PNSQC started the 2019 conference season with a Culture Jam. Here are some of the great speakers and talks at this lunchtime event at Intel, Ronler Acres on 1/25/19.
Use the Scientific Method to Build a Culture of Quality
Adam Light from SoTech
Agile teams exist because building the right thing the right way requires cross-functional collaboration. But agile teams do meet challenges, and quality is often an early casualty when things go wrong. Company culture is the most frequently cited obstacle to success and improvement. How can you influence company culture as a QA professional?
Bringing the right data to the table can change the game. Testing skills and a tester’s mindset are just what is needed to drive effective experiments. Find out why QA skills are such an asset for achieving culture change and learn a powerfully simple model for translating QA skills into organizational learning and improvement. Adam explores how the scientific method and the Improvement Kata can turn quality assurance skills into an asset for culture change.
Meet Adam
Adam Light helps leaders deliver results and improve their organizations by combining scientific thinking with lean and agile methods. He is an experienced consultant, teacher, and coach who drives systemic transformation through a focus on leadership capabilities and practical skills. Adam began his career as a software developer before becoming a manager of projects and people; he has more than 25 years of software industry experience. Since 2009, Adam has led SoTech, a consultancy providing customized agile improvement solutions for organizations worldwide.
Moving Up the Monitoring Maturity Matrix
Steve Tufty
In an effort to support business needs, a sportswear manufacturer has created a target for the availability of the applications supported by the IS/IT department. A daily report of the uptime of these applications has been developed using Splunk. These uptime calculations vary based on the monitoring maturity of the applications that are being monitored. Steve discusses the monitoring maturity matrix used and the trade-offs used to determine the best monitoring strategy.
Meet Steve
Steve takes new products to market in a timely fashion, accomplished by applying appropriate agile techniques, developing personnel, building teams and facilitating communications between product stakeholders, especially marketing and engineering. Selectively hire, guide, mentor, and critique team members so that maximum velocity is attained while keeping high-quality standards. Develop work instructions and conventions so that consistency and maintainability are maximized.
A Culture of Quality in Action at Cvent
Lloyd Bell
Lloyd shares his company’s journey in developing a culture of quality at Cvent. Understanding the pieces that go into a quality culture start with identifying and understanding your users, both internal and external. Beyond that, putting in the hard work and sacrifice to achieve a culture of quality requires a lot more than just talking. The ultimate goal is to advance the quality of the software through a committed team with a passion to learn and improve, but how do you do that? Lloyd shares his story in creating that sort of environment.
Meet Lloyd
Lloyd Bell is a 23-year veteran of software and hardware testing and development. Lloyd has experience in game design, voice acting, test management, has been a producer on multiple game titles and has started a 3rd party customer service and testing lab. He has recently worked with Microsoft on the Connected Experiences team and has led teams to help with the release of Microsoft’s day-one launch of the Windows 8 and Windows Phone platform. Lloyd is currently working at Cvent as the Director, Quality Engineering. Cvent helps organizations make their conferences, meetings, conventions, and trade shows a lot more popular through the power of mobile event apps. They have developed thousands of apps for events of all sizes and industries each year.
Weaving a Culture of SW Quality into Intel’s Hardware fabric
Aldrich Almeida from Intel
Intel is one of the largest silicon manufacturing organizations in the world. To enable and light up the silicon and platforms developed at Intel requires a large amount of software at all levels.
Aldrich dives into the history and importance of software quality at Intel and the Intel Software Quality group, and how a culture of software quality has been woven into Intel’s hardware fabric.
Meet Aldrich
Aldrich has been at Intel for 18 years working as a software developer, Project Manager, Engineering Manager, Program Manager and more recently as a Quality Manager.
He is responsible for managing the software quality of Intel’s Client products working in close association with business partners to ensure customer’s quality expectations are met.
Agile in Schools: Re-Imagining Education
Thompson Morrison from Innovate Oregon
Our current education system is over 100 years old, developed to support an industrial economy. As we quickly move into a new, technology-enabled creative economy, entirely new skills and mindsets are needed. Re-imagining education to prepare the talent for this new economy requires a deep cultural transformation. Such transformations, however, are extremely challenging. This talk explores how Innovate Oregon is becoming a catalyst for this transformation – looking to establish a new model in Oregon that will become a model for others around the world.
Meet Thompson
Thompson Morrison is the Founder and Chief Evangelist of Innovate Oregon, a strategic initiative of the Technology Association of Oregon (TAO) which supports infrastructure, talent and business development initiatives to drive economic growth in Oregon. Mr. Morrison is also the Corporate Development Director for OnlineNW. He is responsible for corporate strategic planning, new market development, and managing innovation initiatives for the company. OnlineNW, a regional ISP, provides internet services for 2,500 square miles of the mid-Willamette Valley. As part of their commitment to the economic development of the valley, they are building world-class fiber networks in rural communities.
