Historically, Project Managers (PMs) and other middle managers have hustled in a bureaucratic system to drive teams to deliver value. As organizations transition from a project to product model, where can these leaders best add value in a fast-moving, Agile and entrepreneurial world? In this new and exciting world, middle managers are enabling rapid delivery of value and successful business outcomes via the creation of the Agile Value Management Office™. Learn how an Agile VMO™ drives business agility through small batches, frequent releases, and continuous adaptation. We'll explore how to:

• Create a collaborative management team-of-teams
• Bring Lean discipline to product portfolio prioritization
• Establish an End-to-End team model of resource management
• Track in-flight product work using a Visual Management System

We'll explore the transition for PMs and other leaders into this exciting role: facilitating the delivery of flow, value, and innovation end-to-end on the Agile VMO™, even as they support their Agile teams in the quest for business agility.

2019 will be the year of Big Agile, where large adopters like General Motors, the Department of Defense, the State of Michigan, Lockheed Martin, and others, who have combined IT budgets exceeding 100 Billion dollars, have all announced their desire to “go agile” at a scale not yet seen in our community. Are technology leaders who cut their teeth in a low-trust, command-and-control, high-documentation environment prepared to make a successful transformation? What will Big Agile look like, and how will it affect the rest of the community?

This will be our industry’s biggest challenge, and I've been studying it for years. As the large adopters in the federal government and corporate sector begin to adopt agile, they’ll bring their habits, culture, and bureaucracies with them, and they need to get in front of the wave.

Just testing in production

The Lean in Agile for Women session is designed to explore some of the additional challenges women face in today’s workplace and to provide unique techniques to help women empower themselves and each other.

This exploratory workshop brings women together to discuss shared experiences to identify barriers and to explore techniques derived from Lean and Agile values to generate insight and facilitate targeted behavior change.

Lean In Agile is a community organization created to raise the value and visibility of women within the Lean and Agile spaces and beyond. Join us to experience the LIA difference and walk away with a greater toolkit for personal empowerment as well as the potential to be part of facilitating community and organizational change.

For many of us, legacy code is a fact of life. Code without tests -- no safe way to make changes, no safety net, no hope of untangling the web of accumulated ugliness, an incomplete understanding (or less) of how it really behaves. And your next set of changes is just going to add to the garbage pile and make it worse. You need tests so you can safely make changes, but you can't add tests without changing the code. It is a chicken-and-egg problem.

So how do you turn legacy code into code you can change confidently? Slowly, one step at a time. Join Gene as he shares his experiences working with a monolithic codebase that was so bad it made national news. He'll go over the steps he and his team used to refactor the code safely by using mocking frameworks, mutation testing, and patience to build an understanding of how the code worked so that they could change it confidently.

This talk is for anyone that has inherited legacy code that they aren't confident in and wants to make it something they can work on and improve. You'll leave with some tools and techniques that will help you change your legacy code into something maintainable.

One of the things I like about AgileDC is that I see a lot of familiar faces. Not just familiar from previous AgileDC events, but from other Agile events in town, other conferences, Meetups and such. I also go to local DevOps events, and I see familiar faces there too, but I don't observe much overlap between the two. In this talk I will discuss whether this division is real, or perhaps just a figment of my imagination, whether we as an Agile community should care, and what we should do about it.

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.

Have you tidied up your personal life with Marie Kondo and are now wondering how to achieve the same effect in your work life? Do you have the feeling that the most valuable product backlog items (PBIs) are getting lost under a mountain of old stories, bugs, and tasks? Maybe you know a change is needed, but feel completely overwhelmed about where to start? If so, join us to learn how to make your product better through the life changing magic of tidying up your backlog.

