The 3rd IIBA Scotland event...

The 3rd IIBA Scotland event, again sponsored by Be Positive, was held at the RBS Gogarburn HQ campus on the edge of Edinburgh, an amazing venue with great hospitality (lovely canapés btw), on the evening of Monday 25th June.

The session was fully booked with 50+ people from a wide variety of backgrounds attending. After a good chance for networking & chat, it was opened by Be Positive's Vicky Di Ciacca, who reminded folks about the IIBA European Conference in London this September & provided materials for the same.

Joe O'Brien, co-founder of EdgeCase, now becoming {new context}, a leading Ruby on Rails training & consulting company, gave a great wee intro on why they use "agile" & how it has helped them to manage client requirements & expectations. We were reminded to always ask "Where is the value?" when prioritising change.

Next, Paul Wilson (the UK MD & an Agile/Extreme Programming coach) spoke about Lean Business Analysis, Test-Driven Development & other Agile practices. He outlined how they can improve ability to manage client requirements. We also learned how to identify problems early and reduce the impact of failure, how to "Build the right thing" as well as "Build the thing right".

The contrast was made between Big Corporations affording to fail somewhat & Start-ups not having that luxury & there was the amusing tale of Involved vs Commited (ham & eggs from a restaurant run by a chicken & a pig).

We were reminded to always focus on what is potentially shippable - and what makes us successful - while monitoring the rythyms of change. An exploration of "Making things visible" included an interesting story about the specification failure of the orders given to the infamous Light Brigade.

Following up on these themes was Alan Gardner, one of their key developers, who gave a talk on "Specification By Example" including a brief tour of an acceptance testing tool, Cucumber, demonstrating how it can help when delivering requirements to clients. There are tools out there that can help clients, BAs & development teams to better understand each other & see concrete progress on requirements - find them & use them.

Wrapping up, Joe again emphasised development driven by "the value", where "agile" requires measured feedback at all levels. He also recommended to "Just get talking", "Release for the right reasons", "Know why you are successful", & to share success by "Telling stories about what people are doing". The need to understand the motivation behind an order, in modern military terms, so it can cope with any changes, means that "brittle interfaces" to third parties are not good.

After a short break for more chat & networking, we held three breakout workshops, facilitated by our Gillian Kilpatrick, Vicky & myself to examine how Agile impacts on Products, People & Processes. The summary results of those three discussions will be written up by us & included with the other outputs (video, slides etc) in due course.

Written up by Adrian Doherty, Business Analyst, Be Positive. Thanks also to Gillian & all the folks at RBS for organising this event so well.