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Enterprise Agile [clear filter]
Monday, August 7
 

10:45am EDT

Viewing The Organization as Complex Adaptive System-An Approach To Enhancing Agility (Sunil Mundra)
Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.


Abstract:
One of the biggest challenges for Enterprises today is dealing with constant and rapid change happening all around them. The change is so disruptive that no Enterprise, regardless of age and size, can take their survival for granted. However, nature and humans have dealt with change very effectively since time immemorial. Systems like Weather, Economies and even the Human Body are highly adaptable to a rapidly changing environments. These systems, known as Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), have grown resilient by thriving on change.
So when we have systems all around us which are effectively dealing with Change, can Enterprises learn from CAS about dealing with change. The answer is a resounding 'Yes'! While adopting Agile Values and Principles are helping organizations not only cope with change but also leverage it, the understanding of CAS and how they deal with change will certainly help Enterprises enhance Agility.

Learning Outcomes:
  • 1. Understand the model of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), and how they deal with change effectively
  • 2. Learn the similarities between 21st Century Enterprises and CAS
  • 3. Gain insights about the characteristics of CAS
  • 4. Learn the difference between 'Complicated' and Complex', and how the 'Complicated' model is an impediment to Enterprise Agility
  • 5. Understand how Enterprises can deal with the challenges arising from Change and enhance Enterprise Agility, by adopting the CAS model

Attachments:

Speakers
avatar for Sunil Mundra

Sunil Mundra

Principal Consultant, Thoughtworks
Sunil Mundra is a Principal Consultant at ThoughtWorks. His areas of expertise include consulting on Agile Adoption and Transformation, Agile Maturity Assessment, Agile Training and Coaching, and Distributed Development. Sunil speaks regularly at national and international level... Read More →


Monday August 7, 2017 10:45am - 12:00pm EDT
F1

2:00pm EDT

Designing Business Outcomes #noprojects (Evan Leybourn)
Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.


Abstract:
In most agile teams, the focus on delivering projects has continued to distance them from what's important - delivering value to their customers.
All too often we’ve been measuring activity and cost, not outcomes and value. And it’s important to understand that an organisation that plans for growth outcomes (without binding a team to a specific output) can fundamentally adapt to a changing market. By creating clearly defined, non-conflicting, outcomes and common working principles senior management can delegate the “how” to their teams, while retaining ownership of the “what” and “why”.
This interactive presentation will help participants define the real outcomes and associated measures for their work and teams. Participants will come to understand that outcomes can be complex, interdependent and occasionally conflicting. Therefore we will create 3 elements;
  1. the profile of the outcome,
  2. the relationship between outcomes, and
  3. the principles that align work across all outcomes
Without binding a team to a specific output, an organisation that understands, and plans for, growth outcomes can fundamentally adapt to a changing market. Governance controls come in the form of common working principles and clearly defined, non-conflicting, outcomes. In this way, senior management can delegate the ‘how’ to their teams, while retaining ownership of the ‘why’.

Learning Outcomes:
  • Introduce #noprojects - The alignment of activities to outcomes, measured by value, constrained by guiding principles and (optionally) supported by continuous delivery technologies.
  • The importance of outcomes
  • How to create an outcome profile
  • How to create constraining principles

Attachments:

Speakers
avatar for Evan Leybourn

Evan Leybourn

Founder, Business Agility Institute
Evan is the Founder and CEO of the Business Agility Institute; an international membership body to both champion and support the next-generation of organisations. Companies that are agile, innovative and dynamic - perfectly designed to thrive in today’s unpredictable markets. His... Read More →



Monday August 7, 2017 2:00pm - 3:15pm EDT
H4

2:00pm EDT

Intentional Architecture: Practices for Sustainable Development and Delivery (Rebecca Wirfs-Brock)
Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.


Abstract:
We'd like to deliver functionality on a regular cadence, but sometimes poor design and technical debt trips us up. Ongoing, sustainable development and delivery of system functionality benefits from explicit attention to architecture. Yet we don't want to slip into old habits, overspecifying things we'll never implement or doing too much design upfront. We need to strike a balance. While being agile, we also want to pay attention to the desired and emergent architecture qualities of our systems. Performance, scalabability, maintainability, or flexibility don't happen by magic.
This session introduces you to several architecture practices that can be picked up individually and adapted to your specific business context. You'll learn about practices for managing architecture work, making it visible, and for incrementally delivering architecture. For example, you might want to want to define a landing zone for key system qualities, giving room to make architectural tradeoffs. Or, you may need to raise awareness of existing architecture debt so that you can plan accordingly. Or you may need to fit in cycles of architecture investigation or innovation in with ongoing delivery of functionality. Or probe your existing system's capabilities through defining quality scenarios for normal and failure/recovery modes.
One set of architecture practices doesn't fit all situations. Come learn some powerful architecture practices that can be independently adopted to address your challenges with architectural complexity, uncertainty, emergent system behavior, and incremental delivery of features and capabilities.

