One of the key advantages of Agile over plan-driven approaches is that an Agile mindset acknowledges our ever-diminishing ability to usefully predict the future and focuses our efforts on managing change instead of trying to suppress it. This “new reality” has become pervasive enough to drive its own buzz word – VUCA, which stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity. But beyond the hype lies a truth that Agile leaders need to understand and embrace – that certain problems really do respond differently to our attempts to manage and solve them. Why does this matter? Because problem contexts that defy straightforward cause-and-effect expectations significantly impact productivity while simultaneously presenting much higher risks to success. Even worse, applying leadership approaches that aren’t matched to the problem context dramatically increases the danger of catastrophic failure.

In this session, we’ll examine how the Cynefin framework helps us make sense of what kinds of problems we’re dealing with and how we should approach them. We will then look at ten ways in which Agile frameworks, approaches and technical practices help us manage or even reduce complexity and one where they fall short. You will walk away with a deeper understanding of how - and why - the things we do as agilists increase stability and reduce risks for our teams.

The Agile Manifesto doesn't explicitly talk about what changes in management should happen and neither do the approaches. In fact, sometimes we hear the exact opposite from teams - "What do we need managers for..?" or perhaps "Can't they just get rid of all the impediments we have?"

As a former manager and now as a coach, I find the words Servant Leadership sometimes doesn't resonate. It actually only paints part of the picture anyway. What we want are ways to enrich management so that they can do more for the organization and its teams. Let's discover what some of this enrichment might be.

One of the most disregarded principles of the Agile Manifesto is one of the most important: Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done. Simplicity seems simple enough, but in reality it’s as complicated as the work we are so often asked to deliver on—work that we may ultimately find was not worth doing. This session explores the complexities of this sort of counter-intuitive workstream optimization, with low-effort tactical approaches to preventing such waste in software and product development. The session attempts to codify the things teams need to do to truly execute on simplicity, and as a bonus, fulfill what is likely the most important principle of the Agile Manifesto: satisfying the customer.

On average Agile transformations get into trouble at about 14 months from the time they start. Have you ever wondered why?

Is it because you started from 'the bottom up?" Or is it because you spend time, money, resources and people creating great teams and didn't pay attention to having a professional, empowered Product Owner organization?

Agile transformations that target department level and not the organization have a very low success rate and you end up with an agile department enveloped by a traditional organization. That leads to dark work, decision delay and dysfunction.

So, what can you do?

Come and learn some of what I learned the "hard way" over 7 transformations.

Changing the practices, behaviors, and beliefs of people and teams is hard; and organizations are many multiples harder. As agilest, we are educated to seek and deliver value. But that is one of the first big issues. What are the chances that we can know what is truly valuable for the people within the team or organization, both individually and collectively?

Another big issue is that most agilists are well-educated in frameworks, practices, and tools, but our training doesn’t generally prepare us for the other aspects imperative to implementing lasting agility and change. There is little focus in our standard training on the impact of systems and structures, and even less on internal aspects such as morals/ethics, ego, psychology, and culture.

I would like to present to you two models which opened my eyes over the past 6 years to a much larger awareness and understanding of how to approach agile transformation for impactful lasting change, and show you how to apply them to your work efforts. Seeing people, teams, and organizations through the lens of these models has greatly changed my understanding and approach and I believe has strongly benefited the outcomes of my efforts.

Spiral Dynamics Integral (SDi) is a bio-psycho-social developmental model showing itself through color bands representing levels of increasing inclusive evolution. AQAL – All Quadrants, All Levels [All Lines] – models a set of quadrants depicting our internal and external, individual and collective attributes and aspects. Woah! Don’t be thrown by that crazy-sounding stuff. Stick with me.

While those models might not sound very applicable to decreasing your cycle time to deliver your latest microservices through your fully-automated DevSecOps pipeline, without awareness of these models, you may never actually lead your team(s) to the point of decreasing cycle times, much less get your organization to the point of benefiting from DevSecOps practices.

Please join us for this session as we explore how these models allow us to be more successful in our work as Scrum Masters, Coaches, and/or Leaders. Benefit from learning new ways to see your system, avoiding and removing challenges and impediments you face in your sluggish, stuck, or failing agile journeys. Begin to see the world in a whole new way, not just at work, but in all aspects of life.

With every great movement, there are pioneers, early adopters, and then the majority who follow their lead. The agile pioneers understood that agile is not a process change, nor a new SDLC to implement, but a whole new way to think and work while serving your customers. So why do most agile transformations focus on teaching frameworks, methods, laws, and practices?

Join me to learn how to activate and encourage this way of thinking, often described as an agile or growth mindset, within yourself and your company on your journey towards a more agile workplace.

DevOps has become all the rage from a technical change perspective; it really has changed the game. And while it provides numerous benefits, only after you also embrace the human side of change within the organization, can you really get to full Agility.

What if we could take advantage of a continuous delivery of change just like we do in our development pipelines? As executives, managers, Scrum masters, coaches, or anyone else in a leadership role, we should desire to make each change focused, easy, and small to contain risk. Once this is done, changes can mimic a development pipeline that delivers towards a business outcome. This workshop will help you learn how to keep the number and size of changes in check and consider how to manage the risks of deploying change.

Scrum is easy to understand but hard to implement. Many team members think of Scrum as a framework with roles, meetings and artifacts. They take a training class and come back to work and take on new roles, setup Sprint planning, standups, reviews, and retrospectives. They start working in Sprints using product backlogs, user stories, task boards, and burn down charts. Things start out well, however, soon difficulties arise and anti-patterns and smells emerge as teams start moving from Scrum to ScrumBut. You’ll often hear “We do Scrum but we don’t have an engaged Product Owner” or “We do Scrum but we don’t test within the Sprint”. In this interactive session we will tie elements of the Scrum Framework to the values and principles of the Agile manifesto to better understand the purpose behind the framework and it’s roles, meetings and artifacts. Come to this session to understand the reasons things are setup in a certain way so that you can assess the implications, risks and impacts of deviating from the basic framework.

Learn how to get out of your team’s way and empower them by clarifying decision making, delegating decisions to others, and encourage employee engagement.

If you are a manager, leader, or a coach and you want to begin making decisions at the fastest responsible moment, come learn about a method that will help you delegate decisions, encourage employee engagement, and empower those in your organization.