Moving from a traditional Enterprise Data Warehouse culture, i.e. single monolithic Data Warehouse, to a more flexible Integrated Data Warehouse comprising of data marts on different data platforms that meets a specific need, is a challenging proposition but necessity for a nimble agile organization. This case study/talk is an agile/devops transformation journey that started with focus on

• Speed (brings analytics closer to real-time business decisions and insights)
• Scale (Store first, explain later for all data elements) and
• Cost (Modernize with open source technology stack)

We will share insights on our pitfalls and how we overcame the challenges, tooling and open source technologies adoption, realigned our strategies to enable 40+ data engineering teams servicing a complex retail business.

Most transition or transformation involving a large scale has been lead by initiatives supported by change groups. Agile has been no different as most large organisations has invested into Agile CoEs to enable the change. The question however remains are the Agile CoEs effective in brining about the desired change. The panel discussion will attempt in understanding the challenges and various ways in which organisations are dealing with them to overcome them.

Panelists:

1. Arvind Rathore: Head of Agile Transformation -  Societe Generale
2. Rani Malli: Senior Director, Business Transformation  - Philips Software
3. Nagendra Kumar: Agile Change Agent -  McAfee

Moderator & Devil’s Advocate: Ravi Kumar

What is coaching?

“It is helping to identify the skills and capabilities that are within the person, and enabling them to use them to the best of their ability” — wikipedia

"Individuals and Interactions over Process and Tools"

The above is first of the 4 values espoused in the manifesto but yet it is common to see many agile coaches engage with teams and organisations advocating more and more processes. This is a common sight with new teams and also with teams on the path of agile transition from few months to few years irrespective of the competency, skills and maturity of the teams. Agile Fluency model created by Diana Larse and James Shore highlights the focus on value over compliance and practices at any given level

“ Team fluency depends on more than just the capability of the individuals on the team. It also depends on management structures, relationships, organizational culture, and more. Don’t make the mistake of blaming individuals for low team fluency, or assuming that one highly-skilled individual will guarantee high team fluency ”

An agile coach responsible for building high performing teams will need right set of powerful tools and techniques to leverage while working with teams and also to set the right expectations to both management and teams. This talk will draw from experience using few such powerful tools mentioned below while coaching teams attain fluency.

1. Deliberate Practice
2. Driving Empowerment & Self Organisation: Working Agreements
3. Scaling Agile Transformation: Creating a Learning Org 
4. Driving Commitment: Key Measures Highlighting Self Organisation

This is not a beginner level talk and assumes participants having experience in leading agile teams and transformation initiatives in your respective organisations.

Change is a necessity and fact of organization sustenance and survival. Some changes are quite disruptive while others evolve gradually. Agile when compared to the many of the other models is radical and requires some fundamental shifts both in culture and traditional management practices. The Indian IT Services industry is at the crossroads of change with a heavy influx of agile projects in the recent past. Effective change in the context of agile with a heavy baggage from the past makes it harder. Business still has to continue and projects must be executed; so how do we go about an effective agile adoption/transition.

This talk will try and look into the complexity and inhibitors of successful agile adoption in a typical large IT Services organization and questions the viability of certain agile methods such as Scrum and XP. We will explore why evolutionary methods such as Lean/Kanban are better fit and the necessity for evolutionary software development such as emergent design as a core premise for delivering Professional Software Development Services. Finally we also challenge the current status quo that is detrimental to a meaningful agile adoption and suggest few positive changes with Agile IT Services Manifesto.