Date/Time: Tuesday February 8th, 2011 6:00 pm MST
Location: ICT 121, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada http://www.ucalgary.ca/map/interactive

Most agile teams use visual planning boards to manage their work and co-ordinate the activities of team members. A common example is the XP Task Board used by the team to track the progress of each user story. Task Boards bear a strong resemblance to the Kanban boards that are a central part of the Kanban approach to agile.

So what’s the difference? The style of board chosen determines the kinds of issues that become clearly visible and hence the benefit you will obtain.

In this presentation, Gerard describes his search for the right style of visual management board on a selection of different styles of projects. The journey sheds light on the rationale behind different styles of board and should help you may pick the right style of board for your environment. This presentation includes a dry-run of the material Gerard will be presenting at the Lean Software and Systems Conference (LSSC 2011) in Long Beach, CA in May.

Speaker Bio:
Gerard Meszaros is an independent software development consultant and trainer with 20+ years experience in software and over a decade of experience in agile methods such as eXtreme Programming, Scrum and Lean. He has also been one of the early proponents of including User/Usage Centered Design (UxD) practices on agile projects and has applied automated unit and acceptance testing on projects ranging from full-on eXtreme Programming to traditional waterfall development in wide range of industries.

He has been a frequent presenter of papers and tutorials at major conferences such as Agile 200x, OOPSLA, JAOO and SD West/Best Practices. His book xUnit Test Patterns – Refactoring Test Code was published in May 2007 by Addison Wesley in the Martin Fowler Signature Series and won a Jolt Productivity Award in the Best Technical Book category. Gerard is based in the Calgary area but has worked as far afield as Europe and China.

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