Jez will start by discussing the value of CD to the business, inspired by the lean startup movement. He will then present the principles and practices involved in continuous delivery, including value stream mapping, the deployment pipeline, acceptance test driven development, zero-downtime releases, and incremental development. Next he will cover how CD is enabled by an ecosystem including Devops, cloud computing, agile testing, and continuous deployment. Finally, he will describe how continuous delivery can co-exist with ITIL and compliance in an enterprise environment.

The chemistry the team has created, however, is fragile. Its culture and ability to deliver effectively can be thrown off balance when someone is added to the team in the middle of a project that has not been part of the cultural growth of the team. They are bringing in the company culture, which can lead to the perception of social deviance.

Managing these risks effectively is required to meet enterprise goals.

This talk will discuss the use of an Agile Acceptance Test Driven approach to managing software development risks. The presentation will include the process of doing Acceptance Test Driven Development using requirements by example and will demonstrate the automation of these acceptance tests into the TFS build process.

There is another way.

In response to the high failure rates of agile adoptions, organizations of all sizes have sought another path – incremental improvement. And it's working.

This presentation introduces the tools and techniques for incremental process improvement, why it works, and tips for adoption. But we'll also talk about when it doesn't work -- because incremental change isn't always the right fit.

To wrap up, we'll walk through the organization and cultural patterns that lend themselves to incremental change, and those that lend themselves to radical change. You'll walk away with an idea of where your organization fits, and what path to agile adoption that you should take.

In general, development teams are aware of opportunities for improvement but struggle with prioritization, practice details and how to get started --- in comes InCycle Blueprint. The free TFS Template provides an agile-based framework combined with a series of ready-to-use initiatives to accelerate time to improvement.

Topics will include:

• How agile concepts are used for ALM improvement projects
• The InCycle Blueprint process
• How to create an improvement backlog from the Blueprint Library
• How to manage an improvement iteration
• How to track advancement with dashboards 

What are the biggest challenges to adopting ALM? 

What is next? What is the next big thing for ALM?

Join Thomas as he hosts a panel of industry executives John Weigand (IBM), Cyndi Mitchell (ThoughWorks), Melinda Clover (HP), and Sam Guckenheimer (Microsoft) for their take on these questions...and more! 

For most businesses, software plays a key role in anticipating and responding to these dynamics. Getting ahead and staying there is now directly tied to our ability to design, deliver and evolve software. Routinely closing the loop between business strategy and software delivery has never been more critical, or more possible. But it is hard. Everyone - business, techies, managers and executives - must get in on the action.

Continuous Delivery can help large enterprises become as lean, agile and innovative as a perpetual beta startup. It requires a culture of collaboration, learning and discovery across the entire organization. Leaders will need to re-think their management styles. Business people will need to learn a lot more about software, and software people will need to learn more about business. Individuals will need to re-invent themselves at every level in the organization. In this talk, we'll look at the leadership practices, mindsets and behaviors you'll need to make it happen.

We all talk about "best practices" but a tiny minority of organizations actually practice them all. But not to worry, think of "best practices" for human health. We know all about them, but very few of us actually practice them all. Maybe if someone did arduously practice all health practices they would forget to have a life.

Tim has come to believe that project patterns are stronger than best practices. They are the habits, the decision practices, and the corporate culture, the unstated rules, which dominate office life.

The first key is to identify your own organization's patterns. If they are positive, how can you perpetrate them across all projects? If they are negative, how can you break the habit?