What any leading software organization want ? Happy and Satisfied customers.

How to make them happy ? By rapidly delivering innovative products and services with quality which will make them feel good.

How to deliver great software ? By building teams of motivated people who discuss and share ideas with each other and have common purpose.

How to build super awesome team ? By helping them to identify common purpose, trust and collective ownership.

To build common purpose, trust and ownership within team, Join our session to know 7 techniques to build culture which inspires this.

In this session we will share ideas based on our experience in Product and Services organizations. Our session shares working techniques we tried in our day to day work with success.

This session will help audience beyond buzzwords to transform way teams rapidly deliver working software and delight customers by taking ownership. Session also shares practical tips and techniques for inspiring trust and ownership in any team.

Here is link for slides

https://www.slideshare.net/nilesh.naik/7-techniques-to-inspire-trust-and-ownership

The story goes ...

During the Agile Coach Camp at Agile India 2019, we had an interesting discussion driven by Woody Zuill around the concept of Organisational Inertia. This has been a topic of research since the early 80s with the newest research in 2000s as well. The research basically revolves around two aspects:

1. An organisation's incapability to keep up with major shifts
2. The resistance towards change

These don't necessarily stop change from happening but considerably slows down the shift. With organisations struggling to survive in a VUCA world, Organisational Inertia becomes one of the critical factors for consideration. Enter, an Agile Coach! Our industries have heavily invested in them in the recent past and continue to do so in order to help them survive in this VUCA world. Shane Hastie addresses this as the Golden Age of Agile Coaching in which coaches can help the poor souls navigate themselves during a period of turmoil. I respect that.

But my evil mind links the concepts of Organisational Inertia and the Golden Age of Agile Coaching differently; so during the Agile Coach Camp, I asked folks to run a Thought Experiment which I also mentioned in my talk during Agile India 2019.

The hypothesis is: "We can deploy Agile Coaches in organisations and hopefully the organisations will overcome their inertia in 10 years to provide a better work experience to their employees. Contrarily, if Agile Coaches cease to exist, organisations may crumble under their inertia in 5 years and the ones left will be great places to work" ... from a Behavioural Economics standpoint, the second option seems better.

Being a SLICE fundamentalist, I decided to run this hypothesis and began my experiment on 3rd June 2019, the day after I finished my last batch of ICAgile's Agile Coaching training. At the time of submitting this proposal, it hasn't been very long since I started the experiment, and it hasn't been easy to deliberately take a step back from coaching interventions. The observations have been interesting (if not amazing) so far and this is my experience report that I wish to share during Agile India 2020.

My plan is to run a set of experiments until 31st December 2019 and then decide my way ahead. I mention below the observations so far that I wish to share in my talk but there may be other experiments that I'll share if provided a platform at Discuss Agile Day Pune 2019.

This session will provide Persistent Systems view on DevOps which includes the fundamentals of Continual Integration, Continual Testing, Continual Deployment and Continual Learning. An important aspect of every Lean journey is the mindset of people which would be detailed out here. A case study covering the DevOps transformation journey of one of the programs in the organization will be covered here. The audience would be walked through the challenges faced and the program’s exploratory journey leveraging Lean principles. This session would also cover how the lean culture is practiced and promoted at Persistent.

Organization's culture is the sum of belief and behaviors of all employees. It is built on values and drives Organizational effectiveness through Competitive advantage. The visible part of cultural iceberg drives us to think what we see and believe in our Organization constitutes the culture. There is also big portion of cultural iceberg that is not visible to the employees that drives the hard reality.

Culture is a soft concept and like strategy it cannot be copied. Is there a way to measure culture? If not, then how do we say whether particular culture is good or bad? As an individual how often do we change our behavior to adapt to a new situation? If changing one’s behavior is tough, then how difficult is to change behavior of big Organization?

Come join me to visualize and understand a world of culture delivered to you in a capsule. You would not only multiply your knowledge but will go home with resonating thoughts that would drive you to do more of cultural transformation at work place!!

Mindset and Culture change is at the core of agile and DevOps adoption. While we all know it’s importance, there is no single approach or process to make this change happen.

We have embarked on a mindset transformation Journey at our workplace.

In my session I will cover pragmatic approach of bringing in mindset and culture change. An approach which we are adopting in our workplace and seeing the change resulting in multifold benefits. You will learn Echo system of Mindset, Culture and Behaviors and leave the session with multiple ideas and an insights on how to make cultural and mindset shift in your organization.

In Agile ways of delivering software products we often hear people talking about adopting 'Best' practices to improve their delivery. Common buzz in the industry is that look for BEST practices in Agile ways of working we should look for BEST practices.

