Agile2017

Abstract:
Ever feel like the market moves faster than your marketing team? Or wonder how flexible your finance (and leadership!) teams would really be if self-direction glitched and blew a million dollars? Organizations introduce Agile believing it will lead in part to greater responsiveness and resiliency. Yet, why do so many fail to achieve those outcomes?
It isn’t just that they’re structured and operated by default along hierarchical lines rather than by design for iterative work. Achieving the full benefits of Agile comes from shifting the culture and mindset of a whole organization, sometimes as radically as encouraging it to “Make New Mistakes.” This very philosophy was a driver in the fastest division in HP’s history to reach $1B, a hardware division that was focused on manufacturing operations with razor thin margins, and markets that changed 3x faster than the development lead time.
Through a series of short stories and exercises, attendees will explore 5 practices from that business which led to roaring success. We’ll probe their parallels in Lean / Agile practice. With each one, you’ll briefly self-inspect the state of your own organization, as well as create a backlog you can use to adapt in your “real world” beyond the conference.
Do you have, or want, a vision that takes you beyond high performing teams, to a high performing, resilient business? Come hear how you can help your organization shift from mechanics that “do” Agile, and walk away with a feel for what’s possible when not just development but a whole organization surfs the flow of “being” Agile.

Learning Outcomes:

• articulate the importance of having a clear, shared purpose to guide Agility
• describe the framework of Situational Leadership and how to apply it to your own leadership style
• identify two ways to clarify decision authority and where that clarity can be improved in your business
• apply a simple "big picture" model to help match the Agile mindset to traditional business / project managment

Attachments:

• mnma2017slides-170731235010.pdf

Abstract:
How can large, traditional marketing organizations - those that rely on functional departments, and annual marketing plans / budgets hope to keep up? We believe the answers lie in an Agile approach, and we are working hard to transform our marketing department from a plan / interrupt driven culture to one that can quickly sense and respond to customer needs and market changes.
This is easier said than done in a 350 person organization, but we are finding the solutions are familiar, and are rooted in a scaled agile approach. The key ingredients we have found so far include:
• A servant leadership mindset that lets go of details and actively supports team success
• Full cross-functional agile teams that eliminate the overhead of cross-departmental hand-offs and coordination
• Larger delivery groups organized around a set of solutions that deliver on a larger / holistic value proposition (aka release trains)
• Adaptive value delivery supported by experimentation, measurement, collaborative planning, and transparent execution
Our journey isn’t complete yet, but we are seeing real results. Join Steve Wolfe and Mary Bremel from CA Technologies and Yuval Yeret from AgileSparks to hear about CA’s journey to marketing agility, including key challenges faced and learnings applied along the way.

Learning Outcomes:

• - Agile Marketing can achieve transformational results for marketing organizations that strive to become more relevant, competitive as they join the digital age.
• - Agile Marketing is possible not just for small nimble companies but also for large organizations with hundreds of marketers and several legacy siloes.
• - Blueprint for implementing agile marketing in a classic marketing organization - What are the key practices, how to start, what to pay attention to.
• - Agile Marketing can apply to marketing groups supporting a certain business as well as cross-corporate initiatives.
• - Differences between Marketing and Product Development to be aware of when extending Agile towards Marketing in your organization

Attachments:

• Agile_Marketing_Depth_Assessment1.pdf
• agile2017-agile-marketing-ca-technologies-yuval-yeret-steve-wolfe.pdf

Abstract:
With the increased speed that CIOs and CTOs are moving their teams into agile environments, their financial brethren are running to catch up. Having been grounded in the days of waterfall methodologies, the financial side of the house is dealing with great uncertainty on how to account for software development costs. Questions include: Are all development costs now expensed because of the continual planning, developing and pivoting of software projects that occurs within agile? If development costs can be capitalized, what is the appropriate way to track these costs – through hours or something new altogether like story points?
We will explore how the historic accounting guidance that was developed specifically through the lens of waterfall methodologies remains applicable within agile methodologies. We will look at the alternative ways to amortize these capitalized development costs and evaluate the pros and cons of doing so. In addition to the financial reporting aspects of this presentation, we will also explore the benefits gained by moving from project-based funding to overall product–based funding and what key requirements must be in place to have that successful.
The goal of this presentation is to increase awareness among the audience that while making the decision to become agile is a business decision, this decision cannot be done in isolation. The business will eventually need the approval by their finance colleagues and if these financially grounded colleagues are not educated on the financial and accounting implications of moving to agile methodologies they may block such a move based on their misunderstandings alone. Getting everyone on the same page is a key success factor when moving to agile.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand how cloud computing is impacting businesses and why agility is an important factor in that transformation.
• Gain an appreciation that Finance colleagues must be included in decisions that involve changing from waterfall to agile environments and what requirements are needed to maintaining capitalization of software development costs, both for internal use or technology/software companies.
• Learn the pros and cons of tracking costs using time tracking systems or story points.
• Obtain an overview of the amortization of capitalized software costs within agile environments.
• Understand the benefits of moving from individual funded projects to product based funding.

