“Move fast and break things.” — Mark Zuckerberg

Mobile is no longer a hobby for companies. In that world, speed is the key. My company embraced the principle of “welcoming changing requirements, even late in development.” It’s allowed us to grow, and we have accomplished some amazing things.

It’s also caused some challenges for teams. They felt the pain of this pace, and our clients were frustrated by delayed releases.

This presentation describes a 3-month case study I ran to measure things like team communication, productivity, and quality while implementing Scrum for the first time. The results were convincing, and allowed us to learn what happens when you value speed more than anything else.

I hope you’ll join me in seeing how we learned to work smarter instead of harder.

The stereotype of technical professionals as inarticulate, socially inept geniuses inventing problems to solve is unkind and inaccurate. Yet the Dilbert image persists. So do jokes like the one about the engineer sentenced to death on the guillotine, who watches the instrument of death malfunction, then tells the operators how to fix it.

Why do people make fun of engineers and those with their mindset? Do people wired and trained to analyze and solve problems and focus on the mechanics of a situation frustrate those whose brains are wired differently? And how does the engineer’s way of dealing with individuals and interactions - that first value of the Agile Manifesto - sometimes get in the way of team collaboration and productivity?

In this interactive session, we'll show a little empathy for engineers and other analytical folk whose neurological wiring makes them seem different from the rest of humanity. We'll also explore how those with the engineering mindset can develop their own empathy and consciously adopt behaviours that amplify their value to their teams and organizations, make them more effective leaders - and make their own lives easier by positioning themselves for understanding.

Join Sue in a lively exploration of what can happen when engineers and technical professionals shift their mindset from solving problems to creating impact.
You will leave this session with an appreciation of:

• How to make your ideas meaningful to others by taking their perspective
• How shifting your language from "What?" to "So What?" helps people connect the dots
• Why giving up the need to be smart may be the smartest thing you ever do
• Techniques you can use to take someone else's perspective.

Ben Linders said: "if you want to solve the problems that you are having, and deliver more value to your customers, you have to change the way you do your work. That is why agile promotes the usage of retrospectives: To help teams to solve problems and improve themselves!" 

In this workshop I will walk you through the reasons, concepts, phases, tips and tricks of agile retrospectives and everything that happen behind the scenes. We'll share the space and learn together how to make this event a great one in a practical, engaging, fun and interactive manner.

Are you ready for the challenge?  

You're a Manager or Executive not a ScrumMaster - what is the role of Leadership in an Agile Organization? You've seen the Dan Pink video on Motivation and are mystified as to how to help.

Join a panel of experienced Agile Coaches for a discussion and Q&A of their experiences as coaches. Each of the panelists has a different background, and a unique journey into their role as an Agile Coach. Along the way, they've each built up a wide and diverse set of skills, from their careers, interactions, and experiences. 

What have some successes been?
How do we even define success for ourself, as an Agile Coach?
More importantly (and hopefully more entertaining), will be some of the lessons learned... We'll explore what was tried, but had a surprising and unexpected outcome. 
And, we'll discuss some of the ways experienced coaches continue to learn, share, grow, and develop everyday!

Agile is alive and well in the technical sphere, but why should we stop there?  At the root of it teams from every discipline are simply a group of people working together to reach their goals. Their subject matter is unique but the challenges are not.  We are all normal.

Rob Villeneuve is a software developer turned CEO, and who used Agile to empower a team of 50+ at rebel.com.  This first hand account will share the transition story of rebel.com from a few agile teams into an Agile Organization.  We will explore the rewards of thinking agile at every level, from leadership to the front line, and Rob will share experiences from each department at Rebel embarking on their own Agile journey.  If you wish others in your organization would simply try agile, or would improve their understanding of why you agile, then you may have something to learn from the cross-training experiences of introducing agile to non-technical teams.

 Rob has introduced agile to teams of many sizes, disciplines, and experience levels including: Board of Directors, Leadership Teams, Sales, Marketing, Finance & Accounting, Customer Service/Call Centre, Software Development, Network Operations, and Architects (Building Architects).

Just as MSWord16 doesn't work on a laptop with Windows XP, some new methods of working are failing to deliver on their promises because we're trying to install them in environments that need an upgrade.

Join Sue Johnston in a lively exploration of what happens when traditional thinking gets in the way of innovation and progress towards organizational goals. We can't create positive and lasting change through action, alone. We need to change the way we - and those around us - think about our teams and our work.

You'll leave with:

• an appreciation of the role of mindset on project success

• a fresh approach to influencing others to produce good outcomes

• techniques to shift from unilateral control to collaborative learning

Come and learn how to provide the operating system for highly productive teams. Warning: There will be hard thinking about soft skills.

One the most significant ceremony of any Agile Team is Daily Standup where the team members get together and plan for their day. But quite often the daily standup turns into a zombie status update meeting where team members come together to blurt out their updates and walk away to their desk without ever maximizing the benefit of that meet up.

