Jeff Patton – Modern Agile

5:30-6:00 : Pizza 

6:00-7:30 : Jeff Patton – Balancing Continuous Discovery and Delivery

7:30 : Door Prizes 

Location  

http://ujug.org/ujug-meeting-location 

Balancing Continuous Discovery and Delivery 

This talk is about discovery: the work we do to identify and validate our ideas are worth building, and how we balance that work with the effort to build high quality software. 

Before Agile development, just getting working software built was a challenge. Today more and more companies can predictably deliver something. But that something is often still the wrong thing. And, no matter how fast your organization delivers, it never seems to be fast enough. 

 In contemporary agile practice we go beyond focusing on just building working software. We include Lean Startup and Design Thinking practice to engage whole teams in understanding customer and user’s challenges, identifying solutions, and validating those solutions are valuable before we invest. 

 In this talk, Jeff will describe how to balance a continuous, whole team focus, on discovery and delivery.

Jeff Patton makes use of over 20 years of product design and development experience to help companies create great products.Jeff started in software development in the early 90s as a project leader and senior developer for a small software product company. There he learned that well written code, and fast delivery isn’t the secret to success, it’s just table stakes. It’s actually deep understanding of your customers and users coupled with a desire to create a product that’s really valuable to them that makes the biggest difference. 

In 2000 Jeff worked as a product manager at one of the first companies adopting Extreme Programming. It was there he built a strong appreciation for the discipline that Agile thinking brings to software development and a deep concern for what seemed to be left out, specifically good product thinking. Since then Jeff has been an evangelist championing the inclusion of strong product design and user experience practice in Agile development. Today Jeff teaches and coaches a contemporary blend of practice that incorporates Lean and Lean Startup and Design Thinking all directed at helping organizations build products their customers love.

Jeff’s a Certified Scrum Trainer, and winner of the Agile Alliance’s 2007 Gordon Pask Award for contributions to Agile Development.  Jeff is author of the bestselling O’Reilly book User Story Mapping which describes a simple holistic approach to using stories in Agile development without losing sight of the big picture. You can learn more about Jeff, and find essays and past writing from his columns with StickyMinds.com, Better Software Magazine, and IEEE Software on his website: jpattonassociates.com.