While it is true to say that people’s attitudes and beliefs are key to implementing an agile project, or Agile in itself, much of the use of the term ‘mindset’ implies a mental model that can be defined and engineered. In this presentation, we will look at how we can measure attitudes within an organization and use multiple small actions to trigger the rapid evolution of organizational culture, so that it can sustain agile developments. Mindset and the alignment-based ideas of some on the Agile movement too often imply creating homogeneous beliefs and values that will lead to full alignment. In practice, this damages resilience and can be dangerous. This presentation will introduce the idea of coherence instead of alignment - the celebration of cognitive and behavioral differences that can align if needed to support the delivery of sustainable solutions.

This talk is about my journey to become an ICF certified coach and how I apply those skills both to my role as a strategy consultant and business leader.

Coaching is a powerful discipline that differs from mentoring, teaching and consulting. Applied correctly it can help you have better, more powerful conversations and allow you to overcome difficult challenges.

I'll talk through the skills what I learned and where they align and differ from Agile coaching practices.I'll talk to the most powerful tools I learned that I now apply to all my work such as logical levels. Throughout this, I'll do a couple of simple exercises for the audience to take with them and use.

These skills are valuable to people at every level of the organization and equally, can be applied to all aspects of your life.

Toxic behaviours in a Team cause damage to the Team. Affecting their performance, causing high levels of stress and demotivation. Conflict Navigation is one of the biggest challenges within the Teams. Can you help them to overcome this challenge? Are there any antidotes?

When a Team member shows a toxic behaviour, how the Team reacts to it? Can we educate the team and help them as a System to overcome these challenges? As a Scrum Master or a Coach, our main mission is to help out teams to be their better selves. By the end of this workshop, you should be able to help your team to be better prepared to deal with conflict.

Mike Cohn advocated writing user stories in a “As a <user> , I want <action> so that <benefit>” template because it put the system requirements in first person, thereby bringing an inherent user perspective to design and helping product owners prioritize effectively. However, the user perspective has so far not captured the user state of mind or mood resulting in terribly designed interfaces and bad user experiences.

Let us look at a couple of user stories to understand this concept.

a. As an entitled-to-support user, I want to enter my broken in-warranty hard disk details so that I can create a support ticket.

b. As a valid user, I want to like my friend’s post so that he gets fake internet karma.

For a development team, these user stories mean fields, buttons, backend, fancy CSS and that is all. But if you look closely, user in story 1 is not just an entitled-to-support user but a ‘frustrated and dejected” user whereas the user in story 2 is a ‘happy’ user.

How about rephrasing the user stories in the experience template

As a <user> , I want <action> so that <benefit> becomes As a <mood> <user> , I want <action> so that <benefit>

Since the purpose of user stories was to initiate and enable team discussions on features and not be the actual task set in stone, I strongly believe that capturing user mood in the story would enable better design discussions and even sharper prioritization.

I started my Agile journey in 1985 when after graduating I had the chance to work in research. We had no idea that what we do is Agile, we just did it. Later I moved from Aided Design and Manufacturing to coding, completing the journey from developer to Development Manager and CTO. Along the way I evolved from "cowboy" developer to more structured and disciplined approaches. My first 'encounter' with formal Agile was in 2001 when I discovered XP. As a Software Development Manager and Later Project and Program Manager I used Agile practices in over 50 projects. I learned that Agile is not a silver bullet and is not easy but is not only an option but an option to survive in a continuous changing world.

What do you mean we can be Agile if we aren't doing scrum?

Trent takes you on his personal journey from a Scrummaster to Agile Coach, looking at the key insights and learnings of what it really means to be a coach in a consultants world.

Through this journey you will also look at why numerous agile initiatives are failing, leaving employees and organisations feeling disillusioned; and how we must change our approach to give Agile a new lease of life it so badly desires.