Broadcast Date : Thursday, September 16, 2010
Time: 10:00 AM PT / 12:00 PM CT / 1:00 PM ET
Duration: One hour

Speakers:
Angela Druckman, Agile Mentor and Certified Scrum Trainer (CST), CollabNet
Bob Aiello, Editor-in-Chief, CM Crossroads

Project managers are rewarded on their ability to manage staff, budgets and dependencies, and drive projects to successful completion.  But such behavior can be deeply at odds with the collaborative nature of Scrum.  Is there a place for project managers within Scrum?  In this webinar, we will look at ways project managers can be successful, contributing members of the organization's move to Scrum.  We will examine the roles PMs commonly play in Scrum projects, unique characteristics these individuals have that can benefit the Scrum team and how project managers can continue to add value as the organization adopts agile practices.

Broadcast Date: Thursday, August 26, 2010
Time: 10:00 AM PT / 12:00 PM CT / 1:00 PM ET
Duration: One hour

Speakers:
Jeffrey Fredrick, Technical Evangelist, Urbancode, Inc.
Eric Minick, Lead Consultant, Urbancode, Inc.
Bob Aiello, Editor-in-Chief, CM Crossroads

While there is much discussion of implementing Continuous Integration at the team level there is less information available on implementing such automation in the Enterprise. Where does automation meet change management, approvals and process? How do we integrate our build systems to our deployment systems? In this lean economy there are plenty of rewards for companies who can answer these questions. Automation helps teams become more efficient, reduces waste, and improves consistency from project to project.

Join Urbancode's Jeffrey Fredrick and Eric Minick for a 1-hour discussion where they examine the role and limits of automation in an integrated strategy for moving software from source code to production release. Covered topics include:

• What is required in Enterprise Continuous Integration.
• The basics of distributed automation.
• Where automation can support the build-deploy-test-release process.
• How and why to use a build-promotion approach.
• Establishing an end-to-end audit trail.

Broadcast Date : Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Time: 10:00 AM PT / 12:00 PM CT / 1:00 PM ET
Duration: One hour

Speakers:
Michael James, CollabNet Certified Scrum Trainer and Agile Transformational Coach
Bob Aiello, Editor-in-Chief, CM Crossroads

Scrum is built on the principles of self-organization and self-management. So although Scrum teams receive direction on what to build, from their Product Owner, they do not have a conventional boss telling them how to do their daily work. This is a cultural shift away from the way development teams have traditionally worked in the past. Scrum empowers teams to make decisions and encourages project transparency, team collaboration and better communication. This webcast is for software developers (programmers, architects, testers, analysts, UI designers, etc.) and ScrumMasters who want to know what it feels like to be on a properly functioning, self organizing Scrum Team.

Broadcast Date : On Demand
Duration: One hour

Speakers:
Andrew Phillips, Vice President, Product Development, XebiaLabs
Bob Aiello, Editor-in-Chief, CM Crossroads

Development iterations in the Agile philosophy can be as short as one or two weeks, leading to a constant stream of new software packages. As a consequence, in Agile there will be many small software deliveries rather than one big one as was the case in the traditional waterfall approach.

This iterative strategy leads to a nearly continuous stream of software packages that Operations then has to deploy to the production environments. So as soon as Development starts to embrace change by using Agile methods in their software engineering process, the Operations department needs to change their way of working as well.

What does this mean for the way Development and Operations cooperate? Productivity gains for Development of 400%-500% when using Agile are not uncommon. This means Operations needs to become much more productive as well. If Development delivers 4 to 5 times more software packages per unit of time, Operations consequently has to deploy 4 to 5 times more packages as well. Still, the entire change process has to remain intact, also for smaller updates, putting restrictions on how fast Operations can scale up.

How do you handle this?

• Can your Operations and Development teams continue to cooperate as they used to do before they adopted Agile methodologies?
• Are there specific Agile methodologies for the Operations teams as well?
• Can ‘self-service deployments’ be used as a way for Agile developers to deploy new updates themselves directly?
• Can IT organizations continue to safely and reliably deploy their software components while working ‘Agile’?

In this webcast, we want to touch upon specific issues IT organizations may face when deploying applications in an Agile environment.

Join in on this discussion during the webcast on June 17th, and subscribe yourself now!

