Track: Agile in Practice

Abstract: This session takes an inside look at successfully delivering from concept to cash, showing the technical aspects of what is required to iteratively build a robust product that always performs, and the skill and discipline needed to deliver high-quality software to production every week. We'll talk about how we use practices everyday to codify quality through intensive collaboration and driving with story tests; to build in repeatability through automation, system administration and environment ownership; to grow the end-to-end system through iterative contextual optimization, figuring out what to optimize and when; to improve the bang-for-buck by eliminating and preventing waste while maintaining options.

We know this because we wrote one of the busiest entertainment Web sites in the UK - 6 million page views per day - from scratch. Every week we delivered high-quality revenue-generating features to users maintaining the level of technical craftsmanship required to sustain repeated delivery. Our success is born out of an effective working environment and a rigorous approach that enables us to rationalize stakeholders, minimize dependencies, operate all environments including production, focus on what's important and deliver greater value by helping the businesspeople follow the money. Over the past few years we've worked hard to improve our approach and we'll continue to do so. It's the most effective way to deliver that we've found to date and we work with clients who appreciate this and are prepared to invest in their software as corporate assets.

Target Audience: Anyone who's involved in developing software and is interested in getting an inside view of how we use agile principles to get stuff done

Keywords: delivery, effectiveness, iteration, practice, end-to-end