Take a recently acquired high-profile client with global stakeholders, insert a very aggressive timeline for a complex problem, throw a global team of researchers, designers and developers at it, and see what happens!

Wonderful things can happen when multi-disciplinary teams are engaged on intense, complex projects using Agile methods. But, tight timeframes magnify problems that otherwise would have been easily worked through, including: internal and external team dynamics; communication challenges; and time zone differences. We will share with you the good, the bad and the ugly of what happened, and what we learned from our experience.

“They are resisting the changes I am trying to implement!” It’s a common refrain when people don’t embrace a change with the speed or enthusiasm desired. Do you keep pushing, give up or call in the big guns? How you respond to resistance can doom the change to failure, or boost the chance of success.
As coaches, we introduce new ideas in many different contexts. Relying on positional authority (our role as coach), or calling on outside authority (the managers who hired us) isn't likely to get those ideas a fair hearing.
In this talk, Mike will help you see resistance from a new perspective. By understanding how much influence you have, what forces are interacting around you and seeing different ways to re-frame your issues you can still get your message across without “inflicting help” on others.

In many Agile environments testing is either pushed to the end of a Sprint or is handled in a separate Sprint. This “mini-waterfall” approach to testing can be the root cause for a number of problems, including stress for the testers, delays in getting to Potentially Shippable Product Increment, missed testing, and team interruptions.

During this session we will look at 8 practical techniques that teams can try to help them deliver higher quality products. We will be using Jenga blocks as a tool to explore the techniques that can be used to improve quality.

As a leader are you struggling to find a way for your team to improve and have that change stick? Here’s a thought: What if the point isn’t to have change stick?

Successful organizations look at change as the way we work. This is where Leading for Change comes in. Leading for Change requires all of us, regardless of our title, to take a different approach in leading ourself, the people around us and the system.

Drawing from my upcoming book of the same title, I will help you start thinking of leadership in a different light. We will start by looking at how you lead yourself, then expand into leading those around you. Finally we will examine what it means to lead a system so you, the people and the system will never stop improving.

Leading for Change is about providing the leadership in support

Continuous delivery is the capability to release new features or changes at any time, dictated only by the needs of the business and not restricted by technical limitations. Some companies use this to deploy dozens of times a day, others release less often.

The benefits of continuous delivery are fairly obvious today. Companies that have the ability to release on demand have a distinct advantage over their competitors who can’t.

The challenge is planning the journey. Given where we are today, what steps should we be taking? What measurements should we be tracking now to know if we’re moving in the right direction? What do we need to change in our process to make this happen?

In this workshop, we will explore several milestones and measurements for continuous delivery to allow participants to create a roadmap for their specific environments.

Mike has been helping a variety of companies move towards continuous delivery, from startups to the Fortune 500 and brings that experience to the discussion.

This workshop shows how Test-Driven Development (TDD) is used to enable emergent design. Using a simple but representative example in Java, the presenter will demonstrate how a low-level design naturally emerges when using the TDD cycle of test/code/refactor. The audience will be involved by suggesting the next steps and also by pairing with the presenter.

Note that the goal of the session isn't necessarily to have a complete working example at the end, but to illustrate the process of low-level design through TDD.

The Agile Manifesto - its values and principles - describe an environment of teamwork. But are agile practices just for teams? Can anyone be agile? Is there such a thing as "Personal Agility?" Is it something that everyone can apply to their work as individual contributors?

As a solo practitioner, Sue Johnston has been experimenting to discover whether "Agile for One" is possible. If so, what does it look like? Can a team of one perform better by adopting an agile stance? Does that improve interactions, flow, delivery, quality and all that good stuff? Most importantly, does it create an environment where work is value-driven, meaningful and fun? And does it contribute to a sustainable pace?

In this interactive session, you'll be introduced to a workable model for personal agility. You'll explore ways to adopt and adapt agile practices for individual work. And you'll leave with your own personal agility framework.

In the spirit of an experience report, Sue will also share results of her recent experiment with Agile for One and how agile values, principles and practices contributed - or didn't - to her success.

As a customer how do you define “value”? What does it take for a business to shift Value from "Meh" and create “Wow” experiences?

Why does the software industry struggle to deliver valuable results? Every team I work with talks about delivering valuable features. When I question how they define value I might get text book answers about ROI, sales, efficiencies or other quantifiable measures. Although they are important measures, I don’t believe “Wow” comes from anything you can quantify. If that’s true then how do we get from Value to Wow without going broke?

