Jez Halford
Jez is a freelance PHP developer with seven years' experience. He particularly enjoys web development because it allows him to intersperse the twin delights of solving tricky problems and making things that look nice. Mostly, though, he's interested in finding ways to make all the stuff related to producing software that doesn't involve writing code easier to get along with. When he's not working Jez likes cooking delicious things, trying to find common ground with his aloof cat, and going on holiday.
Conference Day 1
Making Kanban Work for You
12:00 - 12:50 Saturday 4th October
These days, we know that agile is the way forward for most development work. We've moved on from the waterfall model and even large organisations are embracing the agile way of life. Or are they? Scrum is a hugely popular methodology, but it can be inflexible. It sometimes falls down in the face of business pressures and, let's be honest, sprint planning can be incredibly dull. Especially if you know it's all going out the window when the CEO changes his or her mind next week. Kanban might just be the answer. Kanban is amazing. It's an agile methodology that stands up to the real world, that never gets in the way, and that makes developers super-efficient. It transforms bored, miserable teams into highly motivated Post-It moving fanatics. It makes it easy to spot bottlenecks in your process and it gives you incredible insight into exactly where your development time is going.
If your team are just getting started, or if they've been plugging away for years, Kanban can help. It's really useful for teams that are growing and for organisations that are looking to move from ad-hoc support and occasional new features to a more formalised development process. It can fix teams that are unproductive and turn failing projects around.
To achieve great results with Kanban, though, you have to play by the rules and know how to introduce it to your team without causing a revolution. I'll be introducing the key principles of Kanban, explaining how it works and offering advice on getting started, and looking at how Kanban can help refine your development process to absolute perfection. This talk is for you if you're bored of sprint planning, you keep missing sprint goals, if your team is unproductive, if you've tried Kanban but are unconvinced or if you're just curious about agile generally.
