Our understanding of how humans learn has grown tremendously in the last 20 years. Providing an environment in which people have room to think, and the safety to experiment and adapt is key. We will review fundamental concepts of neuroscience and how they intersect with organizational behavior. We will also review how the agile mindset takes advantage of these concepts. From there, we can begin to envision the conditions that will provide the greatest opportunity for learning and continuous improvement. Together, we will share ideas on how we can start to transform our environments into safe spaces where teams can grow and thrive.

THE CHALLENGE: Every year we may attend numerous presentations and meetings - filled with the typical dense and disorganized Power Point decks. We may leave that session thinking: "there's an hour of my life I’ll never get back."

For years I've worked with IT and HR leaders and project managers to improve their presentations. A key part of their job is to influence key decision makers - but more often than not we just don't know how to design a compelling presentation. We overwhelm our audience with too much information and we ignore what brain science teaches us. The result: too much random information delivered in a confusing way. So, our presentations fail to influence our audience and get us the results we want.

THE SOLUTION: Then, when we least expect it, we hear a presentation that rises above the noise. One that persuades us to take action. What makes that one so compelling?

Science shows that our brains work beautifully when we can focus on a few key ideas. So, what do good presenters do? We powerfully land a small number of BIG ideas. I will teach participants how to follow this simple and powerful method using the PRESENTATION PYRAMID.

Implementing a product roadmap in an Agile way can be tough. Roadmaps are often written as a document that isn’t easily accessible. This leads to a variety of issues. A good agile roadmap should allow for agile practices such as daily standups and planning. They should create high visibility and transparency, operate with low overhead, and provide the right information to the right people at the right time.

In this talk, Chris will share how he’s implemented a Roadmap Wall. He’ll show how to incorporate the roadmap components into a highly visible and actionable format. The roadmap wall has multiple benefits and will:

• give leadership and executives visibility into how their business objectives influence features, story backlogs, and priorities
• leverage delivery teams to understand technical feasibility tradeoffs
• show the options available to satisfy competing customer needs
• demonstrate a clear picture of how business objectives link to customer needs
• provide near real-time information for decision making

To realize these benefits, we’ll leverage a variety of familiar tools. Chris will show you how to use a kanban system to manage business objectives and OKRs. You’ll learn how using an opportunity solution tree clarifies the customer’s need when roadmapping. He’ll show you a new way to use story maps when detailing features, improving communication and planning.

In the end, you’ll walk away with a new method for visualizing your product roadmap, giving your team better decision-making information.

We all know that features in a backlog should be prioritized, as should projects in a portfolio, but how can we optimize the ordering to get the best outcome? In this session you’ll learn about and compare seven different techniques, from basic to advanced, for setting priorities: multi-voting, risk analysis, business value game, ROI, Buy a Feature, Cost of Delay profiles, and Weighted Shortest Job First. Participants will work in small groups to practice a few of the techniques on a hypothetical application.

What is the IT guy doing in the Marketing Department and what does Agile have to do with marketing strategy? Originally proposed as a simple Kanban roll out, the effort to bring Agility into a Marketing Strategy team became the start of transformational effort to define value streams, push through organizational boundaries, implemented CI/CD pipelines for Marketing Products, and bring an Agile Mindset to a team at the nexus of multiple value streams and central to the transformation of a revolutionary view of client experience.

This talk focuses on the application of Agile/Lean foundations in a Marketing Organization to unlock hidden potential, detailing how the foundations of an Agile transformation in technical delivery teams -- team Agility, CI/CD pipelines, and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) -- are integral to Marketing Products in a digital media age. Critical to success is the definition of value streams in order to re-align teams from functional organizations to the flow of continuous customer value.

Beyond Marketing, Agile professionals can apply the lessons learned from this coaching engagement to any enterprise services team concurrently supporting multiple lines of business through multiple business channels: HR, Legal, Finance, etc.

Agile transformations have been key for speeding up software development via agile "projects". With projects, development is still often segregated from the business and work is often prioritized based on making the project successful and not what can bring the most value to the business and end users. A new approach is needed. During this session, Wendy Flowers will discuss why the gap between modern technical practices and the business is causing organizations to fail and how managing work via product and not projects will optimize value creation across the entire organization.

