This session is a process to hold tough conversations. This is an effective process and I have done this at the IAF Asia Conference at Kuala Lumpur in September 2019. It's based on Marshal Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication, one of the best frameworks for communication & stakeholder relationship related issues.

When we face a challenge what we often see is the 85% things which we might not have control over and end up feeling helpless. Being in a VUCA(Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) world we face situations like these quite frequently both in professional and personal life. Imagine if you are in one such situation yet you get good results, how great it would be? Because there are still a few things which we call the 15% solution to a problem which we fail to see as its like our shadow and best seen by others.

15% solution is similar to moving a few rocks to change the course of a river. This activity is exactly about moving a few rocks to find great solutions to the challenges we are facing NOW, just thinking about what is the best you can do without more resources, authority or permissions, by just doing the things in your control

In this session we would explore 15% solution along with Troika

What keeps a business ticking? Customer value.

• Do you know that 75% of consumers are willing to pay more if they love the product?
• Have you realized that around 60% of features in a product are rarely or never used.

With this, it is evident that users do not buy or use all that you build and they pay more if they love it. Hence it is important to plan, prioritize and produce as per customer value. But what makes a product lovable and how to win customers?

In this session, I am going to discuss in detail about the new techniques i.e. "PLS DO SIR" which I have implemented with 10+ Scrum teams, how to make a product lovable, how asking the right questions helped us in uncovering issues, how to build undaunted teams and when to engage customers.

You can deliver great "VALUE" to your customer if you can take care of the above.

Let's get onto a journey

From "No" /"Yes, but" to "Yes, and"!

Improv is the act of working together to build something new from a bunch of quickly generated ideas, disposing quickly that don’t work and building on the things that do along the way. The more an improv team works together, the more they trust each other, and the better they know each other’s’ strengths and how to use them. Isn’t it Agile Teams also all about?

Make other people look good. This will make you look better, too. Let's experience this through fun games!

Although management experts have recommended to eliminate employee performance appraisals for over 40 years, they are a fact of life for many who work in traditional enterprises. For Scrum Masters and others that still have to live with them, this talk will help you learn how to use Scrum itself to prepare you to outperform any performance review, and to be able to deliver a stellar performance review in real time at any moment!

The craft of Agile Coaching fundamentally requires deep, insightful, meaningful communication. In everyday execution, this typically involves a coach and the coachees having a conversation, or dialog. However, there are other ways that an Agile Coach and their coachees can connect – nonverbal communication.

Explore the different aspects of nonverbal communication in the domain of the Agile Coach! This workshop overviews nonverbal communication in Agile Coaching and provides a starting point for developing this critical skill.

As an agilist, you all heard about the organizational transformation, leadership agility, etc. Also, you might be a change agent working as part of this adoption.

Many people refer or point out to the Organization reinvented book as a reference as part of the agile adoption journey.

Here is a true story of a small NGO, from the very southern part of India, in existence for the past 15+ years and serving humanity by doing a grassroots level change. They have shown the meaning of empowerment, self-managing and self-organizing in an absolutely different way.

I want to talk about this group (though they have never heard of the agile movement, though the founder had a background of Software development).

A common understanding about different Agile methodology is that those are implacable only in software project. But I want to share my experience, how a failed IT infrastructure project became a successful one after following Agile way where internal & external stakeholders and team members are not aware of Agile properly.

Transformation has become the buzz word of the times with it spreading over various manifestations like agile, devops, business agility, organizations transformation etc. At the same time most transformation initiatives are driven in a global organizational and team environment.

In a global environment, we look at scaling and standardization quite frequently. Organizations train everyone alike with same content, same philosophy, same tools, and standards yet we struggle in producing exceptional/uniform results that are sustainable. We see teams falling back to their old ways of working leaving a question on the transformation itself.

Transformation is often seen as a series of changes in the way we work, the process rules, the way we are structured and several other things. However none of the changes mentioned above guarantees a transformation that is sustainable in delivering business value.

In this talk, we explore

• The possible areas to look at why often we fail in sustainable transformation
• Even after a transformation exercise, why do organizations have to still deal with areas of accountability, commitment and ownership and delivery at cadence.
• What really matters in a transformation exercise, are we focusing on the right things?
• Essential ingredients for a sustainable transformation

When Agile works everywhere and helps in becoming successful why can’t we implement it in pursuing our passion. In this topic I want to Share my personal experience on how I implemented Agile in making a weekly TV series “Nenu Thanu” (Telugu language, aired in EtvPlus) successfully for 2 years. I will share the initial challenges I encountered and how Agile helped in successfully overcoming them and also maintaining balance between profession and passion.

According to neuroscience - human Mind Power system consists of easily learned techniques that help you focus and direct your thoughts, and the first technique you’ll learn is visualization.

‘Visualization is any technique for creating images, diagrams, or animations to communicate a message. Visualization through visual imagery has been an effective way to communicate both abstract and concrete ideas since the dawn of humanity.’ Using visualization techniques in any gathering help to inspire creativity, focus and shared vision.

