Fall 2018 Conference Topic Descriptions

Conversations are directed and productive BECAUSE the agenda was democratically voted on, and discussions are time-boxed. If the topic is exhausted, we move on.

If you have not participated in one, this is a great chance to do so.

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Fun Daily Scrum Social Networking: Alternative to Lean Coffee

by Greg Mester

Topic: Fun Daily Scrum Networking and ICE-BREAKER questions after introducing their name and company.. A great tool to get teams to realize how easy it is to hold a daily scrum and it is applied here as a social networking ice breaker, so people can create social and professional connections throughout the conference. Groups of 30 people take less than 10 minutes to ask the 3 questions:

1) What fun thing did you do last weekend?

2) What fun thing do you plan to do this coming weekend? and

3) What blockers do you have to having fun this weekend?

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1) What new Agile technique/concept did you do last week or month?

2) What new Agile technique/concept would you like to learn today? and

3) What blockers do you have to trying a new agile concept and could you use some help of follow-up with AgilePhilly?

Bio: Greg Mester an Agile Cheerleader is currently transforming an organization of over 30 plus teams into an Agile organization. Greg loves to get teams to work at an enjoyable, sustainable pace, so they have time to enjoy life and produce timely customer solutions.. His career journey includes: engineer, independent business owner, project / program manager, Scrum Master and continues as an Agile Coach. Greg's 30 years of experience includes Agile and Scrum work with over 30 teams across 8 different companies in areas ranging from fighter jets and tanks to software in brick and mortar stores, entertainment, schools, health care, insurance, logistics and large corporate IT organizations.

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Mentoring: How to Get a Mentor and How to Be a Mentor

by Greg Robinson and Doug Leard

Greg and Doug will cover how to have Mentoring within your organization. How to approach management, how to approach others when you think mentoring can help the team - or yourself. In some organizations, Tech Guilds of like-minded people can be the springboard for it.

And besides the Mentoring within your organization, Greg and Doug will cover the AgilePhilly Mentoring Program, where experienced members can be mentors and less-experienced ones can be mentees. These activities are usually done in a phone call every two weeks. Learn if these are things to make you better at your job and or to pay back someone who helped you along the way.

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Official Start Time is 9:30 am

9:45 - 10:45 First Morning Hour

Scaling - Getting Big is Not the Answer

with David Bulkin, Anil Kappa, and Don Patti

When people talk about agile at scale, they think about getting big using an agile framework like SAFe, LeSS or Scrum@Scale. Perhaps getting big and locking into a framework is not the answer. We will have a discussion what it means to scale, when to scale, the popular scaling frames, how to use do what’s best for your context, and how to scale intelligently.

Bio: Anil Kappa, Don Patti and David Bulkin are agile coaches, consultants and trainers, offering agile services in the Philadelphia area through Grow Lean LLC. Anil has built successful IT services companies which have been featured in INC 500 and NJ Fast companies list. Don has successfully founded and grown two entrepreneurial businesses during his career and applied Lean approaches in both manufacturing and software development. David has been applying agile for 17 years and has trained 20,000 individuals, and coached numerous teams, on agile methods.

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Authentic Leadership

by Anu Smalley

Many leaders still attempt to be one way at work and their true authentic self emerges outside of work - Some believe leadership is acting. For us to be successful agilists, we need to show up as our authentic self’s so that we can be true leaders. Based on the work done by Bill George, the creator of the "authentic leadership" approach to management, this session will talk about the importance of your authentic self, its impact on your leadership style, 4 traits of authentic leaders and provide 5 recommended steps towards your own authentic leadership

Bio: Anu is the President and Founder of Capala Consulting Group, LLC where she specializes in Executive coaching and Agile Transformations. She is also an Enterprise Agile Coach and Certified Scrum Trainer® - providing education and coaching, consulting services to clients across the United States. An IT professional with over 25 years of industry experience, Anu holds a Master’s degree in Psychology from Osmania University in India and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Bowling Green State University, Ohio.

