Stop driving on the sidewalk!

In software development and delivery, it sometimes feels like we're perpetually stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle. Sometimes we can easily go around, and sometimes we can't see what's really holding us up. In our experience, many teams are barely peeking over the steering wheel! Our workshop is aimed at sharing a technique that will help you arrive at faster, safer, and happier - whether you're stuck in a ditch or cruising the highway.

This workshop will introduce a simple method you can use to discover, define and communicate risks and opportunities affecting your teams. Even better, you can use it regardless of what team, department or silo you find yourself in. We'll examine visual representations of valuable data you can use to have productive conversations, make confident decisions, and align towards making real progress.

Takeaways:
- How to create a collaborative Value Stream Map  
- How to use Value Stream Maps to find and diagnose workflow bottlenecks  
- How to build actionable, data-driven maps that make the path clear to everyone  
- How to use maps to target your improvement and automation efforts where you need them most  

Tackle complexity, friction and waste in a few hours with a versatile and actionable mapping technique.

Not only will you see dramatically improved alignment and collaboration, but you can do it all remotely with free tools.

We'll show you how with the right map, you can be 20% better tomorrow.

TACO is an acronym I use with clients to help them map controls from their software delivery pipelines to the organizational controls.

TACO stands for Traceability, Access, Compliance, and Operations.

The approach consists of a base list of 25 automatable controls that are documented and the control activity, artifacts and SOR identified. After mapping how these controls are handed we map them to the organizational controls and identify any gaps.

This model allows for the creation of opinionated pipelines and helps create a common understanding across teams as to what is required in order to be secure.

Taking a TACO approach can be considered a part of implementing a DevSecOps program and I’ve used this approach at multiple banks. I’ve given the base talk at three conferences and multiple times to internal teams. It helps build organizational confidence in the automation of software delivery.

During the talk, I’ll run through the different categories of controls, how they are implemented, what the purpose of them is, how to create robust feedback loops for controls such as SAST and how to handle long-running processes such as DAST.

Content is fairly high level but I can dig into specifics of each given area as questions arise.

After over a decade of agile transformations, many organizations have several years experience of agile and are naturally looking for signs that the change is complete. Attention turns to the level of skill or maturity an organization needs in order to declare the transformation a success. As a result, models of agile maturity have emerged that promise to somehow measure how agile you are.

The good news is that agile, by definition, should be iteratively delivering value from the moment a transformation starts. Looking back, your ability to deliver has already changed immeasurably. You are already faster, more focussed, and delivering a product with higher quality. The bad news is that you have only just started your journey. Change itself has changed, as Gary Hamel said. What looks mature today will be table stakes tomorrow.

We will talk about what agile maturity looks like today, and where agile maturity will go in the future. We will learn how iterative value delivery is the price to pay to move along the experience curve. The more frequently you deliver value, the faster you move along the experience curve. By introducing a Wardley Maps in the context of business agility, you will be able to map out the path of your transformation, filling in any gaps that you may have, and beginning to understand what direction your transformation may take you in the future. Specifically, you can identify the drivers needed to reap the benefits along the way, rather than at some mythical end point. Business agility is not a destination but a continually evolving journey. Learn how to enjoy the journey rather than long for the destination.

The CFD is growing in popularity in the agile community and has been called a successor to the Scrum burn-down chart. It’s a  very effective tool as it  provides a better visualization and typical information for critical decision making.  Furthermore, CFD can help you improve your process by providing insights into issues and by identifying potential bottlenecks.

In this session, we’ll look at the different patterns, behaviors and examples of CFD, reviewing what each represents, and how can they be used in both a Kanban and Scrum context.

As Artificial Intelligence takes on a foundational role in tackling complex prediction problems, organizations are increasingly investing to adopt this technology hoping to obtain extraordinary results. However, less than 7% of AI initiatives ever reach production. Part of the challenge is that organizations drastically underestimate the inherent challenges in developing effective AI products.  While AI is often seen as a threat to replace us all, the most valuable implementations of AI within the workplace take a human-centric approach and focus on augmentation, not replacement.  

In this talk we introduce the “AI Learning Flow”, an agile and design thinking-inspired, human-centric perspective to help teams understand and navigate the challenges inherent to AI product development.  This will help you:

• Deeply immerse yourself into the user's context and derive insights into the prediction problems they face
• Co-create value models with your users and stakeholders, taking accuracy economics, training data governance, prediction ethics, and judgment enhancement into consideration.
• Continuously identify, prioritize and validate assumptions through thinly sliced experiments to minimize risk and/or uncertainty.