We’ll start by exploring the costs of a large, cluttered product backlog and share a short quiz you can use to gauge the current state of your own backlog. Next, we’ll cover how we’ve adapted the KonMari method and introduce five easy steps you can take to get started in your tidying process. We'll share real-life examples along the way, calling out potential pitfalls to avoid (don’t become a storage expert!), and illustrating how story mapping may be the magical backlog equivalent to Kondo’s “vertical folding” technique. By the end of the session, you’ll know the specific next steps to take so that you too can realize the many benefits of a tidied-up product backlog: improved visibility, increased self-organization, and easier decision-making.

DevSecOps uses application security practices that have been around for a while. The innovation of DevSecOps is incorporating security into the daily workflow of the team rather than leaving them to the end of a release like many legacy processes do. Shifting security left is made possible by the ability to automate many aspects of security testing and verification. DevSecOps leverages DevOps practices to make application security a first-class citizen in the practices of modern software product development. DevSecOps starts with a culture change mindset of cross-functional teams creating software through collaboration and fast feedback cycles.

The security in DevSecOps starts before the code is written by using techniques like threat modeling and risk analysis to help figure out who might want to attack you and how they might do that. This often ignored security practice can be enabled by following the DevSecOps practices of having a cross-functional team involved in the process from the beginning, including security professionals.

Next, DevSecOps maps application security practices into the build pipeline for a project in order to provide quick feedback about the security posture for any change made to the software. By using automation to allow the team to move quickly while maintaining confidence in the health of the code base, DevSecOps extends that health check to include application security checks. While automation can be used to make security data collection easier it is important to understand what security practices still require a human being.

This talk focuses on how, when, and where practices should be incorporated into a build pipeline to get the most value out of your security practices through automation. It explores what manual security work still needs to be done by a person and how to maximize value while minimizing the effort of human beings.

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.

Imagine you are asked to sit in on a team’s sprint review and retrospective. The team has been having difficulty forming and the Scrum Master has asked you to observe the team dynamics during these two sessions. Are you simply going to watch what’s going on or is there more you can do? Perhaps you are seeing interactions and team dynamics at play without truly realizing what you are observing. And when you do observe, are you injecting your own biases into those observations? Observation is a powerful tool, but one which we may not take advantage of to its true potential. After all, what exactly should we be observing, anyway?

By learning how to expand our observational skills in a non-biased and non-judgmental manner, we can gain a deeper understanding of team dynamics and interactions allowing us to offer more meaningful and impactful support, coaching, and empathy. Because there are many observational aspects that pass us by, the best way to become more observant is through deliberate practice. So, let’s practice together with a group exercise in a fun and safe setting!

In this highly interactive workshop, we’ll start by sharing tools and tips to make you a better observer. Then we’ll ask for a small group of volunteers (“builders”) to be observed performing a brief task. The remaining attendees will practice applying the observation techniques, and, after the builders finish, will share their observations in small groups. We’ll conclude with a full-group debrief and discussion of the key takeaways and opportunities to improve our effectiveness and observations.

If you’re looking for new ways to connect with your team, to enhance your agilist toolkit, or simply participate in an informative and interactive workshop, this session is for you!

In this interactive workshop we will examine multiple examples of Antipatterns observed in real-world Kanban boards. In each case we will identify the issues and discuss ways to improve the situation. We will review a number of better alternatives and see how the improvements map to the core principles of Kanban such as visualization, managing flow, and making policies explicit. Brand new to Kanban? Learning by example is a great way to get started! A long-time Kanban veteran? Come to see how many antipatterns you recognize and help firm up our Kanban Antipattern taxonomy and nomenclature!

Kanban is an extremely versatile and effective Agile method that has seen significant growth in popularity over recent years. Kanban’s flexibility has led to widespread adoption to manage business processes in disparate contexts such as HR, loan processing, drug discovery, and insurance underwriting, in addition to Information Technology. Like snowflakes, no two Kanban boards are alike. The downside to this flexibility is there is no well-known and easily accessible library of patterns for designing effective Kanban boards. Like Apollo engineers, teams are expected to design their board starting from first principles. Unfortunately, sometimes teams get stuck with board designs that may not provide the visibility and insight into their workflow they hope to see. Worse, some designs actually may serve only to obscure the situation. Working within the limitations of an electronic board can exacerbate the problem even further. Is all hope lost? Certainly not!

