Best Practices for Managing Agile Projects   

Sue McKinney

Vice President, Strategy and Technology

IBM  

 Friday, February 8, 2008

12:00 pm to 1:00 pm Eastern Time (9 am Pacific Time)

Webcast presentation

Registration is now closed. The recorded presentation is available to PSN Members in the PSN Member Exchange (login required.)

More organizations are getting serious about adopting Agile methods for software product development. It's no surprise -- users of Agile methods such as Scrum, eXtreme Programming, and Sprint are realizing faster adaptation to change, lower cost of change, greater development efficiency and predictability, and closer collaboration between developers and customers. To be successful, a transition to Agile methods will require effective leadership and management of this change.

In this Web Forum presentation, Sue McKinney of IBM (Somers, NY) will share their experiences, key enablers and best practices with making the transition to Agile methods. IBM has one of the world's largest and most demanding software development organizations - 500 internal teams from 20 to 400 people, 60,000 globally dispersed end-users in their software group and another 125,000 in professional services. With about 25% of IBM's software projects now employing Agile - there is a great deal that can be gained from their challenges and progress with employing Agile.

TAKEAWAYS

You’ll gain the following useful takeaways by attending this event:

• The business rationale for moving to Agile
• Considerations to make before you start to use Agile methods
• Key enablers of success for Agile projects
• Governance principles and implementation for Agile projects
• Essentials for reshaping and reinforcing the software development teams including roles, culture and knowledge sharing
• Achieving an outside-in orientation and closing the gap between developers and customers
• The value and use of a customer visioning process for Agile projects
• An appropriate balance of rules and empowerment
• Insights into managing frequent incremental delivery of working software in short amounts of time
• The challenges of geographically dispersed teams and large scale projects
• Ideas for achieving the benefits of collaboration, empowerment, innovation and flexibility

Plus, after this Web Forum presentation, attendees will have about 15 minutes to ask Ms. McKinney their specific questions.

Copies of the slides will be provided to all attendees.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER - Sue McKinney

Sue McKinney is the Vice President of Strategy and Technology for IBM's Software Group. She is leading an effort to effect significant transformation across the software group development teams through fostering agile development, strengthening their development community, and executing cross-software group initiatives.

Previously, Ms. McKinney was Vice President of Real-time Collaboration and Social Networking Development within Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software (WPLC) division, and was responsible for the development of the Sametime Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing solutions, and defining new product opportunities for IBM in the Social Computing marketplace. In her career at IBM, she was Vice President, WebSphere Portal, Domino and Lotus Workplace development; Director for Advanced Collaboration development, Lotus, with software development responsibility for Lotus Sametime Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing technologies and Lotus QuickPlace; Director of Appliance Development in IBM's Server Group; and Executive Assistant to Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger and helped drive corporate e-business initiatives across IBM and externally.

Ms. McKinney joined IBM in 1984 where she worked in PC software development of text and language sensitive editors.  She then moved into various software development management positions, leading efforts in 4GL compilers, creating software distribution products for AS/400 and lead OS/2 server development in the mid-1990s.

She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the Ohio State University.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND

This web event is best suited for anyone who is investigating, planning or implementing agile development practices, processes, technology and management. This includes managers, directors and Vice Presidents of Product Development, Software Development, Engineering, Technology, Product Management, Implementation Services, and Program Management.

FEES

$90.00. Save $15.00 with early registration by Wednesday February 6.

PSN Members can attend at no charge. (See PSN Membership to join.)

REGISTRATION

PSN Members can register online or by sending an e-mail to: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Non-members can register and pay online with credit card (VISA, MasterCard and American Express are accepted.)

After you register, you will receive further details for participating in this Web Forum event.

CANCELLATIONS

A full refund will be provided if you miss the Web Forum event and request a refund in writing within 24 hours after the event. But, before you request a refund, you may wish to receive access to the recorded presentation including audio up to 30 days after the Web Forum event. With a recorded presentation, you can stop, start, rewind or fast forward the presentation at any time.

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QUESTIONS:

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