Sunday, May 09, 2010

[AgileScotland] Agile for Businesses which need more money ... and Agile Robots!

It's short notice (thanks to an unexpected hospital visit), but we've got 2 great free Agile Scotland events happening this coming  Thursday (13 May) @ Glasgow Caledonian University. 
  • The first is a day session for business folk & managers concerned about using Agile&Lean to make more money.
  • The second is an evening session for good coders who like robots and a bit of competition.
Please read below then email me on clarke.ching@gmail.com to sign up.

Many thanks to the School of Engineering and Computing, Glasgow Caledonian University, for providing the venue and supporting AgileScotland once again.

Clarke

1.  Agile/Lean boot-camp: for businesses which need to make more money, now
     by Clarke Ching - 10am - 3:30pm [Free - but with 3 restrictions]

This is a follow on from the very popular free training sessions we ran last year.  This time the course is aimed at businesses which need to make money but are struggling because their software projects are fraught with problems.  A lot of businesses miss out on the financial benefits of working in a lean/agile way because they mistakenly think it's only for techies.  This is a course for managers, sales folk, relationship managers, solutions architects, CFO, business owners and anyone concerned with the financial aspects of software projects.  It is NOT a course for developers, analysts, designers, testers.  It's NOT a course for start-ups, agile consultants, or for ftse-100 businesses.

We will cover: 
a) How to make promises/offers to your customers which not only delight them and which - most importantly - you can keep, profitably.
b) How to sell agile projects to external and internal customers at high margins.
d) How to use Agile & Lean to rebuild trust with your existing customers.
c) How to use Agile & Lean & Theory-of-Constrains to speed up your multi-project environment and deliver many more projects each year.
d) How to turn (a-c) into happier staff, happier customers and more cash.

The three restrictions: 
* Your business must have an established software development team with between 5 and 50 developers.
* You must have permission to discuss (with the group) the way your software development teams currently work and the ways they don't work.
* No more then 2 people per business can attend - and we only have room for about 12 more people.

[Please note that this is not a sales pitch.  I've been doing free stuff for AgileScotland for a half-dozen years now and I just happen to have a fortnight free to do this kind of stuff.]

2.  Agile Robot's - Matt Wynne - 6-8:30pm. [Free]

Now for the fun bit: a coding competition, with Robots! 

Small teams of programmers will create robots and send them into battle over a series of tournaments. Which team's strategy and skill will win?

First, read more details here.  
Second, check if you've got the necessary skills:  

Competence in a programming language that will run on a linux system (e.g. python, perl, ruby, haskell, java, clojure, erlang, possibly C# (under mono) - if we figure out how to support it!  You'll need to bring a laptop.

Third, acknowledge that this is a dry run of the SPA session Matt is running later this month so there may be a few teething problems.  
Fourth, remember that this is a competition, but it'll be more fun if you don't just code in java or COBOL.
Fifth, email me for to book.

Finally, you've probably already signed up for Mary Poppendieck's free evening event the following Wednesday but the conference room is huge so if you or a friend would like a spot then please email me at Clarke.Ching@gmail.com.  There are still just a few seats available for the Poppendick's training course the following day - email me and I'll connect you with Adrian and they other folk organising it.

---
Clarke Ching -  
* Over 14,000 people have read "Rocks Into Gold" ... my  biztech parable about Agile ... that never mentions Agile.  Read it for free at tinyurl.com/RocksIntoGold or buy it from amazon. --- www.clarkeching.com Phone: 079 2011 4893