Attachments:

• Product_Focused_Organizations_Create_Opportunities_to_Capitialize_a_Higher_Amount_of_Costs_for_Internal-Use_Software.pdf
• Agile2017 - Avoiding the Pitfalls of Capitalizing Software Final.pdf

Abstract:
In the VUCA world, only those businesses that can truly act with agility will be able to capitalize on new opportunities at the speeds and in the delivery models that the consumer demands. Regardless of the business vertical, agility is key. "Business Agility" itself is extremely elusive as consumers' demands regularly outpace a business' ability to deliver.
While a great Software Development Life Cycle helps enable agility, it will not get you business agility. The Steve Denning Learning Consortium on the other hand, is a community of several companies practicing agile across their organizations that have joined together to share best practices and drive learning at scale to create business agility models to share back to the agile community.
Microsoft, Spotify, Cerner, Ericsson, Barclays Bank, CH Robinson, and Riot Games have all presented their individual stories at Agile conferences globally. They have now joined forces to learn from each other under the leadership of Forbes contributor and author Steve Denning. Through a series of site visits, deep dive focus topics and free form discussions over the past 2+ years, the SDLC has uncovered several patterns that can help you on your journey to business agility and hold the promise to change the world of work.
The patterns are not unique to IT and are being successfully applied in HR, Support, Business Development and other business departments.
Key patterns include:

• Nurturing Culture
• Delighting Customers
• Descaling Work
• Enterprise-wide Agility

Join Steve Denning, Matt Anderson (Cerner), and Ahmed Sidky (Riot Games) to discuss how you can enable business agility in your organization.

Learning Outcomes:

• Participants will learn how to adopt and scale various business agility practices that the SDLC members have identified as common practices. This includes organization-wide agility spanning beyond IT in areas like HR, Support, and Business Development.
• Four main topics/patterns were presented at The Drucker Forum as part of the official findings, but the discussion will allow for audience questions to address their specific concerns/challenges.

Attachments:

• Report-r28-NOV-9-2016-PUBLIC-VERSION.pdf
• SDLC Agile 2017.pdf

Abstract:
Agile methods aren’t just for software anymore. Actually they haven’t been just for software for quite a while now. That said, the types of companies, and the types of industries, that are exploring team-based, collaborative, iterative and incremental approaches to do their work is rather breath-taking. Agile is truly going mainstream. The question at hand is can we apply team-based agile straight out of the box in a non-software context? Can we take our scaled agile approaches and apply them without modification? My experience is that most of the principles and patterns apply, sometimes the practices and frameworks need modification for a particular context.
This talk is going to explore two case studies… one with an international hotel chain going through a major rebranding initiative and another, a well-known fast food restaurant looking to optimize their kitchen production capacity. Two totally different companies, two totally different industries, both trying to use agile to solve their problems. We’ll look at the challenges each faced, what they had in common, and the patterns, tools, and techniques they are using to solve them. We’ll extract some common themes and test them for general applicability to other non-software domains. The talk will close with what might be a new way of applying agile outside of a software context.

Learning Outcomes:

• What aspects of common agile methodologies work in non-software project domains
• How to apply mainstream techniques in situationally specific ways
• What patterns seem to generally work outside of software and how to apply them

Abstract:
Organizations have typically adhered to an annual budgeting ceremony where funds are allocated across an organization to a variety of program and project areas. The purpose is to realize the organization’s strategy. Unfortunately, the success of this approach is mixed at best. Funding is decided upfront based on assumptions that are poorly understood. Once work is broken down there is little connection to the organizational value it’s supposed to deliver. There is little accountability for business results the further a team is away from executive leadership.
Value Driven Management (VDM) is a way of working that advocates embracing agile principles throughout the entire organization (including Finance, HR, PMO, Product, Program, Portfolio). This approach enables leaders to steer their strategic portfolio more deliberately to maximize value from investments and realize the outcomes earlier.
This talk will introduce Value Driven Management, cover case studies and practical examples, end with an interactive exercise on getting started with VDM in your organization, and leave the audience with lessons learned.

Learning Outcomes:

• Learn how to confront waterfall business practices and their limitation on your organization’s ability to scale agility
• Build a lean / agile organization at scale focused on changing the way investments are allocated and value is measured
• Gain buy-in from executive stakeholders, business collaborators and delivery team members to embrace this new paradigm

Attachments:

• Agile2017_LindaLuu_presented.pdf

Abstract:
Santa delivers value, faster, and better than any business in the World! He’s a jolly old sole and one hell of a marketing genius. Branding Saint Nick positioned Santa Pays It Forward (SPIF), a non-profit, to cultivate a one elf shop, into a lean non-profit workshop spanning across 8 states, providing for low income seniors.
Join me in this real life fairytale,"Twas the night Santa Pays It Forward became an overnight non-profit success!" Discover how the Agile Marketing Manifesto helped brand this non-profit implementing marketing values and principles to fuel creation. Santa is possibly the world’s most beloved, but to truly market a company your mind and heart have to be in it. I will share the power of conviction and its impact to marketing. Finally, I will explain how taking a unique approach to selling proposition will set a company apart from the rest.
Now on Dasher, on Dancer, is your mindset Prancer? On Comet, On Cupid, it’s time to use Agile Marking to innovate your business.

Learning Outcomes:

• Learn how adaptive campaigns over big bang campaigns can be most cost effective for lean startups
• Discover ways to empower and motivate individuals to build marketing programs by giving them the environment and support needed
• Define innovative ideas to dress your brand for any season

Attachments:

• SPIF.pdf