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Using Mapping Techniques to Navigate Problem Areas

by Pete Fleming, Deborah Wyse and John Voris.

Our job is to see problems and resolve them. We need to tackle these subjective areas objectively, in order to achieve buy-in from upper management and our teams. Facilitated Mapping builds shared understanding and keeps the focus on value, in a variety of ways.

This workshop presents three complementary techniques that you can use to highlight and navigate through project challenges. For example, how do we identify the good and bad seen within our teams? How do we convene business and technology stakeholders to plan so that features support business activities? How can we organize information about the user needs and behaviors, in order to understand their entire experience and therefore maximize value?

Shu Ha Ri, Impact Mapping and Customer Journey Mapping are proven methods that guide brainstorming, planning and prioritization, and help teams navigate through the problems that often arise during these activities. This interactive workshop is relevant for technologists, designers, product owners, or anyone else working on a software product.

Attendees must attend BOTH one-hour parts of the workshop.

The workshop will be in the morning running from 9:45 am to 12 Noon.

Bio: Pete Fleming works on the full spectrum of User Experience Design for Chariot Solutions, from up-front user research and usability evaluations to information architecture and User Interface and User Experience design.

Pete Fleming recently was the Product Design Lead to AT&T focusing on Digital Life (the company’s home automation and security product). Prior work was Product Design Lead for DIRECTV apps for the company’s home automation and security services, and Product Experience Design Services to Comcast and Blue Cross Blue Shield, among others. Peter also is a Founding Board Member of The Dare Two Foundation, applying Design Thinking in the fight to prevent type 2 diabetes.

Deborah Wyse is a senior project manager and CSM who leads and supports teams from discovery to retrospective. Her expertise is with technology products and services that enhance community well-being, connecting individuals and families to education, health and financial resources. She is active in Philadelphia's Women in Tech & local Agile communities. Most recently, Deborah was a project manager with Communally, a Philadelphia Certified B Corporation.

John Voris CSM has been the Lead Coordinator for AgilePhilly for many years and connects us to the robust tech scene in Philadelphia. John first started Timeboxed Sprints and Minimal Viable Product in 1990 and he still continues to advocate for modern methods at his current company. He believes what we do is a craft that requires practice and we should not back away from its challenges.

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A Case Study of using Objectives and Key Results (OKR's) for Team Accountability and Transparency

by Karen Loomis

The Vertex Innovation Labs started using OKR's a year ago. We'll share our lessons learned from experimenting with OKR's. From listening to our experience, you'll get an opportunity to sketch your teams OKR's by the end of the presentation.

Bio: Karen Loomis of Vertex is a business development manager in the Vertex Innovation Labs. Karen acts as a scrum master and customer development coach for new product development. She has her PMP and CSM and has been leading projects for the past 10 years.

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11:00 to 12:00 noon Second Morning Session

Is Humility an Agile Team Superpower?

by Mark Dodge

The two biggest inhibitors of quality thinking, learning, and emotionally engaging with others is our ego and our fears. This session will explore how embracing humility can enable agile teams to break through these inhibitors to higher levels of performance – especially in the age of smart machines.

Bio: Mark Dodge - Senior Scrum Master at Vanguard in Malvern, PA - CSM, CSP, PMI-ACP, ICP-ATF, ICP-ACC, SAFe PM/PO

Agile journey started in 2006 with varied experiences as Developer, Product Owner, Release Train Engineer, Dev Team Manager, and currently Scrum Master. He understands what it is like to be ‘Flawsome’ - individuals who embrace their ‘flaws’ and know they’re awesome regardless!

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* CANCELLED *

Help, My Agile Team Has Fallen And It Can’t Get Up ! * CANCELLED *

by Bill Faucett

An exasperated manager, product owner, or team member comes to you frustrated about a team that has lost its way. Have you ever experienced this? Where do you start and what can you do? I will share a few of my experiences working with struggling teams, the problems we identified, and how we started to improve performance. We will also relate my experience to your, comparing and contrasting challenges and approach.

