Presentation: "The Kiev Experiment": Evolving Agile Partnerships"

Time: Wednesday 16:50 - 17:50

Location: St James’s Suite, Fourth Floor

Abstract:

A whirlwind journey through the evolution of development processes within a large department of an investment bank working alongside external vendors in Eastern Europe and India. The journey takes place over 5 years of improving techniques and process to deliver a major software programme and describes the journey from a small core band of software engineers to a program of 15 teams spread globally all working on the same codebase.

We will explain the evolution of the relationships with our vendors, from formal contractual relationships to partnerships based on shared goals alongside the evolution of the teams and processes used for the delivery of the software. We will reflect on the core principles which have enabled this evolution and will explain the patterns which were successful and also the pitfalls to avoid.

Download slides

Alexander Kikhtenko, UBS department at Luxoft

Alexander Kikhtenko
“Alexander is a Lead Software Engineer and a Scrum Master within the UBS department at Luxoft. His current role implies coaching teams in agile software development methods and helping them to build high quality relationships with the customer as well as fostering technical wisdom and excellence. His overall experience in leading R&D teams is more than 6 years and spans a broad range of industries including Investment Banking, E-commerce, Accounting and Government. Alexander is a strong believer in software development being a science of human relationships and interactions hence his primary focus on spreading this thought among software writers. He is obsessed with the idea of learning organization and constantly striving to reach this state within the company”

Peter Thomas

Peter Thomas
Peter is a Lead Software Engineer within Clearing & Settlement IT technology at UBS. His primary focus is on delivery of large scale solutions, using agile techniques and mentoring and developing teams based in London, Ukraine, India and Hong Kong to improve the software delivery processes. Previously he worked for IBM and PwC as a consultant within Financial Services, Telecoms and Pharma industries. With 20 years of software development experience, he has learned lots about how not to develop software and is still searching for that silver bullet.

Simon Ogle

Simon Ogle

Simon is currently a business analyst and product delivery manager for Clearing and Settlement IT at UBS. After experiencing a spate of costly projects that failed to realise their intended benefits he rejected the tyranny of the waterfall and moved from consultancy to UBS in 2006 to join an experiment aimed at transforming an organisation around Agile principles and values. He never looked back.

Simon works with groups in London and Kiev promoting collaboration and learning to build strong multi-disciplinary teams and pushes specification by example and acceptance TDD as a means to forge greater understanding between customers and delivery teams.