Dan North, ThoughtWorks

Dan North is a developer and coach for custom software consultancy ThoughtWorks (http://www.thoughtworks.com), where he encourages people to write tests. He has been developing software for thirteen years, and has spent the last few years using agile principles to help teams get better at delivering high value software. He is particularly interested in enabling software teams who are new to agile delivery.

Track:   Software Process Improvement, SPI

Abstract: When people say "process improvement", many people think of SEI CMM initiatives. It's a common misconception to think that CMM and process improvement are the antipathy of agile development processes. However we've found that process improvement is a key part of people adopting and using agile methods. We've seen two main threads as we've worked with clients: 1) people new to agile methods (often new to any method) wanting to improve how they develop software by taking ideas and practices from agile processes, and 2) existing competent agile teams who use process improvement to further tune and and adapt how they work. This session discusses some of the challenges facing agile processes and looks at ways to implement and improve processes in each of these contexts.