Agile approaches, with their focus on delivering working software through short test-driven iterations, promise to improve quality, productivity, and satisfaction. Experienced agile practitioners zealously tout their successes.

But as an analyst schooled in traditional processes, it can all seem strange. Those short iteration cycles can make it difficult to keep up. It’s a whole new vocabulary. On day one coders are coding and testers are testing. An agile development team can be a “hungry beast” demanding to be fed with user stories. Without the big requirements document, or the time to write it, how can you be certain your teams will be delivering the right things and not wasting time and money?

This fun and engaging hour starts with the dirty little secret behind the origins of the Agile Alliance. Learn why test-driven, incremental development makes sense whether you’re agile, just considering it, or convinced you’ll never be. Cut through the seemingly absurd lingo, ritual, and ceremony that all too often gets in the way. Learn how a few simple yet powerful models can get you organized. See how a test-driven approach can clarify that all-important “definition of done.”

Agenda:

6pm – Registration
630pm – Main Topic
730pm – Announcements
8pm – End
About the Speaker

In 1998 Marc Balcer led one of the very first agile development projects.

Since then, Marc and his teams have delivered systems in areas ranging from transportation logistics to medical diagnostics. Marc has published articles and books on UML modeling, service-oriented architectures, agile development, and software testing. He’s currently the chief architect of TAME, a cloud-based system for agile testing.

In addition to being a highly sought-after consultant and agile coach, he’s ASPE’s lead instructor and course developer on modeling techniques and test automation.