Catherine Powell

Agile, Meet Reality: Team Structures That Work

Catherine Powell is a principal at Abakas, a software consulting company. At Abakas, she provides engineering management, development, testing, and process consulting services. She has worked with a variety of software, from an enterprise storage system to mobile software to web applications. She is an author, speaker and a mentor to engineers and technical managers. Catherine focuses primarily on the realities of shipping software in small and mid-size companies.

Website

http://www.abakas.com

Twitter

@cmpowell


Sessions

API Usability: Think of the humans!

Friday 14.10 - 15.00 in: Keyboard Cat

APIs are consumed by programs, but those programs are built by humans. A good API is one that both programs and humans enjoy using. That means the API not only has to be powerful and responsive, but usable, too. Using examples like Twilio, Twitter, and FourSquare, we'll discuss what makes an API usable or not. We'll talk about common usability traps and the bugs we make or prevent consuming applications. Finally, we'll discuss approaches to API development that improve usability.

Tags: Architecture Test UX

Agile, Meet Reality: Team Structures That Work

Thursday 11.10 - 12.00 in: Ken Lee

It's time to put the ideals down and embrace reality. Organizations have different needs and different people, and agile teams should reflect that. This talk will examine multiple real-world agile teams and understand why they work - or don't work! We'll consider how the product, the organization, and the customer all affect the engineering team - and how to make it work for everyone involved.

Tags: Agile Team Test