Your Organization is Agile…YAY! You are working in a prescribed framework (Scrum, Kanban, etc.)…YAY! You are a part of a Dynamic team…YAY! You are all set and running as a defined High Performing team…NO! So, what is in the way? I can help answer that, it isn't just a team problem.

Through my experience in Agile environments, organizations check all the boxes for implementing agile, but forget the most important which are the behaviors. Over the years, I have started to focus on the behaviors needed in an agile environment. In this session you will look at what gets you excited? What makes you frustrated? What motivates you? How are you showing up? Are you owning your day or renting it? And why reflecting on these matters!

I will provide tools that we will use to identify personal behaviors and statements that you will be able to use not only within your profession, your team, your organization, but also in your daily life outside of the office.

Are you ready to show up to be your best?

Coaching stances are a self-charter, a guide for agile coaches and practitioners as they work with individuals and teams. They serve as a way for agile coaches to keep themselves on course and to navigate the choppy waters they undoubtedly encounter. So, how do you go about building that charter, that stance, so that you can show up authentically and as your best self? And, how do you best convey your stance to your team and in your organization?

In this workshop, Kari and Erin will lead activities designed to help you identify the values and behaviors that define your coaching stance. Through facilitated peak experience and mundane experience exercises, you will uncover and explore your values in ways that are personal and meaningful. In small groups, you will share what is important about these values in the work they do as agile coaches and how you can demonstrate these values in their work within the organization, whether that’s with teams, management, senior leadership, or other agile coaches. You will also choose an image that resonates with the way you would like to illustrate your coaching stance--or design one of your own. Erin and Kari will leave you with inquiries to further develop your charter once you return home from the conference.

With the tools and exploration in this workshop, you can return to your teams and organizations, better prepared to serve as agile champions and thoughtful agile-coaching practitioners. It is our hope that you will be inspired to help other agilists in your organizations to create their own values-driven coaching stances.

You know agile, have been on teams as a scrum master or product manager/owner or even a program manager, but now you are an agile coach and need help “jumping in feet first.” While there’s a lot involved in “coaching,” like emotional intelligence, experience, background, emotional intelligence, communication skills, confidence etc. but sometimes you need a little “mentorship” and how/where to get started in a coaching role.

This is a beginner to level session for new coaches in an agile transformation role.

This session will help you get started on an agile transformation assignment with a coaching backlog and will inform new coaches on “where to start” as an Agile Coach.

The session will begin agile transformation challenges followed by common agile impediments, conditions for success, an agile readiness checklist and a coaching backlog including Epics, Features and “where to start.”

Peer coaching can make a huge difference in reaching your work and personal goals, but how do you get started and and make it stick? We’d love to share our informal peer coaching method that combines personal responsibility, agile, and goal setting in a way that is guaranteed to be successful. We call it “Thing Three.” In this interactive session, we will teach you the basic format we follow, along with the research to back up why it works. We will also demonstrate how it has helped even the busiest colleagues stay accountable consistently, over years, and continue to reach every goal they set. You’ll get to exercise these skills too and immediately see the value of peer coaching!

When we are on the floor & wearing the coaching hat - we are dealing with 3 things -

1. Ourself (Coach himself)
2. Person (Coachee)
3. Problem

According to Chad W. Hall, there are also three levels of coaching which he describes in Coach The Person Not The Problem.

1. Beginner: Coach the Problem
2. Better: Coach the Problem through the Person
3. Transformational: Coach the Person for Internal Change

It is very important to understand the 3 levels of coaching. Many of us we operate at level 1.

We will share some recent practical & experential examples/learnings which emphasizes more on coaching at level 2 & 3.

Note - Inspired from the book "Coach the Person Not the Problem: A Simple Guide to Coaching for Transformation - By Chad Hall"

Portfolio Management is quickly evolving away from annual planning, traditional project intake and subsequent status reporting to rapid ideation and innovation with better decision making. The highest performing organizations are focused on hypothesis driven development with a focus on low-cost, incremental learnings to deliver against better business outcomes. Join Tina as she shares how organizations have successfully made the shift to Lean Portfolio Management while driving transparency and visibility at scale. Learn how the principles of Value Engineering will increase alignment across IT, Engineering and the overall Enterprise.

