Personal Improvement

Keynotes

K1 The Art of Change: Influence Skills for Leaders

Dale Emery, DHE

Wed, 06/05/2013 - 8:30am

An organization’s ability to make improvement, whether for greater agility or other goals, involves two components—a technical component and a people component. The technical component is generally logical, linear, and relatively straightforward, and the technical change agents are often skilled at implementing the technology. On the other hand, the people component is never straightforward.

Tutorials

ME Twelve Heuristics for Solving Tough Problems Faster and Better

Payson Hall , Catalysis Group, Inc.

Mon, 06/03/2013 - 8:30am

As infants, we begin our lives as problem-solving machines, learning to navigate a strange and complex world in which others communicate in ways we don’t understand. Initially, we hone our problem-solving talents. Then many of us find our explorations thwarted and eventually stop using—and then begin losing—our natural problem-solving ability. It doesn’t have to be that way. Psychologists tell us that people can regain lost skills and learn new ones to become better problem solvers. Payson Hall shares techniques and skills that apply to situations in real life.

MG What’s Your Leadership IQ?

Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA, Inc.

Mon, 06/03/2013 - 8:30am

Have you ever needed a way to measure your leadership IQ? Or been in a performance review where the majority of time was spent discussing your need to improve as a leader? If you have ever wondered what your core leadership competencies are and how to build on and improve them, Jennifer Bonine shares a toolkit to help you do just that.

TC Essential Patterns of Mature Agile Teams

Bob Galen, RGalen Consulting

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 8:30am

Many teams have a relatively easy time adopting the tactical aspects of agile methodologies. Usually a few classes, some tools introduction, and a bit of practice lead teams toward a fairly efficient and effective adoption. However, these teams often get “stuck” and begin to regress or simply start going through the motions—neither maximizing their agile performance nor delivering as much value as they could.

TM Six Free Ideas to Improve Agile Success

Pollyanna Pixton, Accelinnova

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 1:00pm

Free? Is anything free these days? Based on her experience working with organizational leaders and her research into what drives organizational performance, Pollyanna Pixton shares six ideas—and the keys to their effective implementation—to help assure the success of your agile teams. As a bonus, her suggestions won’t cost you a thing. Pollyanna’s first free idea is how to create a culture of trust—the keystone of open collaboration—within your team and organization. The second free idea is about ownership—how to give it and not take it back.

TP Influence Strategies for Software Professionals

Linda Rising, Independent Consultant

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 1:00pm

You’ve tried and tried to convince people of your position. You’ve laid out your logical arguments on impressive PowerPoint slides—but you are still not able to sway them. Cognitive scientists understand that the approach you are taking is rarely successful. Often you must speak to others’ subconscious motivators rather than their rational, analytic side. Linda Rising shares influence strategies that you can use to more effectively convince others to see things your way.

MO Understanding and Managing Change

Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA, Inc.

Mon, 06/03/2013 - 1:00pm

Has this happened to you? You try to implement a change in your organization and it fails. And, to make matters worse, you can't figure out why. It may be that your great idea didn't mesh well with your organization’s culture or a host of other reasons. Jennifer Bonine shares a toolkit to help you determine which ideas will—and will not—work well within your organization.

MP Solving Real Problems through Collaborative Innovation Games®

Bob Hartman, Agile For All

Mon, 06/03/2013 - 1:00pm

Are you having trouble getting people in your organization to agree on a path forward? Is collaboration sometimes more like a contest to see who can yell the loudest? Is it difficult to get customers to give you the information you need to create a product charter or unambiguous requirements? Achieving meaningful collaboration with a diverse group of people can be very difficult. Bob Hartman shares his experiences with Innovation Games®, collaboration exercises that dramatically improve the way people work together.

