Better Software West 2018 - Mature Agile Teams | TechWell

Conference archive

Better Software West 2018 - Mature Agile Teams

Monday, June 4

Selena Delesie
Delesie Solutions
MB

Agile Managers: Nurture Your Teams to Thrive

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Monday, June 4, 2018 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

For most managers Agile is a totally different way of work that requires a particular style of leadership. However, agile transitions often fail to provide adequate guidance on how a manager fits into an agile organization. Your role and responsibilities need to change as the organization changes. You must learn to coach, remove obstacles, and model new styles of communication. In this interactive session, learn how you can flourish as an agile manager as you nurture your teams to thrive. Join seasoned leadership coach Selena Delesie as she discusses the differences between traditional and...

Ryan Riplley
Independent Consultant
MF

Rethinking Your Retrospectives

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Monday, June 4, 2018 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

The retrospective is the most important ceremony that an agile team performs. Continuous improvement ideas, team health concerns, organizational impediments, and shared wins are brought to light and explored during a retrospective. This is the heart of agile. Ryan Ripley says that if you aren’t doing retrospectives, you’re missing an incredible opportunity to collaborate and improve as a team. Learn how to get started with retrospectives and take away solid action items to get this important tool implemented on your team. For those already using retrospectives—but still unsure how to get...

Ryan Riplley
Independent Consultant
MK

Coaching Workshop: Taking Your Scrum to the Next Level

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Monday, June 4, 2018 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

Are you struggling to achieve results from your agile and Scrum teams? Are you having trouble with user story writing or with effective estimation and forecasting? Are your sprint reviews and retrospectives low focus and low energy? What about gaining traction on the organization-side of things? Do your leaders actually understand the underlying principles? Are they measuring things properly? And what about Scrum at Scale—how’s that going? If you have questions, any questions, about how to improve specific practices or generally how to improve your agile journey, then this tutorial is for...

Tuesday, June 5

Rob Myers
Agile for All
TC

Take Your Test-Driven Development to the Next Level

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Tuesday, June 5, 2018 - 8:30am to 4:30pm

Test-driven development (TDD) is a powerful discipline that combines testing, coding, and software design to ameliorate defect rates and facilitate future enhancements. TDD has been around for some twenty years, so why isn’t it more prevalent—and more popular? For one thing, TDD is not easy to get right! And, it seems expensive. In this mostly hands-on tutorial, Rob Myers will explore these concerns by diving straight into the deep-end. Rather than starting with theory and working toward practice, Rob is going to reverse the tutorial recipe. Come prepared to spend the first half of...

Mary_Thorn
Mary Thorn Consulting
Bob Galen
Zenergy Technologies
TE

Learning How to Lead High-Performing Agile Teams

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Tuesday, June 5, 2018 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

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...

Marcus King
Improving Enterprises
Allison Pollard
Improving Enterprises
TF

Leaders: Getting Real without Getting Fired

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Tuesday, June 5, 2018 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

Are important words often left unsaid at your place of work? Do you feel like you're navigating a complex maze in conversations? Does your message tend to miss the mark with co-workers, who increasingly seem to be impediments to your reaching your goals? Trust and communication issues within the workplace can hollow out an organization. When organizations suffering from a lack of trust, it costs them speed, productivity, and collaboration. Join Allison Pollard and Marcus King as they share models to evaluate your own behaviors and facilitate activities to help you find your voice for...

Doc Norton
CTO2
TG

Chartering Agile Teams: Conditions for Success

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Tuesday, June 5, 2018 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

Team charters are essential, but there's no specific formula for how to effectively create them or what to include. Each element of the team charter is specific to each team. There can be a framework for developing the charter, but it must be a collaborative effort of—at a minimum—the members of the team. Join Doc List as he shares his often-used framework, the key steps in crafting a charter, and the activities that are a must for the process. Explore aspects of setting specific constraints or criteria for the team, particularly Definition of Done and Definition of Ready, and see examples...