We will start by examining two similar customer experiences. Both experiences are valuable, but one is over the top in terms of “Wow!”. Using these as a basis we will examine the system of delivering value at the corporate, team, employee and customer levels. There’s no magic formula to creating “Wow!” moments but if can align your system you might have a chance of creating a few.

If we examine traditional goal setting methods, like SMART, we see that we've been encouraged for over 30 years to make sure that our goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Based.  The theory being that if our goals meet these criteria, we will be more like to actually achieve them.  From there, we take the actions necessary, we measure, and ta-da! we achieve our goals.

Only, in a large number of cases, we don't quite get there. A few things can end up happening:  

1. We get tired of pursuing the goal and give up
2. We pursue the goal, but can't quite seem to achieve it, even though we know what we want and how to get it
3. We achieve the goal, but find that somehow, the results are not what we thought they would be

Examples abound both in our personal lives and in organizations.  We work hard to get a promotion, only to find that we aren't satisfied with the new role.  We commit to a healthy lifestyle, only to give up on it after a couple of weeks.  Organizations set goals for improvement, and don't achieve them, even though everyone did the right thing.

What if we are actually motivated by how we think achieving a goal will make us feel, rather than by the achievement itself?  So really, when we were working for that promotion, what we actually wanted was to feel powerful and capable (even if we weren't conscious of it).  We thought that the promotion would make us feel that way, but it didn't.

Human beings are uniquely motivated by feelings -- we do things that we think will make us feel good, and avoid things that we think will make us feel bad.

What does this have to do with agile development you ask?  Well, in my experience as a coach and a ScrumMaster, I've watched teams struggle to adopt agile practices (even though they seemed to really want to) and I've watched team members resist implementing practices that have obvious, undeniable benefits, and wondered what the barriers were.  The common thread in all of these teams seems to be the lack of understanding of how they want to feel on an agile team -- ultimately the "what's in it for me?" is missing for them.  It's like leaving the "so that" off of the user story.

It's not enough to just want to "be agile".  We have to know why we want to be agile, and specifically, what we as individuals will get out of an agile transition.

In this workshop, we will use user stories as a basis for setting goals, with a particular focus on using the "so that" to identify how we as team members, want to feel when work on an agile team.

Culture is often stated as the top obstacle to transforming into an agile organisation.  This misunderstood obstacle can limit teams in reaching their full potential or even expel any hopes for meaningful change. During this session, we’ll explore ways to uncover the dominant culture of your organization, identify the contrasts with an agile culture and how to empower every individual to lead change initiatives.

Elles permettent de partager les connaissances entre des personnes qui exercent le même métier, mais elles sont aussi un moyen d’apprendre sur vous, votre écosystème d’équipes et votre organisation. J’élaborerai sur les diverses façons de mener une communauté de pratique, les meilleures pratiques, et nous les expérimenterons ensemble.

The White Bead Corporation is looking for Above Average Employees for expanded production.  On the job training provided.  Earn bonuses!  The White Bead Corporation is a proud producer of shiny, perfect, white beads. We work hard to meet our customer’s exacting demands and won’t settle for anything less than perfection. We need Willing Workers who are Above Average Employees to handle this rigorous task in an inspiring environment. Apply within.

Come watch, and participate, in the classic experiment made famous by Dr. Deming. Let’s explore the link between typical management techniques, human factors and overall quality.

Are you curious about agile and agility? Are you just starting out and have more questions after your “boot camp” training?  Bring your questions and build the content of the discussion in real time.  I’ll demonstrate agile practices in a highly interactive workshop using your own content.  No two workshops are the same, because the list of questions are always different!  You, the audience, will build the backlog (content/questions), I will estimate them, and then you prioritize the backlog.  I’ll go in 10-minute “sprints” taking items off the backlog, answering your questions and addressing your content. AFter, we’ll have a review and a retro.  We’ll get as many “sprints” in as we can before our time is up.  You walk away with your questions answered, and a “live” demo of what agility looks like in practice.

Every guru, philosopher, and management leader out there says the first step to Leadership is taking Responsibility.  But none of them tell you how!  We will explore the research-driven approach that provides clear steps on how to take Responsibility in any situation – work, home, or life.

This Workshop is targeted to all team members who wish to explore and expand their Leadership capabilities.  While initially believed to be targeted at managers and those in “leading” roles or positions, it will become clear that anyone can exhibit leadership, regardless of their role, by demonstrating responsibility in their own actions.