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.

Organizational and team culture is rooted in implicit assumptions about how individuals relate to one another in getting work done.  To foster alignment or change, it’s critical to have open and frank discussions about what we assume and what we value: this workshop will demonstrate how to have that conversation using LEGO Serious Play

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a tool for change that’s aligned with the values, beliefs and challenges we find in business today. It can engage and inspire a work team – even an entire work force. It flips our perspective from looking at problems to be solved and invites us to examine what’s working. A focus on strengths helps us do more than perform – we transform. In this lively session, we’ll head in a new direction – away from the deficit-based approach to change where we identify problems and shortfalls. Instead, we’ll approach things from the other side.

In this session, you will:

• Learn how and why AI works
• Discover the 5D model (definition, discovery, dream, design, and delivery)
• Explore some questions that make positive change possible
• Discuss ways to incorporate AI in our daily work

Appreciative Inquiry isn’t just “happy talk.” it’s grounded in science and proven effective in large organizations and small teams around the world. It’s a way to open communication, unleash potential and create a true learning organization. AI offers a positive, strengths-based approach to organizational development and change management.

Join us and learn about the subtle shift you can choose to make – and to introduce to others – for everyone’s benefit.

After working for 25 years in advertising agencies and major networks - I believe that the software industry and the Agile community ...have something to teach / share with the advertising world.

• Agile marketing promotes experimentation and continuous improvement.
• Its actions are based on trends and in reaction to surrounding changes.
• Agile campaigns allow improved collaboration between clients and agencies.
• Discover why traditional marketing is out-of-date and how Agility will help you rapidly adapt to the market.

“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.

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.

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.

What does John F. Kennedy's "We choose to go to the moon in this decade...", the recent organizational change that you had, and your latest update on social media have in common? Have you ever thought why well-intended, perfectly valid logical ideas fail to appeal to people?

One of the best ways to communicate with people is through a story. Stories or narratives help you to connect with the hearts and minds of your audience. An emotionally engaging story affects more areas of the brain than rational, data-driven messages - meaning that they are far more likely to resonate with people you lead. Realizing this, the importance of storytelling as a tool has gained prominence in organizations.

So what sort of stories can you tell in a business context? And an eloquent leader uses different narrative patterns of storytelling to achieve different outcomes. Learn about the skill of storytelling to communicate your vision, spark action, have people collaborate at work and transform your organization.

Changing an organisation for the better can be really hard!  At times, it may seem impossible!  Why?  What can you do to make it easier?

In this session Steve will share lessons learned from his experience as a change agent attempting to introduce various agile development practices to several organisations.  With outcomes ranging from "failed dismally" to "roaring success", the audience will come away with a few laughs and some practical tips to refer to when setting out on their own journey.

I suffer from a (sometimes debilitating) condition called "I don't feel like it" syndrome.  I know what I need to do to, or what I should do, but I just don't feel like it.  So I don't do it.  The list of things I know I need to do but just don't do is long and varied, and ranges from things like tracking my spending, to exercise, to meal planning, to cleaning my house.  I understand why I should do these things, I'd like to reap the benefits of doing these things, and yet, fairly often, I choose not to do these things, because "I don't feel like it".  I'd rather drink wine.

Does that sound at all familiar?  If so, I think you'll enjoy this session.

I'll discuss what's behind the "I don't feel like it" syndrome, and how I've used agile practices to overcome it. I'll provide specific examples from my own life that can be generalized and used by anyone to get over "I don't feel like it" syndrome.  And you can still drink wine if you want to!

In this talk, Jesus invites you to take a closer look about how curiosity has transformed his professional carreer into an unlimited source of inspiration that supports his Agile journey. This inspirational talk, is a deep retrospection about live and the value of being authentic when establishing relationships with others.This experience-report has been formated in chronicles that will hopefully inspire you to connect with your authentic-self and lead you to greatness.

To win work, consultants are asked to price their work competitively. To win repeating work, consultants must do a good job. In this session, we'll explore some of the approaches Amanda has taken as a Product Owner to create great, meaningful and lean deliverables.

Together, we'll examine how traditional UX and Change Management artefacts can be tweaked to deliver more value in less time. Some examples of these tweaks include: varying the level of fidelity, varying the direction, substituting appropriate alternatives and identifying and focusing on priorities. By using the basic lean principle of prioritizing the end product, instead of the content that is produced to create and support it, you'll learn how to make the most out of the budgets that surround the activities unrelated to writing or testing code for a product or site.

While this advice may cause your standard process to be sacrificed, the quality of the resulting product and the alignment with its user's needs will not. Resulting in more bang for your (or your client's) buck.

Agile software development has drawn from a number of disciplines to come up with good practices that work well for so many teams.  At times, these practices may seem eclectic and arbitrary yet they work really well and we don't know why.  Or, we are trying to do something but our organization is "special" so we can't do it exactly like the book says.

This discussion will peel away the "software" from Agile and look at the principles behind the practices, where they come from, and give specific examples of how they work in other disciplines.  

When we focus on the principles, it becomes much easier to get the most out of the practices and tailor them for our "special" teams without loosing the benefit.

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.