If you try looking for BEST practices definition in Wiki you get -

A best practice is a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to any alternatives because it produces results that are superior to those achieved by other means or because it has become a standard way of doing things, e.g., a standard way of complying with legal or ethical requirements.

In my view, Best Practice must surely be able to demonstrate a superior outcome achieved because of the way the thing has been done.

If “Company A” had success with a particular initiative then should the same approach be followed for “Company B” to attain the same result ?

And most importantly do we really need to look for Agile BEST practices ?

Most people struggle with real-life scenarios that seem to make Agile look un-realistic and blame other people or processes for the failures.

I'll go through some of these most common scenarios - talking about what we do wrong and how we can overcome such challenges using SCRUM values.

To help my case - I will be taking 3 case studies that cover some frequently encountered scenarios and take a deep dive on how we can better respond to such situations and events.

In today’s digital era Organizations have to rely on software applications to drive their business growth. Defining new strategies to increase their customer base and new revenue channels is important. It is critical for an Organization to enhance and manage their software applications.

Organizations have to build Application Maintenance and Support (AMS) Teams to ensure all applications and softwares are running seamlessly.

Everything around us is evolving so quickly including technologies, market conditions and customer expectations. Merely fixing bugs and maintaining software is not sufficient. Enhancing user experience, improving performance, maintaining sustainability and staying competitive are crucial for organization success.

Agile Methodology is based on empirical process and it enables organizations to adapt and respond to changes quickly in Product Development Cycle. Responding to customers promptly is important for AMS as well. Can Organizations apply Agile Principles to Application Maintenance and Support? Besides responding promptly to customer can AMS be leveraged for gathering and collecting customer data efficiently to define user centric solutions?

I will be unfolding answers to these questions during my Presentation using my own journey as Change Agent. I will share how organizations can evolve Application Maintenance and Support teams as part of their Agile Transformation Journey.

Digital disruption is changing the world in which we live and work. New technologies have created new markets that, in turn, create new customers and new competitors. And those customers and competitors are driving new expectations.

Digital transformation is a natural progression from traditional business transformation, one more suited to the modern world.

For a Digital transformation to be successful, we need a high level of employee and customer buy-in. Resistance to change can derail even the most carefully planned digital strategy and leave investments in flames.

We need absolute clarity about digital’s demands, galvanized leadership, unparalleled agility, and the resolve to bet boldly.

Narratives or storytelling has always been central to human experience – it's how we explain and make sense of the world. It takes intuitiveness and empathy on the part of the storyteller to connect with the audience.

An effective narrative can catch our attention and to help us to apprehend the world while touching us, makes it a powerful tool and a valuable instrument for leaders.

Can leaders leverage this craft element of business narratives to be the key to achieving employee and customer buy-in ?

Can we motivate our workforce through a narrative and make them believe in the desired outcome, and see what’s in it for them?

Can business narratives enhance collaboration and innovation?

In this session I will discuss a story of a digital transformation program how we have used narratives to

Lead team into the Future

Communicate vision and instill Organizational Values

Transmit Knowledge and Understanding

Improve collaboration and Innovation

Responsiveness is new reality. Transparency and visibility are new must have for leaders. Exploration and adaption of new technologies is new norm. How do we build such a responsive organization?

Three elements to build responsive organization-

• Adaptive leadership
• Value driven portfolio
• Organization design

Five steps for meaningful digital transformation

• Focus on outcomes that matter
• Clear measure of success and data driven decision making
• Evolutionary architecture and lean change approach
• Building autonomous teams
• Adaptive leadership and learning culture

Target outcomes

• Build learning org
• Ability to attract and retain talent
• Maximize the value
• Steering mechanism for reacting to change

This talk gives overview on how Leadership at different levels in an Organization can set tone for Business Agility. Agile coach can mentor leaderdership to be key change agent for Business Agility

Micro Abstract: A single demo is worth a 100 meetings

Abstract:
Dojo Delivery Agility is an abstract (non prescriptive ) Agile product development framework built to augment the Dojo way of working across teams. Built on the concept of hyper sprints, Dojo Delivery Agility enables teams to build “E-shaped” skills to unlock the next level of productivity and predictability. Dojo Delivery Agility as a process framework is crafted on the fundamentals of SCRUM, XP, and Agile Dojo.

