Have you spent a lot of energy and time with your teams focusing on estimation? Do you feel that everyone isn't quite on the same page? There are many challenges on teams who wish to work with an agile mindset, and negative patterns around estimation can have quite the impact on productivity and team morale.

In this workshop, participants will revisit what a Product Backlog Item represents and exactly what an estimate represents. Using this as a foundation, session participants will learn about four distinct parts of a pattern that repeats itself in organizations who may not have a strong handle on these concepts. The workshop concludes with a lightweight estimation exercise that participants can take back to their organization.

Having a better understanding of estimation is helpful, and having a simple yet powerful game to compare items relatively to one another will help break your teams of the pattern of misunderstanding the point of backlog item estimation.

Innovation Labs often don’t create the impact they’ve promised and many eventually fail. Capital One’s Innovation Lab, founded in 2011, has evolved to stay relevant throughout the years. In this session, Amber King, Senior Manager of Accelerator Operations talks about how the Labs' operating model has changed over the years, the details of how the Lab's new accelerator model works, how we incorporate Lean Start-up, Design Thinking, Google Design Sprints, Scrum, and Kanban techniques on our teams and what has triggered the need to reinvent the Labs' model in order to continue to push for disruptive innovation.

So you are considering getting a coach to help you in your transition to Agile. Or perhaps you are an Agile practitioner considering becoming an Agile coach. What do these Agile coaches do? What makes them different?

This session will enter the foyer of the house that describes what coaches do and considerations one can have when they think about coaching (including hiring one). Prepare to be challenged and to learn a bit of what it takes to be or work with a coach; it has little to do with courses or certifications, though they may help. In covering what coaches do, one can now begin to think along the lines of what the skills one may need to improve.

Scaling Agile is easily misunderstood. Scaling is the term we often hear used to describe using Agile methods with large enterprises.  Larger enterprises often deal with bigger and more complex problems than small ones. They have more employees, subcontracting companies, different business units, more processes and a strong culture that defines how things are done. At the same time, they need to be able to deliver results in an ever-changing business environment. They need to be Agile but the bigger the company, the bigger the challenges are for scaling Agile. 

Scaling frameworks available in the market today are maturing quickly and provide a variety of choices. Like the Agile Manifesto, these frameworks are based on principles, and they vary widely in the specificity of the recommended approach.

In this session, we will compare how two scaling frameworks, LeSS and SAFe, address the challenges of agility at scale.  We will talk about how these two frameworks align, coordinate, and manage dependencies across multiple teams to maintain consistency and agility at scale. 

Going agile in the government is easy to say and hard to do. Teams and individuals prefer to stay apart and work on their own for weeks or months at a time. Documentation can quickly become more important than working software. Addressing the demands brought on by a change in administration, policy, or executive direction requires teams and individuals to start working together in order to succeed in their overall mission.

This experience report will discuss the benefits, challenges, and outcomes when implementing Kanban in a traditional waterfall and silo working environment. Techniques for creating a continuous change towards an agile way of working will be shared. Performance data from a two year Kanban initiative at the Department of Labor will be reviewed and discussed. Participants will walk away with a clear understanding of how Kanban can break down silos, improve the agility of a traditional waterfall and silo focused organization, and noticeably improve performance.

Running a small business is no small task. Financial management, sales, hiring, managing people, and supporting existing clients are just a handful of activities a small business might address in a single day. So what happens when you use the Kanban Method to manage your business?

I’ll share my experiences while training, coaching, and evolving a small business using the Kanban Method. You’ll see how the Method quickly surfaced issues, revealed hidden opportunities for innovation, and how the business is using the Method to mature the services they offer.

The Agile Manifesto has been around for over 16 years. That seems like enough time for organizations to adapt to Agile processes and get the hang of writing Agile contracts. Yet, when it comes time for US Federal Agencies to enter into a contract about Agile work processes and deliverables, we're still seeing Waterfall language persist.

If we want to see Agile software development contracts that are truly aligned for the best interests of all parties involved, there are a few steps that we need to take. Learn what these steps are in this presentation.

Everyone hopes that Agile will help increase innovation at their company.  But in the scaled, commitment-driven world of SAFe, organizations are finding it more and more difficult to innovate.  Learn some of the common barriers to innovation in SAFe organizations and what you can do to avoid them.

