Agile + DevOps Virtual 2021 - Teams & Leadership
Monday, June 7
Foundations of Tech Leadership
NewAccording to a CareerBuilder study, only 40% of new tech leaders receive formal training when they become a boss for the first time. The rest are forced to get scrappy to quickly equip themselves with new skills, techniques, and mindsets to effectively transition into their new roles. Join Kate Wardin to learn tactical techniques and resources for both new and seasoned technical leaders to feel confident in their roles. Interactive group exercises will cover topics such as 1:1s, time management, valuable team metrics, and will help you practice these new ideas and techniques in a safe and...
An Agile Coaching Practicum in 360 degrees
Let’s face it, agile coaching isn’t for the timid or faint of heart. In most companies, it’s an incredibly challenging and nuanced role. And an important part of it is having the ability to coach in 360 degrees: downward—across your teams, outward – across managers and peers, and upward—towards those pesky leaders. Oh, and did we say that virtually EVERYONE is an agile coach? In this workshop, join Mary and Leon as they share tools and experiences coaching in all directions. They will review three different coaching models from the X-Wing, to Powerful Questions, to 9-Stances, to the Agile...
Tuesday, June 8
Creating a High-Performance Agile Team
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 fairly efficient execution. However, these teams are quite often simply going through the motions—neither maximizing their agile performance nor delivering as much value as they could. Borrowing from their experience and lean software development methods, Bob Galen and Mary Thorn explore high-performance team patterns, which are the thinking models of mature agile teams, including large-scale emergent...
Agile Project Failures: Root Causes and Corrective Actions
Agile initiatives always begin with high expectations—accelerate delivery, meet customer needs, and improve software quality. The truth is that many agile projects do not deliver on some or all of these expectations. If you want help to ensure the success of your agile project or to get an agile project back on track, this tutorial is for you. Jeffery Payne discusses the most common causes of agile project failure and how you can avoid these issues or mitigate their damaging effects. Poor project management, ineffective requirements development, failed communications, software development...
Learning How to Lead High-Performing Agile Teams
Currently much of agile adoption—coaching, advice, techniques, training, and even the empathy—revolves around the agile teams. Leaders are typically ignored, marginalized at best, and in the worst cases even vilified. But Bob Galen and Mary Thorn contend that there is a central and important role for managers and leaders within agile environments. Join Bob and Mary as they explore the patterns of mature agile managers and leaders. Examine why those who understand servant leadership know how to effectively support, grow, coach, and empower their agile teams in ways that increase the team's...
The Transformation Mindset: A Leader's Guide to Embracing Agile
NewMany leaders want to transform their organization to become more agile, adaptive, and responsive to the market. However, most do not deeply understand how to lead their organization through such a massive change. They install prescriptive scaling frameworks and send employees to training, but discard the elements of true transformation that are difficult. When the inevitable failure ensues, they switch frameworks, fire people, and revert back to what worked for them in the past. What these leaders fail to recognize is that the mindset they used to build their organization conflicts with...
Wednesday, June 9
Business Agility in Uncertain Times
PreviewThe COVID-19 pandemic crisis has affected businesses across the world. In 2020, we worked hard to execute immediate actions like for 100% Working From Home (WFH) in many countries. Even as things have stabilized, we all know that we are a long way away from the next normal. As a brighter future emerges in 2021, three focus areas for business agility are:
1. Customer-centric Lean Mindset. Developing a customer-centric lean mindset from executives to individual contributors helps drive consistency of purpose and alignment of action end-to-end across the enterprise.
2. Lean...
No Silos. Building an Effective (Rainbow Monkey Unicorn Pony) Program
It doesn't matter you call it DevOps, DevSecOps, or Rainbow Monkey Unicorn Pony - security is an integral part of the software development lifecycle. Even though we understand this, it's often difficult to know how to start building an effective DevSecOps program. This presentation will address four pillars of a successful application security program: Analysis, Validation, Observation, and Enablement and how they enable an organization to develop, deliver, and deploy applications from an idea to a customer facing environment. We'll discuss how to roll out a collaborative DevSecOps program...
Terraform Infrastructure as Code: Best Practices and Common Mistakes
PreviewTerraform is one of the most common coding platforms for managing cloud infrastructure as code. I have been using Terraform to manage infrastructure on the cloud for several years now. Additionally, I coach DevOps teams in large enterprises that implement 100% infrastructure as code. Everything in this presentation comes from experience. I'll guide you through a series of best practices including source code management, environment management, execution through pipelines, modularizing Terraform code so it can be reused across the enterprise, and much more. Additionally, I'll review...
