SVPMA Monthly Event - Surviving the Transition to Agile Development with Rasmus Mencke, Saleforce July 2, 2008

Organization: SVPMA - Silicon Valley Product Management Association
Topic: A Product Manager’s Guide to Surviving the Transition to Agile Development
Speaker: Rasmus Mencke, Senior Product Manager, Salesforce.com
Date: Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
Time: 6:30pm - 9pm
Location: Network Meeting Center at the TechMart - 5201 Great America Parkway, Santa Clara
Cost: Free for Members. $20 for pre-registered Non-Members. $25 at the door.
More info: http://svpma.org/meetings.html

Presentation:
Many software organizations today ask “How do we make a transition to Agile development and what benefits will we get?”. Should you transition your organization to Agile all at once or proceed more iteratively, team by team?

This talk will cover:

* Salesforce.com's year of living dangerously as we moved our entire R&D organization from a Waterfall based approach to an Agile model in just 3 months
* How Product Managers survived the transition, and what we have learned
* Why Agile development works so well for Software as a Service (Saas) and Platform-as-a-Service (Paas) companies

During these 18 months, Salesforce.com has refined and measured our progress and learned many lessons. It was a risky approach that has ultimately delivered dramatic results and extraordinary business value.

Rasmus will present the approach Salesforce.com took, the business value we achieved, and the impact on team morale as measured by our quarterly team wide survey.

Speaker:
Since 2006 Rasmus Mencke has been driving the vision, direction, and design of messaging features on the Salesforce.com Platform-as-a-Service offering, as well as playing a leading role in the Agile Development Method (ADM) rollout team. Rasmus comes with over 10 years of international experience in Product Development, Product Management and Marketing, specializing in email and messaging. Prior to Salesforce.com, Rasmus was at Oracle for 10 years holding various positions in both Europe and US. Mr. Mencke holds a bachelor degree in Computer Science and bachelor degree in Marketing and Business Administration from Niels Brock Business College, Denmark.

Official Website: http://svpma.org/meetings.html