A new series of monthly seminars, talks and presentations exploring the wealth of possibilities offered by digital technology. Every month successful professionals from the digital industry will be coming to Parliament to share and discuss their experiences with us. These events are open to Members of both Houses, staff of Members, and all parliamentary staff.

The first seminar takes place on Thursday 22 January, Attlee Suite, 10am-12noon

How to ensure success with agile

The presentation will cover a brief overview of agile and scrum for those who are not completely familiar with it. You’ll learn about a number of techniques that will allow you to go beyond the basic mechanics of iterative development that can help to ensure the success of an agile project. We’ll discuss why some agile projects fail and how to avoid the common traps of just “talking the talk” to cover up the fact that your team is really not very agile at all. We’ll look at different types of software projects to understand when to apply levels of governance (and how much) to your agile project. You’ll also learn what agile software development has in common with the Eurofighter Typhoon.

Two enthusiastic agile ambassadors, James Cannings and Karoliina Luoto, will deliver a presentation looking at running successful web projects using Agile methodologies; in particular, how this works in the public sector and traditional Prince 2 environment.

Please email the webandintranetservice@parliament.ukto reserve a space.

The Speakers

James Cannings started MMT Digital in his bedroom in 1999 after he graduated from University in the UK with a 1st in Computer Science and Cybernetics. He spent many years learning his trade as a developer, working with almost every technology that came along whilst constantly refining the companies approach to developing large scale digital projects for clients. In recent years James has hung up his development hat and has focused on solutions architecture and consultancy. He has spent the last two years fully immersed in the world of agile based development and has rolled out the successful processes across the business for a wide range of clients and projects. Almost every project that James is involved in requires discussion around the “tablet / mobile strategy”.

Karoliina Luoto is a consultant focusing on agile purchasing, great web concepts and agile customer/client co-work management. In Karoliina’s world, project methodology is not a black and white issue, but a series of questions which require creative and preferably simple solutions. Projects are not about waterfall or agile, they are about vision, inspection and adaptation. Before consulting, Karoliina has been in charge of web service and collaboration development in different organisations. She also has background in marketing, communications and publishing.

Achieving parity of esteem between mental and physical health in care standards and public attitudes has been attempted for decades. A new publication from POST outlines the history of these efforts, the various ways in which parity is defined and measured, the challenges of achieving this ideal and the strategies that may be employed to that end and is worth reading.

Parity of Esteem for Mental Health – POST Note