This is the second in the series of posts that we will be doing for workshops taking place at Agile India 2013. The next workshop we are focusing on is “Honing Technical Practices To Realize Sustainable Agility” by Venkat Subramaniam.

Venkat is founder of Agile Developer, Inc. and has trained and mentored thousands of software developers in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia. He is also an award-winning author and has written several books including: ‘NET Gotchas’ and ‘Practices of an Agile Developer’ (winner of 2007 Jolt Productivity Award). He is a regular invited speaker at several international conferences.

We feel quite privileged to have him present several talks and also this workshop at Agile India 2013. He was one of the favorite speakers at Agile India 2012 based on the feedback we received. Also his video from Agile Inida 2012, was the most viewed video online.

While Venkat was traveling around the world attending conferences, we stole some of his time and asked him a few questions about his workshop.

What’s the take away for the attendees from the workshop?

Learning practical technical practices to sustain and succeed with agile development.

Agile development is really feedback driving development. Many organization and teams are really excited and focused on succeeding with agile development. They have aggressively adopted various management practices. While this is good and essential, it is not sufficient.

In addition to receiving feedback, the team has to respond quickly and effectively to the feedback received. In addition to right intentions, the team needs to have the technical ability to respond to change. It is hard to be agile if our code sucks. Having high quality code and quickly running automated tests, can help respond to those feedback and keep the response cycle running smooth.

Management practices (and the management support) are like the left wheels of a car. Technical practices (and the support from programmers and testers) are like the right wheels of a car. For a stable sustainable progress these wheels have to be aligned.

Programmers serious about improving their technical skills to support agile development on their projects or for the companies will benefit from this workshop. They will learn specific skills that have impact on their ability to respond to change and support their teams. They will learn how to create lightweight, evolutionary design, how to recognize and evaluate such design, to refactor code, write useful unit tests, create effective mocks, and how to practically create continuous integration feedback loops.

I invite programmers to bring their computers, roll up their sleeves, pair up with fellow practitioners, get their hands dirty with code and design, and hone their technical skills through this workshop. There is very little theory in this workshop, its all about learning by doing.

What are some of the main topics covered in the workshop?

• Agile development and sustainability
• Cost of technical practices
• Driving design using automated tests
• Evolutionary architecture
• How to make good use of mocks to aid unit testing?
• How and when to refactor code?
• Practicals of continuous integration

Are there specific tools or languages that you plan to focus on?

There is strong influence of programming languages and automated tools in this workshop. However, programmers have the flexibility to use the language they’re most comfortable with or relevant to their work. I can comfortably program in about 8 languages, which includes the main stream languages, so should be able to assist the programmers with specific questions and also compare and contrast approaches based on language influences.

Who’s the workshop intended for?

Programmers passionate and genuinely interested in improving their technical skills to support their organization’s agile development efforts.

Links to some talks/presentations by Venkat:

http://blog.agiledeveloper.com/2012/01/collections-of-presentation-videos.html

At this point, 400 delegates have registered for Agile India 2013 Conference in less than 3 weeks.

Looking at the delegates who’ve registered so far, we have represenation from the following companies:

• Aconex
• Alcatel Lucent
• Alliance Global Services
• Allscripts India Pvt. Ltd
• Aricent Technologies
• BNP Paribas India Solutions
• Cognizant Technology Solutions
• Direction Software Solution
• eGain Communications
• Enteleki Technology Solutions
• Envestnet, India
• GembaTech
• HCL
• HCL Technologies
• Huawei Technologies
• Independent Consultant
• InMobi
• InRhythm
• Inteamo
• Intergraph Consulting Pvt. Ltd.
• John Deere India Private Limited
• MSCI
• Multunus Software
• Ostrya Labs
• Pitney Bowes Software
• Rotary International Infotech Pvt. Ltd.
• S.i. Systems
• SAP Labs India Pvt. Ltd.
• Shop Smart Inc/BradsDeals.com
• Societe Generale
• Software Artisan
• Support.com
• SymphonyTeleca Corporation
• Synerzip Softech India Pvt. Ltd.
• Tata Consultancy Services
• TenXperts Technologies
• Thomson Reuters
• ThoughtWorks Technologies India Pvt. Ltd.
• Yahoo India Pvt Ltd

And their roles:

• Agile and Lean Coach
• Agile Coach
• Agile Coach/Scrum Master
• Agile Project Manager
• Architect
• CEO
• Co-Founder and CEO
• Code Junkie
• Code Monkey
• Consultant
• Development Manager
• Director
• Director-Quality
• Engineer 2
• Engineering – Director
• Engineering Lead
• Engineering Manager
• EVP & CTO
• Executive Manager
• General Manager
• General Manager – Quality
• Head of Engineering
• Head of Project Management
• Lead Executive Quality
• Manager
• Product Owner
• Product Owner/Technical Lead
• Program Manager
• Project Manager
• Senior Consultant
• Senior Manager
• Senior Manager – Consulting
• Senior Manager-Technical Group head
• Senior Manager, Agile Coach
• Senior Project Manager
• Senior Software Engineer
• Software Architect
• Software Artisan
• Software Developer (Embedded System)
• Sr. Associate
• Sr Engineer
• Sr. Manager
• Sr. Manager – Projects
• Sr. Project Manager
• Sr. Quality Manager
• Sr. Software Engineer1
• Sr. Vice President
• Team Lead
• Technologist
• VP Solutions

In my experience, people/companies would like to register for the conference early-on, to take advantage of the early-bird discounts. However they might not be sure who (which employee) will be available and can attend the conference. So most end up waiting till the end to book their seats.

