Exhaustion. Numbness. Emptiness. As coaches, as scrum masters, our work is about serving others, oftentimes at the expense of ourselves. This talk is about learning to act graciously, to act kindly, to do unto ourselves as we do for our teams. We will discuss the urgency of slowing down, of leaving room to contemplate our inner world, and of "bringing calm into the motion and commotion of the world." I discuss the urgency of slowing down, the neurobiology of graciousness and compassion, and how to use practices within the contemplative-practice tree. I will also cover how to use these practices to show when self-care is falling to the wayside and how to build a foundation of compassionate graciousness. Research for this session draws upon primary sources such as Pico Iyer, Dr. Rachel Remen, Mirabai Bush, and Dr. James Doty, philosophers and contemplative thinkers such as Thomas Merton and Henry David Thoreau, and poets such as Emily Dickinson and Mary Oliver. The Dalai Lama says that the one thing without which we cannot live is kindness, and I posit that we must also show that kindness, that graciousness, to ourselves.

This talk targets Agile practitioners of all skill levels, but particularly Agile coaches and scrum masters. So many of us help others to move forward, to self-organize, but service can be exhausting. This talk is for you, to help you find practices to show that kindness, that graciousness, to yourself.

Using metrics for punitive reasons is a problem as old as time. In software, this is further complicated by the fact that people rarely agree on why we are collecting metrics in the first place. In this session we will explore how we can use metrics for good instead of evil.

By focusing on the goal of system improvement, rather than individual performance, we can begin leveraging data to make a positive difference in how we work while also delving into why we work the way we do.

This session will include real-world examples of problems that organizations create for themselves by using metrics for the wrong intent. We will also discuss examples of good metrics and how they can be used to make our lives better.

This session is not intended to offer an exhaustible list of metrics or instructions on how to improve all systems. Rather, the intent is to provide a framework on how to ensure the quantitative and qualitative metrics you use are measuring the right things and how to apply them to a system of continuous improvement. Attendees will have a repeatable framework they can apply after leaving the session.

The session is broken into two main parts.

• Part 1: Identify the right (quantitative and qualitative) metrics that will help people and teams meet outcomes or goals.
• Part 2: Create a cycle of learning and improvement that aligns people and teams to the outcomes or goals.

Not many people can say they have performed as an Analyst, Product Owner, and Scrum Master, much less in the same year, and sometimes at the same time.That has been my journey throughout 2018 and into 2019 thus far, as I made intentional decisions in pursuing my next best step, exploring where I really fit, and experiencing quite a few surprises along the way.

As a CSM and CSPO, I navigated each role taking what I learned in the classroom and implementing it as a practitioner. Being very team AND operations oriented, I have always thrived when one of these were included in my job description. 3 companies, 3 roles, and 2 organizational restructures later, I have found a career that involves both. I learned what works and doesn't work for me and my teams, as well as, what I like and dislike compared to my strengths and weaknesses, especially among changes in organizational needs and structure.

This short and sweet talk will be an overview of my journey and leave attendees with characteristics of each role to help them decide where they might fit in this agile world and tips on how to talk to your boss about your next step.

Good news: Test-driven practices have jumped the chasm to general acceptance! The bad news, though, is that while TDD, BDD, and ATDD are prominent buzzwords in the industry today, they are rife with misconceptions, with many people incorrectly assuming that being test-driven is all about testing.

In this talk, learners will leave with a clearer understanding of Test-Driven Development (TDD), Behavior Driven-Development (BDD), and Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD), and gain practical insights into how these practices can help teams develop better software. We will gain an appreciation for TDD as being primarily a specification and design technique, and how to get the whole team involved earlier in the delivery cycle using a BDD approach.

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.

How do you get people to agree on priorities when they may have different objectives? You may be facing an issue now where stakeholders are pushing against each other in order to get their work done first. What would happen if we could create an open dialog among stakeholders and have them understand different perspectives and focus on the goals of the greater good instead of just their own? Let’s face it, proper prioritization is the difference between writing code and developing valuable solutions.

In this simulation style workshop, you’ll learn practical methods for bringing stakeholders together and openly discuss their different priorities to agree on what’s most important overall. You will see first hand how a combining group discussion with proven prioritization methods such as Weighted-Shortest Job First and (WSJF) and Must Have, Should Have, Could Have and Won’t Have (MoSCoW) work.

Do you feel like Agile Scaling has become a goal rather than the means to an end for your organization? To determine where you stand on the Scaling spectrum, ask yourself a few soul-searching questions: Why do we need to scale? Is this the right time for us to scale? If you’ve checked these boxes, you may wonder “where do I go from here?”

This talk will focus on 3 areas that emerged as common themes throughout my experience working on government Agile Scaling projects and ultimately influenced the trajectory of each agency's scaling journey:

• Communicate vision consistently
• Focus on your people genuinely
• Create your own path intentionally

I've seen successes and some struggles with Agile Scaling efforts in government agencies. Regardless of the agency acronym or the frameworks used, these key elements shaped their scaling outcomes.

Summary

In this session, you’ll learn about one team’s struggle to improve collaboration and how they sought to shorten cycle time by carefully crafting an experiment with an Andon Cord. The Andon Cord is a Toyota innovation designed to empower front-line employees to recognize issues, initiate a stoppage of work, and work together as a team to quickly identify a path forward. The emergency cable strung above assembly lines became a symbol of the Toyota Way, and has widely been copied throughout the auto industry and beyond.

You’ll be introduced to metrics that show a surprising correlation between collaboration through Andon Cord pulls and Cycle Time!

One common mistake by new Agilists is to think that the product backlog is a linear list with the highest priority item on the top. As it's often the case, the reality is different. Prioritization is neither binary nor linear. Your team will be asked to work on several competing priorities, like meeting the new regulation while working on the next product milestone (the product is the company lifeline) - and your product owner will insist these are both top priority!!

In this workshop we are going to explore different tools, to ensure that our teams are working on the highest value backlog items: from Eisenhower Method to Cost of Delay, CD3 and modified Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF).

What happens when 25 product owners, developers, and quality engineers reflect on their previous sprint through the eyes of a child?

Playdoh took my teams, remote and collocated, from showing up to an obligatory meeting on their calendar to intentional interpersonal and intrapersonal dialogue.

Between the carpet and the sticky fingers, adults are usually cleaning up more Playdoh than playing with it themselves. Even to my own surprise, in this “Play Retro,” our team members connected, not only on a professional, but also on a personal level in ways they had not done before.

This session will give an overview of our experience using a “Play Retro” and leave you with tips and things to consider planning a retrospective.

Exhaustion. Numbness. Emptiness. As Agilists, all too often we are seeing teams, organizations, and people that have been transforming for a very long time, and many feel like they have no end in site. Where they were first excited about transformation and trying something new, they are now wanting to be left alone for a hot minute. Transformation isn't something to be completed but rather endured.

In this session, Erin and Yogita will help you to understand what transformation exhaustion is and how to recognize it. We'll also help you to develop--and practice!--ways to show teams their transformation progress as well as how to connect and reconnect with teams. You may have entered the session tired and footsore, but you will leave with new ideas and insight on how to transform your agile transformation.

It’s no news that we are in an ever-changing world. Heard of VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous - VUCA)? And to be successful in this environment, organizations and teams need to learn how to work with seemingly contradictory perspectives and views. This workshop will give participants a practical tool to do just that. It's no longer right or wrong, it's no longer black or white, it now depends.