V. Lee Henson
AgileDad
TH

Advanced Backlog Refinement and Estimation Techniques

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Tuesday, June 5, 2018 - 8:30am to 12:00pm

One of the greatest challenges organizations face when embracing Agile is how to streamline the process of analyzing, defining, and refining the product backlogs so they can be easily consumed by their teams. Join Lee Henson to take a deep dive into advanced techniques that allow you to refine the work and ultimately achieve more accurate complexity estimates—for better project and release forecasting. Explore techniques including the creation of the Agile Press Release, which defines the who, what, where, when, why, and how behind the scope of an agile project or release in a simple one-...

Jeff Payne
Coveros, Inc.
TI

Agile Project Failures: Root Causes and Corrective Actions

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Tuesday, June 5, 2018 - 1:00pm to 4:30pm

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...

Wednesday, June 6

Ashley Hunsberger
Blackboard
K1

Use DevOps Principles to Transform Culture

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Wednesday, June 6, 2018 - 8:30am to 9:45am

At the heart of DevOps is the idea that organizations break down silos and teams work together to innovate faster, reducing the length of feedback loops and delivering value faster. Ashley Hunsberger describes how Blackboard is using DevOps principles—collaborative practices, iterative improvements, incremental testing, and more—to transform their development culture so everyone owns quality. Big change does not happen overnight, so they learned to make smaller changes that support the overall vision. Join Ashley as she lays the groundwork for iterative and continuous improvement...

Selena Delesie
Delesie Solutions
BW1

Leadership from Within an Agile Team

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Wednesday, June 6, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Teams struggle for many reasons, leaving people frustrated, complacent, and content to exist in mediocrity. There is a secret sauce that propels individuals, teams, and entire organizations to be really successful. And that secret is effective leadership! And not just the executives, managers, or those with leader titles get to lead – everyone does. The real benefits of agile emerge when each person embraces their personal leadership. By embracing our inner leader, we are able to engage our team, improve the value and quality of our deliverables, and gain the competitive edge the agile...

Shaun Bradshaw
Zenergy Technologies, Inc
BW2

Essential Patterns of Mature Agile Testers

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Wednesday, June 6, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Testing in agile teams is still one of the great mysteries of the agile world. In many organizations, testers continue to be marginalized. In others, testers are active but rarely understand or reach the full potential of their role. In this session, Shaun Bradshaw, an experienced agile coach and tester, will explore the practices and mindset of fully empowered agile testers on high-performance agile teams. Throughout Shaun’s agile coaching experience, he’s seen it all—from total dysfunction to high performance and everything in between. He’ll share with you real-world tactics to help you...

Ryan_Lockard
Contino
AW1

Secrets from the Authors of the Agile Manifesto

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Wednesday, June 6, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Agile coach Ryan Lockard interviewed fourteen of the seventeen authors of the Agile Manifesto for a special podcast project. Originally the idea was to capture the intent of authors and to chronicle the story of the Agile Manifesto, but what emerged became much more. This session covers the real story behind the rise and fall of agile in industry and what we can do to reclaim it. Ryan will dive into the history behind the Agile Manifesto and its signatories, what precipitated the manifesto's creation, and what the vision for it was. From that story emerges the rise of an industry, and to...

Catherine Louis
CLL-Group.com
AW2

When Continuous Improvement Feels Like Constantly Failing – An Introduction to Design Thinking

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Wednesday, June 6, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Do your Retrospectives feel like a repeat of the last one? Are they moan and groan sessions? Want to try something new to give your team a boost? When design principles are applied to strategy and innovation, the success rate for innovation dramatically improves. Great design has that “wow” factor that makes products more desirable and services more appealing to users. Why not try using known design principles during your retrospectives to get that "wow" factor for your teams! In this session Catherine Louis will provide a Design Thinking overview. You’ll roll up your sleeves up and try it...

