Steven Voyles

We’ve announced the details for the July meeting of the Saint Louis IIBA chapter and it’s going to be a great one. Lou Hawn and Art Staden of Icon ATG will be joining us to present “Requirements Definition with User Stories in an Agile Environment”. From the speakers’ abstract:

“Core Agile development generally focuses on an iterative and collaborative mechanism to manage a small software development team (i.e., the Scrum). Teams adopting Agile development typically see significantly improved alignment with the business goals, reduced development costs, faster time to market, and lower investment in skills and process. In Agile development, requirements are typically done through a lighter weight technique called user stories, which match the fast-paced needs of the Agile environment. This presentation discusses scaling Agile delivery beyond the development team, how to include requirements activities in an Agile development environment, and an overview of how to develop quality user stories.”

For more details on the meeting, click here. As always, our meetings are free to attend and open to the public.

Canonical has released the beta version of Ubuntu 10.04 in the traditional desktop, server, and notebook versions along with a version designed to run on Amazon’s EC2. Some of the more noteworthy changes include new default themes, better social media integration through Gwibber, and faster boot times.

You can find a full list of the new features along with download links at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/lucid/beta1 or check out the Test Drive project for an easy way to experiment with the beta version in a virtual machine.

Membership in the IIBA just got even better.  Earlier this week, the professional association for Business Analysts announced a new on-line library that will be available to its members.  According to the official announcement, the library contains hundreds of titles with a total value of around $15,000 US if purchased individually.  While I haven’t had time to view the entire library, just a few minutes of exploring turned up such popular titles as “The Business Analyst’s Handbook”, “Seven Steps to Mastering Business Analysis”, and even some titles crossing over into the project management realm including the coveted “A Guide to the Project Management Body Of Knowledge (Pmbok® Guide), Fourth Edition”.  While, the IIBA already offers invaluable benefits to its members in many ways; a vast, always accessible (with an Internet connection, that is) resource like this is just another great reason to join up today.

Official Announcement