Learning Outcomes:
  • Appreciate explicit attention to architecture and the utility of independent architecture practices
  • Ways to manage and mitigate architecture risk: landing zones, risk reduction backlogs, architecture roadmaps
  • Managing architecture investigation: architecture spikes, innovation spikes, bounded reasearch
  • Making architecture work and progress visible: coloring the backlog, system quality dashboards, system quality scenarios
  • A decision-making framework for "dialing in" explicit architecture practices

Attachments:

Speakers
avatar for Rebecca Wirfs-Brock

Rebecca Wirfs-Brock

Wirfs-Brock Associates
I'm best known as the "design geek" who invented Responsibility-Driven Design and the xDriven meme (think TDD, BDD, DDD..). I'm keen about team effectiveness, communicating complex requirements, software quality, agile QA, pragmatic TDD, and patterns and practices for architecting... Read More →


Monday August 7, 2017 2:00pm - 3:15pm EDT
Wekiwa 7&8

3:45pm EDT

Enterprise Discovery: From Clouseau to Columbo, Understanding Large Organizations (Thomas Perry, Marcelo Camozzato)
Limited Capacity seats available


Abstract:
Understanding the enterprise is essential to the success of any enterprise transformation initiative. All too often, consultants are rushed in to implement agile methods without any meaningful understanding of the existing people, processes or culture. Engaging without understanding these important contextual elements is a recipe for failure. There is an alternative that can help lead to more successful outcomes: Organizational Discovery.
Organizational Discovery is a structured process for uncovering the critical elements of the people, process and culture. It goes far beyond the current rather superficial models of "agile assessment" to dig into uncovering meaningful functions and dysfunctions within the enterprise. In this talk we describe the discovery process with different investigation approaches and the pros and cons of each.

Learning Outcomes:
  • Understand the enterprise discovery process
  • Learn different investigation approaches and how and when to use them
  • Discover the kinds of artifacts needed to uncover to maximize engagement success

Attachments:

Speakers
avatar for Marcelo Camozzato

Marcelo Camozzato

Principal Transformation Consultant, CA Technologies
avatar for Thomas Perry

Thomas Perry

Founder, Thomas Perry LLC
Tom has been working as a transformation agent in software development for over 20 years. He has worked on teams at startup companies, large corporations in the Fortune 100 and the State and Federal Government. His background includes testing, development, project/program management... Read More →


Monday August 7, 2017 3:45pm - 5:00pm EDT
H1

3:45pm EDT

Leveling Up at Scale: How to find your target and aim for it! (Steve Holyer)
Limited Capacity filling up


Abstract:
Are you ready to scale successfully?
Your success depends on management structures, relationships, and organizational culture. It also depends on the skills, tools, and practices your teams are mastering.
What investments are required to create the environment that cultivates progress and mastery of team skills and capabilities at scale?
What are the benefits you can expect in return?
  • Do you need consistent and sustainable team focus on producing value that is fully aligned with business goals?
  • Do you need high-quality, predictable, and reliable continous delivery capabilities that come from mastering technical and engineering practices?
  • Do you need to be a disrupter? Do you need to achieve the goal of optimizing value through business agility?
Help your teams chart a path to an agreed-upon goal of mastery.
In this hands-on session you will work together with others who share your passion in order to uncover strategies that develop team proficiency and produce the outcomes your business and customers need. Plan your investment strategy in Agile Practices at the team level to help you gain new insights for working at scale.
We will be working with the team-based Agile Fluency™ Model from James Shore and Diana Larsen to understand your individual teams' development. We will explore what the model can teach us about mastery that supports scaling your Agile principles and practice while you create an environment that fits your customer and business needs best.

Learning Outcomes:
  • Explain how teams learn through deliberate practice that support success at scale no matter which scaling principles and processes are emerging in your organisation.
  • Ask the right questions to evaluate scaling frameworks in terms of the principles and practices that fit your organisation best.
  • Identify the zones of the Agile Fluency Model and show how they apply tp your teams.
  • Understand how skills and practices may change as teams become more fluent.
  • Encourage the environment your organisation needs to develop proficient fluency at the next level—and the right level for your organisation.


Speakers
avatar for Steve Holyer

Steve Holyer

Agile PO Coach and Trainer, engage-results.com
Steve Holyer is a product ownership coach, trainer, facilitator and consultant helping product organisations unleash value and deliver results. Principal consultant at Steve Holyer and Associates in Zurich Switzerland; he is an international speaker and trainer on Scrum and Agile... Read More →


Monday August 7, 2017 3:45pm - 5:00pm EDT
I1
 
Tuesday, August 8
 

9:00am EDT

I love the smell of DATA in the morning (Getting started with Agile Data Science) (Troy Magennis)
Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.


Abstract:
Data science improves effectiveness of many industries by looking at what has occurred in the past and using that analysis to help make decisions about the future. This talk shows practical techniques to solve questions about Agile processes and software development using even small amounts of historical data.
This session introduces the concepts behind data science and offers numerous easy wins with practical applications to any software development process. It will demonstrate how even a little data can be used to inform more likely future outcomes and how to get started immediately in your company.
Some of the practical techniques explained and demonstrated are –
  • How to estimate the likely lead time for future items based on (similar) past items using completed item cycle-time data trends
  • How to forecast how many items are likely to be delivered over some period of time using system throughput (just needing historical start and completion date data)
  • How to estimate the likely number of remaining defects in a product using sampling and defect report and fix rate data
  • How to look for clusters of similar impediments and failures in completed items using blocker clustering and frequency data
  • How to identify and quantify declining predictability in a process earlier by observing changing process trends
By the end of this session you will know how and why simple techniques applied to historical data are reliable and outperform intuition alone, and have immediately actionable techniques that you will understand. Everything shown is easily implemented using post-it notes and spreadsheets (yours or mine, freely available on Google sheets or Excel).
Learning outcomes include -
  • Learn what “data science” means and how it is used with simple examples
  • Learn how to immediately start doing simple analysis of historical data
  • Learn how to assess the expected reliability of analysis applied to historical data
  • Learn five immediate ways to perform quality data science in an Agile context
Data science isn’t as complicated as it sounds with the core concepts easily understood in a few minutes. Even if you hated mathematics in school, this session will make you love again.