Agile is a set of values and a mindset. As such, it can be hard to answer questions that leadership often asks. These questions include: How agile are we? Are we getting more agile? What are the growth opportunities for our team?

Many organizations use assessments to determine their level of agility. This session will introduce several assessment approaches and tools. Like medicine, when used incorrectly, the results can be toxic. We will explore the merits, potential uses, and possible downsides of each approach.

You will leave this session understanding more about your options, as well as insights for framing an assessment that fit your needs best when trying to measure your organization's culture and teams.

Look up the definition of Scrum Master and you may read the Scrum Master role is responsible for “process authority.” But what exactly does this mean? Now imagine working with a team new to Scrum and immediately sensing unease and even a touch of hostility as team members begin to ask: “Does this mean the Scrum Master is my boss,” or “Do we have to listen to her?” The word authority may not be the best choice of words out there. Nonetheless, it’s not difficult to come across, and can often create a lot of angst and confusion.

I worked on a new Scrum project where the project teams were confused (and some concerned) about the “process authority” definition and the overall responsibility of the Scrum Master. As a result, they were slightly hostile to the Scrum Master role, and untrusting of the Scrum Master’s responsibility. The Scrum Master needed to gain the team’s trust, but how could this be done in such an environment? I was the project’s agile coach and needed to diffuse the confusion and better the working environment as quickly as possible. My journey started with this interactive presentation and discussion that many found helpful.

This presentation explores topics to help ease the tension and confusion surrounding the Scrum Master role that teams unfamiliar with Scrum may have. These topics include…

• What it means (and does not mean) when Scrum Master’s have “process authority”
• Responsibilities and expectations of the Scrum Master compared to the expectations of other roles on the team
• How different leadership styles play a role into servant leadership
• The importance of trust in a Scrum Master/team relationship

The presentation uses real-time audience feedback to further explore these topics. Audience members will provide answers to questions provided throughout the presentation, so we can explore members’ thoughts, opinions, and experiences they have had with Scrum Masters.

Great Scrum Masters facilitate, coach, and remove impediments. Great People Managers do the same. So why is it considered 'conventional wisdom' that a Manager can't also be a Scrum Master? We will explore the organizational context and leadership skills that make this dual role not only possible, but potentially powerful, and share some stories of successes and failures.

Meetings are a necessity of doing business. And too often, meetings are simply painful – without leaders, agendas, or people just tuning out. Too many meetings drag on and on because a lot of folks just don’t know how to run a good meeting.

If you want to hold better meetings for your team, then this talk is for you.

Yvonne Chen will share her experience, insight, and actionable techniques and tips that you can apply to any meeting. This talk covers:

• 6 things you should you be doing when you’re facilitating a meeting
• 6 tips and tools you can deploy during a meeting to make sure it stays on track
• 6 tips and techniques you can turn to when you have to wrangle someone who’s sucking all the oxygen out of the room ;)
• 4 skills that will set you apart as a facilitator

Come learn about how you can own a meeting #likeaboss and really mean it when you say, “Thanks, everyone - good meeting!”

Agile frameworks and methods harness the team concept and “collective intelligence”. In a world of silos and individual achievement, why not stand together? This talk will highlight the journey of two internal coaches who were put together in an organization to help grow its agility. No-one could predict the power and bond of these coaches and what they would create together. We will talk about attributes, benefits and potential downside of pair coaching (if there is one). Tips on how we hold space together during sessions, how we challenge one another to keep growing, learning and becoming stronger as individuals and as a pair.

We often use tools like Roman Pichler’s Product Canvas to define what the right features are for users, but why do we not use tools to assess how to build it? Teams default to frameworks like Scrum or Kanban because it is mandated or popular but as Agile Coaches we should assess our environment before coaching people to adhere to a process that may not be a good fit.

My journey consisted of on-boarding many teams using Scrum. Why Scrum? Well because Scrum = Agile… or at least is does to the folks who hired me to coach teams. The next few months always consisted of forcing, breaking, and tailoring a process that had issues in execution from the beginning. This led to the birth of the Agile Coach’s cheat sheet. It is intended to aid in creating or tailoring processes before bringing it to a team based on factors like team location, working environment, and team roles.