Kalpesh_Shah
IntraEdge Inc
AW3

Outcome Over Output: Don't Be a Backlog Lumberjack

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Wednesday, June 6, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

As agile goes mainstream, many organizations are only focused on mastering different elements of agile frameworks. Progress is measured by vanity metrics such as velocity and burndown charts. These metrics can turn agile teams into backlog lumberjacks! Teams, ScrumMasters, and leadership must realize that while speed to launch is crucial to delivering software, speed to learning is even more important. To accomplish this mindset shift, product owners need to learn to change their focus from mastering the art of writing user stories to connecting their teams with the users of their products...

BW4

A Case Study in Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement

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Wednesday, June 6, 2018 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Continuous improvement is the goal of agile teams. But what does it look like when we create a continuous improvement strategy beyond our agile teams and bring it to the company level? Working at Spotify, Kevin Goldsmith saw the benefits of its fantastic continuous improvement culture. When he joined Avvo as its new CTO, his primary goal was to help Avvo create that culture for itself. In this session, Kevin will show what Avvo has done to build a foundation for a continuous improvement culture. He’ll explore the frameworks used to create highly engaged teams and share the organizational...

Mike Cottmeyer
LeadingAgile, LLC
AW5

Faster Food and a Better Place to Sleep: Applying Agile Outside Software

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Wednesday, June 6, 2018 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Agile methods aren’t just for software anymore—actually, they haven’t been for quite a while. Agile's collaborative, iterative, incremental approaches to work have caused it to go mainstream. But can we apply team-based agile straight out of the box in a nonsoftware context? Although most of the principles and patterns apply, sometimes the practices and frameworks need modification for a particular context. Mike Cottmeyer will explore two case studies of agile journeys: an international hotel chain going through a major rebranding initiative, and a well-known fast food restaurant looking...

John_Cutler
Independent Consultant
AW6

Beating the Feature Factory Mindset

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Wednesday, June 6, 2018 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

On a human level, we crave outcomes and impact. But in software product development, there is something addictive about the "build more and more features" approach that often leaves people frustrated and unsatisfied. Developers understand the challenges of working in output-focused environments and the adverse effects this has on productivity, morale, and business impact. Join John Cutler as he discusses these "feature factories," why they exist, how they impact your business, and how you can shift the focus to outcomes and impact. John thoroughly makes the case that churning out features...

Bernie_Maloney
Persistent
BW7

Create Influence, on Demand

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Wednesday, June 6, 2018 - 2:45pm to 3:45pm

The effectiveness of agile approaches are built on influence rather than authority. Practices like collocation and stand-ups actually amplify influence, leveraging behavior patterns built into humans through biology and social conditions. In this workshop, Bernie Maloney will show you how to unpack some fundamental influence patterns, gleaned from typical collaboration ceremonies, and turn them into conscious tools for leadership. Through interactive exercises, you’ll amplify and practice your ability to influence by quickly establishing and building rapport via all forms of active...

Lee Eason
Ipreo
AW7

Methods for Handling Key-Person Dependencies in Agile Teams

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Wednesday, June 6, 2018 - 2:45pm to 3:45pm

On any team, from infrastructure engineering to development to HR, there is always a looming danger of one individual being the only person capable of performing a key task, either because of their technical skills, domain skills, or business experience. The risks of having key-person dependencies—reduced productivity, inaccurate project estimates, morale problems, delays, and business-impacting defects and downtime—are hard to identify and can be even harder to resolve. Lee Eason is a leader and coach who has experienced this problem for so long, he finally decided to do something about...

Melissa Petak
Onlife Health
AW8

Creating an Innovation-Rich Culture

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Wednesday, June 6, 2018 - 2:45pm to 3:45pm

It's important to create a culture that inspires and infuses your development team with great ideas. But ideas are not action. Ideas in and of themselves are nothing more than unrefined, random thoughts, and worse, most ideas never get implemented. Even when you do follow through on some of the best ideas, they can cause great harm without proper planning and execution. While creativity is an asset, unbridled creativity where disparate ideas abound outside a sound decision-making and execution framework will create distraction and chaos. In this session, Melissa Petak will show you how to...