Learning Outcomes:
  • What “data science” means and how it is used with simple examples
  • How to immediately start doing simple analysis of historical data
  • How to assess the expected reliability of analysis applied to historical data
  • Five immediate ways to perform quality data science in an Agile context

Attachments:

Speakers
avatar for Troy Magennis

Troy Magennis

President, Focused Objective
Troy is the founder and consultant for Focused Objective LLC the leading quantitative analysis and forecasting vendor for the software industry for the last five years. He regularly speaks at industry conferences and promotes the better use of historical data, metrics and quantitative techniques to anyone who listens. Troy has worked at all le... Read More →


Tuesday August 8, 2017 9:00am - 10:15am EDT
I1
  Enterprise Agile, Talk

9:00am EDT

LACE - drinking our own champagne (Deema Dajani)
Limited Capacity filling up


Abstract:
Don't waterfall your agile transformation effort. LACE stands for Lean Agile Center for Excellence, it's your uber group of change agents that shepard your Agile transformation. Whether the transformation is an organization decision, or a grass roots movement, you are going to hit a point where LACE is needed to sustain the change. Stickiness! LACE is one of the critical factors for the more successful enterprise transformations.
This talk is less about "why" you need a LACE, rather it is about the tactical "how". Taking you through an interactive working session, to discover how to establish or evolve your organization's LACE. Attendees will leave with a booklet that they helped co-create during the session. And more importantly, with the inspiration to take action.
What is this based on? Not theory. The speaker implemented this approach in successful large scale transformations in financial services and insurance spaces with groups in the 1000-10,000 people range.

Learning Outcomes:
  • * Back to the lean and agile basics, for the transformation initiative itself. Drinking our own champaign
  • * Leveraging essentials from org change management, and lean agility to structure the LACE team and their work
  • * Primary objective is to give the attendees inspiration and a menu of actions they could consider to evolve their LACE


Speakers

Tuesday August 8, 2017 9:00am - 10:15am EDT
Wekiwa 9&10

10:45am EDT

Advancing from global processes to a fit-for-purpose, human “SW development system” (Hendrik Esser, Jonas Wigander)
Limited Capacity seats available


Abstract:
Processes and, generally, way of working approaches are usually optimized for one particular context. Having one company-wide way of working might help to keep a company aligned, but often causes severe local sub-optimization and frustration. So: should every sub-organization have their own processes, practices and ways of working?
At Ericsson, one of the world’s largest SW companies, operating in a rapidly changing highly complex environment, we must swiftly provide high quality solutions responding to our customer’s needs. This requires a good balance between a company-wide alignment and local optimization.
Then how can we practically achieve just-enough (global) alignment to enable (local) autonomy and optimization?
In this talk you will learn about the Ericsson Business Unit IT and Cloud’s journey from fixed static processes to – as we call it – our “SW Development System”.
You will learn about that SW Development System, which is based on insights from Agile, Lean, VUCA, Human System Dynamics and Applied Systems thinking: it is a human-centered, “just-enough” framework for working in an aligned way across a large organization where different parts contribute to a large product portfolio. It avoids the trap of forcing “mechanics” into the organization and yet allows us to work in an aligned and locally optimized way, helping us to collaborate and evolve across our large enterprise.

Learning Outcomes:
  • Understanding of how to achieve a good balance between company-global alignment and local autonomy.
  • Learn about a Development System, that is based on the human interactions instead of process mechanics.


Speakers
avatar for Hendrik Esser

Hendrik Esser

Growing up in the 1980s I was a passionate computer game developer during my school and study times. After getting my diploma in Electrical engineering I started at Ericsson in 1994 as aSW developer. From 1996 I worked in project management roles. Since 2000 I am working as a manager... Read More →
avatar for Jonas Wigander

Jonas Wigander

Change Program Manager, Ericsson AB
Change management, large scale System and SW development, PLM for SW, Continuous Everything and DevOps, Agile and Lean.


Tuesday August 8, 2017 10:45am - 12:00pm EDT
F1

10:45am EDT

Making 'agiLE' Work: Agile in the Large Enterprise (Candase Hokanson)
Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.


Abstract:
As more large enterprises are adopting agile practices organization-wide, they face unique challenges when compared to smaller organizations or individual projects. While most agile approaches work well at the team level and even for small groups of teams, many of those same preferred practices just don’t work when scaled scaled to an entire organization. For example, with just one or a few agile teams, self- directing teams can organize how they want to solve problems, but when scaled to an entire organization, some level of consistency between teams is needed to manage the dependencies between them. Because of this, the teams can't be fully self-directed. Additionally, distributed teams are a reality in global enterprises, but most agile approaches prefer co-location for face to face conversations. Business stakeholders aren’t usually part of the decision to adopt agile, and as such, are resistant to participate, or are not trained on how to work with teams operating in an agile environment. Executives sometimes mandate the organization-wide move to agile, leaving managers to implement a methodology they might not believe in or aren’t trained to support. PMOs love gated approval processes and are hesitant to give them up, but they are still needed as key stakeholders on projects. Also, in most global organizations, funding isn’t allocated to projects in an agile manner, which means executives are asking for guarantees on the dollar that agile just doesn’t support. These are all challenges we've seen at our customers when scaling agile practices and while we don't have all the answers to these challenges, we do have suggestions for how we handled these situations at various times.
In this talk, we’ll (1) start by understanding the primary motivations for large global organizations to adopt agile practices followed by (2) an overview of different scaled approaches and their limitations when scaling and conclude with (3) the most common challenges our customers’ teams are up against, and suggestions to overcome those challenges.

Learning Outcomes:
  • 1) Understand why large enterprises want to adopt agile processes.
  • 2) Understand limitations of scaled approaches to operating in an agile environment.
  • 3) Discuss common challenges of agile in large enterprises, and how to overcome them.