In this session I will share a case study of how we created a simple experiment that turned into Standup Poker and revolutionized our Daily Standup. This technique helped us uncover true insights of teams progress and got the team talking about strategic planning and plan to remove any impediments as a "team" on daily basis to accomplish their sprint goal and commitments.

We learnt that when team members started using this technique, hidden impediments and dependencies started to emerge and team members organically started to re-plan and prioritize their work to accomplish the Sprint Goal. Product Owner also found great value in this technique as this helped them see the teams true progress and engage with the team to re-prioritize user stories and even take a story out of the sprint if required. Scrum Masters started to observe a trend in the confidence level over the span of the sprint and brought that information to Sprint Retrospective to discuss and brainstorm ways to improve and keep the confidence levels high throughout the sprint. The discussions and observations due to Standup poker resulted in teams committing better and more confidently during Sprint Planning and got into the rhythm of always accomplishing their sprint goal, but more importantly they started improving everyday and got into "continuous improvement" mode.

The content, exercise and message of this session highlight the agile principles of individuals and interactions over process and tools and fostering the mindset of continuous improvement.

In this session we will share examples, stories and experiences from trying the Standup Poker and how this simple technique converted a bunch of individuals into a TEAM !!!

3.5 years ago Seedbox Technologies decided to embrace agile methodologies as its way to develop web based products, get them out faster, survive and thrive competition.

It's all started in a traditional fashion:  external consultants were hired to teach employees the agile mindset and how to use agile methodologies like Scrum and Kanban when developing web based products. Project Managers got trained and became Product Owners, experienced Scrum Masters were hired to get development teams to their highest level of performance as fast as they could, developers got trained and developed experience around their team development processes, engineering managers supported agility across the company, and stakeholders directly involved in product development got invited to collaborate with software development teams through agile processes, once they got fully implemented.

That's right, Engineering got agile quite right but by doing so:

• What happen with the rest of the organization?
• What about peoples mindset?
• Is them vs Us or vice versa? 
• Are they able to collaborate, inspect and adapt like the engineering teams and people related to agile projects do?
• How do we get everyone in the organization to communicate when we don't share the same vocabulary?
• How do we fill the gap and avoid old management treats get in the way of the companies transition to something bigger than just the teams?
• Shall we wait until they realize that we all need to change or shall we help them get there?
• How do we use are know-how to turn this mess into a big opportunity for the organization to grow?
• Do we need help?

Well, if this experience report gets accepted, I will share what I've learned about:

• The challenges & flaws that we faced when transitioning from team based agility to organizational agility
• Some of my reflections as an inside observer
• How to use the lessons learned as a wake up call
• What can be done to help the organization to thrive

Let's walk together through a nurturing experience report that might ignite your sens and get you inspired to give the extra mille! 

Mob programming is collaboration taken to the extreme, eliciting the best from every member of the team. In this session, you will experience the dynamics of mob programming and learn how to use this technique successfully in your own environments.

After mobbing with over two dozen teams, we've seen definite patterns emerge, that we'll discuss here.

In order for teams to step into high performance. it's critical that they develop the practice of having effective conversations about what is and isn't working. Yet in practice, the retrospective meeting is often the least-valued of the agile events: team members feel that their retros are boring, repetitive, and superficial.

In this workshop, we will teach participants how to design and deliver a really useful retrospective using LEGO SERIOUS PLAY. We'll cover the basics of this powerful facilitation technique, and give advice about how to build your own SERIOUS PLAY kit using pieces easily available at the local toy store. We'll also offer practical suggestions for how to design a retro that gets everyone talking (and building), and results in the team agreeing on action.

The participants will leave with a powerful retrospective technique that they can immediately use with their teams.

Agile failure is most felt by Scrum Masters. Why do so many fail to properly support their teams? Why do so many fail to inspire meaningful change in the level of leadership? Why do so many fail to guide transformation in their organisations?

In this workshop, we will harness the knowledge and experience of the participants! 

Prepare to work together to discover the Scrum Master vital behaviours!

Many people are taking on the mantle of Scrum Masters across agile teams around the world. Unfortunately, many of them have come from more traditional work structures that don't develop effective Scrum Masters. There is a misconception about the purpose of a Scrum Master. Often the Scrum Master becomes the facilitator or the project manager. This has to stop. Effective leaders, agile coaches, and Scrum Masters take advantage of vital behaviours in supporting scrum masters or by building mastery within these behaviours.

During this workshop, participants will go through a series of exercises to identify the purpose of a Scrum Master, how we can measure success, identify potential vital behaviours, learn from others to determine the vital behaviours, and then create a sound influence strategy to enable effective Scrum Masters and the work that they do. This workshop will use concepts and the model from the book "Influencer" (by Joseph Grenny et all) which details the three (3) keys to a successful change initiative and uses the six (6)  sources of influence.

Prepare to work together to discover the Scrum Master vital behaviours!

Agility can provide great results or increase team performance. What about its side effects? My goal is to bring attention to all sorts of side effects, which are often underestimated during and after a transition towards Agility. From conflicts to good team spirit, from employee resignation to higher employee retention, you will definitely experience both negative and positive side effects.