Let’s learn more about effective Kanban system design by examining what to avoid and why. Learning by example is effective and fun!

Date driven behaviors are common in many pre-agile organizations. They are as bad as sin and produce bad outcomes when considered through a long range lens. This presentation targeted to managers and leaders in organizations in the early stages of agile transformation. Scott will lead an entertaining and provocative look at how classical date driven behaviors often produce outcomes that are the opposite of what those leaders ultimately desire. Scott will suggest an experiment to focus on the virtue of frequently delivering incremental value as an alternative to those date driven sins.

It’s the latest and greatest business bingo term, the Minimum Viable Product, or MVP! It even has its own children now, like Minimum Loveable Products (M♥️Ps), Minimum Marketable Products (MMPs), and Minimum Marketable Features (MMFs). It’s made it up to the executive level, and almost every organization I work with these days has at least heard of the MVP.

But almost no one actually does it right. Most just map the name onto old Project Management concepts of “this is what I want in my first release”. Like Agile itself, MVP is a mindset shift. It’s not like anything most of us have ever done before.

• Do your “MVPs” take less than a month to build? If not, you’re doing them wrong.
• Do your customers pay you to build your “MVPs”? If not, you’re doing them wrong.
• Do your “MVPs” make your users light up with joy? If not, you’re doing them wrong.

I'll show you a build and release prioritization technique, based off of Lean Startup workshops I’ve been running since 2010, that can be done in hours - not days - and which will produce a true Agile Design that your teams can implement, in true iterative fashion.

People don't like being told what to do, especially knowledge workers. Yet in many work settings we give feedback that is directive in nature. What would it be like to receive feedback that, instead of making us ashamed of our failures, helped us to learn and grow? What would it be like to give feedback that enabled deep and sustained learning and growth in another person, while still being perfectly honest?

During this talk you will learn about Developmental Feedback, which enables the giver of the feedback to be clear and speak truth, and enables the receiver of the feedback to absorb it without defensiveness, and with a sense of invitation to learn and grow. You will learn about a variety of feedback types, how to have a "shared sensemaking conversation," what Impact Feedback and "The Story I Tell Myself" feedback actually are, and review sample dialogues. We will explore the conditions necessary for effective developmental feedback conversations, such as psychological safety and timeliness. You will emerge with a practical tool you can use with anyone (not just at work) to speak your truth while respecting the other person’s humanity, leading to lasting change and deeper relationships.

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.

If I were to ask you to recommend a standardized agility enablement methodology or framework that leverages the application of the agile manifesto to support the delivery of software which one would you recommend? I too asked myself such questions when I realized that I needed to select a license that would equip me with the Agile framework tools needed to enable organizational agility. I have discovered that all my licenses availed the tools that charted my way towards the implementation and effective agility transformation by adopting the agile manifesto.

As we continue to enable organizational agility, we have learnt that 'thought leadership' and 'decisive decision making' is an invaluable component for teams that are at the nascent or maturity phases of their agile transformation journey. Recently, I had the honor of participating in a very elightening and informative agility enablement session that was hosted by the co-author of the Agile Manifesto - Arie Van Bennekum CPF at the British Computer Society in the UK. I came away with lessons that affirmed my belief that 'one size does not fit all' when it comes to selecting agile frameworks and tools. Of these lessons, I will curate a session that equips agile practitioners with answers to questions like "what is agnostic agile?", "does agnostic agile work?", "what does it take to implement agnostic agile?", and "how can you transform using this methodology?".

My talk will be delivered using a real agilist story that leverages Joseph campbell's stages of the hero's journey where we shall review the hero's 'call to adventure', 'the initiation act, and 'the return act'.

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.