Ever been in a situation when the Product Manager comes and asks for “a couple of small changes that are high priority” and the team says “They’re kind of big. Which one do you want first? Really, really!”.  “I want them all! As soon as possible.”.

There are many directions one can go from here. One can work harder or work smarter. While you probably know ways to work harder, but let’s explore ways to work smarter.

In this talk Ardita will share techniques that she has used which produce good results. She will talk about Product management, technical backbone, collaboration and how all to get Product managers and teams “singing” together in harmony and with focus.

Ever been in a situation when the Product Manager comes and asks for “a couple of small changes that are high priority” and the team says “They’re kind of big. Which one do you want first? Really, really!”.  “I want them all! As soon as possible.”.

There are many directions one can go from here. One can work harder or work smarter. While you probably know ways to work harder, but let’s explore ways to work smarter.

In this talk Ardita will share techniques that she has used which produce good results. She will talk about Product management, technical backbone, collaboration and how all to get Product managers and teams “singing” together in harmony and with focus.

As a tester on a team, you should be a part of initial discussions around release planning and deciding what to work on first. Teams often start with big backlogs created by the Product Owner, but then get into long analysis on "Where to begin?". Believe it or not, the Product Owner doesn't know everything and any help from the team is appreciated.

A testing mindset is one important ingredient in helping to make these decisions.

In this talk, Janet and Ardita will bring some exploratory testing practices to help the Product Owner (and the team) to help decide what to work on next. They connect the testing world with the product management world to create a more effective way for a team to decide where to put their efforts so they learn faster and produce valuable solutions earlier. For example, exploring different scenarios and alternate paths helps the team visualize MVP.

Interactive exercises enable participants to experience to practice and learn. This workshop will help anyone working on an agile team that struggles with understanding where to start, or what to build.

Join a panel of experienced Agile Coaches for a discussion and Q&A of their experiences as coaches. Each of the panelists has a different background, and a unique journey into their role as an Agile Coach. Along the way, they've each built up a wide and diverse set of skills, from their careers, interactions, and experiences. 

What have some successes been?
How do we even define success for ourself, as an Agile Coach?
More importantly (and hopefully more entertaining), will be some of the lessons learned... We'll explore what was tried, but had a surprising and unexpected outcome. 
And, we'll discuss some of the ways experienced coaches continue to learn, share, grow, and develop everyday!

It is common to work on projects that have a hard deadline. These deadlines are not always fictional and time really matters. Frequently, there is a big discussion if Agile is the right approach for these cases. Can we deliver what is requested without a detailed planing, task breakdown, milestones on a Gantt chart?

In this talk, I will bring examples from my experience volunteering at GiveCamp for several years. Over one weekend volunteers create digital solutions for non-for-profit organizations using 2 hour sprints, MVP deliverables, prioritization, collaboration and an environment in which you feel proud of what you do. If you think this can't happen in your organization, come to this session and challenge me!

Many Agile teams focus on Velocity as their measure of progress. They build burn-up charts to track it over time and make it the focus of much of their discussion during Sprint Planning and Retrospectives. Is the strong focus on this metric truly in line with the principles of Agile Software Development?

Join Ardita as she leads us through a hands on workshop to explore this question. In this workshop you will discover how a focus on Value first, instead of Velocity, changes how the team approaches the work to be completed. Through a series of structured activities you will work with a Story Map for a fictitious project and assign value to the discovered stories. You will learn the practices and skills necessary to track Earned Value on your project and also learn the valuable lesson on how to discover what not to build. The outcome will be a set of new skills that you can take back with you and immediately apply to your current team development planning efforts. This session will be fun and educational. This is one workshop you don't want to miss.

You've heard that quality belongs to everybody on an Agile team. You've heard that testers and developers should "collaborate" in order to drive quality higher. You've heard that automated tests help a team continuously validate the quality. It's time to stop thinking about it! It's time to stop talking about it! It's time to make it happen! 

Watch Ardi and Cheezy do this in front of your eyes. They will build a web application driven by acceptance and unit tests.You will see how a Product Owner, Tester and Developer will create executable User stories, develop the code to validate these stories and refactor along the way. At the end, you will get a taste of what a Continuos Delivery pipeline looks like. Prepare to collect your jaws from the floor!

As leaders of Agile teams, we often need to be aware of different personality types of people we have in our teams. Coaching, people management and leadership is a difficult art and sometime we all need more than just patience. We need tools and frameworks that help us find better ways to communicate and bring change. Insights Discovery is a simple personality model that can help you understand yourself and your clients. Based on this, you can adjust how you message the change you bring, how you create a collaborative dynamic in agile teams, how you present a new idea and how to be successful when introducing new concepts. This model is useful when working with team members or Executive leaders. This will be a workshop that will take you through an exercise where you will be able to test this model. Fun guarantied!

Many Agile teams focus on Velocity as their measure of progress. They build burn-up charts to track it over time and make it the focus of much of their discussion during Sprint Planning and Retrospectives. Is the strong focus on this metric truly in line with the principles of Agile Software Development?

Join Cheezy and Ardita as they lead us through a hands on workshop to explore this question. In this workshop you will discover how a focus on Value first, instead of Velocity, changes how the team approaches the work to be completed. Through a series of structured activities you will work with a Story Map for a fictitious project and assign value to the discovered stories. You will learn the practices and skills necessary to track Earned Value on your project and also learn the valuable lesson on how to discover what not to build. The outcome will be a set of new skills that you can take back with you and immediately apply to your current team development planning efforts. This session will be fun and educational. This is one workshop you don't want to miss.