Many of us work in geographically dispersed teams and struggle with the inherent challenges of such teams. In software development these challenges also impact the agile development methodology we want to use. Over time at Macadamian we have established strategies that have helped our teams get better at being both agile and dispersed. In this session we will share these practical strategies with participants followed by some of our current difficulties and what we propose so far to resolve these.

More and more companies are turning to embedded sensors and connected devices as a way to improve their service offerings and bring more value to their customers. This connected ecosystem of technology, services and value provides designers with an opportunity to look beyond the design of a screen interface (UI - user interface design) and embrace a more holistic approach to designing full experiences and solutions (UX - user experience design).

This case study will walk you through the opportunities (and challenges) we faced in designing an experience for a connected device. While UX practitioners have a myriad of tools available to them in their toolboxes, we will be focusing primarily on the use of these 3 tools:

1. Contextual research - its importance and the importance of who conducts it
2. Mapping and looking at how ecosystem mapping can be used to create a multi-layered map of technology, business, value and how mapping the physical can become important when designing for connected environments
3. Notification design and re-thinking how cues, such as visual, auditory and haptic, can come into play when you are no longer designing for a device and can, instead, integrate your design into the physical environment

... and how we leveraged them to create a design solution that integrates into both the physical and digital environment of our client.

Cultural differences can be found in many situations and we'll talk about corporate cultures. Most often cultural gap becomes apparent when working with other companies, but in many cases you can find this gap even within the same company, between different departments or management layers.

How to deal with the gap in product vision and processes?

How to make Waterfall and Agile teams work successfully?

How to bridge the gap of different Agile implementations?

Here, at Macadamian, we deal with differences in corporate cultures on a daily basis. And at the same time, we are constantly evolving internally to retain our competitive edge, making sure all departments are aligned to achieve our goals.

We would like to share some examples of the problems we encountered of the years and the principles we are using to resolve them successfully.

Management teams are getting great results with the Agile methodologies but what do your team members really think of it. If you ask most developers, they will tell you that the Agile processes are getting in their way and are useless in their day to day operations. Originally, the methodology came from a manifesto that was all about empowering a team so how did it shift this way? During this presentation, we will take a look back at the original manifesto and explore some of the pitfalls that you might have fallen into. We will also look how we can get back to the core principles of Agile and empower your team.

Join a panel of Agile Coaches for a discussion as to what we've seen, both the good and bad, in organizations they've been coaching. And, what you can do about it, no matter where you are in your organization. Plus, bring your own questions to ask this panel, and take from the experiences of coaches including Glenn Waters, Ellen Grove, Omar Bermudez, Jesus Mendez, John Tobin, and Michael Kaufman.