Mary has been in the Information Technology industry for thirty years. She has managed solutions for companies in several disciplines, including supply chain management, manufacturing systems, and digital media. As a seasoned leader in both operations and new product development, she brings a practical, customer-focused approach to software development problems.
Jeff has been CTO / VP of Engineering or VP of Object Technology in nine software companies. He conceived Scrum Agile development process in four of them and has implemented it company wide in the other five. He is well known as the Co-Creator of the Scrum Agile Development Process, which influenced the design of the other leading Agile processes. He is currently CTO of PatientKeeper, Inc., and is doing consulting engagements for Scrum training, certification, assessment and team motivation in the US, Europe and Latin America.
Nancy Van Schooenderwoert does Agile Enterprise coaching – everything from launching new agile technical teams to advising executives on how to take Agile and Lean principles far beyond software development in their drive to deliver more customer value faster. Nancy pioneered agile practices for embedded software development beginning in 1998. Her background in electronics and software development for avionics, factory automation, medical, and defense systems brings a unique perspective to her coaching practice.
Tom has 25 years of experience in computing including eight years of work with object technology. His modeling and mentoring skills are rooted in his experience as a physics professor. His early work was in IT infrastructure, product development, and manufacturing support, and evolved to consulting project assignments in healthcare, logistics, mortgage banking, and travel services.
Jay is a Lean/Agile Coach, Trainer and Certified ScrumMaster-Practicing. His consulting practice focuses on integrating techniques from Scrum, XP, Lean and Thomsett’s project discovery approach. Jay has a particular interest in the ethical, and psychological factors that inform and integrate Agile principles and practices.
Come join us for a seminal 2-day event at MIT in Cambridge, MA. with Mary & Tom Poppendieck, Jeff Sutherland and Nancy Van Schooenderwoert.
This will be a unique opportunity to be in a relatively intimate conversation with these Lean/Agile/Scrum/XP thought leaders for two days. This will be an in-depth discussion of Lean/Agile/Scrum software development challenges, principles and practices. The event is all volunteer run and produced by the Agile Bazaar, an Agile Alliance Affiliate and newly an ACM chapter in the Boston Area.
For one competitive price, you will get:
Deep Lean is an in-depth seminar targeted to people familiar with Lean, Agile, Scrum
and XP software development. For those needing more background, we
recommend reading Mary & Tom Poppendeick's first book: Lean Software Development -
An Agile Toolkit in advance of the seminar.
Jay Conne
Jeff Sutherland
GartnerGroup rates 85% of projects over 1,000,000 of code as failures. As Edward Deming commented to MIT Prof. Peter Senge, "our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people" and the damage is so large it is incalculable. Recent industry data show some hope is on the horizon. Whereas only 16.2% of projects were successful in 1994, 35% were successful in 2006. This has been largely due to iterative development and early release of software to incorporate user feedback. These basic agile practices have increased the return on investment of software development from 25 cents on the dollar in 1998 to 59 cents in 2006, This is one of the largest industry transformations seen in recent history. We will discuss the global revolution that is going on in the world's best companies and why and how it will eliminate waterfall development as a credible business practice.
Mary Poppendieck
Some companies are better than others at software development. The really good companies, the ones that have tackled most of the easy problems, all seem to have one problem left: they are trying to do more work than they have the capacity to deliver. Anyone who understands queuing theory realizes that trying to work beyond capacity will slow things down, not speed things up. Everyone who works with computers understands thrashing – an overloaded computer spends all of its time moving data around in its limited remaining storage area. This happens when disk usage reaches about 80 or 85% capacity, and the only solution is to do less or get more storage.
This session will discuss what causes software development thrashing and how to stop doing it.
Jeff Sutherland
Scrum derives from the work of Takeuchi and Nonaka on best practices in new product development in companies like Toyota and Honda. Rooted in lean principles it is designed to achieve the Toyota effect - 4 times industry average productivity and 12 times the quality. Lean is based on the Japanese principle of muri (smooth out flow), mura (eliminate stress on any person or system), and mudah (aggressively eliminate waste). We will discuss how Agile implementations are good, mediocre, or terrible, depending on how effectively they implement these lean principles.
Mary Poppendieck/Tom Poppendieck
Learn how to do Value Stream Mapping by doing it. Real processes will be mapped and critiqued, to help you gain an understanding of the benefits and pitfalls of this valuable tool.
You are invited to join the speakers, leaders of the Agile Bazaarand your fellow students for an optional dinner at a local restaurant (walking distance). Time and location will be announced at the seminar. (Note: price of dinner is not included in seminar; everyone is responsible for their own charges.)
Nancy Van Schooenderwoert
What really happens when a company decides to go agile? What happens after the first pilot project when everyone’s on their best behaviour? Like any relationship, there’s a “first fight”. There is a “coming to terms” with the things we cannot change. There is a realisation that this is bigger than just ‘Agile’. It’s not only about software anymore. It’s not only about the agile teams. The needs of other departments must be addressed. If agile teams are self-organizing, what are managers supposed to be doing? This session presents stories from Nancy’s experiences coaching many agile teams and their managers as part of one company’s move to go agile.
Sometimes methodologies are confusing, but we all understand stories from the experiences of others who’ve faced the same issues we are facing. This session will present stories from actual agile teams, their managers, and customers over the course of an agile conversion at a large company. Agile adoption initiatives fail because there are really four simultaneous initiatives that must all be done correctly:
We will see through the experiences of real teams how the operation of these four sub-initiatives has impacted one company.
Mary Poppendieck
There are a lot of leaders recommended for software development. We have the functional manager and the project manager, the scrum master and the black belt, the product owner and the customer-on-site, the technical leader and the architect, the product manager and the chief engineer. Clearly that’s too many leaders. So -- how many leaders should there be, what should they do, what shouldn’t they do?
Leadership in software development – what works, what doesn’t and why.
Jeff Sutherland
Creating a successful Scrum team is only the first step on the road to an Agile company. In most enterprises today, you must create a successful product portfolio delivered by distributed/outsourced teams. Even then, to win in a market segment, an Agile approach to the enterprise product strategy is needed to dramatically improve opportunity for success. How to implement an Enterprise Type C Scrum will be discussed along with challenges and solutions from several companies currently running an enterprise Scrum with emergent product strategies and dynamic, iterative changes in company direction at the senior management level. The goal is to achieve deep penetration of a market sweet spot and attain market dominance!
A moderated free-for-all with all the speakers!
We would like to thank the following companies and organizations for their support in sponsoring the Deep Lean Seminar:
