Agile + DevOps USA 2024 - Developer
Customize your Agile + DevOps USA 2024 experience with sessions for software developers.
Sunday, October 13
Agile Fundamentals - ICAgile Certified Professional (ICP)
Fundamentals of AI—ICAgile Certification (ICP-FAI)
Foundations of DevOps—ICAgile Certification
Monday, October 14
A Quality Engineering Introduction to AI and Machine Learning
Although there are several controversies and misunderstandings surrounding AI and machine learning, one thing is apparent — people have quality concerns about the safety, reliability, and trustworthiness of these types of systems. Not only are ML-based systems shrouded in mystery due to their largely black-box nature, they also tend to be unpredictable since they can adapt and learn new things at runtime. Validating ML systems is challenging and requires a cross-section of knowledge, skills, and experience from areas such as mathematics, data science, software engineering, cyber-security,...
How to DevOps Your Testing Strategy – An Exercise in Value Stream Analysis
The DevOps movement is here. Companies across many industries are breaking down siloed IT departments and federating them into product development teams. Testing and its practices are at the heart of these changes. Traditionally, IT organizations have been staffed with mostly manual testers and a limited number of automation and performance engineers. To keep pace with development in the new “you build it, you own it” environment, testing teams and individuals must develop new technical skills and even embrace coding to stay relevant and add greater value to the business. DevOps really...
Designing (Much) Better Agile Meetings
Many teams have been following the same few patterns for facilitating sessions such as daily scrums, sprint reviews, retrospectives, and backlog refinement events for decades now. However, while these well-trodden approaches can be good starting points, there are ways to make them tremendously more effective with minimal effort. You will learn to design agile meetings that account for your particular circumstances and goals while wasting as little time as possible. First, Arlen will cover: exploring the true purpose of agile meetings – Is the daily scrum more about status or planning? Is...
Leveraging Generative AI for Software Productivity
Executive leaders across the globe have been asking a relatively simple yet profound question: Can we leverage generative AI to transform our business, enterprise, or industry? For software-based companies, focus has either been on differentiating their product and service offerings using this new technology. But how about leveraging generative AI to improve team productivity and efficiency? This may be possible but how do you measure its success? What are some of the key use cases within business analysis, development, and testing that software teams can use? Are there any pitfalls...
Essential Test-Driven Development with AI/LLM Assist: A Hands-On Workshop
Will AI take over developer and tester roles? Rob's investigations found that an AI/LLM bot can write effective implementations but will need very clear, descriptive specifications. Yes, we humans will need to write the tests first! Test-Driven Development (TDD) has allowed developers to do just that—to "think in tests"—for over 25 years. TDD combines engineering specification, developer testing, coding, and design in a fast feedback cycle that greatly reduces defects, debugging, and rework. Test-driven teams write a failing automated test that defines new behavior, then the "...
Tuesday, October 15
Supercharge Your Workflow: To GitHub and Beyond
Whether you are new or experienced with GitHub this class is for you! Supercharging your workflow caters to anyone who wants to enhance their agile and DevOps process with the capabilities of GitHub. GitHub has long been the premier site for open-source projects and is now turning a pivotal corner into becoming the predominant platform for all aspects of the development lifecycle. Some examples of this include; protecting company code through various GitHub Products or curating marketplace actions and workflows prior to use. This tutorial will look at how to leverage GitHub Actions (CI/CD...
Wrangling Your Untested Legacy Code: A Hands-On Workshop
Although most agile developers would prefer to use Test-Driven Development (TDD) on everything, their products or systems usually contain existing untested "legacy" code which resists and stifles good TDD practices. Untested code is easily broken and can hide those defects for months. Even with TDD, a developer adding new behaviors to legacy code can quickly run into problems when that untested code must change. Characterization Testing (i.e., testing existing behaviors) is the ancillary technique that allows teams to strengthen their safety net of fast, automated tests. But adding tests...
Getting Started with AI and Machine Learning
Are you a software professional who would like to learn to use AI and machine learning (ML), but don't know how to get started? One of the best ways to get into ML is by designing and completing small projects. Although you will ultimately need to understand the fundamentals of AI/ML, there's no reason why you can't learn foundational terms, concepts and principles as you put them into practice. Join Kaushal Dalvi as he introduces you to the world of applied machine learning. Kaushal will guide you through a series of ML projects end-to-end, enabling you to gain experience with creating...
MLOps: DevOps for Machine Learning
Much attention is given to machine learning model training and testing in the industry. While these activities are essential for producing a production-ready machine learning model, organizations face some critical business challenges that must be addressed when building and testing machine learning models. Things like the reproducibility of results, accuracy of predictions, reusability of components, and trackability of experimentation are all vital to the success of any application. The term MLOps has emerged as a method for applying DevOps practices and automation to the machine...
An Agile-Not-Fragile Introduction to Microservices
The microservices architecture provides guidance for decomposing systems into small, loosely coupled, independently deployable and scalable services. Microservices align well with agile development and DevOps practices because they enable new increments of the system to be delivered earlier, more frequently, and even continuously throughout the lifecycle. However, as with all new paradigms, there are pros and cons that must be considered when transitioning onto a new landscape. Join Kaushal Dalvi as he gives you an agile-not-fragile introduction to microservices. You'll learn the...
Wednesday, October 16
Everything Old Is New Again: Using What We Already Know for a Safer Future
Our world is filled with complexities and unknowns, and when these collide with emerging technologies, the resulting risk seems insurmountable. We accept this increased risk as a cost of using the new technology, assuming that previous lessons learned don’t apply and that a blank slate is required to gain the most benefit. However, this never turns out to be true. Time and time again, we realize that much of what we already know is still relevant to these emerging technologies, regardless of how advanced or paradigm-shifting they are. This is good news for reducing the risk in innovation...
AutoOps: How Generative AI and Prompt Engineering Turn Engineers into Superheroes, Not Replace Them
Envision a DevOps realm infused with AI-driven superpowers, where a reliable AI companion revolutionizes the way we approach development. This companion doesn't just assist; it transforms the adventure of creating software that spanning the full spectrum of SDLC possibilities and pinpointing bugs in the most unexpected places. This is the essence of AI-augmented with human-in-the-loop, a paradigm where AI elevates engineers to maestros, orchestrating a symphony of enhanced augmented subject matter intelligence. By turbocharging the testing process to be quicker, smarter, and more efficient...
Designing Resilient Event-Driven Data Mesh Architecture
Most enterprises deal with large scale data. There are common challenges involved in managing data. One such challenge faced by distributed applications is effective processing, identifying transactional boundaries, and exchange of data across disparate systems, where governance, modeling, ownership, and consumption considerations are tenets. An event-driven data mesh provides capabilities to power both operational & analytical use cases, in both real time & batch. It provides the framework necessary for creating, communicating, and using data. In request-response architecture,...
AI & The Impact on How We Work
Our industry has been transformed by new technologies, radically changing how we work. Thirty years ago, deployment cycles took 3-5 years; today, they happen in seconds. This rapid pace is largely due to our focus on investing in tools that boost developer productivity. We're still driven to create tools that simplify developers' work and make it easier for others to join the field. Many companies are heavily invested in enhancing productivity. However, the abundance of productivity tools doesn't automatically lead to increased productivity. Companies need to examine and adapt their...
Continuous Integration of AWS Serverless Applications
The primary draw for implementation of AWS serverless applications is the supposed simplicity. Anyone that has attempted to implement testing within a CI pipeline on a serverless application, however, knows that it is anything but simple. Serverless technologies allow for the faster construction of more complex applications with more complex integrations while also providing new technologies and execution environments, all of which pose a challenge to those used to testing in a more traditional way. This presentation looks at an API-based serverless application as an example and introduces...
Streamlining Enterprise Application Deployment: Unifying CI/CD Automation with GitHub Copilot
During the session, Mala will address the challenge of enhancing operational efficiency and customer satisfaction through optimized CI/CD deployment processes, exemplified by DocuSign Inc.'s strategic collaboration with GitHub's Copilot ecosystem. She will delve into key focus areas such as automating deployments and establishing robust branching strategy and governance practices. For instance, she will explore how DocuSign leverages Infrastructure as Code to automate provisioning and configuration of infrastructure components, ensuring consistency across diverse deployment environments....
Maximizing Observability in Cloud-Native Architecture: The Role of OpenTelemetry
PreviewCloud-native architecture involves breaking down software components into smaller, loosely coupled applications known as microservices. While this approach can effectively address scalability issues in the cloud, it can also introduce greater complexity. Identifying the root cause of a microservice failure can be challenging if there is not enough data available. As such, a well-designed cloud-native system should incorporate logs, metrics, and traces to facilitate effective root cause analysis. OpenTelemetry offers simple and effective tools for implementing observability in a...
Lightning Strikes the Keynotes
Throughout the years, Lightning Talks have been a popular part of the Agile + DevOps conferences. If you’re not familiar with the concept, Lightning Talks consists of a series of five-minute talks by different speakers within one presentation period. Lightning Talks are the opportunity for speakers to deliver their single biggest bang-for-the-buck idea in a rapid-fire presentation. And now, lightning has struck the Agile + DevOps keynotes. Some of the best-known experts in software engineering will step up to the podium and give you their best shot of lightning. Get multiple keynote...
Thursday, October 17
MLOps for Responsible AI: Techniques for Ensuring AI Quality
With the rapid adoption of generative AI, more and more companies are infusing AI models and services into their products. However, many of these companies are likely to lose business and valuable revenue due to their lack of investment in MLOps. Typically, organizations developing AI systems have relied on training metrics like accuracy, precision and recall, but software quality goes beyond that. Now that the barrier to entry for AI tools is smaller, we need to set quality standards, test practices, and think about AI ethics and safety. Ensuring the quality of AI goes beyond traditional...
Navigating the Path to Agile Excellence: Metrics that Matter in DevOps Transformation
PreviewIn today's rapidly evolving tech landscape, transitioning to agile and DevOps practices is crucial for organizational growth. However, many teams struggle to gauge their progress effectively within these methodologies. In this insightful session, Cholette will explore the key metrics that drive success in agile and DevOps adoption, focusing on best practices that can be applied across various organizational settings. Delving into essential metrics drawn from industry best practices, Cholette will shed light on the critical indicators for understanding progress and fostering...
From Concept to Code: Leveraging LLMs for Agile Excellence
Unlock the next level of agile and XP development by integrating Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot across the software development lifecycle. This presentation unveils how leveraging LLMs from initial ideation to final deployment transforms agile practices, enriching pair programming, test-driven development, and continuous integration with innovative AI capabilities. Learn to automate and refine development tasks, enhance specification clarity, and boost testing efficiency with ChatGPT, optimizing every phase of agile workflows for superior product quality and...
Are AI Assistants the Death of Programmers?
There is a lot of hype about Generative AI automatically creating software applications. Some see this as the death of the software engineering profession, while others believe AI technology will simply help increase the productivity of programmers. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle. This session explores this question and uses demonstrations of commercial and open-source AI assistants to show what is and is not possible with today's GenAI technology. A high-level discussion of how these models work will be included to give the audience some context for what they can and...
Reluctance to Relishing—Rolling Out DORA Metrics to Skeptical Teams
PreviewTeams are rightfully skeptical when faced with a mandate to implement DORA metrics, especially when no effective rollout approach is considered. Kendra will outline the context, conflict, and climax of the story arc to ensure a smooth rollout. First the context: DORA metrics and their importance. A ‘burning platform’ of 'those who do not keep up will get left behind'. Then, the conflict: tension builds when distrust between a team and leadership when leadership mandates change without the why or how. Stories of two project teams will serve as examples. Finally, the climax which include...
Agile and DevOps Leadership
In the dynamic landscape of software development, agile and DevOps methodologies have emerged as cornerstones for achieving efficiency, innovation, and customer satisfaction. However, successful implementation requires adept leadership capable of navigating multifaceted challenges. During this session, Vijay will delve into common hurdles faced by leaders in agile and DevOps transformations. For instance, envision a scenario where a large enterprise embraces agile but struggles with traditional hierarchical structures. This creates tension between established protocols and agile's...