Agile release planning provides a high-level summary timeline of the release schedule based on the product roadmap and the product vision for the product’s evolution. It allows the a product team to decide how much needs to be developed and how long it will take to have a releasable product based on business goals. Since features represent value to the customer, it is crucial that we prioritize a release in order of highest to lowest business value. Often times, this poses a challenge as various roles prioritize differently. In this session, individuals will work in teams to prioritize hypothetical user stories according to the business value of the given scenario. Individuals will leave this session with a game/technique to efficiently prioritize his or her backlog according to value with input from the entire team.

“We are going agile!” This seems to be a statement often used in an effort to streamline existing business practices in favor of more efficient and customer-focused processes. However, before we make a paradigm shift in our day to day business activities, it is important to recognize the context in which we currently situate ourselves, and make the right decisions based on that context. Dave Snowden’s Cynefin Framework helps us visualize and understand that not all situations and/or challenges are created equally. Using this framework can help us make sense of the context we are in so that we can not only make better decisions, but also avoid the problems that arise when our preferred management style causes us to make mistakes.

Agile release planning provides a high-level summary timeline of the release schedule based on the product roadmap and the product vision for the product’s evolution. It allows the a product team to decide how much needs to be developed and how long it will take to have a releasable product based on business goals. Since features represent value to the customer, it is crucial that we prioritize a release in order of highest to lowest business value. Often times, this poses a challenge as various roles prioritize differently. In this session, individuals will work in teams to prioritize hypothetical user stories according to the business value of the given scenario. Individuals will leave this session with a game/technique to efficiently prioritize his or her backlog according to value with input from the entire team.

“We are going agile!” This seems to be a statement often used in an effort to streamline existing business practices in favor of more efficient and customer focused processes. As we shift the paradigm of our day to day business activities, it is important to make sure that the new paradigm we is a fit for our current situation and needs. You can have great solutions, but if they are not applied in the right context, they will be worthless or worse, harmful. Dave Snowden’s Cynefin (pronounced Kih-neh-vihn) Framework, a welsh word, loosely meaning “habitat” and helps us visualize and understand that not all situations and/or challenges are created equal. Therefore, different agile solutions are warranted depending on the context of the scenario. It let’s us place ourselves in the right scenarios or “habitats”, so that we can pair the right agile approach with our corresponding situation to achieve optimal outcomes.

Typical workforce behaviors have been inherited and imitated through years of stagnant practices and countless interactions. It is imperative that organizations knows that its past practices will not foster future success. Organizations need to foster “learning agility” within individuals in order to foster large scale transformation that will allow them to flourish in an increasingly complex and ambiguous workforce.

One way to see learning agility is as the mindset and the subsequent practice of being able to quickly learn content or a particular skill, in order to develop and cultivate new strategies that will ultimately equip one to face complexity within and beyond an organization. Simply put, it is the ability to digest new information and quickly apply it to a rapidly changing environment.

As the world’s context shifts, organizations must evolve accordingly, or risk leaving themselves behind; implementing the agile framework, particularly the concept of learning agility, in any organizational setting will enable continuous innovation with high-quality, sustainable practices for the paradigm shifts occurring in organizations. I leave you with the words of the futurist Alvin Toffler, “the illiterate of the future will not be the person who cannot read. It will be the person who does not know how to learn”. Is your organization actively fostering learning agility?

In an era marked by rapid advances in automation and artificial intelligence, current research suggests a dramatic shift in the skills needed to sustain in the future workforce (1). As technology constantly flourishes around us, the Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21) recognized that all learners need educational experiences in the classroom and beyond to build knowledge and skills for success in a globally and digitally interconnected landscape. Thus, P21 developed the 21st century learning framework, with input from teachers, education experts, and business leaders to define and illustrate the skills and knowledge students need to succeed in work, life and citizenship. Anchored in the 4Cs: creativity, collaboration, critical thinking, and communication, they constitute the skills needed to master the 4Cs of our future workforce: complexity, change, competition, connectedness (2).

I argue that although the Agile framework started in software development, its implementation in schools and training programs will successfully foster the 4Cs in students who are preparing for the future workforce. At its core, Agile is all about innovation. It’s about dealing with uncertainty through incremental work delivered by self-organized and motivated teams that are capable of adapting and responding to change (3). As such, implementing the Agile framework in schools will help prepare our future workforce with the skills needed to “flourish in a world that is increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous” (4). As the world’s context shifts, schools and training programs must evolve accordingly, or risk leaving students behind; implementing the Agile framework in a classroom setting will allow us to create schools and training programs, that enable continuous innovation with high-quality, sustainable teaching practices for tomorrow’s workforce.

1. Manyika, Lund, Chui, Baughin, Woetzel, Batra, Ko & Sanghvi, 2017

2. Miller, 2016

3. Prieto, 2016

4. Denning, 2016