John Borys
Lone Star Software Symposium: Austin
Austin · July 10 - 12, 2015
Agile Technical Coach at Accenture Digital Interactive
John Borys has developed Enterprise Java applications for 16 years in the Chicago Metropolitan area. He has consulted for small start-ups and Fortune 50 companies. Introduced to Agile in 2004 while working on a maintenance system for the F-22 Raptor Engine, he has been an agile Proponent ever since. During that time he has been an Agile Developer, Scrum Master, Technical Lead, Java Architect, and for the last four years, an Agile Coach.
He is currently with Accenture specializing in Agile Transformation in the Large Enterprise and teaching teams XP Fundamentals.
John is a Certified Scrum Professional and a Certified Scrum Master.
Presentations
Transitioning to Agile - with Agility
Too often we struggle with the transition. We want to become agile, but we feel that some kind of groundwork must be laid. “Sprint Zeroes” are used as an excuse to do anything BUT sprint. Provisioning hardware, setting up development environments, all these things take time in the enterprise. And all of these are very cumbersome - the opposite of agility.
Building the Agile Team (Agile for beginners)
What does it mean to be Agile? What are the basic principles of Agile Software development and how do I build my Agile Team. What do I really need to build a good agile team? What skills sets are required? Do Project Managers make good Scrum Masters? I have been “doing agile” for a while now and it doesn't seem to work? Does anyone ever really do “true agile”? This presentation is an Introduction to agility and is intended for people who are unfamiliar with Agile/Lean principles and want to learn more.
QA in the Agile World
QA. We all know we need it, but quality takes time. How do we squeeze it into two-week sprints? Is a story really done if we haven’t finished QA? Do your Dev teams throw “code over the wall” to be tested in the next sprint? Or are your testers expected to test all your code in the last three Days of your Sprint? These are anti-patterns we see all the time in the Large Enterprise. In this presentation we will discuss how QA is handled - and mishandled when an Enterprises “adopt” Scrum. We will conclude with the best approaches to delivering potentially shippable code, in a quickly changing business world. This presentation will assume a basic understanding of agile principles.
The Scrummerfall Zone
There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to us. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground of non-commitment between light and shadow, between science and superstition, agile and waterfall, and it lies between the pit of your fear of Big Up Front Design and your Project Manager’s desperate need for “dates” and “estimates”. This is the methodology of stagnation. It is an area which we call “The Scrummerfall Zone”… NOTE: This presentation is for those who have a solid understanding of agile principles, but are struggling with the transition to agile. There will be a lot of discussion during and after the presentation. Be prepared to talk.