Bio: Bill Faucett of Slalom Consulting uses his experience with XP, Scrum and Kanban teams over the past 12 years to help clients and delivery teams adopt and improve agile practices. His perspective is that the best agile teams adapt patterns and practice to suit their unique needs.

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Scaling the Agile Transition Wall

by Kimberly Davis

Transitioning from traditional software development approaches to an Agile approach is difficult for any organization. Scaling the Agile Transition Wall offers insights into getting started with Agile and implementing it at scale.

From implementation mistakes, lessons learned and the value of small victories, these lessons in transition can be applied to all teams and all organizations. Kimberly will talk on implementing scaled agile rather than what it is. She works for a the department of defense and our prime PO is Lockheed Martin. They've implemented scaled agile across both our organizations since they're primarily responsible for the systems engineering and we do the software for them.

She is responsible for scaling it throughout her organization (AFMS) and she has a counterpart at Lockheed. So implementing Scaled Agile ( what not to do and what to do, leadership buy-in, etc.) are the many lessons she has learned.

Bio: Kimberly Davis is the Lead Agile Architect for ASRC Federal Mission Solutions (AFMS) located in Moorestown, NJ and is primarily responsible for the transition from Waterfall to Agile for real-time, mission critical defense systems. This is a large scaled effort that involves AFMS and their customer, Lockheed Martin Rotary Mission Systems.

Kimberly is an Agile enthusiast and practitioner with certifications in CSM, CSPO, and CAL1 from the Scrum Alliance, an SA and SP from Scaled Agile, and finally a PMI-ACP from the Project Management Institute.

Measuring the Urgency Index

by Travis Bjorklund and Crystal Harris

Organizations that adopt Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, or other agile methodologies get access to a bevy of new metrics: velocity, predictability, cycle time, variability, and many more. These metrics can help an organization incrementally improve and focus their transformation – or they can just drive the teams to misery. So where do you start? First, track the urgency index.

Bios: Travis Bjorklund is a team builder, a lean-agilist, a devops enthusiast, a process engineer, and a change agent. He specializes in leading teams of agile coaches to drive measurable business improvements for his clients – from Fortune 50 enterprises to small businesses. He is very serious.

Crystal Harris is a leader, change agent, agile coach and software developer.. She's passionate about using agile and lean practices to connect developers directly to the business outcomes they impact. She is only serious when absolutely necessary.

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12:00 - 1:00 Lunch in the Big Room

1:00 - 2:00 First Afternoon Session

From “Shu-Ha-Ri” to “Ba” - Looking at Lean Culture, a Culture you can Lean On”

by Kimberly Davis

Agile Teams are the heart of delivering value. The success, quality and timeliness of delivered solutions can vary greatly based on the inner operations from within a team. Whether or not a team is coming together for the first time, or has been working together for a long time, leaders must guide the team down a successful path so they can continuously delight their customers and stakeholders.

Teams that consistently deliver, continuously learn and enjoy working with one another often thrive off each other’s skills, knowledge and motivation. Kimberly Davis will discuss the patterns and behaviors for a team to go from “Shu” , learning to work together, to the “Ha” phase, learning to adapt as a team, to the “Ri” phase, where they are motivated practitioners of a practice they preach and take pride in.

In transforming a government-subcontract-Waterfall organization, Kimberly will share the methods she has used for identifying such patterns and behaviors and solutions for building strong and united teams, and the critical coaching mechanisms necessary for get through these three stages.

Bio:

Kimberly Davis is the Lead Agile Architect for ASRC Federal Mission Solutions (AFMS) located in Moorestown, NJ and is responsible for the transition from Waterfall to Agile for real-time, mission critical defense systems. This large scaled effort involves AFMS and their customer, Lockheed Martin Rotary Mission Systems. Kimberly is an Agile enthusiast and practitioner with certifications in CSM, CSPO, and CAL1 from the Scrum Alliance, an SA and SP from Scaled Agile, and a PMI-ACP.

