You've probably heard about "splitting" user stories, but often the idea is mentioned without any real concrete idea of what it involves. In this talk we are going to look at why splitting user stories is valuable, some theory about how to do it, and then look at some real world examples of splitting users stories.

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Your daily standup meeting can be your most important secret weapon for getting work done quickly and efficiently, but this doesn’t happen by accident. Effective daily standups are the result of a lot of intentional decisions to help your team reach its peak potential. In this talk, we’ll look at the goals of the daily standup and then work through how different approaches and common practices support or detract from those goals.

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In this session, we are going to look at the differences between estimating and forecasting. We will start out looking at examples of sizing work to make sure there aren’t hidden parts and then look at estimation approaches and finally at ways to produce forecasts that let us better predict the future. If you are looking to create more transparency and drive more efficient software development, this session will give you some good theory as well as simple concrete steps to accomplish your goal.

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What does a cult that clears runways in the forest and wears coconuts like headphones have to do with Agile? You’ll find out in this talk that is a refresher of the foundation of Agile with a focus on the why behind all the different practices used by teams. No tales about pirates this time, but we’ve got stories about toothpaste tubes assembly lines, a manager who offered to buy a rocket for our Agile project, and a modern real-life version of the emperor who had no clothes fairy tale.

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Come test your Agile knowledge, impress your co-workers, and win fabulous prizes! For this lunch and learn session, we are going to take a break from listening to people talk about Agile and instead play some game show-style quizzes with prizes and bragging rights for the winners. We'll cover topics from past lunch and learns, the Agile Manifesto, and maybe just a bit of random Christmas trivia thrown in for good measure. Hope to see you there!

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Continuing our walk through all 12 Agile Principles, this week we will be looking at Principle #7 - Working software is the primary measure of progress. Is this principle so obvious that it doesn't need to even be mentioned? We'll explore how teams sometimes let things other than working software become their primary measure of progress and talk about how to avoid that danger on your own team.

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Selenium is a wonderful tool, but many of the 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 cover techniques to deal with tests that seem to break for no reason, how to use page objects to make tests less brittle, and look at ways to get faster feedback from slow running tests. In particular we are going to be looking for 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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Tired of the same old retrospective format? Struggling to turn insights into actions? Having difficulties creating a safe, inclusive environment where people participate equally?

Join me for an interactive exploration of my top tips, strategies, and hacks for continuous improvement.

In this unique and engaging slideless session, you'll participate in a "choose your own adventure" experience that will allow you to influence where we focus our time. No standard one way presentation here; this is your talk, focused on your challenges.

We could run this session 50 times together, and each would be different.

You'll leave this session with practical tools and strategies that you can immediately implement with your teams to drive continuous improvement.

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Drunk Agile hosts Daniel Vacanti and Prateek Singh both have books out. Dan's book, Actionable Agile Metrics for Predictability Volume II takes a fresh look at Flow Metrics. How do we up our predictability game by combining our understanding of these metrics with techniques that have been in place for almost a century? Prateek's book 'Scaling Simplified' helps boil scaling down to its basics, giving readers a way to scale without bulky or costly frameworks. Come have a chat with Dan and Prateek (whisky not required) about their new books. Bring your questions about predictability, metrics, and scaling. Also, come help further the ideas for a new book that they have brewing.

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People were dying. Then Atul Gawande discovered an extremely simple solution that helps keep mistakes from occurring whether you are in the cockpit or the operating room. What he learned and how he applied it to save lives can help your Agile team become resistant to errors.

This is going to be an ultra-focused 30-minute lunch and learn where we are going to review The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, look at how it can help Agile teams, do a quick game show quiz, and give away a copy of the book.

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