Agile + DevOps West 2023 - Agile Team Member
Tuesday, June 6
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...
Approaching Conflict Productively
NewWhen it comes to high-performing teams, conflict is inevitable and necessary. The very essence of gaining the best value outcomes is a result of leveraging the wisdom of various perspectives and experiences. Those variances will generate conflict. Yet, this is only a negative if we are unequipped with the knowledge and tools to embrace and approach conflict. In this tutorial, expect to unpack the differences and the relationship between conflict and drama. Discover tools for helping all voices be heard. Plus, have fun practicing skills in preparing how to react to conflicts productively...
Wednesday, June 7
Avoiding the Chaos of an Agile Transformation
Agile is not a fairy tale. You have to face real life challenges and be well prepared in order to succeed. The reality is the bigger and older your organization is, the more difficult it is to pass through process level changes and that's when chaos is born. Resolving all the issues with chaos could potentially take years. In this session, Peter will share his story of one of his projects where he had to face numerous obstacles as a Test Manager in achieving proper agile implementation and to raise the quality of the products of his client. Some of the obstacles included: - Agile...
Full-Stack Psychological Safety: Go Beyond the Front End
When someone says DevOps, you probably think of tools: parsers, scanners, compilers, version controllers, and more. Or you may think of a cross-disciplined team with mix of skills to take a product from idea to deployment and maintenance. While DevOps does include both, tools and skilled staff are a fraction of what is needed to be successful. In this session, we will present the main ingredient for gaining the full benefits of DevOps: Psychological Safety. Unfortunately, Psychological Safety is often overlooked or over-simplified. If spoken about, it is often addressed in binary terms –...
Rethinking Career Development
Careers used to be very linear; a ladder you would continue to climb up until retirement. But today we are discovering that careers are no longer strictly vertical. In this session, Kimberley Miller will challenge organizations to rethink their career development outlines and separate monetary promotions from job titles in order to create a robust working environment that encourages career development in all directions. Other topics Kimberley will cover include: - Do you have a track for individuals who are people vs. craft focused? For example, can someone progress in your company without...
Driving Innovation in Agile Organizations
Pause to innovate, and your company will cease to exist pretty quickly thereafter. In the current business climate, “innovation” should not just be a part of your company’s vision, but it also needs to be embedded in the cultural fabric of your organization and must be practiced relentlessly. As companies brace themselves for agile transformation, one key area that needs the utmost attention is—how to build a culture of innovation that can coexist with the agile delivery framework, or SAFe as we know it. In this session, we will focus on the significance of innovation and how an agile...
What Are Your Automation Strategies?
Everyone in your organization has probably discussed automation at least once. But who is responsible for automation? And what are the automation strategies for your organization? Several factors should be considered before jumping into automation. In this session, Lisette Zounon will share her personal experiences and cover case studies and successful quality transformation. Lisette will also cover what to consider for your automation strategies because it always depends on your organization and what you are trying to achieve. Attendee takeaways from this session include identifying your...
Thursday, June 8
360 Degree View of Agile Mindsets
Agile presentations frequently discuss the difference between doing versus being agile and the importance of shifting to an Agile Mindset. They also mention the role of an organization’s culture in making that shift. But we don’t spend much time trying to understand the underpinning values that shape those mindsets or the influence that mindsets and culture have on one another. For those of us instantiating agility in an organization, the biggest challenge is working up and down the organizational hierarchy to shift individual mindsets. To do that we have to 1) understand the internal...
Scaling Agile and DevOps Capabilities
It is important for businesses to understand scaling agile and DevOps capabilities before considering an agile transformation. In this session, Dr. Tawanna Sargent will share her experience joining a business that wanted to go through an agile transformation, but leadership didn't know how to make this happen. Dr. Sargent quickly learned about the organization and discovered that structure and alignment did not adhere. This session will dive into the key lessons learned including creating synergy and autonomy in teams, SAFe improving DevOps, identifying ineptitudes, and embracing the...
Using Neuroscience to Boost Your (Scrum) Events
Inspired by Sharon Bowmans’ Training From the Back of The Room, this session will explore how you can use brain science to keep scrum events live, active, and worthwhile. For example, research shows that our brain 'disconnects' after ten minutes when nothing changes. In a training setting, you would use this knowledge to change the setting regularly, or to make short exercises or chunks of information. In a scrum event, you could use this knowledge also. How? That's what we will explore during this session. You will learn about neuroscience and how you can use it to activate your brain and...