Attachments:

Speakers
avatar for Candase Hokanson

Candase Hokanson

Senior Product Manager, Seilevel
Candase Hokanson is a Senior Product Manager at Seilevel and a PMI-Agile Certified Practitioner who trains and Coaches, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, and business analysts on Agile approaches as well as championing products in those roles for clients. She works with teams to unite... Read More →


Tuesday August 8, 2017 10:45am - 12:00pm EDT
Wekiwa 9&10

2:00pm EDT

The Story of LeSS (Bas Vodde)
Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.


Abstract:
This talk is based on story-telling, where Bas will share the creation of LeSS and within that side-track on explaining better how LeSS works. Expect most of the session to be in story format and not in typical introduction to X format.
LeSS is a lightweight (agile) framework for scaling Scrum to more than one team. It was extracted out of the experiences of Bas Vodde and Craig Larman while Scaling Agile development in many different types of companies, products and industries over the last ten years. There are several case studies available and an book describing LeSS in detail.
LeSS consists of the LeSS Principles, the Framework, the Guides and a set of experiments. The LeSS framework is divided into two frameworks: basic LeSS for 2-8 teams and LeSS Huge for 8+ teams. All of these are also available on the less.works website.
LeSS is different with other scaling frameworks in the sense that it provides a very minimalistic framework that enables empiricism on a large-scale which enables the teams and organization to inspect-adapt their implementation based on their experiences and context. LeSS is based on the idea that providing too much rules, roles, artifacts and asking the organization to tailor it down is a fundamentally flawed approach and instead scaling frameworks should be minimalistic and allowing organizations to fill them in.

Learning Outcomes:
  • See why experimenting is a key to improvement
  • Learning the difference between component and feature teams.
  • Understanding the difficult problem of owning vs renting processes
  • Understand the LeSS Frameworks and the LeSS 'complete' picture
  • Seeing why organizational complexity - added roles, processes and artifact - is harmful for agility.


Speakers
avatar for Bas Vodde

Bas Vodde

Odd-e
Bas Vodde is a coach, programmer, trainer, and author related to modern agile and lean product development. He is the creator of the LeSS (Large-Scale Scrum) framework for scaling agile development. He coaches organizations on three levels: organizational,  team,  individual... Read More →


Tuesday August 8, 2017 2:00pm - 3:15pm EDT
I3

3:45pm EDT

Scaling Such Great Heights: Salesforce's 11 Year Agile Story (Tamsen Mitchell)
Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.


Abstract:
A Catastrophic Fail?... YES!

Was it Humiliating?... Very

Did we FAIL?....Hell Yeah!!...
...But NOW, Salesforce has one of the most well-known Agile transformation stories. Customers are constantly asking for the recipe to our secret sauce. How did we scale to over 400 teams and 45 business units, across a global Technology and Products organization? "We want THAT!"
I'll speak candidly about what went wrong, what went right, and key things we consider critical to making it work. (HINT: It came with a lot of inspection and adaption.)
This workshop will provide insights into our process, the keys to creating and maintaining our Agile organization, and the culture that is the foundation of our agility.
We'll shine a light on the parts of our process that have been influenced by the flavors of SAFe, Scrum@Scale and LeSS. Then, we'll talk about what we've been doing in the past few years, around systems thinking, organizational development, spiral dynamics and integral agile theory. Lastly, I'll share our aspirations for where we want to take our scaled agile practice and how our coaching team supports our company's goals.
One size does not fit all. A best practice implies there is 1 way, and it doesn't get better. Unless you are Spotify, you can't match what Spotify has done. Each company must find their own way, but you can learn from the journeys of others.

Learning Outcomes:
  • Steal the recipe for our secret sauce
  • Explain failures and successes of frameworks based on our experience
  • Understand the current models we use in our scaled model
  • Learn the 4 main things we find critical in our scaling story

Attachments:

Speakers
avatar for Tamsen Mitchell

Tamsen Mitchell

Agile Coach, Graphic Language
It all started when... Tamsen found her passion in cognitive neuroscience and humor. No, really. Graphic Language grew out of a passion for visuals, coaching and humor. It was founded by Tamsen Mitchell after years of research into what makes information compelling and memorable... Read More →


Tuesday August 8, 2017 3:45pm - 5:00pm EDT
H2
 
Wednesday, August 9
 

10:45am EDT

Future-Backwards: Lessons Learned from Scaling Agile (Laura Burke, Mary Thorn)
Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.


Abstract:
What if you went back in time and made changes to the way your organization adopted Agile? What were the key events that paved the way for success or failure? In this session, you will hear insights from of people who have scaled Agile around the world while learning the power of running a Future Backwards retrospective (Cynefin).
After the audience is lead through the exercise, the presenters will share their own journey of scaling Agile in a large, distributed organization. By the end of the session, attendees will uncover key turning points from their own experiences and safely share them with the entire group.
We recommend attending with a colleague! However, if you haven’t ever scaled Agile in an organization and are attending to learn, no worries. You can help facilitate others at your table and learn more about their journey, all while gaining experience with a new retrospective technique - one that scales and is great for distributed-team.