This talk is about my journey to become an ICF certified coach and how I apply those skills both to my role as a strategy consultant and business leader.

Coaching is a powerful discipline that differs from mentoring, teaching and consulting. Applied correctly it can help you have better, more powerful conversations and allow you to overcome difficult challenges.

I'll talk through the skills what I learned and where they align and differ from Agile coaching practices. I'll talk to the most powerful tools I learned that I now apply to all my work such as logical levels. Throughout this, I'll do a couple of simple exercises for the audience to take with them and use.

These skills are valuable to people at every level of the organization and equally, can be applied to all aspects of your life.

How to Navigate Software Delivery With Confidence  

Too many organizations rely solely on "Compasses" like specific metrics, principles and reference companies (being more like Spotify) instead of pairing that reference with "Maps" of where you are right now, and what surrounds you. I'll introduce some of my favourite maps: Value Stream, Dependency and Capability Maps, and how to use them to move with confidence towards your compass target.  

Takeaways:
- How Value Stream, Capability and Dependency Maps help visualize and share what's between you and where you want to go  
- How to pair Compasses with Maps to drive progress in the right direction  
- Clear examples of data-driven maps that make the path clear to everyone  

For years the Agile community has leveraged games to playfully introduce and reinforce Agile learnings.  Whether it's the coin game, the ball-point game, getKanban or another of the myriad of Agile gaming options, the immediately relatable AHA! moments give us new perspectives and insights to apply to our day-to-day lives.

But... we played them in person...  Which, as we all know, has become increasingly difficult in 2020.

In this talk we will take you along with us on our journey at a large (familiar, yet un-named) financial institution where we have been developing new and innovative ways to deliver interactive, fun Agile Fundamentals training in a remote setting.

During the talk we will interactively take trainers and learners through:
- what we used to do vs. what we have been doing for the past 7 months
- which games we've developed and/or modified to suit the remote setting
- which principles flow seamlessly and which can be challenging to translate into the remote context
- what we've learned to date and where we're still challenged

We might even play a game or two ;)

Organizations and products are failing at an alarmingly high rate in today’s challenging markets. It is more important than ever that we are able to implement our strategy as effectively as possible. But this is not the full story, for an organization to achieve its strategic objectives, we need great products that continuously deliver value to their customers.

This webinar will introduce the strategy implementation circle showing the role of products in support of an organization implementing strategy. The webinar will highlight the need for organizations to use an iterative approach to product development and strategy execution. The approach will be supported by a successful example and case study as well as by constant reference to the relationship between products and projects, and product owners/managers and project managers. 

You’ve been working with a team for a while now and you’ve noticed that planning meetings always go overtime, we can never seem to agree on an estimate, design discussions always go down a technical rabbit hole, and the requirements are always too sparse.

On the other hand, the end of the sprint feels like a giant rush, there’s always unfinished work that bumps to the next sprint, and the customer is still complaining about not having their product yet.  What is going on?  Where are all these issues coming from?

It could be that your team has trouble starting, and trouble stopping.  Join this session to learn about what happens in our minds as we think about our work and how to get started, and stopped - with some fun along the way.

We are living in an unprecedented time. Volatality in the stock market, record-high unemployment, unimaginable impact on small & large businesses, a complete shift to remote teams… the list is endless.

Leaders might feel helpless and without tools to deal with these seismic shifts. In this talk, I present a practical point of view that asks the leaders to be bold. It is not just about surviving the crisis but thriving. 

In 2009, after the 2008 financial crisis, EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) of resilient companies had risen by 10% while industry peers lost 15%.

• Do you want your organization to be one of those resilient companies?
• What are some of the concrete steps that you as a leader can take today to emerge stronger and better from the current COVID-19 crisis?
• How can you adapt to these seismic shifts happening in the market?
• How can your organization emerge stronger and better from this unprecedented situation?

The answer lies in creating an agile organization that can adapt seamlessly to the current as well as any future crises that may arise. Though agile principles have always been valuable they are even more pertinent in challenging times such as these.

In this talk, I discuss the principles and a practical approach that leaders can use to create a thriving organization.