Julie Wyman
Excella Consulting
Hunter Tammaro
Excella Consulting
AW9

Measuring Flow: Metrics That Matter

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Wednesday, June 6, 2018 - 2:45pm to 3:45pm

Are you considering kanban but not sure how you’ll predict delivery without story points, velocity, and a burndown chart? Or are you part of a Scrum team but feeling like your team could benefit from improved flow within your sprints? In this session, join Julie Wyman and Hunter Tammaro as they explore key kanban metrics for measuring team flow and predictability. In the first half, they will introduce metrics including lead and cycle time, throughput, and the cumulative flow diagram. They’ll review what each represents, discuss easy ways to collect them, and show how they are similar and...

Thursday, June 7

Ryan Riplley
Independent Consultant
Faye Thompson
Cardinal Solutions Group
K4

Collaborative Curiosity

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Thursday, June 7, 2018 - 8:30am to 9:45am

Let's try an experiment. Rather than trying to figure out what you need or want to hear from a keynote, we propose your taking over as the product owner and driving the discussion? Join Ryan Ripley and Faye Thompson as they take your most pressing, real-time questions and craft them into an inspiring keynote that is relevant to you and your needs. They will take on all agile topics: How does a team optimize their learning? How do you make it safe to explore, experiment and fail? What should you do when your teams aren’t “buying” self-direction and accountability. What do you do when those...

V. Lee Henson
AgileDad
BT1

Agile 3.0: The Five Secrets Advanced Agile Companies Know

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Thursday, June 7, 2018 - 10:00am to 11:00am

Now that organizations have opted to morph agile into their own homegrown Agile Center of Excellence, many have missed out on simple advanced practices that would allow them to be even more aligned and ready to embrace a more practical agile application. Join seasoned agile coach Lee Henson as he shows you how to leverage internal and external agile service agreements to help guide your teams to a more solid agile footing. He will explore setting a clear vision and strategy by building an “agile press release” and how to embrace estimation excellence for stories, releases, and entire...

David Horowitz
Retrium
BT2

Conducting Agile Retrospectives That Drive Real Change

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Thursday, June 7, 2018 - 10:00am to 11:00am

Think about your latest retrospective. Were people interested and engaged, or did they complain and accuse? Did you leave the retrospective feeling like you learned something valuable, or were you simply there to check the retrospective off your list? Retrospectives are hard work, but effective retrospectives can have a transformative effect on your team’s performance and, ultimately, your organization’s ability to achieve its goals. Join retrospective expert David Horowitz as he explores tangible steps you can take to turn your retrospectives into the catalyst of continuous improvement...

David Bernstein
To Be Agile
BT3

Overcoming Test-Driven Damage

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Thursday, June 7, 2018 - 10:00am to 11:00am

Test-driven development is supposed to help us refactor our code safely, but we often find that when we refactor our code, we also have to refactor our tests. What was supposed to add safety becomes a burden requiring time and effort. Writing good unit tests is a critical skill that developers need to master in order to get the most benefit from test-driven development. Tests must be unique, written at the right level of abstraction, and implementation-independent in order to be most valuable. In this session, David Bernstein will cover effective techniques for doing TDD that support...

Nablia Safdar
Do it Best Corp.
AT1

Fuel Agility with Transparent Expectations

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Thursday, June 7, 2018 - 10:00am to 11:00pm

Do you know how your work is aligned to tactical and strategic goals? Success is rooted in a productive and cohesive team-centered culture. When culture and execution are misaligned, failure is almost certain. Everyone on and around the team must understand their role in defining, delivering, and growing value. It sounds easy, but the discipline can be tough, which leads to disappointments and unwelcome surprises. Nabila Safdar focuses on curating transparent expectations by the following six core practices. First, foster candor and respect. This leads to unity. Second, have fresh...