Learning Outcomes:
  • * Future Backward retrospective technique
  • * Scaling issues and solutions from the presenters and the attendees
  • * Distributed Agile challenges

Attachments:

Speakers
avatar for Laura Burke Olson

Laura Burke Olson

Laura Burke Olson has worked as an Agile Coach and a consultant and for globally distributed software development teams at IHS Markit, Appia, and Rally Software. She aligned teams to accomplish large projects and improve their systems for software development. She facilitated planning... Read More →
avatar for Mary Thorn

Mary Thorn

Agile Practices Lead, Vaco
During her more than 20 years of experience with financial, healthcare, and SaaS-based products, Mary Thorn has held VP, Director, and Manager level positions in various software development organizations.A seasoned Leader and Coach in Agile and Testing Methodologies, Mary has direct... Read More →


Wednesday August 9, 2017 10:45am - 12:00pm EDT
F1

2:00pm EDT

Stop Using Waterfall Goals: How OKR can help you focus on Value instead of features (Felipe Castro)
Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.


Abstract:
Even though companies are using Agile for delivering software, when it comes to goal setting the waterfall mindset is still the norm. Most organizations use an annual, top-down process to create a set of static goals that is in direct conflict with Agile.
Waterfall goals permeate Agile, turning teams into "feature factories" with no focus on business results. Instead of points and velocity, teams should be measuring actual value. Rather than following a fixed roadmap with long feedback cycles, they should quickly validate hypotheses.
The alternative is OKR (Objectives and Key Results), the Agile goal setting framework adopted by Google and others. But as with any other tool, OKR can be misused - tracking activities instead of results.
This talk will show how OKR can take Agile to the next level, creating autonomous teams driven by value and not by the opinions of the stakeholders. I will also share a model to help companies make the transition from "working software" to "valuable software."

Learning Outcomes:
  • Understanding that goal setting is still mostly a waterfall process.
  • The need to evolve Agile to focus on value instead of features.
  • How to create OKRs.
  • Using OKR to complement Agile and Lean.
  • A model to transition from delivering "working software" to "valuable software."

Attachments:

Speakers
avatar for Felipe Castro

Felipe Castro

Founder, OKR Coach, Lean Performance
Felipe Castro helps companies leverage OKR (Objectives and Key Results) to transform how they use goals by abandoning the waterfall, command&control mindset and embracing an agile approach for goal setting. He is a global thought leader in combining OKRs with Agile and Lean to... Read More →


Wednesday August 9, 2017 2:00pm - 3:15pm EDT
H3

2:00pm EDT

You can do better than the Spotify Model (Joakim Sundén, Catherine Peck-Phillips)
Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.


Abstract:
Let's put aside the "bubblegum and unicorns" of the Spotify Engineering Culture videos and talk about what doesn't quite work at Spotify and how we're trying to solve it. This is a failure / learning report intended for coaches and other change agents who need encouragement that it's always hard AND it's always possible to improve.
The talk will feature the different perspectives of two coaches: one of the first coaches at Spotify who grew up with "the Spotify model" and one of our more recent coaches coming from a company trying to implement it.

Learning Outcomes:
  • * Spotify is used as a framework/model copied by others, but Spotify's model isn't without challenges even for Spotify
  • * Encouragement that it's always hard AND it's always possible to improve
  • * It's great to be inspired by others but at the end of the day you need to face your difficulties and solve your problems yourself
  • *You can succeed with autonomy by never giving up; it comes with challenges and benefits

Attachments:

Speakers

Wednesday August 9, 2017 2:00pm - 3:15pm EDT
F4

3:45pm EDT

Disciplined Agile Master Class: Agile for the Enterprise (Scott Ambler, Mark Lines)
Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.


Abstract:
Teams within your organization have been experimenting with agile techniques such as Scrum, continuous integration (CI), and agile testing and have shown promising results. But people within your organization still have significant reservations about this new development strategy. How does modeling and documentation fit it? How do you ensure your organization’s long-term goals are still being addressed? How does this approach scale to large teams, to distributed teams, or to regulatory environments? How do you govern these agile teams effectively?
Agile transformation is hard because cultural change is hard. It’s not one problem that needs to be solved, but a series of hundreds decisions affecting lots of people over a long period of time that affects relationships, processes, and most importantly the mindset of those working within the change. Disciplined Agile (DA) is unlike any other framework, because it’s based on empiricism, industry data and industry adoption of modern agile practices. The result is a huge wealth of structured information that allows you to map your challenges into a decision structure of proven strategies that other enterprises have found to work in practice. In effect you can apply the DA framework to identify process improvements that reflect the actual situations faced by your teams.
In this workshop you learn how to go beyond Scrum and Kanban to take a disciplined, modern agile approach to solution delivery that provides a foundation from which to scale. To help cut through some of the agile rhetoric, industry statistics will be shared throughout this workshop. This is a collaborative workshop were participants will work in small teams to describe how they would address common scenarios faced by agile teams in modern organizations.

Learning Outcomes:
  • Discover how organizations around the world are implementing agile in enterprise settings
  • Discover how agile solution delivery works from beginning to end
  • Learn about the choices you have available to you so that you can adopt a strategy that works for you
  • Gain first-hand knowledge about the DA process decision framework and its application from its co-creators

Attachments:

Speakers
avatar for Scott Ambler

Scott Ambler

Consulting Methodologist, Ambysoft Inc.
Scott Ambler is an Agile Data Coach and Consulting Methodologist with Ambysoft Inc., leading the evolution of the Agile Data and Agile Modeling methods.  Scott was the (co)-creator of PMI’s Disciplined Agile (DA) tool kit and helps organizations around the world to improve their way of working (WoW) and ways of thinking (WoT).  Scott is an international keynote speaker and the (co-)author of 30 books, including Choose Your WoW!, Refactoring Data... Read More →
avatar for Mark Lines

Mark Lines

Managing Partner & Agile Coach, Scott Ambler + Associates
Mark is an Enterprise Agile Coach, change agent, and co-creator of the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) framework. With Scott Ambler, he is co-author of Disciplined Agile Delivery: A Practitioner's Guide to Agile Software Delivery in the Enterprise. He helps organizations all over... Read More →


Wednesday August 9, 2017 3:45pm - 5:00pm EDT
I3

3:45pm EDT

Humanizing Large Scaled Transformations FTW! (Nivia Henry)
Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.