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Color Personalities: Lead with Your Strengths | Personality, Interaction and Collaboration

by Adrienne Rinaldi

This session will begin with a Color Personality assessment to learn your Color Personality Signature. It will go through each colors’ strengths, how others view your personality as potential weaknesses (and how they are not), how your personality makes you a good team member or a good leader. Finally, by learning about these four personalities and their traits, can you identify how to interact and communicate differently with team members, your boss, your direct reports?

Bio: Adrienne Rinaldi is an Agile Coach for CapTech Consulting. She has been an agile practitioner for several years working with a wide range from startups to enterprise companies. Her interest in Color Personalities stems from an “Aha!” moment when first taking the assessment with coworkers in a team building activity 13 years ago. When not being an agilest, Adrienne’s activities include a blog, a published book, mountaineering, hiking and climbing. She lives in Denver, Colorado.

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An Outcome Measurement Model; Is Your Agile Adoption Moving the Needle

by Michael McCalla

94% of organizations are practicing Agile in one way, shape, or form. Has this investment yielded anything besides an Agile label? Can we articulate the gains ( and not in story points and velocity) but in measurements that impact the bottom line?

We can drive toward desired outcomes by identifying leading and lagging indicators that "Move The Needle" and change alignment and accountability. A four step model is covered in this interactive session, and the outcomes can change the conversation.

Bio: Michael McCalla is President of Achieving Agility. A technology leader, transformation specialist, and avid Agile practitioner with a passion for building great products and strong teams, Michael has over 15 years of product management experience in the financials, start-ups, coaching, and other the software development areas. The last five years were leading enterprise-wide agile adoption initiatives. His certs are in Scrum, SAFe, and PMI.

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Lean Costing Approaches: Getting to Lightweight Methods for Effective Decision Making using A.V.C.

by David Hughes

Starting in the 1990s with the advent of activity-based costing and in 2003 with the publication of Beyond Budgeting, ideas for Lean Costing have grown along with the Lean and Agile movements. Unfortunately, lightweight methods had not evolved prior to the appearance of Accepted Value Costing (AVC) in 2018.

This workshop will share the research that led to the development of AVC. You will be empowered to decide for yourself how to “connect the dots” for measuring success in Lean Costing terms by comparing and contrasting AVC with other approaches. The focus is on empirical measures and practical models for Lean Costing. You will leave equipped to explore this important topic further on your own.

Bio: Dave Hughes is a long-time AgilePhilly member. In addition to AgilePhilly, he has been a speaker at the Agile & Beyond national conference, the Lean-Kanban North America conference, the PMI Southeastern Region annual conference, the Network for Women with Careers in Technology annual meeting, and the Philadelphia area AICPA professional workshop. Over his career, Dave has taught nearly 8,000 people world-wide. He has 39 years of professional experience, 21 of them with Lean and Agile approaches.

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2:15 - 3:15 Agile Terminology Raffle and Panel of Experts

3:30 to 4:30 Final Afternoon Session

Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

by Greg Robinson

Without a good culture, strategy will fail. Yet without a strategy, a good culture will still produce results.

In this session, we look at different aspects of culture that contribute toward happy, productive, high performing teams and how it relates to the principles of Agility:

Examples include

Strong organizational cultures, but also the associated business failures due to poor cultures.

How to assess your current culture using the Laloux Culture Model, who can affect it, and how to intentionally design for it to produce better outcomes.

And the intersection of Culture and Agility at a local company (Capital One) are reviewed.

You will come away with ideas on why culture might be causing your group to struggle and learn how to focus on Culture to improve business results.

So what is the culture of your company and what do you want it to do?

Bio: Greg Robinson is an Agile leader, Certified Scrum Professional (CSP), Agile Coach, and Scrum Master with 15 years of experience leading software development teams toward program goals and building Scrum Master capabilities. Challenging traditional norms to help customers, teams, and organizations succeed through agility is at the core of what I do. I strive to unlock potential by enabling individuals and teams to solve problems and deliver business value while furthering them on their agile journey.