During our day to day working environment - especially in Agile WoW (irrespective of the frameworks we use) we have lot of opportunities to plan, strategize, brainstorm, innovate and generate ideas. These will always be incomplete without the application of Visualization techniques. Visualization techniques can be successfully applied to identify common goals, understand customer expectations, collaborate with individuals (multiple teams), and identify areas for continuous improvement.

Many a times, key events in our workplace are conducted in vaccum where people feel they are not engaged or disconnected or feel there is no value out of these. We can turn the table around completely by giving the dimension of Visualization using Visual Metaphors.

Agile methods have provided a framework for improving innovation, but there has been a missing piece - Visual metaphors (influenced by Innovation Games ideas) offer ideas, tools & practices to aid the innovation process at its most critical point - product management, particularly visioning & roadmaps identification. Key to innovation is creating collaborative, interactive, visually-oriented, fun, business-driven-environment for people.

In this interactive workshop participants would be experiencing some of the popular & widely used Visual Metaphors that can assist in their Agile journey through which they can experience the power of these tools to generate better visibility, collaboration opportunities, sense making and continuous improvement opportunities.

Where can it be applied?
• Business Review Meetings
• As a tool for prioritization
• Planning, Backlog refinement and Retrospective meetings
It is time for some ‘hands-on’ and ‘minds-on’ to know more about innovation through visualization.

We all know that #Facilitation is a key buzz word. A difference in understanding facilitation begins with an awareness of the difference between facilitating and leading. It has been said that leadership is something you do to a group, while facilitation is something you do with a group.

Facilitator assist group[s] as they work together toward achieving group goals, and in most instances do not interject their own personal opinions or agenda. By expressing their opinions to the group, facilitators risk discouraging others with differing opinions from speaking.

They remain alert to group dynamics and encourage challenging reflection while maintaining respect and safety within the group. Although facilitators may help guide a discussion, they also recognize and foster the groups' own ability to lead itself. Thus unlike authoritative leaders, good facilitators relinquish control to the group and promote open, democratic dialogue among group members.

Agile Architecture

Do you remember the famous dialog from the movie Spiderman – “With great powers comes great responsibility”? Today’s world is driven by Software and as a Software Professional we have great powers and so have a great responsibility towards this world and the human kind. We can use our powers to make this world a better place to live or can destroy it with our bad practices.

The talk is about Ethics and Professionalism. As an ethical professional, its our responsibility to make sure that the work done by us and the practices being followed by us are benefiting the society.

The Wikipedia definition of Corruption is a form of dishonesty or criminal offense undertaken by a person or organization entrusted with a position of authority, to acquire illicit benefit or abuse power for one's private gain.

Knowingly or unknowingly, software profession is being infected with corruption resulting in bad behavior, bad practices and bad products. The talk will be covering some case studies and asking every Software Professional, are we doing the right thing for the society?

We have to do an introspection and ask ourselves –

1. Are we abusing the power to our's or organization’s gain?
2. Are we dishonest towards our profession?
3. Are we getting involved into a criminal activity without being aware of it?

Any change fails predominantly because of 2 reasons – because it tries to change the way WE work; and because it tries to change the way I work.

WE denote an organization – with all its culture and structures. And if any change interferes with the organization’s existing belief system itself, it treats that new change as a virus – as a threat to its existence and way of living – and kills it. Much like a bad organ transplant.

But, there is also an equally, if not more, important “I” part… “How I work”. This is purely an individual decision. And these individuals, who are the most complex system within an organization. How people will respond to change is difficult to predict. It’s all about understanding the perspective of the people affected by the change.

We need to transform how our brain thinks in order to transform how our organization works.

Are you a victim of Digital disruption? or Does your business disrupted by startup? or Do you want to disrupt your business models to create new offerings?

Whatever could be the scenario, Disruption is de-facto business as usual in today's world. How do you embrace the disruption? You have two choices, either you embrace disruption or you become disrupter. Hence organization going through business transformation to remain in business. We will explore different transformation techniques, guiding principles, objectives for orchestrating and defining a successful Connected Approach for Business Transformation.

Let us all understand the 5 love languages which will help us to better collaborate at scale. Have you ever heard about the 5 love languages Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Receiving Gifts, Quality Time, and Physical Touch. Want to know more about this come on Let’s discuss in detail!

Did you ever understand the which is the prime of 5 languages of others so that your actions can be in alignment to their languages which will bring a better collaboration at scale. which will be of great help in your coaching conversations.

we will be discussing how at work, people express and receive appreciation in different ways. If you try to express appreciation in ways that aren’t meaningful to your co-workers, they may not feel valued at all. This is because you and your co-workers are speaking different languages. These insights are from The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace, by Dr. Chapman and Dr. White which will help you identify the five languages of appreciation in order to: 1.Express genuine appreciation to co-workers and staff — even on a tight budget. 2. Increase loyalty with the employees and volunteers in your organization. 3. Reduce cynicism and create a more positive work environment. 4. Improve your ability to show appreciation for difficult colleagues. 5. Convey the language of physical touch in appropriate ways.

Based on the #1 New York Times bestseller, The 5 Love Languages, Dr. Chapman and Dr. White which gives you practical steps to make any workplace environment more encouraging and productive, This talk will be an enlightened one for sure for the target audience.