This feels broken! It’s not good for the participants nor for the conference organizers.

To avoid this problem, we’ve introduced a new feature in the Agile India 2013 Registration System, which lets you register for the conference by just specifying the number of seats. You can defer adding the exact attendees’ details till 1 month before the conference.

Also you can always edit the attendees info, up-till 1 month before the conference.

(We need 1 month’s lead time to get the conference t-shirts, badges and other logistics in place.)

We have a number of exciting workshops that are taking place during Agile India 2013 conference. One of the workshops that we are really excited about is ‘The Fastest Learner Wins‘ by Mary and Tom Poppendieck.

Both Mary and Tom are well known writers and speakers and probably need no introduction. Mary will be soon launching her new book ‘The Lean Mindset’ and will be sharing her some of her learnings during the course of this workshop.

We recently caught up with Mary and Tom and asked them a few questions to get a deeper understanding of what their workshop is about.

What does the title of your workshop ‘The Fastest Learner Wins’ mean?

Speed matters. Learning matters. Design matters. Speed, learning, and design – correctly balanced – are unbeatable.

Once upon a time, a company could hold on to its markets by doing what it had always done well. But today, a small group of smart people with a good idea can start up a new business anywhere in the world; they can leverage the internet and cloud computing to enter a market with a minimum amount of capital in a surprisingly short time. At first, these small upstarts are not seen as a threat by companies already in the market. But over time, the successful newcomers learn quickly and surprisingly often they have taken over whole markets with better, faster, cheaper offerings. The incumbents, caught in their successful past, usually find it’s too late to react.

What are the main ingredients that allow large companies to be able to sustain growth over time?

The average lifespan of a successful US company is about 15 years – much shorter than a career. This amazing fact might cause you to ask yourself: How can my company thrive over the long term? The answer is: Expect change and adapt to it. Our current organizations are strongly incentivized to continue doing whatever they have been doing in the past. But as companies grow large and the world changes, the only real path to sustained growth is innovation. The most innovative companies have learned to change their focus:

• From productivity to impact
• From predictability to experimentation
• From scalability to decentralization
• From making money to making a difference

What will be the key take away for the workshop attendees?

Attendees will learn strategies for improving their companies in the areas of:

1. Innovation
In a world where natural disasters and economic shocks have become routine, only the fast and flexible survive. Wise organizations devolve decision-making to the people who deliver value, sparking initiative and fostering innovation.

2. Design
If there is one thing we know, it’s that the consumer experience matters. Savvy organizations focus on the whole product and care deeply about the consumer experience. They balance empathy with data to deliver the WOW factor.

3. Learning
It is difficult for companies to innovate at the pace and scale of the market. Learning organizations run lots of experiments and keep what works. They leverage disciplined speed, system-level feedback, and validated learning.

4. Mastery
Great organizations set out to make a difference. They seek challenge rather than predictability. They foster effort over entitlement, mastery over success. They are disciplined, determined, and honest. And they keep on getting better.

Target Audience for workshop:
Managers, team leads, product owners, product managers, coaches – anyone who would like to rethink how to create winning products.

Some past talks by Mary:
2011 Agile and Beyond Conference – Opening Keynote – Mary Poppendieck
Competing on the basis of speed

Please do remember seats for this workshop are limited so book soon to avoid disappointment. http://booking.agilefaqs.com

If you had skipped adding attendees’ info or want to update their info, now we’ve a feature which will allow you to accomplish this.

Under your Account Details page, you’ll see something like this

The rest is obvious I guess.

We’ve been working with our event management partner to figure out the conference layout for the Agile India 2013 Conference. As you might know, we are hosting the conference at Sheraton Hotel. Following is the layout we’ve come up with:

I’m extremely happy to announce the plans for Agile India 2013 conference.

Completed tasks:

• Conference website is live!
• Conference Dates: Feb 27th – March 2nd 2013 is confirmed
• Venue: Hotel Sheraton Bangalore (a brand new, luxury 5 star hotel)
• Sponsor Portfolio can be downloaded here: http://agileindia.org/ uploads/downloads/AI2013_ Sponsorship.pdf
• Tentative pricing plan is published: http://2013. agileindia.org/registration/ (If we get similar sponsorship like last time, we’ll break even with this pricing.)
• Tentative program structure: http://2013. agileindia.org/program/
• Confirmed Speakers: http://2013. agileindia.org/program/ confirmed-speakers/

Submission system for session proposals will be live by July 1st.
Early bird registrations will start by August 1st.