Abstract:
It has become all the rage to utilize scaling frameworks to introduce agile in a synchronized and replicable fashion in the enterprise. Having been an enterprise coach for years, I understand the need for such a systemic approach. Oftentimes, what gets lost in these transformations is the humanistic perspective. We get so focused on the framework, that we forget the people.
Join me and fellow participants in a discussion of five key actions that help to humanize transformations: defining the mission together; identifying the value stream; team self-selection; team bootstrap; and keeping the spirit alive post-transformation. This is not another framework, these are deceptively simple steps anyone can take to put people first in their transformation.
Who will benefit from the session?
-Those considering using a scaling framework and lack direct experience
-Those in the middle of a transformation but feel stifled by the structure and lack of innovation
-Those who are nearing the end of their transformation and wonder how to sustain the new culture

Learning Outcomes:
  • Five practical steps for organic scaling that harnesses individuals motivations into meaningful impact:
  • Step 1. Collaborative mission-building: an approach for identifying and articulating the desired business outcome as an invested team
  • Step 2. Value-stream mapping: using a well-known model that identifies the work needed to deliver a product or service
  • Step 3. Team self-selection: a method that empowers teams to self-select their teams based on the value stream identified
  • Step 4. Team bootstrap: a checklist of actions critical to starting a team on the right foot
  • Step 5. Keeping the spirit alive: a discussion about what to expect 3, 6 and 18 months after the initial transformation


Speakers
avatar for Nivia Henry

Nivia Henry

Agile Coach Chapter Lead, Spotify
I believe that great people make great things. This philosophy has translated to a 15-year career building and supporting high performing teams, who continuously deliver great software and experiences. My career path has included agile coaching, enterprise agile transformations... Read More →



Wednesday August 9, 2017 3:45pm - 5:00pm EDT
Wekiwa 9&10

3:45pm EDT

On Track: The ART of avoiding a Train Wreck (Em Campbell-Pretty)
Limited Capacity filling up


Abstract:
Since Agile 2013, the "Agileness" of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) has divided the agile community. Four years on SAFe still has its critics, however according to the 11th Version One State of Agile survey, SAFe is the most widely used of the formal agile scaling methods. So regardless of whether SAFe is Agile, it is being implemented widely, so perhaps it is time for a conversation about the practicalities of succeeding with SAFe. How does one succeed with SAFe? What are the common mistakes that can lead to train wrecks?
Em Campbell-Pretty is one of the world's most experienced SAFe practitioners, having been applying SAFe in the field since before it was called SAFe! In this session she will share war stories and lessons learned from 6 years working with SAFe at some of Australia's largest enterprises.

Learning Outcomes:
  • 9+ tips to avoid a train wreck when implementing SAFe

Attachments:

Speakers
avatar for Em Campbell-Pretty

Em Campbell-Pretty

Managing Director, Pretty Agile



Wednesday August 9, 2017 3:45pm - 5:00pm EDT
I2
 
Thursday, August 10
 

9:00am EDT

Agile Transformations Beyond Teams (Bill DeVoe)
Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.


Abstract:
Agile transformations are usually focused on our IT organizations. As change agents, we've become adept at changing our software teams but we often experience resistance when talking with groups outside of IT - in particular HR and Finance. If your people systems use carrots and sticks and your company funds projects, not teams, your transformation won't see it's maximum benefit and may flounder. In this talk, I'll discuss how I've engaged HR and Finance teams to bring them along the agile path. We'll cover common challenges and missteps and how to address them. And I'll provide you with talking points and practical actions you can take immediately to start making changes to your whole company and effect transformations beyond your teams.

Learning Outcomes:
  • Participants will understand the roots of resistance to agile from HR and Finance teams. They'll leave with talking points to bring to their departments and action plans on what they can do to start working with those departments to transform them to support an agile framework.

Attachments:

Speakers
avatar for Bill DeVoe

Bill DeVoe

Principal Agile Evangelist, Velocity Partners
I've worked in agile shops as a developer in the trenches, a manager, product owner, coach, and agile evangelist. I have a diverse background and I've introduced or adapted agile processes with everything from Fortune 10 companies to small startups. My role at Velocity Partners encompasses... Read More →


Thursday August 10, 2017 9:00am - 10:15am EDT
H2

9:00am EDT

Putting the Customer First in Enterprise Agile Frameworks (Christopher Ruch)
Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.


Abstract:
Where has the customer gone in large scale enterprise agile frameworks? Customer Collaboration is one of the main tenants of the Agile Manifesto, but it seems that have we lost touch with this concept as we have scaled agile into large organizations. If we look at the SAFe Big Picture, the customer is represented, but only at the end of the process consuming the solution. This talk explores how and why it is important to pull the customer to the beginning and middle of the process and not just the end. This isn't to pick on SAFe -- the customer doesn't appear at all on the graphics for Disciplined Agile, LeSS, and Nexus at all! The concepts and principles explored in this presentation are universal in any large enterprise and can, and should, be applied to to any framework.
Each of the main enterprise agile frameworks today (Disciplined Agile, SAFe, LeSS, Nexus, etc) have a graphic representation of their model, which present an inside-out view of how an enterprise is organized to delivery in an agile fashion. But what do our agile enterprises look like from the outside, from our customers' view point? As agile becomes widely adopted as the way of developing products, there is a growing gap with where new product development ideas are generated and how customer input is integrated into the agile process. Increasingly we are seeing organizations struggling because of a lack of an effective and experienced product management group and even experienced agile coaches not knowing how to effectively engage customers in their process.

