You Aren't Agile

Agile methodology is 24 years old. It has a manifesto. It has underlying principles. Do you know what those are? Support them? Believe in them? Many companies assume Agile is just "whatever works". It isn't. The resulting odd mish-mash may or may not be working for you. At the very least, every person you hire will have their own ideas of what Agile means based on their own experiences and it takes time to figure out what it means in their new organization. The problem is worse when you add a new manager, director, or VP to the mix. They will inevitably want to impose their own concept of Agile in their new organization. Again, this is a time-waster for tech.

The purpose of this highly-interactive presentation is to challenge you, have some fun, give out some swag, and help all of us, as a field, to evolve in directions that make sense. Are you Agile? I think not...

Come prove me wrong.

Paper | Presentation

Linda Wilkinson

Linda Wilkinson has been a QA practitioner for 40 years (!). She started her career in software analysis, moved into QA, and followed the traditional route of QA Analyst I, II, II, Senior, SDET, Lead, Manager, Director, VP, and took a few brief forays into DevOps, DBA, Product Management, and data analysis as it became necessary in order to accomplish quality goals. At last count, she has worked with 18 languages, helped author a book, and has had the privilege of speaking at a variety of conferences, both as a speaker and as a member of expert boards in QA and metrics. She has built QA teams (functional, automated, and performance) from scratch five times. Passionate about quality and providing business value, her teams have maintained error rates close to 1% with high customer satisfaction ratings in a highly competitive and ever-changing technical landscape.