Adept Agile Requirements – Plan Faster, Better & Easier
For a philosophy built upon the idea of rapid adaptation, the rigid way in which requirements are managed in many agile projects is a poor fit. For instance, strict requirement trees linked tightly to organizational hierarchies can be damaging to local ownership, speed, and quality of decision-making. Potentially useful ideas like user stories and Gherkin can be misapplied to ill effect. A narrow focus on writing out requirements can miss opportunities for more effective communication through visualization. This workshop will review a host of simple but lesser-known techniques for addressing these antipatterns and more, taking your ability to manage requirements quickly and effectively to the next level. The approaches presented are a culmination of over 20 years of experience working with hundreds of clients and thousands of students in the practicing agile community.
Arlen Bankston was at the vanguard of the agile movement, beginning to practice within two years of the Agile Manifesto’s writing. He was among the first to explicitly blend lean systems thinking and user experience practices with agile software development practices. Arlen was one of the earliest Certified Scrum Trainers, exploring Lean, Six Sigma, BPM, and other process management and systems thinking approaches to ensure that organizations took a holistic perspective beyond just the software. He became a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt while leading a Lean-Agile practice for six years, and was a successful entrepreneur helping to lead the consultancy LitheSpeed for fifteen years following. Now he has formed the company Adaptagility LLC and is working in concert with Grow-Lean LLC. Today, Arlen works across every industry and enjoys a reputation as a thought leader and a dynamic, entertaining, and practical trainer and presenter. He has trained and mentored thousands of ScrumMasters, Product Owners, team members, and executives. Arlen wrote the book “HR and the Agile Organization” to describe how human resources departments can adapt to better support organizations that are trying to become more adaptive while improving employee engagement and retention along the way.