A Team is a "complex human system" comprising of good number of individual "components" - people with various skills. Each of these components need to be well oiled and needs to contribute towards achieving the true agility and stay relevant, competitive and alive. It's not the “best individually performing component(s)” that can take the team and organisation towards agility. These "Super-Heroes" will lead to local optimisation and eventually, an overall disaster or death for an organisation. So, we do not need super-heroes working in silos.

Rather, we need all the components to work together and collaborate. For instance, even a small software delivery team needs a bunch of skilled individuals can work with others effectively and collaboratively, and that one inspiring leader who can coach them “we” over “me” mindset. Real Agile teams are great teams outperforming themselves every time.

In this brief talk titled "Agile Coaching: Breaking the #SuperHeroCulture", we will be exploring some aspects of a truly Agile team and organisations, and what “ingredients” can make them outperform themselves. The super-hero culture needs to go away for organisations to survive in the complex business environment.

There have been many “movements” within the “Agile Revolution” (pun intended). #NoManagers. #NoEstimates. #NoProjects #NoOps. Some other pertinent questions are:

• What’s next in Agile?
• Is Agile going away anytime soon?
• Have we really reached the saturation level of success that could be achieved with Agile, or it is just a mere defeatist outlook towards Agile?

A manifesto is the core of every philosophy which defines it's intent and affirms the values and principles. Agile is no exception. Its human-centric philosophy made Agile very popular with software development teams since the release of the Agile Manifesto in the year 2001. However, “Agile Thinking” has been around for a lot longer than most people think. Humans have always been trying to figure out “better ways to do things” and have "responded to changes" that came our way.

Every once in a while, comes a new idea that ignites the fire within people. That idea gets well perceived by few, well implemented by fewer, and used inefficiently or even abused by many others. Unfortunately, Agile shares the same fate.

Through this lightning talk, the presenter will state the obvious, in a not-so-obvious manner. Agile is a mindset; Agile Manifesto is a thinking tool. Period.

If we look at the Agile Manifesto as a thinking tool and apply the Agile values and principles in our day-to-day activities (be it product development, service delivery, or even personal life), we can develop the right mindset and continuously better ourselves. The Agile world needs to "keep it simple", and value the core principles over the "fancy inventions".

Agile isn't going away; however, it may live on in just it's spirit. An Agile Mindset has been and will always be the way forward.

This session is a mix of hands-on workshop and a presentation on AgileChakra: The Wheel of High Performing Organisations.

Chakra is a Sanskrit word meaning “wheel or circle”. AgileChakra is a metaphor used to summarise the core capabilities and the competency areas that make an organisation truly agile and high-performing in today’s times, and to explain how the organisations need to ride on this wheel to survive in today’s competitive world. AgileChakra encapsulates all the frontiers which form an organisation, e.g. culture, technical capabilities, product and service offerings, governance, leadership, etc. and stresses on how an Agile Mindset is a key ingredient across all areas.

AgileChakra has evolved over the years based on the presenters’ interactions with organisations at various stages of Agile Transformation and is highly inspired by the great work of the Agile and Technology evangelists across the globe. The AgileChakra is NOT an attempt to re-invent the wheel, but an endeavour to define the required capabilities of a high performing organisation in a simplified manner. The AgileChakra will continue to evolve as the technology and agile landscapes change.

AgileChakra has been exhibited in internal organisational forums and internal conferences during the presenters’ appointment as Agile Coaches, and has helped immensely in coming up with strategies for Agile Transformation. It has not yet experienced the public limelight like Agile India.

More than 90% of products fail after they are rolled out to end users. Why is that so? Were these products not really innovative enough? Yes, they were innovative in their own ways. But users still discard these products. And again, many of us humans believe that innovation is a rare thing and only some knows the “art of innovating”.

In this brief talk titled "Design Innovation and Agile: Making Innovation a habit", the innovation-is-an-art myth will be busted and we will be looking at the “scientific” approach to innovating. Yes, Innovation can be a culture like many organisations like Google, Pepsi, and Microsoft, are. Design Thinking is a great strategy for innovation and thereby, can help in creating products that can amaze end users. While we discuss these points, we will also see if there is any agility in Design Innovation.

Business agility is an organisation’s ability to respond rapidly to changes in the faster-than-ever changing business environment. It requires good amount of adaptability, flexibility and balance to acquire and sustain long-term business agility.

An organisation is a "complex system" comprising of good number of individual "components" - people, infrastructure, departments, etc. Each of these components need to be well oiled and needs to contribute towards achieving the true business agility and stay relevant, competitive and alive. It's not the “best individually performing component(s)” that can take the organisation towards agility. These "Super-Heroes" will lead to local optimisation and eventually, an overall disaster or death for an organisation. So, we do not need super-heroes working in silos.

Rather, we need all the components to work together and collaborate. For instance, even a small software delivery team needs a bunch of skilled individuals can work with others effectively and collaboratively, and that one inspiring leader who can coach them “we” over “me” mindset. Real Agile teams are great teams outperforming themselves every time.

In this brief talk titled "Super-Hero Culture: The Achilles' Heel of an organisation's Business Agility", we will be exploring some aspects of a truly Agile business organisations, and what “ingredients” can make them outperform themselves. The super-hero culture needs to go away for organisations to survive in the complex business environment.

What does "Scaling Agile" mean? Is it about taking agile to a higher level? Or, is it about scaling our delivery capability using Agile? 

SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework), LeSS (Large Scale Scrum), DAD (Disciplined Agile Delivery) are some of the names of the frameworks that first come to our mind in the context of scaling agile. And it's a great time for the software industry which is getting more and more matured and adept with Agile in general, and scaling agile in particular. It's great that we have a problem of "plenty" when it comes to choosing the appropriate framework to use when agile is to be scaled up. 

The purpose of this talk is about highlighting the core challenges that we face when we scale agile, and how the solution lies in the basic principles, than in any of the frameworks. Without getting into the comparison (pros and cons) of the frameworks, the intention is to have the right mindset, about choosing the right set of values and principles, about valuing "Principles" over "Frameworks". 

What came first - Lean or Agile? It's a chicken-and-egg question for many. And then, there are beliefs that these two are separated twins.

If you think that Lean software development and Agile are the same, think again!

There are both difference and similarities in the Lean and Agile principles and practices.

During this talk, we will discuss on how Agile and Lean are related or different. Or are they two different names of the same thing? how the principles of Lean and Agile can be leveraged in order to create complex software solutions at enterprise level.