How many times did you hear: legacy systems are not a good fit for Agile transformation? Have you ever said it yourself? I want to tell you a story of a digital transformation in Premier to prove you wrong. Agile is not only a great fit for the legacy applications, it an absolute business necessity, because how else can you provide incremental value for hundreds or thousands of users through a flexible adjustable roadmap?

My story is not going to be about an immediate success. We've had our fair share of problems, challenges, and small failures. "Legacy" means "old". It means - outdated technology stack, messy dependencies, code that nobody understands, manual testing, manual builds, manual deployments, redundant features. Also, customer issues, bugs, performance issues, scalabiity concerns. Wait, did I mention dependencies?

Come to the session if any of this sounds familiar, if you're afraid of starting the Agile transformation, or if your company already went through a number of initiatives but the old habits die hard. I will share the valuable lessons we've learned from our experience, the strategies to apply to make the changes stick, as well as the anti-patterns to watch for.

How many times did you hear: legacy systems are not a good fit for Agile transformation? Have you ever said it yourself? I want to tell you a story of a digital transformation in Premier to prove you wrong. Agile is not only a great fit for the legacy applications, it an absolute business necessity, because how else can you provide incremental value for hundreds or thousands of users through a flexible adjustable roadmap?

My story is not going to be about an immediate success. We've had our fair share of problems, challenges, and small failures. "Legacy" means "old". It means - outdated technology stack, messy dependencies, code that nobody understands, manual testing, manual builds, manual deployments, redundant features. Also, customer issues, bugs, performance issues, scalabiity concerns. Wait, did I mention dependencies?

Come to the session if any of this sounds familiar, if you're afraid of starting the Agile transformation, or if your company already went through a number of initiatives but the old habits die hard. I will share the valuable lessons we've learned from our experience, the strategies to apply to make the changes stick, as well as the anti-patterns to watch for.

Agile adoption has changed the corporate landscape in many different ways. And while the change has been mostly positive for the teams, some can see Agile and Scrum ideas as a revolt against the traditional management practices. If the team is self-organized, what’s the manager’s role? Uncertainty leads to confusion and fear, stress and distrust. Managers who don’t understand the spirit of Agile, who cling to their titles and try to preserve the chain of command, can sabotage and hurt the Agile transformation. During the talk we will discuss different ways managers can become an obstacle during Agile transformation, and what they should do instead to help the teams grow to their full potential and be successful. We’ll see how the manager’s role has changed over time, what they have lost in the transition, and how their fear and insecurities can lead to management dysfunctions. We’ll review examples of how managers can ruin the agile spirit, and then take a look into ways managers can boost agile transformation and become true leaders.

At the end of the session you'll understand the conflicts and dilemmas that make your managers behave like they do, you'll learn how become a great Agile manager and how to help your manager to turn into an awesome Agile leader. You'll also have a better idea on what to expect from Agile transformation, how roles will change over time and what you can do to make it successful.

I am a Director of Software Engineering and I'm speaking from experience of being a manager in Agile world.