Practitioners, and discuss about various Scrum and Agile related topics. If you are living, working or just passing by Phoenix (Arizona) take a chance to join one of our meetings and share your knowledge while enjoying fine and traditional German Beer and Bratwurst. 
Here is how we organize the Scrumtisch:
1. Finding the topics
Of course we appreciate proposals upfront for the upcoming Scrumtisch, but mostly people are busy and therefore we collect a backlog of topics or issues at the beginning of the event. We write these down in the Backlog and then we prioritize them. We can make use of a flip chart, so if you want to prepare something, you are really welcome, just post your idea into the backlog at the beginning of the meeting. When we have a sufficient number of items we will then as a group prioritize them.
2. Timeboxed discussion
The 2 highest prioritized “Topics” will be discussed. The others are ending up in a backlog for the next Scrumtisch. We focus on each of the 2 topics for 30 min. One person in the group will be moderating the discussion and takes notes, ideas and hints on the flip chart. Someone should also take care of writing things down – send them to info@phxsug.org, and we’ll post them on the PHXSUG.org website.
3. Open talks and good food
After the “official” part of the Scrumtisch we are just sitting together, talking in small groups about the topics or other issues, and enjoying very nice Beer and Brats!.
Location: Haus Murphy’s 5739 W. Glendale Avenue Downtown Glendale, Arizona
Date: November 15, 2011 Time: 6:00pm to 8:00pm
Here’s a map to Haus Murphy’s (and a Picture).
Posted in Meeting Announcements.
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– November 7, 2011
Keith Denham finds the new trends discussed interesting. Teams that are not co-located are challenging for Agile teams. And he likes learning lessons from popular movies!
Big thanks to the team at Integrum Technologies for editing.
Posted in Meeting Announcements.
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– October 18, 2011
In this interview of with Larry Apke, he highlights the interaction among the members as a strong reason to come to our meetings..
Big thanks to the team at Integrum Technologies for editing.
Posted in Interviews.
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– September 30, 2011
Click the image to download the the .pdf of the slides from the talk. I tried to include enough pointers either through links or just key words so that you could easily find more information on each topic. However, if you have any comments and/or questions, please just email me at perry.reinert@infusionsoft.com.
Posted in Meeting Reviews.
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– September 28, 2011
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