Learning Outcomes:
  • - Understanding the role of the customer, the voice of the customer, and market validation of new product ideas
  • - How to define who your "customer" is
  • - How to identify opportunities for involving customer input into your enterprise agile process, taking into account different kinds of product development and a framework for identifying the right way to engage customers in your process
  • - Understanding how design thinking, lean start-up, and usability testing are powerful tools when combined with agile for engaging the customers

Attachments:

Speakers
avatar for Christopher Ruch

Christopher Ruch

Director, Agile Transformation, Summa
Agile and DevOps coach, trainer, and thought leader specializing in enterprise scale adoption and cultural change. I lead Summa's Transformation Practice.



Thursday August 10, 2017 9:00am - 10:15am EDT
Wekiwa 9&10

10:45am EDT

Designing your Transformation Roadmap (Skip Angel)
Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.


Abstract:
What is the best way to approach an agile transformation? How can you ensure the transformation delivers the business outcomes you are seeking? How should you measure your progress along the way?
As you begin on what is potentially a multi-year journey it is important to be able to answer these questions in order to align the organization and guide investment, and yet, big up front plans will restrict your ability to learn and adapt. What is needed is a different approach, one that leverages agile and lean techniques.
In this interactive workshop, leaders and change agents will get to experience tried and tested techniques for creating a transformational roadmap aligned to goals and measurable outcomes. They will learn practical methods for defining and prioritizing the steps on that journey and discover the importance of identifying and celebrating successes along the way.

Learning Outcomes:
  • Understand the importance of creating a roadmap to guide your transformational journey.
  • Learn techniques to develop a transformation roadmap using a supplied set of transformation planning cards (participants will get to take a set of cards with them).
  • Determine and prioritize the activities needed to align and deliver against measurable business outcomes.
  • Discover how to break the roadmap down into manageable releases, helping to realize improvements early and often.

Attachments:

Speakers
avatar for Skip Angel

Skip Angel

Transformation Consultant and Mentor, CA Technologies


Thursday August 10, 2017 10:45am - 12:00pm EDT
I4

10:45am EDT

HR Performance Management ~ How do we Solve Enterprise Agile's Biggest Impediment Yet? (Dan Sloan)
Limited Capacity filling up


Abstract:
Individual goals. Annual reviews. Ratings. Bell curves. Ugh.
Are these rituals considered an impediment in your Enterprise Agile journey? If so, then the time has come to revolutionize your organization's Human Resources (HR) performance management system.
In this presentation, we will examine the philosophy behind traditional HR performance management and the negative impact it is having in Agile organizations. To address this complex challenge, we will explore the emergent field of Agile performance management and share practical, real-world experiences that can be used to champion this change in partnership with your HR organization.

Learning Outcomes:
  • Obtain basic understanding of why performance management systems exist
  • Absorb historical context behind the management of "performance" vs. "growth"
  • Increase ability to recognize the unintended consequences of an Agile-incompatible performance management approach
  • Acquire tools and evidence for advancing an Enterprise Agile journey stalled by performance management

Attachments:

Speakers
avatar for Dan Sloan

Dan Sloan

Enterprise Agility Coach, Cox Automotive
I am a member of the Enterprise Agility coaching team at Cox Automotive, a 34,000-person global enterprise focused on "Transforming the way the world buys, sells and owns cars". Prior to joining Cox Automotive, I was the co-founder and practice lead for an organizational transformation... Read More →



Thursday August 10, 2017 10:45am - 12:00pm EDT
F3

2:00pm EDT

Rising above Failure: An Interactive Case Study in Scaling Agile (Steve Martin)
Limited Capacity filling up


Abstract:
In my experience, no one starts an Agile based initiative wanting to fail. But, sometimes there are extenuating circumstances that challenge even the best of us. The trick is to learn and remain open from the failure, no matter how painful they may be at the time. While it can be challenging and somewhat humbling, continuous improvement and growth can happen from failure.
In this interactive workshop, we’ll start out quickly reviewing some of the latest research related to failure, along with some steps to take to address them. We’ll then spend most of the time discussing a real-world failure for a large program involving scaling Agile. There were over 150 people, more than 10 teams, budget in $10s of millions, and multiple technologies.
We’ll present this in a "case study" format, where you’ll get the background of the situation, and then asked what would you do. Next, steps taken and outcomes from the actual engagement will be shared – especially on what not to do. We’ll focus on the failure modes, which ones we addressed, which ones we did not, and what happened.
Turn from the perceived “dark side” of failure. Make failure a learning opportunity to grow stronger and to become more aware.

Learning Outcomes:
  • Be able to recognize common failure modes and learn some steps to address them
  • Apply failure mode learnings to a scaling Agile "case study"
  • Leave with lessons learned of failed Agile scaling that can be used in training sessions at the attendee's organization

Attachments:

Speakers
avatar for Steve Martin

Steve Martin

Founder and Principal Consultant, Cottage Street Consulting
With 20+ years’ experience, Steve is an Enterprise Agile Consultant with a solid history of helping his clients produce tangible results by applying Agile and Lean Startup concepts throughout organizations. He is a seasoned mentor, coach, facilitator, and trainer at all levels... Read More →


Thursday August 10, 2017 2:00pm - 3:15pm EDT
H1

2:00pm EDT

What’s in your role? Elevating the Scrum Master role at Capital One (Marie Dingess, Jennifer Honermann)
Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.


