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Leadership

Tutorials

MA An Introduction to SAFe: The Scaled Agile Framework
Al Shalloway, Net Objectives
Mon, 06/08/2015 - 8:30am

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is quickly being adopted by many large organizations that have had some success with agile at the team level but have not been able to scale up to large projects. Al Shalloway describes what SAFe is, discusses when and how to implement it, and provides a few extensions to SAFe. Al begins with a high-level, executive’s guide to SAFe that you can share with your organization’s leaders. He then covers the aspects of implementing SAFe: identifying the sequence of features to work, establishing release trains, the SAFe release planning event, SAFe’s variant of Scrum, and when to use the SAFe process. Al concludes with extensions to SAFe including creating effective teams—even when it doesn’t look possible—and implementing shared services and DevOps in SAFe using kanban. Get an introduction to SAFe, discover whether it would be useful to your organization, and identify the steps you should take to be SAFe.

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MN It’s All About Me™: Owning Your Behavior, Improving Your Team NEW
Doc List, Doc List Enterprises
Mon, 06/08/2015 - 1:00pm

Successful high-performing teams have many common attributes. One is their ability to function together collaboratively. In order to collaborate well, they must communicate effectively and get beyond the members' personal biases and quirks. In this interactive workshop, Doc List shares common problems with behavior, motivation, emotions, and interpretation that frequently get in the way. Participate in exercises that lead you to understand―and sometimes expose―your own blind spots and limitations. Challenge your own assumptions, learn about taking ownership of your own feelings and behavior, and articulate the difference between behavior and interpretation. Along the way, gain a new understanding of intuition and how you're using it in your interpersonal situations. Leave this workshop with a new and clearer understanding of how you've been interpreting others' behavior and acting on those interpretations.

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TD Giving Great Presentations: The Art of Stage Presence SOLD OUT
James Whittaker, Microsoft
Tue, 06/09/2015 - 8:30am

Every hour of every day in every country where business is conducted, the same scene plays out―dozens of well-paid people sitting in a conference room being bored senseless. Death by a thousand slides. This mind numbing, soul crushing, grotesquely expensive experience ends here and now! James Whittaker reveals the secrets to conceiving, building, and delivering a great presentation. Whatever your level of presentation skills, this tutorial will hone them. Learn how to build a compelling story from the ground up. Receive advice on how to remember and recall that story as you deliver it. Learn how to use oratory and literary instruments to make the story come alive for your audience. Do your part to put an end to bad presentations―attend this tutorial.

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TH Risk Management: Project Management for Grown-Ups
Tim Lister, Atlantic Systems Guild, Inc.
Tue, 06/09/2015 - 8:30am

Many organizations are childlike. They blithely plan the project as if nothing will go wrong. And then, when something does go wrong, they are shocked and dismayed. Risk management is not just worrying about your project, and it is not about running away from risk. Risk management for software projects is all about when you make decisions and when you take action. How do you deal with uncertainty? When do you decide to deal with a risk while it is still just a risk, and when do you decide to wait to see if the risk does turn into a problem and manage it then? When done with utmost skill and to its greatest advantage, risk management starts before a project is even born. Tim Lister presents the advantages—and the dangers—of practicing risk management like a grown-up. Tim offers a process for you to consider tailoring for your organization and discusses how your organization can grow up.

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TK Essential Patterns of Mature Agile Leaders SOLD OUT
Bob Galen, Velocity Partners
Tue, 06/09/2015 - 1:00pm

Currently much of agile adoption—coaching, advice, techniques, and training―revolves around the agile teams. Leaders are typically ignored, marginalized, or, in the worst cases, vilified. Bob Galen contends that there is a central and important role for managers and effective leadership within agile environments. Join Bob to explore the patterns of mature agile managers and leaders—those who understand servant leadership and how to effectively support, grow, coach, and empower their agile teams in ways that increase the teams’ performance, accountability, and engagement. Investigate training and standards for agile adoption, and situations and guidelines for when to trust the team and when to step in to provide guidance and direction. Examine the leader’s role in agile at-scale and with distributed agile teams. Good leadership is central to sustaining your agile adoption; bad leadership can render it irrelevant or a failure. To inspire you and your teams, join Bob to walk the path of the good and to examine the patterns of the bad.