Natalie_Warnert
CA Technologies
AT3

Stop Guessing and Validate What Your Customers Want

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Thursday, June 7, 2018 - 10:00am to 11:00am

In agile, everything we do is an experiment. Product development is no different. We think we know what the customer wants, and the customer thinks they know what they want, but it turns out we're all wrong! To get to validated discoveries about our features, we must understand how to write a better hypothesis for our development experiments. This session focuses on challenging the mindset that we are validating options during our experiments. Natalie Warnert will show you how to eliminate options that don't work with data and feedback by looking at your product hypotheses as tests that...

Stefana Saxton
Black & Veatch
BT4

Innovation: The Art of Being Wrong

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Thursday, June 7, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

So, your company wants to be innovative. Are you comfortable with failure? The word failure is littered with negative connotations. Elon Musk financed three failed SpaceX rocket launches. Edison designed more than 2,000 light bulbs that did not work. The Wright brothers crashed dozens of planes and gliders before one took off. And the Americas were discovered through failed circumnavigation. Some failed small and learned. And some failed big but survived and thrived. The lesson is that organizations must embrace failure to accelerate innovation. Join Stefana Saxton to learn how to...

Faye Thompson
Cardinal Solutions Group
BT5

It's All In Our Heads: Using Neuroscience to Improve Performance

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Thursday, June 7, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Understanding how our brains take shortcuts to process all the data they take in can help us recognize when its happening, take measures to correct our course, and use that information to build stronger teams. This talk sprang from my curiosity about the intersection of neuroscience and organizational behavior. It is my hope that attendees will leave with the ability to recognize when they and their teams are using processing shortcuts, as well as some techniques for mitigating their impact. Learning Objectives: - Identify several ways in which our brains short cut processing in order to...

Billie_Schuttpelz
SolutionsIQ an Accenture Company
AT4

Impostor Syndrome: The Innovation Killer among Us

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Thursday, June 7, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

As an agile community, we talk a lot about innovation and failure. But we often forget to talk about the head games that keep us from innovating. Billie Schuttpelz unearths those internal dialogues that prevent us from taking risks that drive innovation. Become a part of breaking open the conversation around impostor syndrome—yes, it exists, and it's stealing far too many of our authentic voices. Join Billie to get insights into how imposter syndrome is holding you back. You'll learn three ways to unleash your creative ideas, break free of the swirling thoughts and inactivity that...

Steve Spearman
Agile for All
AT5

Let's (Re)Learn about Agile and Scrum in One Hour!

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Thursday, June 7, 2018 - 11:30am to 12:30pm

Every software conference has a number of folks who are brand-new to agile—as well as folks who think they understand it but could use a solid refresher. This interactive presentation will focus on newbies who want to understand the key concepts of both agile and Scrum. Certified Scrum trainer Steven Spearman will give an overview of the key concepts and learning approaches needed to understand agile and Scrum in one hour. While he will cover the structural basics of roles and events, he’ll focus primarily on key concepts of complexity, why traditional methods fail us so often, taking...

Bill DeVoe
Velocity Partners
BT8

Lean-Agile Learning through Games

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Thursday, June 7, 2018 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Most agile practitioners first learn agile by reading a book, attending a class, or attending local meetings. But learning lean and agile concepts works best when we're able to put some concrete examples and practice behind the concepts. By adding a set of games and exercises that teach and reinforce lean and agile concepts to our toolboxes, change agents can provide some practical basis for conversations both inside and outside their organizations. In this talk join experienced agile coach Bill DeVoe, as he shares two of his “go to” games. First, up will be The Name Game, a game that...

