How to Increase Innovation by Building An Effective Knowledge Base

Though brainstorming is the most popular technique for generating innovative ideas for product developments as well as business process improvements, it is limited by the knowledge and experiences of those participating. Having access to a knowledge base that extends beyond the participants' experiences can provide a much greater wealth of ideas. This session will describe how an organization can develop and utilize a knowledge base for effective innovation. The session will show an innovation workshop designed around TRIZ (Russian acronym for the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving). The workshop will provide examples of effective, innovation-enhancing knowledge bases. Access to knowledge captured from a variety of expertise will lead individuals and organizations to more effective innovation. 

How to Convince a Skeptic

Have you ever had to deal with an individual who is difficult to persuade or hard to convince? This WEBinar will cover the underlying principles of skepticism, two key paradigms when dealing with skeptics, and three vitally important critical tests to run on your message BEFORE you give it.

"A just thinker will allow full swing to his skepticism. I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot."  –  Ralph Waldo Emerson

What you'll be able to do: With the tools introduced in this WEBinar (and practice), you will be able to:

 Agile QA’s Revolutionary Impact on Project Management

Agile QA techniques are having a dramatic impact on project management. With an agile approach, QA is no longer the last, highest-risk phase in softw

are projects before launch. In this discussion, you will learn how agile QA practices are changing project management and allowing teams to deliver high-quality products faster. You will find out how to successfully harness best practices of agile QA, including automated testing, test-driven development and continuous integration.

About the speaker:

Rachele Maurer is an agile coach with Platinum Edge, Inc. Rachele has more than a dozen years of PM experience with Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A and iCrossing. She has worked in various areas of the interactive marketing industry, and has been on projects that have varied from Web site redesigns to data center migrations. Rachele is both a PMP and a Certified Scrum Master.

Platinum Edge is a full-service training and consulting partner focused on helping organizations around the world make the Waterfall to Agile transition.  From Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and general Agile courses, to implementation strategies, on-site coaching and Agile PMO development, our partnership model ensures your success.

Build Cross Platform Mobile Apps Rapidly

After the dot com era if there is anything which grew as rapidly in a short span of time, it is the mobile app market.  Recent report says that 1 billion people will own smartphones by 2013 and the mobile app market will grow to $30 billion by then.

One of the biggest challenges for developers and businesses has been to keep up and/or have presence on the various platforms available in the market.  Unlike the web, in mobile apps you typically have a separate talent pool for each of the major mobile platform.  The underlying technologies for these platforms are so different that it is very difficult to share resources across platforms.  Typically individual developers end up targeting just one major platform and businesses pay almost thrice the cost to be on the top three platforms.

In this session we will discuss various strategies using which you can target all major platforms by minimizing the development cost and sharing resources & code base across platforms.

The session will mainly focus on the following three platforms: iPhone, Android & Windows Phone 7 and popular development tools to build on these platforms.

 All You Need To Know About Managing Perceptions

Ever felt a disconnect with the way someone perceives you, your actions, performance, persona? Ever worked on a team that was delivering great service/support but was perceived differently? Perception is powerful - and managing it is even more powerful. During this interactive presentation you will learn some tips and techniques to help you maintain or influence someone's perception of you and your team.

 
Objectives:

1. Create awareness of the fact that we can manage other's perception of us, as individuals and as a team.
2. Understand and learn the drivers of how we are perceived
3. Learn some practical tips for successfully managing (and maintaining) being positively perceived
4. Define immediate actions to take - worksheet provided

 Please register here.

About Mark Chagaris

 Introduction to Agile and Scrum

In this interactive webinar, the participants will get an overview of the fundamental principles and mechanics of Scrum, thereby understanding the benefits of adopting Scrum principles and values in an organization.

Bachan Anand from Conscires Agile Practices , will be focusing on the following goals and relate it to how Scrum and Agile will help you achieve these goals.

As a customer , I want:

- The ability to go to market faster

- Faster return on investment

As a Project Manager, I want:

- To measure the progress of my project in terms of real progress made and product ready to be shipped.

As a team member, I want

- A sustainable pace

Overview of Agile/ Scrum

Kevin Graves has been mentoring Agile/Scrum teams for the past 2.5 years. The has been involved with 7 different teams and 150 sprints. Tonight, Kevin will be providing an overview of Scrum/Agile and compare it against traditional waterfall methodologies. He will also detail how the average day of a QA Professional changes when the team moves to a Scrum/Agile development methodology.  For registration please visit http://scqaasfagile.eventbrite.com.

Testing software systems to verify they perform reliably and as expected is a very critical quality control activity. Unfortunately, this critical activity is being performed on almost every software project in a very ad hoc, informal manner by developers, testers, and users. Informal surveys conducted by the International Institute for Software Testing during its seminars indicate that less than 1% of test professionals attending these seminars have used formal test design techniques to design their tests. Formal academic programs seldom provide even rudimentary coverage of software testing, let alone teaching it as a discipline.