Agile Dojo is well known coaching strategy but this talk is about our experiences with respect to our experiments with Dojo as a product development framework across different domains. Our experiences include mostly learning from failures and successes and hence the session would be driven by case studies. We will also be discussing our studies on teams that adopted Dojo as a way of working which showcased substantial improvement in predictability, productivity, and technical agility. We will also touch upon how Dojo acted as a constructive constrain to triggers change for good. Last but not the least we will also discuss our SENSI program which helped us scale our Dojo Delivery Agility capability of practitioners

SHE QC is an effective technique to structure your never-ending grooming meetings. The SHE QC style of grooming is an effective style for complex stories especially when we need different viewpoints to be considered. One can use the technique to structure their 3 Amigo discussion to elaborate and define scenarios. It is a highly structured & time-boxed grooming technique used by advanced engineering teams to learn, define what needs to develop and remove any second-degree ignorance - “I don’t know I don’t know something”. The technique enables teams to groom stories in a more continuous manner and ideal for teams operating in a hyper sprint mode.

So, you’ve been certified as a Scrum Master or have accepted the role.
For some time, you’ve been in the rhythm of facilitating events, ensuring artifacts are in a good state and actively supporting the team.

You’re considered a mentor, a coach, a facilitator and a servant-leader. Yet, you’re now wondering “how do I take it to the next level?”

Beyond the day-to-day Scrum activities, a Scrum Master’s toolkit will contain various facilitation tools, teaching techniques, systemic understanding and exercises. And it will continue to grow and evolve. That’s continuous improvement after all!

In this hands-on workshop, come explore various techniques, qualities and tools that a Scrum Master has in their toolkit to engage their teams in fun and interactive ways. You’ll learn three key elements of each technique to help cultivate camaraderie, provide clarity and increase the collaboration of your teams.

You’ll not only enhance your learning, but also find ways to motivate your teams to improve interactions that lead to self-organization and the enthusiasm to take themselves to the next level.

When you attend a conference and see a visual artist whip up a masterpiece during a keynote or session that captures everything in one engaging snapshot - have you ever thought “I could never draw like that!” or wondered “how did they do that?”

Well, until recently that was me. But, in learning this skill, I’ve learned that it comes down to a few basic elements, lots of practice and letting go!

There’s also proven science behind why we find visualization like this so appealing. It’s a great way to turn complex ideas into a quick, universal and simple communication method.

Attend this hands-on session to learn key elements of sketching, as we practice tips and techniques so you too can do it with confidence!

The most common issue in any relationship is the communication barrier. Everyone experiences love differently, and it’s easy to miss the mark when it comes to showing that you care. With a little help from The 5 Love Languages, you can learn to identify the root of your conflicts, give and receive love in more meaningful ways, and grow closer than ever. Your Love Language profile will explain your primary love language, what is means, and how you can use it to connect to others. It is a very important aspect for a coach to learn love languages.

As coaches, our focus on any Agile transformation is limited to measuring IT Output (e.g. Velocity, Defects, Lead Time, Cycle Time etc.)

However the real value from Agility an organization can reap benefits are whether Agile has really harvested Business Outcomes or not. In my talk, I will talk about how to move from a focus on IT Output to Business Outcomes

In my talk, I will talk about how to move focus from IT Output to Business Outcomes.

Few important areas, I cover include :

• What is a Business Outcome?
• How Business Outcome contributes to Value Realization?
• Who formulates Business Outcomes?
• How an Agile Coach facilitate the achievement of Business Outcome
• Traceability between IT Output- Business Outcome - Value Realization
• Business Outcomes with examples (NPS, Release frequency etc.)

Once you are introduced to an Agile Framework, it is a common practice to refer to Waterfall methods as the outdated and senile grandfather, but at the same time blaming the parent organization for lacking the right "Agile mindset" or that SCRUM isn't enough for real-life scenarios.

Here we ignore the common mistakes that made the traditional Project Management fail and how we are simply re-packaging it more often than actually going through the shift of imbibing the mindset transition required.

We still have resource planning, utilization monitoring and people management to be done. But with no Project Managers - how do we respond to this data. Most people continue older methods assuming Agile doesn't address these situations. I would like to talk about how we can be more "Agile" with our "management"

When we speak of Scrum framework, the 3-3-5 structure is imbibed in our memories. The 3 roles, 3 Artifacts and 5 events are known to all. When we talk of processes, learnings, improvements, most of the teams confine themselves within the limits of 3-3-5. How many of us realize Product Backlog Refinement lays the foundation of the Release/Sprint planning. Do teams really give the right importance to PBR, or do they feel it distracts them from the their current sprint work? How can PBR be more effective and help teams plan better, be more predictable, help in being more productive, and encourage the teams to take calculated risks when needed - these are few of the things we would discuss during the session.

We conducted with more than 40+ Scrum Masters across the globe in one of the organizations I was associated with, to collect the challenges w.r.t PBR. During this session, we will discuss those practical challenges, and tried and tested recommendations.