Unlike a factory, where we can see work literally moving around, piling up waiting, being worked on, or even deteriorating with time, knowledge workers have to deal with abstract constructs that are largely invisible. Suddenly, answering questions like "what are we working on?" or "how does work get done here" can become tricky.

The basic premise that the first step towards effectively managing knowledge work is to make it visible will not come as a surprise for anyone with some familiarity with Agile. That said, there's more to effective work visualization than a 3-column board showing "To Do | In Progress | Done" columns, and visualizing work items is only the first step.

This session will explore approaches for visualizing otherwise invisible aspects of work, such as commitments, process, rules and, of course, work items, and using them to enable more effective management and collaboration.

Want to experience a health check that you can use with your teams the day after this session? Join in this workshop where you will get hands on experience with Spotify's Health Check model and hear an experience report of applying it to 10+ teams.

Evaluate what aspects of this model are relevant to your context and goals. Hear about what factors contributed to our success and what potential pitfalls to watch out for.

Take the guessing out of what to improve on teams and how to measure it.

Collaboration is generally considered a net positive, and everyone knows it’s a key principle of Agile. Yet most Agile teams -- even those that seem to work well together -- don’t collaborate nearly enough, and thus don’t reach their full potential. It takes attention and work to make collaboration possible, let alone appealing and practical! In this interactive talk, the author of “The Human Side of Agile” explains the not-so-short list of not-so-simple factors that get in the way of real collaboration, and provides a process for determining actions that will make collaboration possible.

Developers are always wanting extra time to refactor their code. But we have deadlines and commitments to make - and really, what is refactoring anyway?This session aims to help non-technical team members to understand refactoring, why it's important, and why you don't have enough time not to refactor. Using Lean 5S, we're going to go through a non-technical example of what refactoring is and the types of things your teams may be doing during refactoring and the language they use.

Wave 2 of Agile is a way to understand the high-performance results that come from Being Agile. We know many in our industry have fallen into the trap or “Doing Agile” – where people lose sight of the objectives and lasting results.

Wave 2 is about Living Agile. It is how we show up. It is how we work with people and organizations to shape the Culture. It is living Mahatma Gandhi's truth:

“Be the change that you want to see in the world”.

When we focus on our own behaviour, we model Being Agile. This is the only way to invite the Agile Mindset. This is Wave 2 Agile. We stop creating conflict and resistance. We become the effective leaders and influencers of lasting change in our organizations.

“To be or not to be? That is the question.”

You've found yourself at the beginning of a journey where all roads lead to Agile coaching. You might be asking yourself, “What do I need for my coaching journey? Am I ready for this? Who can I ask for help? What is being an Agile coach really about, anyway?”

In this session, aspiring coaches will hear about an atypical journey to becoming an Agile coach, learn three key lessons, and remember why living Agile values is the key to, well, everything.

You’ll leave the session with the desire to live fully Agile, have a better understanding of where to start your own Agile journey, and discover how to learn more about yourself along the way.

This talk was previously presented at Manulife’s Agile Day 2018, organized by Jeff Kosciejew, and received an NPS score of 78.

How can we deliver value continuously when building modern JavaScript web applications? In the past 5-6 years, the popularity of JavaScript has exploded. There’s a good chance that you’re working at an organization where you’re using JavaScript.

Learn about component-based architecture and approaches to state management that help us respond to changing requirements or even pivot in a new direction as a product evolves.

What architecture choices and patterns enable meaningful independence and which ones hinder them?

For all you non-developers out there, this is a fabulous opportunity to deepen your understanding of what choices your software development team may be making. Developers, here’s your chance to learn more about what Agile-friendly modern JavaScript development can look like.

While some concepts are indeed language agnostic, this session will focus on the JavaScript ecosystem. We will cover the tools and techniques specific to component-based frameworks such as React, Vue, and Angular.

Agile has now gone mainstream. Starting new and more Agile teams is relatively easy, but organizations then run into the challenge to orchestrate the work of multiple agile teams. Some have even observed that even though they manage to obtain better results from individual teams, if they step back and look at the larger picture, work still takes a long time to be delivered, quality expectations are not met, and teams experience considerable "friction" when they interact with their environment.

This session is directed to those managers that operate above the team (middle-management, director level, etc.) and explores the concerns that need to be considered to create a context in which those Agile teams can thrive and realize the promise of high-performance.

Agile product managers and product owners often feel the need to be in all places, all the time, with all people. To succeed, they need to be inventive, yet focused; collaborative, yet decisive; far-sighted, yet detail-oriented. The best product owners are strategic—envisioning the product, communicating upstream with business executives, researching the market, and continually planning for delivery of high-value product options. Yet at the same time, they are also tactical—communicating downstream with the delivery team, running product demos, and discussing technical considerations.

In this session, we identify the responsibilities and disciplines involved in product work, examine decision-making rules applied to this work, and explore how a product owner or manager can leverage the expertise of the development team. Participate in activities to deepen your understanding of product work and product-related decision making. Leave with concrete ways to lighten the load of product ownership while making space for the right things amidst the clutter of everything.

It’s hard to coach those who are highly stressed or anxious and it’s even harder to help others when you are personally stressed or anxious. In this session, we’ll be learning about some of the neuroscience behind these and will learn a variety of practical techniques that we can do to drop that sense of anxiety in less than a minute.

Anxiety and stress is prevalent within our field and affects everything we do. If you experience this or you would like to help other people who do, then this session is for you.

Bonus: The techniques we’ll be discussing are also applicable with Impostor Syndrome.

Cognitive biases often results to poor decisions that could affect your teams. This talk provides an introduction to cognitive biases and how they impact team performance and effectivity.

I'll cover 3 aspects of teams that could be impacted by these cognitive biases - team dynamics, communication and productivity.

I'll discuss the symptoms of these biases and show you how to proactively control and reduce its effects for more effective teams.

Many software engineers are lead into the false assumption that we are hired to write code. This talk challenges that perception and discusses the real reason we are paid to turn up to work every day.

Coding is fun, but we are paid to solve problems.

I will try and convince you that you can add more value, and have more fun, by concentrating on the problem, not the code.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/emotional-intelligence-power-access-our-agile-mindset-agile-amy/