Concurrent Sessions

BW9 Designing Your Team and Organization for Innovation

Jim Elvidge, BigVisible Solutions

Wed, 06/05/2013 - 3:45pm

If innovation is not part of your team or organizational DNA, your company risks falling behind its competitors, losing market share, and demoralizing your best talent. And yet, you cannot create an innovative organization by simply saying “Be innovative” or adding it to the company values statement. Innovation requires a solid understanding of what motivates people and a deep examination of organizational structure, culture, and leadership styles—such as top-down project control or directive leadership—that may be barriers to innovation.

AW5 Agile Redefines Global Economics: What Recent Data Reveals

Michael Mah, QSM Associates, Inc.

Wed, 06/05/2013 - 2:15pm

Kent Beck, inventor of eXtreme Programming, defined agile success as delivering more useful functionality with fewer defects. Against that definition, early research revealed mixed success. Many organizations did not know how to measure and thus could not have “fact-based” conversations about productivity and cost. Some teams achieved faster delivery, but quality did not improve. Others found both. What factors made the difference? New benchmark analysis by QSM Associates reveals the latest productivity, time-to-market, quality, and cost patterns.

AW7 Behavior-Driven Design in Practice

Nir Szilagyi, eBay, Inc.

Janarthanan Eindhal, eBay, Inc.

Wed, 06/05/2013 - 2:15pm

One of software development’s greatest challenges is combining business needs with technical abilities to build products that customers want. Many development methodologies attempt to achieve this, but Nir Szilagyi and Janarthanan Eindhal think that few connect the dots as well as behavior-driven development (BDD), an agile development methodology derived from test-driven development (TDD) and other agile practices. Unlike TDD, which focuses on code design, BDD focuses on the customer.

AW9 Building Hyperproductive Agile Teams: Leveraging What Science Knows

Michael DePaoli, cPrime

Wed, 06/05/2013 - 3:45pm

The key impediments that prevent many organizations from ever realizing the promise of agile and lean aren’t rooted in processes or tools. The impediments stem from the organization’s leaders. Sharing an interdisciplinary overview of the most compelling science and research in the aspects of team performance, Michael DePaoli shows that it is largely ignored.

BT3 You Said What? Becoming Aware of the Things We Say

Steven “Doc” List, Santeon Group

Thu, 06/06/2013 - 10:15am

Most of us take language for granted. We use words without thinking about how they may affect others and then are surprised at the reaction we get. Learn the importance of language in building and maintaining high performing agile teams. Become more aware of the words you choose and the impact of those words on your listeners. Steven “Doc” List presents a series of exercises in a game show format. Participants attempt to identify loaded words in seemingly simple statements and questions. Some of the exercises are written, others are acted out in role play.

BT9 Unlocking Innovation in Your Organization

Derek Neighbors, Integrum Technologies

Thu, 06/06/2013 - 3:45pm

According to a recent study, more than 60 percent of CEOs cite the need to discover innovative ways of managing their organization’s structure, finances, people, and strategies as their top priority. In order to compete in the 21st century, organizations must rethink how they function—they must adapt or die. Derek Neighbors shows you how to meld chaos, creativity, and collaboration within your organization to unlock innovation. Learn how to balance fun and excellence to achieve results while redefining your organization's culture.

AT7 Building a Team Backlog: The Power of Retrospectives

Kanchan Khera, McKinsey & Company

Bhuwan Lodha, McKinsey & Company

Thu, 06/06/2013 - 2:15pm

“Inspect and adapt” is one of the basic tenets of continuous improvement, and agility in general. Holding retrospectives is one of the core processes that allows teams to look back and reflect on their progress. However, over time, teams may focus only on the product work and lose interest in their own improvement as a team.

AW1 Leading the Creation of an Agile Culture

Pollyanna Pixton, Accelinnova

Wed, 06/05/2013 - 10:15am

Even today, to the detriment of agile success, most organizational cultures remain delivery date-driven—resulting in delivery teams that are not focused on creating value for the customer. So how can we redirect stakeholders, the business, and the project team to concentrate on delivering the greatest value rather than simply meeting dates? Pollyanna Pixton describes the tools she has used in collaboration sessions to help participants begin the process of adopting customer-centric agile methods.