Abstract:
What if your Agile Transformation continued to keep pace with rapidly evolving tools and processes but one of the key roles for driving agile continuous improvement did not? That’s the situation we found ourselves in at Capital One as we shifted to an engineering mindset and innovation culture that demanded more than basic scrum facilitation out of our Agile practitioners.
This talk will identify key symptoms to look for in determining when this role needs a reboot and additional support in their growth. We will share our approach to rethinking the role beyond the Scrum Guide. Once we had a new vision for the role, we focused on understanding what our Scrum Masters would need to achieve it. We will share lessons learned of how we rallied leaders across a diverse enterprise to provide clarity in role growth, training, recruiting, and communities to strengthen our Scrum Masters and improve our organizational agility.

Learning Outcomes:
  • Attendees will learn the complexities of raising expectations for Scrum Masters in a way that:
  • encourages growth in a positive manner
  • allows department lines some level of autonomy
  • strengthens the Scrum Master community
  • involves everyone (Leadership, People Managers, Scrum Masters, Engineers)

Attachments:

Speakers
avatar for Marie Dingess

Marie Dingess

Agile Coach, Capital One
avatar for Jennifer Honermann

Jennifer Honermann

Director, Agile Delivery and Coaching, Capital One
I guide the internal agile practice and coaches in my division at Capital One. I love the potential of what we are trying to accomplish and the freedom to test and learn. That said, it's not been easy. I would like to connect with internal coaches to share lessons learned! We... Read More →


Thursday August 10, 2017 2:00pm - 3:15pm EDT
F4

3:45pm EDT

Prepare Your Software Development for 2020 (Israel Gat)
Limited Capacity seats available


Abstract:
Chances are your company will not make real money in 2017 on the Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine Learning. However, come 2020 your software development process is unlikely to be of much value to the business unless you develop deep expertise in these two areas, both personally and institutionally. Nascent that these two areas are, the time to start investing in them is now.
This presentation will explore the what’s, why’s and how’s of the forthcoming transformation. It will show how the Internet of Things, with more than 20B devices connected to it, will obsolete the way business insights, models and paradigm are derived nowadays. Instead of human brainpower amplified by the wisdom of crowds, machine learning will become the primary way to discover hidden patterns, and, up to a point, to devise and implement strategies to exploit them.
Whether you are a stakeholder, program manager, architect, product owner, business analyst, designer, developer or tester, you will need to significantly amplify your skills in order to engage and generate value in this kind of Zettabyte-scale environment. The evolving blueprint for so doing, including illustrations from various pioneers that are starting to move ahead along these lines, will be presented with special emphasis on how automated insight generation begets innovation.

Learning Outcomes:
  • Grasp the emergent realities of Zettabyte-scale Big Data that will inevitably come with the Internet of Things
  • Understand why our ability to analyze such amounts of data and and act on them lags behind our ability to collect, curate and manage the data
  • Understand the fundamental difference between human insights and automated insight generation
  • Learn how to use automated insight generation to capture value up-front in Lean-Agile processes
  • Find out which new skills you will need to develop in order to successfully engage in collaborative problem solving in 2020, and beyond

Attachments:

Speakers
IG

Israel Gat

Independent Software & IT Consultant, The Agile Executive
Dr. Israel Gat is an independent software and IT consultant specializing in large scale end-to-end engagements. He is recognized as the architect of the agile transformation at BMC Software where, under his leadership, Scrum users increased from zero to 1,000, resulting in nearly... Read More →


Thursday August 10, 2017 3:45pm - 5:00pm EDT
I4

3:45pm EDT

When Worlds Collide: Regulatory Compliance meets Lean-Agile Development (Stephen Mayner, Harry Koehnemann)
Limited Capacity seats available


Abstract:
Achieving Regulatory and Industry Standards Compliance with the Lean-Agile at Scale
Many systems in aerospace, defense, automotive, medical, banking, and other industries have an unacceptable social or economic cost of failure. These systems are also subject to extensive regulatory oversight and rigorous compliance standards. Historically, organizations building these systems have relied on comprehensive quality management systems and stage-gate based waterfall life-cycle models to reduce risk and ensure compliance. These same organizations are now adopting lean-agile methods, and are struggling to understand how their existing stage-gate compliance activities participate in a lean-agile flow of value.
In this presentation, Dr. Harry Koehnemann with 321Gang and Dr. Steve Mayner from Scaled Agile, Inc. will show how to align the goals and practices of those who build high-assurance systems with those who must assure those systems. They will demonstrate how several lean-agile principles produce better compliance outcomes by:
  • Taking an incremental approach to creating and assessing compliance information
  • Including compliance teams and their concerns in the product development ecosystem to collaborate on planning, executing, assessing, and adapting.
  • Incorporate compliance in agile quality practices – automating, adapting, continuously improving, etc.
  • Integrating V&V and compliance activities into iterative development flow

Learning Outcomes:
  • Explain how compliance objectives in high assurance environments are aligned with Lean-Agile principles and practices
  • Know the distinctions between PRODUCT and PROCESS compliance requirements
  • Improve compliance, verification, and validation outcomes through iterative and incremental implementation
  • Understand organizational alignment and collaboration strategies for early and continuous feedback on compliance
  • Apply specific technical practices that increase quality and compliance through automation

Attachments:

Speakers
avatar for Steve Mayner

Steve Mayner

VP Framework, Scaled Agile, Inc.
Dr. Steve Mayner is an executive coach and Lean-Agile evangelist with a passion for cultivating transformational leaders and high performing teams. His 35 year career in business includes roles as Vice President in multiple Fortune 500 companies, as well as Chief Technology Officer... Read More →


Thursday August 10, 2017 3:45pm - 5:00pm EDT
H4
 
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