Chris Murman
SolutionsIQ an Accenture Company
AT7

Things Are Broken: A Case Study In Moving Too Fast

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Thursday, June 7, 2018 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

"Move fast and break things” tells quite a story of the relationship between speed and agile. Speed has been a driver in our industry before it was even an industry. Books promise that certain frameworks can deliver twice as much in half the time, yet teams still struggle delivering what's expected of them. This session describes a six-month case study of a multi-team transformation. The orders were to make the teams deliver faster, but they were consistently missing deadlines. Frustration was on the rise. Only after taking the time to understand what they meant by "faster" could the teams...

Michelle Vician
Kaiser Permanente
AT8

Taking Your Team from Dysfunctional to Dynamic

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Thursday, June 7, 2018 - 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Does it seem like your team is the antithesis of agile? Being negative or fearful, resisting change, or hoarding information are common pitfalls that impede progress and can sink an agile team. How can your team adapt to each other, avoid these patterns, and find its greatness? All teams have people with talents and untapped abilities, but it can be difficult for a team to figure out what works for them, what they have, and what they lack. If your team is struggling to unify, find its stride, or revel in the fun of working together, then this session is for you. Michelle Vician will reveal...

Nir Szilagyi
PayPal
Jose Buraschi
PayPal
BT10

Engineering Productivity and Enterprise Quality at Scale

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Thursday, June 7, 2018 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm

Over the past two years, PayPal has been on a journey to modernize its internal development and test systems, from test environments, implementing enterprise continuous integration and code propagation into the development pipeline, to release processes and production code validation. Jose Buraschi and Nir Szilagyi will talk about transforming the code of 5,000 developers across 350 teams and how it required social “magic” to influence behaviors and motivate engagement. This modernization of PayPal's development practices has involved creating reliable integrated test environments,...

Allison Pollard
Improving Enterprises
Barry Forrest
Improving in Dallas
BT11

Brewing Great Agile Team Dynamics: No More "Bitter Beer Face" Communications

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Thursday, June 7, 2018 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm

Ever find yourself making a sour face after talking to a coworker? Wishing your team meetings felt more like an engaging social hour? There is hope. Those everyday conflicts where something seems “off” after a conversation are often related to differences in communication styles. When team members understand themselves and others, there’s less conflict, more collaboration, and better working relationships. The DiSC model can help you understand why your team behaves the way it does and how to build trust for a more agile team. In this interactive session, agile coaches Allison Pollard and...

BT12

The Impact of Agile Quantified

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Thursday, June 7, 2018 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm

For years, people have made recommendations for how to develop software in an agile way based almost entirely on intuition, folklore, and anecdotes. They've never been able to quantitatively show the accuracy or applicability of these recommendations. This session quantifies those recommendations in the most precise and objective terms, including a presentation of general findings in Larry Maccherone's research correlating agile practices to performance along the dimensions of productivity, predictability, quality, and time to market. These data can be used to make general decisions about...

Wayde Stallmann
Asynchrony Labs
AT10

Three-Minute Improv Games to Improve Your Teams

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Thursday, June 7, 2018 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm

The problem with many agile teams is that they simply never become a team. This often manifests itself as team members feeling unsafe or not quite trusting each other. This workshop will show you how the same techniques improv theater troupes use to improve collaboration, creativity, and communication can be used to help agile teams, too. The three-minute improv warm-up games Wayde Stallmann will lead you through in this session—including improv's famous "yes, and" technique—will help you learn to establish trust, improve collaboration, and learn how to provide a safe environment for your...

Toiya Jones-Current
Kaiser Permanente
AT11

Waterfall to Scrum: It Only Goes Up from Here

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Thursday, June 7, 2018 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm

You’re a project manager using a waterfall methodology, but the team is not making progress on the work and deadlines are not being met. The requirements aren’t clear, scope keeps changing, deadlines won’t budge, and you can’t get more resources on the project. You were doomed from the start! A common solution to this situation is to adopt Scrum, but that can be difficult as well. Join Toiya Jones-Current as she narrates her personal journey and the baby steps she took to successfully switch from waterfall to Scrum and the transition her project team went through to deliver iteratively and...

