On Monday, October 24th, Agile Denver welcomes Mike Cohn, local Agile
expert and author of a new book on planning and estimating for Agile
teams. The meeting will be held at the Qwest Auditorium in Downtown
Denver and the doors open at 6:00 PM.

Planning is important even for projects using agile processes such as
Scrum or XP. Unfortunately, we've all seen so many worthless plans that
we'd like to throw them away altogether. The good news is that it is
possible to create a project plan that looks forward six to nine months
that can be accurate and useful.

In this class we will look at why traditional plans fail but why
planning is still necessary even on agile projects. We will learn the
importance of estimating size and deriving duration. We will practice
estimating by playing "planning poker," which has been shown to result
in higher-quality estimates and plans.

This session is equally suited for managers, programmers, testers, or
anyone involved in estimating or planning a project, or who has ever
given an incorrect estimate.

AGENDA:

6:00 - 6:25 PM Networking and refreshments
6:25 - 6:30 PM Announcements
6:30 - 7:45 PM Presentation
7:45 - 7:50 PM Door prize giveaways

SPEAKER

Mike Cohn is the founder of Mountain Goat Software, a process and
project management consultancy and training firm. Mike specializes in
helping companies adopt and improve their use of agile processes and
techniques in order to build extremely high performance development
organizations.

He is the author of "Agile Estimating and Planning" and "User Stories
Applied for Agile Software Development" as well as books on Java and C++
programming. With more than twenty years of experience, Mike has
previously been a technology executive in companies of various sizes,
from start-up to Fortune 40. He has also written articles for Better
Software, IEEE Computer, Cutter IT Journal, Software Test and Quality
Engineering, Agile Times, and the C/C++ Users Journal.

Mike is a frequent speaker at industry conferences, is a founding member
of the Agile Alliance, and serves on its board of directors. He is a
Certified ScrumMaster Trainer and a member of the IEEE Computer Society
and the ACM. For more information, visit www.mountaingoatsoftware.com or
email him at mike@....

SPONSORS

The October 2005 meeting sponsors are:

- Mountain Goat Software (http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com)
- Addison-Wesley (www.awprofessional.com)
- Softpro Books (http://www.softpro.com)
- Qwest (http://www.qwest.com)

DIRECTIONS

The Qwest auditorium is in the Qwest building on the corner of 17th and
Curtis. The street address is 1005 17th Street. Take the exterior
escalators facing 17th from street level to Level 1. You can then access
the elevators via doors to the right of the escalator landing. Take an
elevator to Level A for the auditorium. If these doors are locked, go to
the main building lobby on Level 1 proceeding 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 $6 after 4pm. Several
other lots are within a few blocks and covered parking can be found in
the Tabor Center for around $5.