Agile software development is full of interesting paradoxes. Your ability to understand these, will go a long ways in determining how successfully you can operate in an Agile environment. In this talk, we are going to look at several of these seeming contradictions and see what we can learn from them that will help us improve the effectiveness of our teams.

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Agile Principle #3 says, "Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale." Why does this matter? What's the big deal about delivering software on a shorter timescale. In this very short session, we'll be premiering a new Agile cartoon that you can use to help your team understand the importance of this principle.

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Selenium is a wonderful tool, but many ways to use it that work well when you have 5 tests, start to break down when you are dealing with a large application with 5,000 tests. In this session we will look at examples of how to write code that uses Selenium effectively even when dealing with a very large number of tests. We will also look at ways to make our testing code more readable even for non-developers, so if you have an interest in how Selenium can be used, you’ll probably find the discussion easy to follow even if you don’t write code yourself.

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While the Agile Manifesto was written for teams, organizations can work with or against agility. In this session, we will look at how organizations can grow to leverage the agility that Agile brings to teams and how organizational-level agility can be achieved.

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Are you working on a product or a project? What is the difference and why does it matter? In this session we are going to look at the difference between the project approach to creating software and the product approach and discuss why the Agile Principles will push many teams to move away from projects and toward products.

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User stories drive the process of creating software. Good user stories help develop software efficiently, but poor user stories can lead to lower return on investment and even cancelled projects. We will look at a number of example user stories from robotic milking machines to online shoe stores to discover the key to creating stories that effectively represent complex work with simplicity.

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User stories drive the process of creating software. Good user stories help develop software efficiently, but poor user stories can lead to lower return on investment and even cancelled projects. We will look at a number of example user stories from robotic milking machines to online shoe stores to discover the key to creating stories that effectively represent complex work with simplicity.

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I've been asked for more examples of splitting large stories into smaller pieces while still delivering work that the user can experience as valuable progress. In this session, we'll look at several examples of this type of story division.

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How does one become a software engineer? In this talk we'll look at what it takes to develop the necessary skills to enter the field and we'll look at a number of different ways to acquire those skills. This talk will be useful for people considering a career shift, developers looking for ways to increase their skills, and anyone with kids who might be interested in learning how to program.

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Everyone loves the idea of doing "greenfield" development where you create a system from the ground up without being subject to legacy concerns. There is great potential to do things "right", but there are also dangerous pitfalls hidden right below the grassy surface. In this talk, we will discuss some of the lurking landmines and look for ways to reduce these risks, maximize the benefits, and deliver an awesome application when doing greenfield software development.

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