Better Software East 2016 - Leadership

As leaders of teams and projects, we regularly face choices and decisions that have downstream consequences. Do you want to be able to make better decisions in your personal or professional life? Do you want to help your team members make better choices when it comes to decisions on their projects? Or are you simply curious about how and why people make certain choices? In this highly interactive tutorial, Andy Kaufman shares why the familiar pros-and-cons approach seems to make sense—but is profoundly flawed. He discusses how our biases influence the options we...

When we want to produce more product with the same number of staff, we normally think about adding more process. David Hussman believes we don’t necessarily need to do that. Instead of talking about scaling agile, David focuses on scaling product learning—while avoiding process inflation along the way. Topics he addresses are: moving from Scrum teams to product team to focus on product success, mapping teams to product(s), interconnecting product discovery and product delivery techniques, and the challenges associated with cross team dependencies and constraints...

Whether you’re a developer, tester, ScrumMaster, CTO, or CEO, you know you have to listen to the needs of your customers and team; accept the fact that they are going to change their minds; and respond, adapt, tap dance, iterate, raise your voice, stand up, and delight your audience in order to ship out the best software of your entire life. Can I get a witness?! Jonathan Silva shares evangelizing strategies that can help you inspire at any level—whether a Fortune 500 company or a startup software company. These approaches include developing your point of view,...

Imagine you’re on an agile development team—and something feels weird. People disagree constantly, and when they finally do agree, no one commits to deliver the solution. Vocal team members dominate the conversation. You don’t trust your teammates. They don’t trust you. This isn’t a team. It’s just a group of people. Does this sound familiar? Because people are people—not interchangeable robots—building high-performing, self-organizing teams takes specific skills and a lot of work. In his experience working with agile teams, Robb Pieper has often taken on the...

Have you ever been on a team and said, “We should try [insert crazy idea here]” only to immediately hear “No!” from a team member, manager, or coach? Talk about stifling innovation. To prevent this, Anthony Crain says that their teams are adopting a new philosophy. Stop saying No … start saying Throwdown! Using this idea, they can distinguish between a favorite way and a better way. “My story writing technique is better than yours.” Oh yeah? Prove it! “My estimation technique is better than yours.” Oh yeah? Prove it! “SAFe is better than traditional...

Most of us believe we are good listeners. However, we often overestimate this skill and are hard-wired to short change it by making assumptions, providing answers, and jumping in when we think we know what people are trying to say. In doing so, we rob ourselves of the chance to encourage growth, build trust and respect, and promote ownership. Listening is about more than hearing the words; it is about tone, body language, and so much more. But wait … listening well can be learned, so join Judith Mills to understand and practice this underutilized skill....

Scaling agile across the enterprise can create challenging organizational conflicts as groups accustomed to working in their own silos struggle to collaborate effectively and identify their shared interests. Join Ellen Grove to learn useful models for considering conflict supported by games teams can use to develop and practice conflict resolution skills. The models address underlying drivers of conflict, modes for responding to conflict, ways to assess conflict severity to determine appropriate interventions, and patterns of principled negotiation. The games...