Even Large Enterprises Need to be Agile
PreviewTo survive in this digital age of speed, agility, and customer-centricity, large enterprises must focus their efforts towards the delivery of the highest customer value within the shortest amount of time. Large enterprises are forced to operate like start-up companies. The only way to sustainably achieve this is through a Digital Transformation that drives Business Agility. But how can an organization embark on such a transformation? What would it take to transform the embedded practices: legacy applications, inefficient processes, traditional culture? How do we even begin? This...
Agile in 160 Billion Gallons: When Agile Principles Occur During A Disaster
PreviewWhile the Agile concepts may sometimes be easy, the why's and how's are a little trickier to wrap your head around. I’ve unfortunately participated in three recent rising flood water events in Houston over the last three years. Employing my agile skills has had a profound impact on the "success of the project". I will be mapping common Agile ideas to dealing with rising water encroaching on your home. I start with an interactive exercise where we talk about flooding, with the outcome being the question: “What do you do when you know that your house might flood?” The answer to this...
Innovation: How to Foster It & How to Squelch It
Everyone talks about the importance of innovation, but few understand what factors contributes to, and detracts from, true innovation.
This presentation will cover the following: Why is innovation in the workplace important? - Springboard by sharing two stories; one from a company that failed to innovate and one from a company that continually innovates - Whole group discussion on benefits of creating an innovative company culture
Innovation squelchers -What are most people doing to prevent innovative ideas and deliverables? - - What you need to STOP doing - Example/...
Thursday, June 10
Remote Onboarding: How to Make the Most of It
PreviewA lot of companies struggle with onboarding remotely. It often happens because of the lack the face to face interactions, communication challenges and difficulties tracking the process and therefore, reveal the potential of the new employees. Moreover, it often leads to overall drop in team performance. Therefore, I'd like to share the recipe of how to iteratively set up the efficient remote on boarding and adaptation period for the agile teams. Among our key success factors we had: cross-teams patterns development, adaptation plan with all team members involvement, challenging...
What Can We Learn about our Agile Transformations from Wardley Maps?
PreviewAfter over a decade of agile transformations, many organizations are looking for signs that the change is complete. You are faster, more focussed, and delivering a product with higher quality, but when are you done? Models of Agile maturity have emerged that promise to measure “how agile you are”, with some mythical end point. By introducing a Wardley Maps in the context of business agility, you will be able to map out the path of your transformation, fill in any gaps that you may have, and begin to understand what direction your transformation may take you in the future. Business...
Take your business to the next level with DevOps OKRs
PreviewObjectives and Key Results, or OKRs are a popular concept nowadays. The reason why OKRs work is because they are about motivation (teams setting objectives that they are passionate about), collaboration (people who have similar passion collaborating to achieve results), and innovation (no one tells them how to achieve these results). OKRs are aligned across the organization so that everyone has a chance to contribute. One of the primary areas where OKRs are extremely important and not yet fully discovered is DevOps. The topic OKRs with a focus on one of the most complex and...
Leading Courageously When Vulnerability Looks & Feels So Scary
Many people believe that you either are born with courage or you're not. Thankfully, Dr. Brené Brown's research shows that you can learn to be courageous! There are four skill sets of courage, and by applying these, you can learn how to have tough conversations, hold yourself and others accountable, reset after a setback, and how to build trust. During this session, you will receive an understanding of all four skill sets, and then dive deeper into the second skill set: LIVING into Our Values. This is a mix of talk and workshop: The first 30 minutes are providing color and context, and the...
Lost in the forest: Tying transformation metrics to business outcomes
PreviewHave you ever looked at a dashboard and felt lost? Have you been asked the question “why are we doing this?” and your answer has been “everyone is doing it.” Have you struggled to explain how your actions are going to benefit your business partners? Let’s explore ways to tie our metrics, progress, and transformation activities to business outcomes that matter to our organizations. We’ll start the session discussing why it’s important to map our transformation activities and metrics to organizational goals. We’ll also review real life examples of completed visual maps. You might be...
Aligning your DevOps Strategy to your Agile Transformation
PreviewIf you have a small team on a greenfield project DevOps is easy to get started; your code is not that complex and you environment need tend to be limited. To do it appropriately for a 1,000 or 10,000 person shop with legacy code is orders of magnitude more complex. You have to do it with slices of the organization. You need to move through various stages of DevOps maturity. In this session we will walk you the practices to implement and the appropriate order to implement them to ensure you get valuable outcomes along the way. We will start with how to approach teams that are just...
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To confront or not to confront
PreviewGrowing up, my mother said to me that I am a person who does not like confrontation, that I cannot take critisism. Now, 32 years of age, I got to know myself as someone who does avoid confrontation. I rather say straight what the situation is like for me, than keep people guessing, because that is what I hate the most when the tables are turned. This is also in the Dutch culture to be very straight and make no bones about it. In this talk i would like to explore confrontation, in the workspace, but also in our personal lives. Most people have the tendency to avoid confrontation, but...