Bob Galen
Zenergy Technologies
AT12

Essential Product Ownership: It takes a Village

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Thursday, June 7, 2018 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm

Scrum surfaced in 1993. So, the role of a Product Owner has existed for 20+ years. Surely the whole idea is well understood by now. Right? And the role is a simple one. There is a single product owner per product team or teams. Defining and accepting the work to meet the clients’ goals. Always mucking around the backlog. Again, simple and clear. Right? Well, in my coaching travels and observations it’s not that simple. I still see literally tens of organizations and hundreds of teams that struggle with the notion of product ownership. So, let’s go over it...

Anu Smalley
Capala Consulting Group
K5

Agile Lighthouses: Navigating toward Successful Products

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Thursday, June 7, 2018 - 4:15pm to 5:15pm

Directional awareness in product development is one of the most challenging aspects of building things—whether applications, services, or true products. Gaining a true north in your journey and having a light to show you the way are often the difference between success and failure. But what is your compass? Where is your lighthouse? It’s your customer, and your challenge is determining how to effectively engage the customer. Agile product management provides a distinct mindset with techniques and patterns useful in navigating these often-convoluted courses. And Anu Smalley is an...

Friday, June 8

Jessica Soroky
NextGear Capital
SMT1

Limitless by Choice: Unlocking Your and Your Teams’ Potential

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Friday, June 8, 2018 - 9:00am to 10:00am

Agile, Waterfall, and everything in between starts and ends with teams. No matter what role you play on the team you have the power to unlock the team’s real potential. No – this isn’t a talk on how to get a higher velocity while working less. This session is the practical view into HOW to become or inspire high performing teams. Join seasoned agile and leadership coach Jessica Soroky as she shares the secret to unlocking your own personal power first. Sick of talking conceptually? Don’t worry this session is all about giving you real tools and techniques you can start using today to take...

SMT2

Agile in a Regulated Environment – Advice from a “Blues Traveler”

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Friday, June 8, 2018 - 10:15am to 11:15am

Implementing Agile practices in a regulated industry has its own set of unique challenges. Learn what worked and didn't work at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC) and WellCare Health Plans as they adopted Agile practices in product and software development within their regulated organizations.

Join Leon Sabarsky as he shares his advice and lessons learned on implementing Agile at the Blues and other healthcare organizations. Some or their particular challenges included scaling up, connecting with non-agile PMO’s, reconfiguring our traditional testing processes, and...

Mary_Thorn
Mary Thorn Consulting
SMT3

Shhh...it's not "SAFe"!

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Friday, June 8, 2018 - 12:30pm to 1:30pm

Scaling agile is tough. Convincing regulated financial institutions to change their "governance" processes to a matrixed, decentralized decision-making organization is almost impossible. But that’s just the change of direction that adopting agile approaches requires.

Come listen to the journey that Mary Thorn took with two regulated financial institutions by implementing the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) without the business-side and people actually realizing the source of the change.

You will learn why and how the principles and values of SAFe and agile can transform any...

David McMunn
Fannie Mae
Dan Craig
Fannie Mae
SMT4

For Lasting Change, Take an Agile Approach to Your Agile Transformation!

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Friday, June 8, 2018 - 1:45pm to 2:45pm

One of the most difficult challenges faced by an organization entering a large-scale, enterprise transformation is how to achieve lasting change. Oftentimes, leadership will charter an Agile Center of Excellence (COE) in the hopes that training, coaching and publication of best practices will bring the desired change. While these actions typically generate excitement and build early momentum, by themselves they will not change the “DNA” (aka, mindset) of the enterprise. To avoid long-term atrophy of agile benefits, it is critical to charter a COE that is deeply in-tune with the enterprise...