You would most likely agree that communication is one of the key success factors in any project, regardless of their size and complexity. This highly-interactive talk shows typical communication patterns, stress the behaviors we keep repeating without even noticing and provides eye-opening insights into the ways communication can be improved. At the end of the session you will understand the most common communication issues and will be able to break those patterns and effective communication will not be just a buzzword without real meaning to you.

The ongoing challenges of creating the magical bond between team members in small and big endeavors can be elusive. What’s more, in the last few decades, this has become increasingly challenging. This presentation provides you with the much needed practical advice on how to create an effective collaborative team environment.
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The presentation follows the Nine must haves of team of leaders as appear in Michael’s book.
The Must-Haves of a High Performance Team
Must-have #1: Develop clear goals and plans
Must-have #2: Effective communication

Must-have #3: Improve and maintain positive relationships among member
Must-have #4: Clarify roles and responsibilities
Must-have #5: Enhance mutual trust
Must-have #6: Solve problems and make effective decisions
Must-have #7: Value and promote diversity
Must-have #8: Successfully manage conflict
Must-have #9: Provide development opportunities and recognition

In Hugo’s workshop, participants will create a best practice board in teams of 5-6 people. The teams go through each block of ‘The Bridge Canvas’. The goal is to share best practices, ideas and experiences. Per block, each team selects the ‘best best practice’. At the end of the workshop, each team will present the best best practices for each block.

At the start of the workshop, Hugo shares a few best practices (personal ones + from other distributed agile experts). Each person gets a handout with clear instructions. This includes some questions to stimulate thinking within the team + some best practice examples per block.

After hiking towards a glacier in Denali National Park Alaska, we were making camp near a small lake. Suddenly I heard my friend saying “Michael there’s a bear here, it is on this side of the lake”. And there he was, a ‘young’ 200 Pound Grizzly no more than 10 feet away… Influencing a bear in the Alaskan outback is quite similar to handling the bears or rather stakeholders of the modern organization – both have their own agenda, and will have you for lunch if they think it serves their interests and appetites.

In this presentation we learn best practices for leading and influencing without authority, including the three essentials model: stakeholder leadership, team orientation and individual adjustment. Do you have the proper toolset to influence the bears when you lack the authority?

How many hours does your team (Scrum Master included) spends trying to keep all the data up to date? Burndown and Burnup charts, backlogs, task boards, etc. How easy is for a team member, the product owner or your IT Director to get a glimpse of how's your project going in this precise moment? How many times did the cleaning lady messed up with you stories while cleaning the board?

Enough of excel files, flip charts and post-its to describe and present your work. It's time to move forward and start using software to help you manage your project. 

In this session, I'll demonstrate how the effective use of an integrated software tool to support the SCRUM framework, can significantly improve the productivity of everyone involved in the software development effort.

Have you ever wondered how to progressively harness focus on your goals and influence your outcomes?

Woody Zuill once famously quoted “If you could adopt only one agile practice, then let it be retrospectives. Everything else will follow”. The constantly evolving world of business in modern times demands frequent inspection and adaptation of methods and strategies in order for the latter to stay relevant. The empirical nature of agile features such assessments that can help individuals and teams adjust to constant change and establish a sustainable pace to deliver complex products.

Behold the ‘Zorro Circles’ of retrospectives to create an excellence in execution in behaviors and tactics. Discover the essentials of designing retrospectives by understanding the multi layered circles of projects' and peoples' characteristics. Experience the applicability of the ‘Zorro Circles’ in a variety of locales through real world instances and walk away with a handful of effective techniques to design moments of inspection and adaptation in your organization’s ecosystem.