"A brittle Culture can doom even a great organization." - Joe Tye

"How do things get done around here?" It seems like such a simple question to answer, but pause, and try to answer that for yourself. And not from a process perspective. Do you truly understand the purpose (the why) behind the work being conducted? Does the working environment support that purpose and would you consider it a thriving or surviving environment?

Defining what an organization wants to achieve and how it will go about achieving it is a critical step that many organizations completely overlook. We are quick to jump to process conclusions yet if an organization is going to experience a thriving Agile journey, they should first understand: how things get done around here. 

Start with Culture - the foundation that leads to thriving Agile journeys.

The 12 Agile Principles from the Agile Manifesto are building blocks for a successful, sustainable Agile journey - regardless of industry and/or department. Many pitfalls that organizations experience are due to oversight and lack of adherence to the Agile Principles. In this session, I will review the 12 Agile Principles, how they apply to all industries, common issues that lead organizations astray, and proven solutions to get back on course throughout any Agile journey.

Does your organization or team’s Agile practice feel stale? Do you believe your team can reach a higher level of performance but not sure what the next step is?

Marie Dingess and Christina Murto will share the changes we have fostered over the past couple of years to move our Agile game to the next level at Capital One.

We will highlight the “seeds of change” we planted and cultivated in our Digital Technology space as well as patterns we saw as teams evolved their practices including:

• Lean, Systems Thinking, Kanban/Scrumban
• Continuous improvement (leveraging PDCA & Improvement Kata)

We will speak to considerations for trying these practices, tools and techniques, and showcase the results:

• Quantitative improvements: decreased cycle time and increased story throughput
• Qualitative measures: improved morale, team ownership of processes, and engaged Product Owners.

We have all been there, a shiny new and improved framework is released and we must implement it, but is this always the answer to improve your Agile organization? Frameworks are needed and provide guidelines for teams but if the teams/companies do not follow the principles and fundamentals of the Agile Manifesto it makes it very difficult for the framework to be successful. The belief is that switching up the specific framework is the answer but they soon realize that the framework is not the main issue that is the driving force. This can leave the teams/companies in a tough situation after committing to a framework that they are not ready for.

I will be sharing my experiences across multiple different companies on how this assumption has let them down and how we had to return the teams back to the fundamentals to solve the issues they are experiencing.

What does it take to build an award winning enterprise mobile app that serves millions of customers? How to keep scaling the platform and delivering values to customers frequently, reliably and with quality while keeping the team happy and engaged?

Beyond coding, there are important pieces of puzzle that have to come together. This presentation offers a case study of our journey from launching the flagship mobile app for one of the country’s top financial institutions to growing the platform that consistently ships and innovates. Through our experience, the audience can gain key insights into the challenges we faced and the decisions and commitments we made along the way to foster a culture that values shipping, innovation, continuous improvement, and keeps it fun in the process.

Everything we do in life and in work can have a hiccup.  No matter how much we plan, we are bound to run into things we did not account for.  The military refers to this as “Murphy’s Law”.  But what happens when you’re graced with an unforeseen change?  Mike Tyson describes it best: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

This talk will focus on tactics within communication, transparency, and execution that teams/organizations can use after life’s curveballs have hit and it’s time to get back on track.

How can we avoid those painful awkward silences in meetings and ceremonies with large groups (big room planning, inspect & adapt/multiple team retrospectives, etc)? How can we get better participation and discussion in these meetings so that more than just the extroverts and senior team members participate? Do an ice-breaker activity! 

By getting people to move, interact, work together, and even have some friendly competition we raise the level of energy in the room and break down some introverted inhibitions. Feel less like you are pulling teeth to get people to speak up and participate. Improve the quality and depth of your discussions by getting perspectives from more team members regardless of their title or tenure.

In this lightning round we'll do a kick-off ice-breaker activity that can be used to start a large group meeting. We'll also share and discuss other ideas for group games and activities. 

Human Resources is critical to creating and nurturing a truly agile environment, and with positions like CHRO becoming ever more prominent, better positioned to make a real difference.  How can HR practitioners apply agile principles both to their own work, and to strengthening the overall adaptability and appeal of the organizations they support?

This session will explore topics from Arlen's forthcoming book The Leader's Guide to Agile HR & People Operations through a smidgen of talking and a bevy of entertaining and (largely) practical exercises.