Broadcast Date : Thursday, May 27, 2010
Time: 10:00 AM PT / 12:00 PM CT / 1:00 PM ET
Duration: One hour

Speakers:
Jean Tabaka, Agile Coach, Rally Software
Roshan Uttangi, Consultant, Wipro
Shriraj Nagarhalli, Consultant, Wipro
Bob Aiello, Editor-in-Chief, CM Crossroads

For: IT development managers and executives wanting more productivity and less risk in their outsourced development projects. Agile teams considering an outsourced development partner with deep experience in Distributed Agile Project risk increases when collaboration among team members is compromised.  But by knowing as much as possible about the health of a project in real-time, teams are better able to adapt to a plan and lessen risk as it comes. How can this happen?  Studies have proven that the discipline that Agile development practices bring can lead to true Risk Management.

Join Rally Agile Fellow, Jean Tabaka, and Wipro’s expert consultants to learn how Agile resolves many of the classic challenges of distributed development and how your teams will:

• Scale without sacrificing quality
• Ensure expected productivity increases
• Gain feedback through incremental value delivery
• Accept change without slowing down
• Reduce project risk through greater visibility

Don’t miss this opportunity to make your distributed development projects as successful as possible. Register now.

Broadcast Date : Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Time: 10:00 AM PT / 12:00 PM CT / 1:00 PM ET
Duration: One hour

Speakers:
Adam Huffman, Software Engineer, Philips Healthcare
Bob Aiello, Editor-in-Chief, CM Crossroads

Shrinking budgets.  Competing priorities.  Schedule risk.  It is easy in a turbulent time to keep your head down and focus on putting out one fire at a time in your software development organization, hoping things will somehow get better.  But this is the ideal time to uncover how improving your release process with Agile release management techniques and supporting automation tools can help you reduce risk, boost productivity, and cut overall costs. 

In this webcast you’ll hear a real-world example of how Philips Healthcare was able to transform their manual, labor-intensive build and release process into an automated system, saving them time, reducing process complexity and, most importantly, giving them the ability to deliver solutions much faster.

Broadcast Date: On Demand
Duration: One hour

Speakers:
Bob Jenkins, Director, Subversion Services, CollabNet
Paul Burba, Subversion Engineer, CollabNet
Bob Aiello, Editor-in-Chief, CM Crossroads

Subversion, the industry’s leading version control tool, has numerous features that are critical to enterprises like yours. The appropriate use of those features can make a lot of difference in the success and return on investment an enterprise gets from Subversion.

Most enterprises find themselves with multiple lines of development in process simultaneously that need isolation. The logical way to accomplish that isolation is through branching, but the need for isolation is normally short lived before the work needs to be merged with changes made on other lines of development. That means merging. Of course you want to know what has been merged to what and you want the tool to facilitate subsequent merges by utilizing that knowledge as well. That means merge tracking.

Broadcast Date: On Demand
Duration: One hour

Speakers:
Jeffrey Fredrick, Technical Evangelist, Urbancode, Inc.
Bob Aiello, Editor-in-Chief, CM Crossroads

Nine years on from the Agile Manifesto, the collection of practices and methodologies known as Agile Software Development continue to gain ground. There is no longer a question if Agile has “crossed the chasm”:  Gartner now predicts that by 2012 Agile Development methodologies will be used by 80% of all software development projects. But the Agile of 2010 is not the same as the Agile of 2001. Agile has expanded from small co-located teams to large-scale distributed development. This move into the mainstream has changed both the attitudes and practices of Agile.

Broadcast Date : On Demand
Duration: One hour

Speakers:
Gwyn Fisher, CTO, Klocwork
Anders Wallgren, CTO, Electric Cloud 
Bob Aiello, Editor-in-Chief, CM Crossroads

Moderated by Bob Aiello, Editor-in-Chief of CM Crossroads, this interactive panel discussion brings industry experts Anders Wallgren, CTO of Electric Cloud and Gwyn Fisher, CTO of Klocwork together for a candid discussion of the cost savings, productivity and quality benefits that can be achieved by stabilizing builds and code quality as early in the development cycle as possible. The reality of today's development environment – including geographically distributed teams, the use of Agile development practices, increasing application complexity- is straining the viability of the traditional coding, build and release process. To stay ahead of the curve, development teams are modernizing their approach to dealing with these issues, and as a result are achieving new levels of development productivity.

Catch this Webcast Live on Two Dates
Broadcast Date: On Demand
Duration: One hour

Speakers:
Dr. Ahmed Sidky, Dr. Agile
Matt Klassen, Strategic Solutions Manager, MKS Inc.
Bob Aiello, Editor-in-Chief, CM Crossroads

Taking a "purist", big bang approach to Agile is not a viable option for most development organizations, especially large enterprises. The most successful deployments of Agile are tailored to the context, strengths and limitations of the organization and are transformations over time, not overnight implementations. The challenge becomes defining a process that minimizes risk and takes an iterative approach to Agile migration, allowing acclimation to Agile principles while accounting for the constraints of Agile 'in the real world'.