Leadership

Tutorials

James Whittaker, Microsoft

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 8:30am

Line up all the successful people in the world. Take away the pedigreed and the prodigies—you know the people who are going to succeed no matter what. Remove the brown-nosers and right-time-right-place lottery winners. And who do you have left? People who succeeded on purpose. Study these folks carefully, and you’ll find their paths to the top have common themes. James Whittaker exposes the career strategies of the ultra-successful and analyzes them in detail.

MF What’s Your Leadership IQ?

Jennifer Bonine, tap|QA, Inc.

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 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.

MJ Building a Culture of Trust Where Agile Thrives NEW

Pollyanna Pixton, Accelinnova

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 8:30am

We know that teams and individuals who take ownership of their work outperform—often by 50 percent—those who don’t. And in agile, team ownership is a key principle. However, leaders often struggle with letting their teams own their work. Leaders are afraid that if they trust, their teams will fail. So leaders must create a culture of trust and help their teams take ownership. But what if the team builds the wrong product? Teams must align with the strategy and purpose of the business as well as with value to the customer. Finally, the organization must deal honestly with ambiguity.

MO It’s All About Me™: Owning Your Behavior, Improving Your Team NEW

Doc List, Doc List Enterprises

Mon, 11/10/2014 - 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 some of 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.

TB Giving Great Presentations: The Art of Stage Presence NEW

James Whittaker, Microsoft

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 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.

TD Essential Patterns of Mature Agile Teams

Bob Galen, Velocity Partners

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 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 agile 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.

TF Risk Management: Project Management for Grown-Ups NEW

Tim Lister, Atlantic Systems Guild, Inc.

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 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?

TI Principles and Practices of Lean Software Development NEW

Al Shalloway, Net Objectives

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 8:30am

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 could 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.

TK Essential Patterns of Mature Agile Leaders NEW

Bob Galen, Velocity Partners

Tue, 11/11/2014 - 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. In this workshop, we’ll 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.

Keynotes

K1 From Chaos to Order—Leading Software Teams Today

Ken Whitaker, Leading Software Maniacs

Wed, 11/12/2014 - 8:30am

To successfully lead “the nerd herd,” you’re expected to motivate your team to perform, encourage innovation, and produce software solutions that delight the customer. Prioritizing your time for what’s most important can be quite challenging—especially when you’re swamped with a steady stream of incoming requests, meeting overload, and the ever-present personnel issues. The expectation of even faster product deployment, the evolution of software development to agility, and the establishment of self-directed teams often require even more time devoted to planning.

K2 The Roots of Agility

Rob Myers, Agile Institute

Wed, 11/12/2014 - 10:00am

What we mean by Agile is becoming less and less clear. Rob Myers shares sixteen years of history and observation, noting the amazingly diverse ideologies and practices that people now include under this umbrella term. Agile started with the earliest notions of iterative-and-incremental, inspect-and-adapt principles and practices from Scrum. It now includes the intensive engineering disciplines of XP that have recently branched off into the Software Craftsmanship movement. Along the way, agile grafted in lean principles and saw the flowering of the elegantly simple Kanban approach.

K3 The Future of Agile: Dilution, Calcification, or Evolution?

Jeff "Cheezy" Morgan, LeanDog

Thu, 11/13/2014 - 8:30am

The agile revolution began more than a dozen years ago. It was started by a small band of rebels who had radical ideas, shared a common vision, and wanted to change the world by challenging the status quo. Where is that agile revolution today? Has it continued the vision of its founders? Has it stayed true to its original values and principles as set forth in its manifesto or has it been watered down to make it more palatable to the masses? Cheezy Morgan ponders the answers to these and related questions.

K4 Get Out of Your Comfort Zone―Now

Tricia Broderick, Pearson

Thu, 11/13/2014 - 4:15pm

In an industry that continues to rapidly evolve, the pressure to increase our mastery can be overwhelming. Whether browsing the web or your organization's technical library, it's discouraging to realize that many of the skills you’ve mastered are now obsolete, replaced by new, important ones that you know little about. Is there a way to change discouragement into excitement? Early in her career, Tricia Broderick was terrified to take chances for fear of failing.

Concurrent Sessions

BW1 Servant Leadership: It’s Not All It’s Cracked Up to Be

Tricia Broderick, Pearson

Wed, 11/12/2014 - 11:30am

Ah, the sounds of feathers being ruffled! Tricia Broderick believes that servant leadership is not all that it’s cracked up to be. She wants and expects more from leaders then just being servants who act only when asked. Until now, a common (and easy) coaching style has been to transform managers from command-and-control leaders to serving others. How can anyone argue that the transition is a great step toward becoming an empowering leader?

BT9 Product Management: Optimizing the What to Develop

Ernani Ferrari, Mondo Strategies

Thu, 11/13/2014 - 1:30pm

Most organizations struggle with the processes that define what software they should develop, when to do it, and how it will evolve over time—all parts of the product management role and activities. Because repeatable processes have not been established and organizations cope with conflicting priorities, teams stress needlessly over day-to-day decisions. Product management requires a fundamental company-wide understanding of its goals and opportunities coupled with the discipline to optimize development and maintenance efforts.