How we connect
The agile community is alive an well in South Africa. If you’d like to get to know some of the people in this book personally, or others like them here are some of the communities you can join.
SUGSA
The Scrum User Group of South Africa - better know as SUGSA is an officially sanctioned Scrum Alliance User Group. It’s a non-profit group run by a group of enthusiastic volunteers. There are chapters in Cape Town and Johannesburg. SUGSA host regular monthly events with speakers on a range of agile topics, not just limited to Scrum. Events are free for anyone to attend. If you’d like to attend sign up to the mailing list on their website to be notified of the next event.
Besides monthly events, SUGSA also host other events like an annual Scrum Gathering, a full 2 day international level conference with talks by industry experts. SUGSA also host an Agile Coach Retreat each year which is a small unconference held over a weekend somewhere remote with alot of wine :)
SPIN
The Software Process Improvement Network - also known as SPIN is a group that meets monthly in Cape Town. Topic range is a bit broader than SUGSA, and generally have a more technical slant. Once again events are free for anyone to attend, and you can signup to the mailing list on their website.
Agile Breakfast
If you are looking for something less formal, Agile Breakfast is a group of people who meet every couple of months for breakfast. It’s a casual atmosphere to talk about anything with like minded agile people. It’s a great place to network and get to know people a bit better. It’s open to anyone, but it’s a pay your own way deal. So you pay for whatever you order. The groups meet at different restaurants, and operate in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. To find out more about this join the Linked In Group for your area.
Lean Coffee
Lean Coffee was started in Seattle and has been replicated in many other cities, including Cape Town and Johannesburg. The groups meet regularly at a coffeee shop on a weekday morning. Everyone writes down topics they would like to discuss and then vote. The meeting is run via a visual board of topics to be discussed, currently being discussed, and done. Check out the websites for Cape Town and Johannesburg if you’d like to find out more.
RailsBridge
RailsBridge is an organization that works to increase diversity in tech by putting on a variety of awesome free events. They host free workshops for women new to coding to leave Ruby on Rails. There is a local chapter that runs workshops in Cape Town.
CodeRetreats
Coderetreats are free day-long, intensive practice events that focus on the fundamentals of software development and design. All ranges of skill and experience are welcome - it isn’t just for the gurus - anyone who has an interest in writing code will be able to contribute and come away with a deeper level of understanding. Register for upcoming events and find out more here: South African CodeRetreats.
JCSE Agile Forum
The Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) is a three way partnership between government, academia and industry, based at Wits University. Their Agile Forum is run every 2 months on the evening of the third Monday of the month. They are ‘non-denominational’ in that they don’t focus on any specific ‘flavour’ of Agile, but welcome speakers and topics on any aspect of Agile (and Lean). Each session is 2 hours long, usually with a single speaker speaking for about an hour and a half, and with a lot of networking before and after. Topics are a good mix of theory, case studies, war stories and pragmatic practices.
Durban Agile User Group
The Durban Agile User Group meet regularly and host speakers on a variety of agile topics in the evenings. Join the Linked In to hear about events.
Developer User Group
The Developer User Group is a group of software developers who meet monthly to discuss topics of interest to general software development. From technology frameworks to agile methodologies, we cover pretty much anything. Currently we meet on the second Tuesday afternoon/evening of every month in Bryanston. Each session is about two hours and takes a presentation or workshop style format. If you would like to see upcoming topics join the group at www.DeveloperUG.org.za - all are welcome.