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An Introduction to Agile and

the Brisbane Agile Academy Meetup Group

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What is this Meetup Group all about?

Who are we?

The Agile Academy Meetup group welcomes anyone interested in sharingtheir experiences and listening to others talk about a wide range of Agiletopics suggested by our members. This is to make sure that we aredelivering what you what to hear about. http://www.meetup.com/The-Brisbane-

Agile-Academy-Meetup-Group/

How often do we meet?

We are currently trialling meeting every 2 months based on a poll of ourmembers.

What topics do you talk about?

Anything and everything about Agile!

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The Agile Manifesto – Where it all began

In February 2001, 17 software developers met at a ski resort in Snowbird, Utah, to discuss lightweight development methods. They published the Manifesto for Agile Software Development to define the approach now known as Agile software development.

Some of the Manifesto's authors formed the Agile Alliance (www.agilealliance.com), a non-profit organisation that promotes software development according to the Manifesto's principles. There is now discussion about changing to focus to solutions delivery for business and IT.

The Agile Manifesto reads:

“

”

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_Manifesto

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What Does It Mean to be Agile?

A little bit about Agile for those who’ve heard the word and want to know what it’s all about:

Agile is an umbrella term for a set of values, principles and practices that have been shown to improve the efficiency, productivity, and quality of projects. Agile is not just a software development methodology though but a way of working that builds on a set of values and principles to deliver business value and manage risks. Agile methods are adaptive; they have frequent checkpoints and feedback loops that are used to manage and reduce risks.

Agile can be used for all sorts of teams and environments, as well as being able to it can be used at the governance level for portfolio management and at the project level for delivery. The core values and principles are:

Values:• Trust• Innovative Accountability• Courage and Honesty

Principles:• Value • Collaboration • Speed • Flexibility • Simplicity • Teamwork

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Agile Myths

References:http://www.makinggoodsoftware.com/2010/11/07/demystifying-agile-top-7-myth/http://www.projectez.com/Files/special%20report%20-%20myths%20of%20Agile.pdf

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AGILE TERM COMMENTS SIMILAR TERMS

Agile Phases Concept – Initiate – Deliver – Deploy (per the Agile Academy phases) Inception

Artefact Tangible outputs produced during both the development of software and non-software project lifecycle.

Deliverable, Document, Template, Code, Diagrams…

Iteration A time-box in which the team self organises to produce some agreed outcomes. Sprint, Increment, Time-Box

Iteration Planning

Meeting

The way we choose candidate stories for the next iteration. It also gives us an opportunity to examine issues before the iteration commences.

MoSCow Is a prioritisation method involving the prodcut owner/customer to make decision on what features to deliver based on ‘Must Have’, ‘Should Have’, ‘Could Have’ and ‘Won’t Have’.

Project Charter A concise record of the outcomes of the Concept and Initiate Phases.

Release The deployment of a working version of a system. Releases may be internal, available only to the development team, or external, available to some or all of the users for the system.

Retrospective A structured opportunity to alter the process to improve the outcomes. Post-Mortem, Debrief, Weekly Review

Role A function that a team member performs on the project. A team member may have more than one role on each project. NB: Role does not equal position or person.

Scrum Scrum is a common approach that has become popular under the umbrella of ‘Agile’. It tends to focus on the Delivery phase of the Agile process.

Agile

Showcase End of iteration demonstration of the previous iterations achievements. Sprint Review meeting

Stand-up Team Status Meeting Daily Scrum, Daily Reviews, Morning hug

Story A short description of something you need the system to do. Some are new, some are changes to existing features and some are corrections of defects.

Requirement

Story List /Story Backlog A list of stories due for completion at some time. Work Queue, Sprint Backlog, Product Backlog

Test Driven Development A software development technique where test cases are written first and code is then produced in order to pass the test cases.

TDD, Test-First Development

Agile Terminology

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Where do you find out more about Agile?

www.twitter.com/agileacademywww.twitter/theagiletribe

As a member of our network, you can learn from, contribute to and connect with Agile expertise from multiple industry sectors.

www.agileacademy.com.au

The Agile Tribe Blog

www.theagiletribe.netwww.linkedin.com.au/agileacademy

http://www.meetup.com/The-Brisbane-Agile-

Academy-Meetup-Group

Other Blogs

• Agile Scout (www.agilescout.com)

Conferences

• Agile Australia conference –major discounts to this leading event for our network using Promo code – Agile11-AA (http://www.slatteryit.com.au/Agile2011/register.html)

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The Agile Academy 2011 CurriculumAgile title styleAgile Academy Course Curriculum

Prepared

Contribute

Expert

Requirements Implement Management

Currently available courses Future Releases

Agile Concept

Phase

Start Me Up

Agile Initiate

Phase

Start Me Up

Agile Delivery

Phase

Start Me Up

Agile

Programming

for TDD

Agile

Testing

Design

Patterns

for Agile Dev.

Agile for Legacy

Applications and BAU

Agile

Project

Management

Taste of

Agile

ContinuousImprovement using Agile and Lean

Agile for the

Business

Agile for

Infrastructure

Agile Aligned

for Agile

Experts

Agile

Builds

Agile

Project

Governance

Agile

Demystification

(CBT)

Agile

Leadership

Agile

Interpersonal

Skills

Agile

FacilitationAgile Team

BuildingSoft skills

Agile Design, Architecture

and Technical Leadership

Agile

Automated

Testing

Advanced Story Writing

and Management

Delivered by Software Education © Copyright Agile Academy V2.0 Jan 2011 More information available at : www.Agileacademy.com.au/Agile/our_courses