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Process Visualization
PreviewThis session will provide you with strategies on how to enhance clarity within your organization using visualization. We will review concepts, guiding principles and methodologies for “Visualizing Flow.” Participants will visualize one process within their organization, evaluate its effectiveness, design a plan to problem solve and increase efficiency through transparency. The session is intended for anyone who wants to learn a new technique for communicating ideas using imagery within their organization. How to equip teams and leadership with shared understanding around day-to-day...
Keep up with your development partners - use Scriptless test automation in DevOps
Continuous testing is an integral part of DevOps and test automation has become the holy grail of testing to continuously test the application code. Test automation framework requires continuous monitoring and maintenance of the test automation scripts. Test script maintenance is the most challenging part of test automation and is one of the major reasons why test automation fails in many organizations. Developers have realized “low-code/no-code” approaches are an efficient way to address the demand for more software, faster. But testers continue to use the high-maintenance, script-based...
Continuous Evolution to Product Centric Operating Model: Enable Teams to Fly
Everywhere we hear and see software driven organizations have led and dominated their industry. An essential ingredient has been a shift to Lean Agile mindset and product centric operating model built on three pillars – product & portfolio management, product development & delivery and product enablement. These unicorns begin each mission with what problems we need to solve, what culture we want to build, what good looks like? Then align expectations with leaders that change is a journey and not a destination. They experiment and iterate, celebrate small wins, learn from failures...
Indiana Jones and the Temple of DevSecOps
Remember Indiana Jones? For infosec, trying to navigate these days is a lot like those movies. How many relate to Indy, when going after a truck in Raiders of the Lost Ark, said “I don’t know, I’m making this up as I go”? Or feel like you're trying to find elusive vulnerabilities and it’s as hard as finding the Shankara stones in Temple of Doom? And ALL are trying to find the Security Holy Grail that will help manage risk – we know what happens when someone “chose poorly”. The truth today is people are much more aware of the need for security. Building trust is key to business success....
Leadership: From Monolith to Pebbles
When working with medical products, the verification process can be a real pain – especially when dealing with completely new QA team, complex hardware/software setup and collaboration of multiple scattered teams. My first release as a System Test Manager was a real struggle – stress, overtime, exceeding deadlines and a lot of uncertainty. But I’ve learned my lesson and focused on preparing and building the team with the right skill set and competencies. Now each team member is a leader in his own field, with set of responsibilities and me acting as a glue to hold them all together....
Friday, June 11
Opening Remarks
Welcoming remarks from Leadership Summit Moderator, Jeffery Payne to kick the Summit off and discuss the days agenda.
Managing the People Side of Change
Change in any size organization happens at the individual’s level. Compelling visions, world class strategies, and an army of consultants are powerless to transform the organization if the needs of the individuals are not incorporated into the program approach. Join Perry Riggs while he looks at the application of ideas from various organizational change management frameworks such as Prosci/Adkar, Lewin, and the Kotter change framework. We will also review ideas from recent literature like Drive by Daniel Pink, Start with Why by Simon Sinek, Dare to Lead by Brene Brown, The Fifth...
Transform Yourself Before Transforming Others
The aspiration of leadership is often rooted in character traits that make effectively leading healthy organizations difficult. Pride, ego, and ambition are powerful internal motivators, but they must be tempered in order for you to grow into the kind of leader your people need. An effective transformation of any kind must start with you to be successful. Join Lee Eason as he shares his stories of leading organizational change while highlighting the personal growth that had to occur for him to be successful. Learn how Lee lead product development turn-arounds and widespread organizational...
Think Tank Discussion Part I: Problem Definitions
Join with your peers in an engaging and highly interactive session to discuss the issues that affect you most. Using answers to the question “As a Leader, What is Keeping You Up at Night?” posed at the opening remarks, participants will form small groups to work on finding solutions to pressing test management issues. Discussions will review identified issues, barriers to change, and focus on innovative strategies and practical next steps. At the end of the think tank, all feedback will be collected and posted online to encourage further collaboration
Think Tank Discussion Part II: Leadership Solutions
Based upon the problem definitions developed during Part I of the Think Tank, small groups will brainstorm on how to best solve these challenges, leveraging the collective wisdom of peers and Summit speakers. Each group will designate a representative to present its results and practice delivery.
Think Tank Discussion Part III: Presentation of Results
Small group representatives will each be given five minutes to present their leadership solutions. Summit participants will vote on which group produced the best solutions.
Wrap-Up
Wrap-up of the Agile + DevOps Leadership Summit.