(Agile) Games are sounding throughout the land. Everyone plays games and anyone guides games. However, what makes playing games "interesting" from the business owner's perspective? 

We look into the criteria of effectiveness and efficiency of games and thus the capabilities of creating business impact for the company.

As such, it turns out a game - is just a game and remains a play if one does not align with underlying business needs. Sounds familiar? But you wonder how to do so?

In this talk, we will look in a 4-Step-Modelmaking the obvious tangible. And in the end, it becomes a structured approach how one might create business impact too.

Target Audience: Moderators, (young) Scrum Masters, Project Leaders, Managers, Decision-Makers, Facilitators
Prerequisites: General understanding of games and agility, and how to lead games successfully
Level: Basic

So many challenges, so little time. As testers or quality engineers, we need to sharpen the saw, but how? Gamification can be a way to look at how you're doing and find out where to improve. It's a great way to have everyone engaged and get the best out of people.

In this presentation, Ben Linders will show how playing games (onsite or online) with the Agile Testing Coaching Cards and Agile Quality Coaching Cards help to explore your current quality and testing practice and decide as a team on what to improve or experiment with.

Target Audience: Testers, Agile Teams, Tech Leads, Technical Coaches, Scrum Masters
Prerequisites: None
Level: Advanced

Extended Abstract

The Agile Testing Coaching Cards and Agile Quality Coaching Cards are a deck of cards with statements that help people to share and reflect. Examples of cards are "Testers help developers design acceptance criteria for user stories", "Failing tests get proper attention even when no defect in the product has been detected", and "Refactoring is done to keep code maintainable and reduce technical debt".

Playing games with these coaching cards (onsite or online), you can learn from each other. Teams can use the coaching cards to discuss quality and testing values, principles, and practices, and share their experiences and learnings.

Different game formats can be used to share experiences on testing and quality principles and practices and explore how they can be applied effectively. The playing formats from the Agile Self-assessment Game (benlinders.com/game) can be used to play with these cards. This presentation provides an overview of playing formats and will inspire you to come up with your own formats.

Facilitation is key when playing with these coaching cards. Ben Linders will present how to prepare a game session and facilitate it, what can be done to keep people engaged, and how debriefing can help to pull out learnings and ideas for improvement.

Takeaways:

- Show how to use gamification to self-assess your current way of working.

- Present examples of playing games with the Agile Testing Coaching Cards and Agile Quality Coaching Cards.

- Explore how facilitating games can help to enhance quality and testing in agile teams.

To continuously deliver IT systems at speed with a focus on business value, high-performance IT delivery teams integrate quality engineering in their way of working.

Quality engineering is the new concept in achieving the right quality of IT systems. Testing only after an IT product was developed is an outdated approach. Built-in quality from the start is needed to guarantee business value in today’s IT delivery models. Quality engineering is about changes in skills, organization, automation and quality measures.

Target Audience: All people involved in high-performance IT delivery teams
Prerequisites: General knowledge of IT delivery
Level: Advanced

Extended Abstract

To continuously deliver IT systems at speed with a focus on business value, high-performance cross-functional IT delivery teams integrate quality engineering in their way of working.

Quality engineering is the new concept in achieving the right quality of IT systems. Testing an application only after the digital product has been fully developed has long been a thing of the past. More is needed to guarantee the quality of applications that are delivered faster and more frequently in today’s high-performance IT delivery models. It is about achieving built-in quality. The road to quality engineering means changes in terms of starting points, skills, organization, automation and quality measures.

Our new VOICE model guides teams to align their activities with the business value that is pursued, and by measuring indicators, teams give the right information to stakeholders to establish their confidence that the IT delivery will actually result in business value for the customers.

Teams benefit from the clear definition of QA&Testing topics that are a useful grouping of all activities relevant to quality engineering. Organizing topics are relevant to align activities between teams and performing topics have a focus on the operational activities within a team.

Also, to be able to deliver quality at speed, for today’s teams it is crucial to benefit from automating activities, for example in a CI/CD pipeline, whereby people must remember that automation is not the goal but just a way to increase quality and speed.

In this presentation the audience will learn why a broad view on quality engineering is important and how quality engineering can be implemented to achieve the right quality of IT products, the IT delivery process and the people involved.

This presentation is based on our new book "Quality for DevOps teams" (ISBN 978-90-75414-89-9) which supports high-performance cross-functional teams in implementing quality in their DevOps culture, with practical examples, useful knowledge and some theoretical background.

In large software projects the assessment of the impact of a code change can be a cumbersome task. If the software has grown and shows an evolutionary design there are always unwanted side effects.

Change control boards are established. But on what data do they judge what can happen with the changes? Very often there is the HIPPO syndrome which means it is the highest paid person's opinion.

In this talk we will show you ways to come to a deterministic prediction of the impact, what data you need and what you can do with it.

Target Audience: Architects, Test Managers, Developers, Testers
Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of collected data in software projects
Level: Advanced

Data technical debt refers to quality challenges associated with legacy data sources, including both mission-critical sources of record as well as “big data” sources of insight. Data technical debt impedes the ability of your organization to leverage information effectively for better decision making, increases operational costs, and impedes your ability to react to changes in your environment. The annual cost of bad data is in the trillions of dollars, this problem is real and it won't go away on its own.

Target Audience: Developers, Data Professionals, Managers, Architects
Prerequisites: Understanding of basic data terms
Level: Basic

Extended Abstract

Data technical debt refers to quality challenges associated with legacy data sources, including both mission-critical sources of record as well as “big data” sources of insight. Data technical debt impedes the ability of your organization to leverage information effectively for better decision making, increases operational costs, and impedes your ability to react to changes in your environment. Bad data is estimated to cost the United States $3 trillion annually alone, yet few organizations have a realistic strategy in place to address data technical debt.

This presentation defines what data technical debt is and why it is often a greater issue than classic code-based technical debt. We describe the types of data technical debt, why each is important, and how to measure them. Most importantly, this presentation works through Disciplined Agile (DA) strategies for avoiding, removing, and accepting data technical debt. Data is the lifeblood of our organizations, we need to ensure that it is clean if we’re to remain healthy.

Learning objectives:

• Discover what data technical debt is

• Understand the complexities of data technical debt and why they’re difficult to address

• Learn technical and management strategies to address data technical debt

Each project has its own unique technology stack, different business logic and a unique team. The definition of quality in our projects can vary greatly. However, there are good practices that will work everywhere. There are steps that can be taken in every project and team to produce the software of better quality. I will tell you how to improve communication and processes, and what tools we can use not to be ashamed of the fruits of our work. Everything from a programmer's perspective.

Target Audience: Developers and Tech/Project Leaders
Prerequisites: Some experience in profesional software development
Level: Advanced

Extended Abstract
Each project has its own unique technology stack, different business logic and a unique team. Some of us work on mature products that have been in production for many years. Others are constantly struggling to innovate in the race against time. The definition of quality in our projects can vary greatly. However, there are good practices that will work everywhere. There are steps that can be taken in every project and team to produce the software of better quality. I will tell you how to improve communication and processes, and what tools we can use not to be ashamed of the fruits of our work. Everything from a programmer's perspective.

“TDD is when you write tests before implementing the business logic” - a simple sentence that is also often misunderstood.
Moving from one project to another, I have observed how many times people were terrified of TDD. I have been there too.
This session will focus on trying to understand HOW and more importantly WHY you should consider TDD. I've transformed failures from my experience into a series of lessons learned, things that in hindsight should have been obvious.

Target Audience: Architects, Developers
Prerequisites: Basic knowledge in testing techniques
Level: Basic