Why do so many organizations struggle to put in place mature Agile teams that can apply proper Agile principles and deliver awesome products? Some people will say, “Agile is hard” as an excuse to not do Agile or to become frAgile. Well we think we have developed the “Secret Sauce” to rebooting any Agile team that just doesn’t seem to be maturing and we want to share it with you!

If you are thinking of scaling Agile across a large organization, then this talk is a must to attend to help ensure your teams have the right foundation. Organizations wanting to scale Agile must have a solid foundation of mature Agile teams who embrace the Agile values and have the right Agile mindset.

Over the years, as we have done Agile transformations in different organizations, we have seen common patterns that keep repeating. The most common pattern we found in our experience is that teams are frAgile. Too many either pretend to be Agile or don’t even know Agile is not a methodology, so organizations question the value of using Agile. Very often the confusion and frustration that comes with thinking that a team is Agile when they are not Agile, brings people right back to their old habits of command and control. Creating successful mature Agile teams is not sorcery, you need to discover the secret sauce!

In this talk, we will reveal our secrets on how to create a successful Agile-Scrum team in 5 sprints. Attendees will learn how we applied our secret sauce as we experimented with more than 30 teams and we refined the know-how. This recipe has proven to be successful in different organizations and teams delivering different types of products. Our Creative-Destruction approach goes through a human change process we labeled The Intervention Plan. The 5 steps are:

• Step 1: Run in the rain
• Step 2: Thunderstruck
• Step 3: Cry over the M&M’s machine
• Step 4: Open-up and look at the sun
• Step 5: Removing the training wheels

And by using these 5 steps, attendees will discover the 5th Agile value!

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.

Many agile methods and strategies are geared towards small teams working in reasonably straightforward situations. That’s great work if you can get it. Most organizations that are adopting agile today have been in operations for decades and sometimes centuries. They are typically dealing with significant investments in legacy systems and processes that won’t go away any time soon. They have an existing culture that is usually not-as-agile as it could be and an organization structure that puts up many roadblocks to collaboration. Their staff members are often overly specialized and many people do not have skills in agile software development techniques, and there are many thoughts as to what needs to be done to improve things, the adoption of agile being one of many. This is certainly not the startup company environment that we keep hearing about.

In this presentation Scott Ambler reviews the challenges faced by established enterprises when transforming to agile and what enterprise agile means in practice. He then overviews the Disciplined Agile (DA) framework, a pragmatic and context-sensitive approach to enterprise agile, working through how it addresses the realities faced by modern organizations. Scott then works through advice for transforming your enterprise to become more agile, including the people-process-tools triad and the skills and experience required of enterprise agile team coaches and executive agile coaches. He ends with an overview of proven strategies for adopting agile in less-than-ideal environments

Scrum is everywhere, with over 90% of agile teams using it. But for many organizations wanting to scale agile, one team using Scrum is not enough. Scrum is not enough. The Nexus Framework, created by Ken Schwaber the co-creator of Scrum, provides an exoskeleton to Scrum, allowing multiple teams to work together to produce an integrated increment regularly. It addresses the key challenges of scaling agile development by adding new yet minimal events, artifacts and roles to the Scrum framework. 

In this talk, we introduce the Nexus Framework and how it, like Scrum, promotes bottom-up thinking with top down support in order to discover and emerge what works best for your organization. We will use case studies as examples to describe Nexus in detail showing how it works, how it is working, and what its strengths and weaknesses are. The audience will be taken through Nexus, its new events and the key role of the Nexus Integration Team.

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.

An overview of Agile across a multi-faceted organization

The Canadian Internet Registration Authority is the not-for-profit organization that is responsible for the development and management of .CA for all Canadians. 

CIRA is undergoing transformation in the face of market change and deregulation of the Internet’s Top Level Domains.  The organization is introducing new products and services using the Agile framework in the face of a changing market.  While Agile is highly flexible and suitable for product and service development it can both align and conflict with traditional corporate planning processes.  The presentation will discuss the points of alignment and friction between corporate structure, planning processes and iterative Agile planning.  We will examine how various teams have adopted Agile and will highlight the complexities of multi-team adoption of Agile.

This presentation will provide an overview on what it means to be an Agile Project Manager. The presentation will focus on how to transition from being a traditional project manager to an Agile Project Manager. Agile is not a set of rules or a number of steps, instead it is a mindset. This presentation will show you how to be Agile and think Agile.

As a Project/Program Manager we should have a good understanding of what it means to be Agile. Once we understand what it means to be Agile, we can start implementing Agile practices and techniques in our projects – giving rise to Agile Project Management.

During my time at the bank, some technology teams have embraced Agile while others have outright refused. As a Project Manager, I was able to obtain positive results by running certain work streams in Agile and other in waterfall. Certain work streams are suitable for Agile while others may be suitable for Waterfall. We can experience optimal results and an increase in stakeholder satisfaction by using an integrative approach.

The word "Agile" is all over the place now. Discussions are not only about if you are doing it, but mostly about how you are doing it. And in those conversations I often feel people are trying to prove hey are doing better than others.  But when we compare our agility, what do we really whant to know? How can I say that my agility is bigger than yours?

Over the last 13 years doing  agile software development and specially during the last 8 years as an agile coach I had the chance to explore this question on how to measure the teams and organisational agility through diverse tools and techniques with multiple customers and teammates. During this conference I would like to share with you those experiences and reflect on how to measure your agility. Maybe you should not only look on how you are doing agile development, but more on what is the impact of it!

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.

Do women make better Scrum Masters, because they’re more nurturing?  Do women have to be aggressive in order to be effective leaders?  Why aren’t women good risk takers?  Let’s explore these topics, other stereotypes, and different myths and facts that surround the female role in agile and technology.  Patricia Kong from Scrum.org and Jill Graves from the Canadian Revenue Agency will share their experiences and facilitate this discussion to explore why women are stalled in leadership roles and in the technology industry, and if Agile can help.