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TP Principles and Practices of Lean Software Development SOLD OUT NEW
Al Shalloway, Net Objectives
Tue, 06/09/2015 - 1:00pm

Lean software development has often been described as “better, faster, cheaper” and focusing on “eliminating waste,” but those are misnomers. Going after speed improvement and waste elimination can actually reduce the benefits you might otherwise get from lean. Al Shalloway describes what lean software development really is and why you should be incorporating it into your development efforts—whether you use Scrum, kanban, or SAFe. Al explains the mindset, principles, and practices of lean. Its foundations are systems thinking, a relentless focus on time, and an understanding that complex systems require holistic solutions. Employing lean principles, you optimize the whole, eliminate delays, improve collaboration, deliver value quickly, create effective ecosystems for development, push decisions to the people doing the work, and build integrity in. Lean practices include small batches, cross-functional teams, implementing pull, and managing work in process. Al will describe how to use lean—no matter where you are in your development process.

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Keynotes

K2 Better Thinking for Better Software: Thinking Critically about Software Development
Laurent Bossavit, Institut Agile
Wed, 06/10/2015 - 10:00am

To paraphrase a famous Albert Einstein quote—We cannot solve our problems by applying the same level of thinking that we used when we created them. Although Einstein was originally talking about war, this also is applicable to software development, where one level of thinking—known as software engineering—has prevailed for the past four decades. Laurent Bossavit explores why several of the key assumptions are no longer—or never were—credible. These include the cost of defects curve, the notion of 10x engineers, and the origin of software bugs. Not stopping at debunking suspect claims and sharing techniques to expose them, Laurent goes on to explain the driving motivation which helped the claims become widespread―a misguided search for universal laws of software development―and suggests an alternative approach at a different level, hinted at by lean and agile practices. In this alternative approach each of us, backed by hard data and critical thinking, puts on the scientist's lab coat in search of local truths within our development organizations.

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K4 Shaping the Future of Agile Software Development
Christin Wiedemann, Professional Quality Assurance, Ltd.
Thu, 06/11/2015 - 4:15pm

Software development needs to continuously re-invent itself to take full advantage of new and evolving technology trends—and to keep up with user expectations. Are our agile approaches evolving as quickly as the new technologies, or are we being left behind as we use the same methods and techniques of a decade ago? Christin Wiedemann says that the future of agile development is ours to shape, and in shaping it we must be willing to question our habits and overturn today’s conventions. We must create a collaborative environment that encourages creativity and innovation. Christin shares what she means by innovation and why the future of agile depends on innovation. She explores ideas around brainstorming and collaboration, and discusses the importance of having the creativity and courage to investigate new approaches. Christin says we must continuously challenge and question methods, techniques, and core beliefs. Discover new insights that can change how you view the future of agile.

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Concurrent Sessions

AW11 Agile in Government and Highly Regulated Settings
Suzanne Miller, Software Engineering Institute
Wed, 06/10/2015 - 4:15pm

Since 2009, the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) has been researching the adoption and application of agile and lean methods and principles in US government and other highly regulated settings (e.g., finance, healthcare) with regulatory constraints on their development lifecycles. At first, there were few of these organizations practicing agile; six years later the interest level in agile approaches to software (and systems, in some cases) development has increased tremendously. Suzanne Miller shares how agile affects areas such as management and governance, contracting, security, measurement, testing, and systems engineering. Suzanne provides insights into the constraints government organizations and regulated industries typically face when adopting agile principles, notes how changes in the regulatory environment are affecting those adopting agile, and shares both adoption risks and some of the strategies organizations are employing to address them.

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AT10 Teaching Pointy-Haired Bosses to be Agile Enablers
Ryan Ripley, AgileAnswerMan.com
Thu, 06/11/2015 - 3:00pm

Ryan Ripley says that Scrum failures can often be traced back to management not understanding their role in an agile world. What gets managed during an agile project? How is success measured? Will I keep my job in the transition? Managers have all these questions and more during an agile transformation. Unfortunately, these fears are not covered during the two-day certification courses. Agile coaches need a plan for how to talk with managers and teach them the best ways to contribute to agile projects. To better understand managers’ concerns, Ryan introduces the concept of personas, representing different managers. He explores ways to “coach up” management and help them get past their concerns and issues. Ryan shares his insights on where managers can improve agile projects, how they can add value in a newly transformed organization, and help pave the way for agile teams to succeed.

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