location_city Toronto schedule Nov 6th 01:15 - 02:15 PM EDT place Lake Superior people 11 Interested

Do you have Scrum/Kanban teams frequently releasing high-value, quality product updates? Unfortunately, such agility usually doesn’t last, with features starting to take longer to build, changes becoming riskier to make, and quality getting more difficult to maintain. This common situation – high cost of change, low safety – is often the result of low Technical Agility. The common solution? Lean on the developers to upgrade their “technical practices.” However, this solution rarely makes a lasting, noticeable difference, because what matters is how developers approach work, and that depends heavily on how product and management engage with them. In this session we’ll explore Technical Agility from a mindset standpoint, identify its influence on product management’s choices, and determine how all parties should engage with each other to achieve a level of Technical Agility that enables actual product and business Agility.

 
 

Outline/Structure of the Talk

Note: This is a 60-minute talk with lots of interaction mostly via group discussion and share-out. I've delivered it several times before and know where the timings can be adjusted if necessary. I don't know what to expect from TAC's virtual platform, but I can achieve the same interaction effect with basic Zoom (breakouts + chat), though it would help to have better tools (e.g. Mural). I can also deliver this as a 40-minute talk without interaction. 

This is the structure of the session:

Introduction: If we want to deliver, learn, and adapt fast, we’re always changing. But change isn’t free, and we must keep it affordable. Putting future changes on a backlog doesn’t make them affordable.

The costs associated with change (10-15 min): short presentation + groups come up with examples. In the debrief, elicit what kinds of cost we encounter (it’s not just money) and what makes changes costly, especially over time.

The human risk associated with change (10-15 min): I’ll argue that developers’ experience is inherently unsafe, and groups will identify examples of low safety.

Technical Agility (10 min): I’ll unpack the response -- technical Agility – primarily from the standpoint of principles (which generalize to areas where popular technical practices are difficult to pull off).

Technical Agility requires intention & mutual commitment (10-15): We’ll see why Technical Agility requires intention and mutual commitment from development, product, and management, and attendees will determine actions for all parties that implement and demonstrate that commitment.

Learning Outcome

Explain, in non-technical terms, what good Technical Agility is and why it’s not an option.

Make cost-of-change and development safety regular factors in your decision-making.

Start creating the conditions that make Technical Agility a reality.

Target Audience

Product owners, product managers, development managers, team/tech leads

Prerequisites for Attendees

Attendees have experience managing products or technical teams, and have used Agile on at least one product/project.

schedule Submitted 3 years ago

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