Effective interactions, between product owners and designers and team members who develop and make those products real, are key to team, product and organizational success. It's reflected in the first value of the Agile Manifesto.

Still, one of the chief complaints, from both the product side and the dev side, is poor communication. The list of irritants includes: lack of clarity, lack of understanding, lack of time, lack of access, too many meetings, too much jargon, too many badly written user stories and too many people involved.

Communication isn''t the only obstacle, but it’s a big one - and it can be overcome with no cost or organizational disruption.

Regardless of the role we play on the team, part of everyone’s job is to create shared understanding. In this session, Marilyn, an experienced product owner and product manager, and Sue, a communication specialist and coach, will share their research about communication gaps in the product-development relationship and approaches that can close the gap.
Join them to explore tips and ideas to improve communication flow and help teams move from concept to cash.

We all know how people use design thinking to create better products and deliver delightful experiences to our users. However, design thinking can be an excellent tool to use for organizational change. In the case of organizational change, our product is the change that we are trying to drive, and our customers are those people who are impacted (internally and externally) and have to live with that change. In the same way that design thinking puts the user front-and-centre for products, it can be used to put people in the organization front-and-centre. In this talk we will discuss how design thinking works and, as a case study, how we have applied it at Scotiabank to help drive adoption of the Bank’s NPS customer insights into building solutions that serve our customers. In that program, previous internal processes were ineffective in pushing relevant data to delivery teams at the right time. Using a Lean or Agile approach would have provided some benefit, but taking a design thinking approach uncovered an array of useful insights to make the whole process more purposeful. Learn from this example to explore how you might incorporate design thinking to drive greater effectiveness and relevance for your team’s body of work.

Ever been in a situation when the Product Manager comes and asks for “a couple of small changes that are high priority” and the team says “They’re kind of big. Which one do you want first? Really, really!”.  “I want them all! As soon as possible.”.

There are many directions one can go from here. One can work harder or work smarter. While you probably know ways to work harder, but let’s explore ways to work smarter.

In this talk Ardita will share techniques that she has used which produce good results. She will talk about Product management, technical backbone, collaboration and how all to get Product managers and teams “singing” together in harmony and with focus.

The practice of Agile is all about speed. Quick to deliver, fast to market, sprinting... While speed is important we need time to reflect as well.

Mindfulness is the practice of focusing your attention on the present moment, where you are and what you are doing. It is a chance to look at the people, the scenery, the world around you. When you are with friends, be with them. Not paying attention to the world around you has consequences not only for you but for your company and colleagues as well.

This session will highlight some mindfulness techniques you can use during your day to improve work for everyone.

In this session, I will walk you through some areas of my childhood, introduce you to my father and explain you how I've used facilitation skills to fight back daddy's illness (alcoholism). During this session, you'll learn more about who I am, and if you pay attention or participate, maybe you'll take away two or three facilitation techniques combined with an inspiring and personal happy ending story.

Are you curious to know how Agility could apply to any domain? Have you tried the experiment?

During this conference, Mathieu will share examples, strategies, reflections as well as certain difficulties of adopting Agility in varied domains such as : engineering, construction of a building, renovation and remodelling projects, urban planning, research and development, marketing, change management, humanitarian aid and event planning.

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.