XP Denver's September meeting is scheduled for Monday, September 22nd at the
Qwest Auditorium in Downtown Denver. Doors open early at 6:00pm for
networking and refreshments. Ken Schwaber will be in Denver conducting a
ScrumMaster Certification class September 22-23 and will be our special
guest speaker this month. As always, our meetings are free to attend and
open to the public.

Ken Schwaber is one of the developers of Scrum, co-author of "Agile Software
Development with Scrum", a signatory of the Agile Manifesto, and a director
of the AgileAlliance (www.agilealliance.org). He will give a talk that
provides an overview of how agile processes and Scrum are structured, their
origins, their skeleton, their heart and their flow. Ken will then provide a
more detailed description of Scrum practices, both in theory and how they
were used to build a middleware business object server at a large financial
insititution.

Ken will also address some common misunderstandings regarding Scrum and
agile processes in general, including: agile process don't scale, agile
processes aren't CMM compliant, you can't estimate with agile processes, and
what the heck is an increment of potentially shippable product
functionality.

Scrum is an agile, lightweight process that can be used to manage and
control software and product development. Wrapping existing engineering
practices, including Extreme Programming, Scrum generates the benefits of
agile development with the advantages of a simple implementation. Scrum
significantly increases productivity while facilitating adaptive, empirical
systems development. Advanced Development Methods, Inc. (ADM) maintains the
www.controlchaos.com website to provide information, news, references and a
cookbook description of Scrum.

This will be a great talk for software development professionals at all
levels of experience with agile methods.

AGENDA:

6:00 - 6:40 PM Networking and refreshments

6:40 - 6:45 PM Announcements and door prize giveaways

6:45 - 7:45 PM Ken Schwaber's presentation

SPEAKER:

Ken Schwaber is president of Advanced Development Methods (ADM), a company
dedicated to improving the software development practice. He is an
experienced software developer, product manager, and industry consultant.
Schwaber initiated the process management product revolution of the early
1990's and also worked with Jeff Sutherland to formulate the initial
versions of the Scrum development process.

DIRECTIONS:

The Qwest auditorium is at their building on the corner of 17th and Curtis
at 1005 17th Street. At street level, to the right of the escalators, are
doors leading to elevators. Take an elevator to the "A" level (Auditorium).
If those doors are locked, you can take the exterior escalators to Level 1
and enter via doors to the right of the escalator landing. If these doors
are locked, go to the main building lobby which is on Level 1 if you walk
straight from the escalator landing.

In addition to street parking, there is an outside parking lot on the East
side of the Qwest building that costs a flat $5 after 4pm. Several other
lots are within a few blocks and covered parking can be found in the Tabor
Center for $4.

DOOR PRIZES:

- $20 Softpro Books gift certificate
- "Test-Driven Development" by David Astels *NEW*
- "Lean Software Development" by Mary Poppendieck *NEW*
- "Testing Extreme Programming" by Lisa Crispin and Tip House
- "Extreme Programming Examined" by Giancarlo Succi and Michele Marchesi
- "Agile Software Development Ecosystems" by Jim Highsmith

SPONSORS:

The September meeting sponsors are:
- Qwest (www.qwest.com)
- Virtuas Solutions (www.virtuas.com)
- Softpro Books (www.softpro.com)
- Addison-Wesley (www.awl.com)

We'd like to welcome a new sponsor this month, Virtuas Solutions, LLC.
Virtuas is a premier group of individuals focused on helping organizations
optimize their software development efforts. Since 1999, Virtuas has
provided customized, leading-edge solutions for organizations of all types
in sizes. Virtuas also provides training and mentoring services in Agile
development practices such as Extreme Programming, as well as open source
integration with Struts and Tomcat.

Thanks also go out to our other regular XP Denver sponsors for supporting
our community:
- Object Mentor (www.objectmentor.com)
- Fowler Software Design (www.fowlersoftware.com)
- Clarkware Consulting (www.clarkware.com)
- O'Reilly & Associates (www.oreilly.com)

If your company is interested in sponsoring XP Denver meetings or events,
please email info@....

Thanks,
- Alex Viggio

x X P D E N V E R
p www.xpdenver.org
d info@...