San Francisco Agile User Group

Meetup Reviews

Reviews from
Kanban and 'Scrumban' on Wednesday Feb 23, 2011

Meetup Rating
4.5011

Attendees
47
Excellent presentations and discussions
— Mike Wright
It was great to hear about the kanban activity in the Bay Area and to see such active interest in this topic.
— Janice
This was a very timely topic. Many thanks to the presenters and meeting participants for sharing valuable experiences and discourse.
— Rob Oliver
Really insightful to have two teams sharing their insights into their transitions to Kanban: how they came to it, how the transition has gone, what it has meant, what they specifically did. Despite lots of experience with Scrum - coaching and even training it - I'd only danced around the edges of Lean and Kanban. In one evening with Sam, Ashley and Beth (not to mention the rest of you!), I had the "aha"s that will open the door for me to Kanban understanding and practice.
— Ron Lichty
I liked the topic, and would love to hear a more advanced session on this topic, as I feel we got cut short (as the meeting ran close to 10pm).
— Tye Jones
What's not to like? Great presenters, intelligent, thoughtful discussion. A great meetup.
— Chance
Reviews from
Agile testing in large team on large code base, sharing the experience on Tuesday Jun 22, 2010

Meetup Rating
3.004

Attendees
46
Terrible location. Requires a drive in from East Bay through heavy rush-hour traffic - could not take BART. Presentation was difficult to understand and too technical for my interests.
— Paul Winsberg
Reviews from
The Price of Uncertainty: Why Agile Projects Succeed When Others Fail on Tuesday Apr 27, 2010

Meetup Rating
4.504

Attendees
56
Both the speakers complemented each other very well. If one represented the Business side, the other explained the technical details lucidly. Very Informative session and others in attendance contributed a great deal in making this a worthwhile investment of my time.
— Neeraj Sethi
I'm always looking for new ways to present and communicate the value of agile practices. The Gedanken Experiment that Kevin presented qualifies! It really appealed to my analytical mind, and I found it intriguing to think through, as it was being presented. I liked it.
— Ron Lichty
Reviews from
Retrospectives on Tuesday Mar 23, 2010

Meetup Rating
4.5010

Attendees
50
Chris is knowledgeable, and brought Steve along as well to help with logistics. Glad he did lots of exercises to get everyone up and moving, as well as more involved. I'm sure it helps to solidify the concepts core to "Retrospectives" in the Agile sense that he wants to convey. The group was about 45 men; 5 women. Lots of programmers/developers, plus a few others.
— NancyF
I loved the hands-on participation. I was impressed with Chris and how he managed to get the audience fully engaged in his talk.
— Aleksandar Gargenta
Thanks to everyone who attended and participated in the exercises. Most enjoyable.
— Steve Bockman
I've helped moderate several older style "post-mortems", so I expected a presentation on "retrospectives" would be kind of dull for me, and I usually dread "audience participation" events because I find them forced and hoaky... so I was very happy to find the material useful and interesting, and that the interactivity generally helped to clarify some things instead of being distracting (ok, except for that final "I appreciate" stuff).
— Andrew Lloyd
It was a different kind of a meeting...very interactive and tactile. Chris and Steve delivered a great presentation.
— Marko Gargenta
A really great format involving the people who had attended to learn the concepts.
— Robert
Very informative and practical advice on conducting Retrspectives in an Agile Setup.
— Neeraj Sethi
Reviews from
Using Agile with Large, Geographically Dispersed Development Teams on Monday Feb 22, 2010

Meetup Rating
4.5030

Attendees
200
This presentation was very informative. I like the fact that Ade tailored the development process to fit his specific circumstances rather than religiously following Agile practices.
— Maja Gruszynski
Globally diversified teams require senior management support and flexibility to be most productive over time. Keeping the team(s) together across multiple projects is paramount to maximum effectiveness. Active team participation and developing relationships beyond project interests make team members more effective contributors. A three to ten-fold reduction in "bug debt" can be realized by segmenting product features into small groups and pushing out only "working" unit tested code. Be careful to look at participation from another's point of view when evaluating team members.
— Rick Carnal
It was great to see how such a large organization as Microsoft is using Agile with 1000s of developers all over the world. It's also interesting that just 5-6 years ago, there was almost no Agile at Microsoft. Wonderful talk by Ade Miller!
— Marko Gargenta
It was good to see some real data and to hear first-hand about how Agile works in large and/or distributed teams.
— Steve Bockman
Started a half hour late with no feedback from the moderator as to why we were just sitting there. The speaker, Ade, was very good - he took feedback from the audience and tailored his presentation to meet the interest of the people attending.
— Michael Lawrence
Very good presentor, very relevant and useful information. Thanks!
— Paul Winsberg
Great event! Concrete examples of how to reap the benefits of Agile while making the necessary occasional non-Agile compromises to deal with messy real world issues. Lots of specific supporting details (bug count reductions etc.). Fantastic!
— Andrew Lloyd
The project that Ade presented on was indeed a very large and geographically dispersed. A very good example on issues and challenges involved. Learned a great deal from it.
— Michael Lim
Awesome meeting: informative, engaging speaker, lots of audience participation. Time flew by!
— Geo
Fun talk.
— Jeff Mounce
Speaker was very experienced in this area and well-prepared.
— Robert
Sorry I had to leave early, this was a fantasitc meeting!
— Paul Keister