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Using Improv to Create High Performing Teams IS CANCELLED

by Jardena London

This is an Interactive Workshop where we use simple Improv exercises to help teams sync and get attuned to each other;

& learn to create safety for their team members;

& build on each other’s ideas;

& let go of planning and control

& and develop deep customer empathy.

Bio: Jardena London is passionate about helping IT organization’s not suck. She does this through Agile Transformation Consulting and her own Blogtoon. Jardena comes from Northern Jersey. (She has had rave reviews of this presentation from its two "performances"). Check her out at www.rosettatg.com/blogtoon

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What are Agile Anti-patterns Costing You?

by Anamika Chanda and Sean Gilligan

What are the impacts of Agile anti-patterns? We have all seen them and we've all struggled with them but, what have you done about it?

From Ceremonies to Performance Metrics, how are Agile anti-patterns keeping you from achieving your Agile outcomes?

Bio: Anamika Chanda, Senior Scrum Master, TD Bank, Mount Laurel, NJ Ana is new to Agile Philly. She has been in multiple Agile roles for the past 8+ yrs. She has worked with financial organizations in Scrum Master (SM), Product Owner and Release Train Engineer roles. She is an Agilist who believes that a SM should have technical and business expertise to transform teams into self-organizing, cross-functional teams.

Sean Gilligan is new to Agile Philly. He has held multiple Agile roles over the last 8 years including, Scrum Master, Product Owner, Agile Project Manager and Agile Coach. Sean is a project delivery and Agile specialist who has a passion for improving team performance and business outcomes through the adoption of Agile.

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There is No Silver Bullet: Metrics Reflect Your Organization's Culture

by Jennifer Honerman

Have you been searching for "the answer" of what metrics will illuminate the agility of your organization? Have you attended conferences and meet ups promising you the answer, only to walk away feeling unsatisfied? Me too!

In this session, I will share my experience leading Capital One's Credit Card organization through this journey after several failed implementations. You'll get to hear what we tried, what we learned from previous failed attempts, and ultimately how we came to the realization that the "right" answer for us is really a reflection of our culture and values, from knowing what the CIO thinks he wants, to working with your team and business partners to finally relate values and significant metrics.

Bio: Jennifer Honerman of Capital One leads the Agile Coaching Practice for Capital One's Consumer Bank. Jen has over 15 years of delivery and coaching experience in high tech and financial services organization.

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Also Ran Topics

These other topics we hope to hear at Evening Meetings this Winter and Spring

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Coach the Coach | The Coaching Backlog

by Adrienne Rinaldi

You’re a new coach. Now what? This session will help you get started on an agile transformation assignment with a coaching backlog. This session will inform new coaches on “where to start” as an Agile Coach. It will begin with reviewing common agile impediments, conditions for success, an agile readiness checklist and a coaching backlog including Epics, Features and Stories.

Bio: Adrienne Rinaldi is an Agile Coach for CapTech Consulting. She has been an agile practitioner for several years working with a wide range from startups to enterprise companies. When not being an agilest, Adrienne’s activities include a blog, a published book, mountaineering, hiking and climbing. She lives in Denver, Colorado.

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What’s in your Agile Suitcase?

by Charlie Villare

This session introduces a new, better suitcase to carry all your stuff. This is a technical presentation on a useful tool, that being the new suitcase - MS Teams - which was released in Feb. 2017.

Although it may resemble Slack, MS Teams has gone much further with its capabilities. This MS Teams suitcase can carry all your tools. And what’s more, it makes it tremendously easy to share all your tools with others. MS Teams offers discussion threads, one-on-one or group chat, audio and video conferencing, file sharing and the ability to run nearly any app. It works on any device and enables collaboration with anyone.

Whether you need a suitcase for work or pleasure, MS Teams will make communicating and sharing much easier. This session will show examples from a work environment and from personal use.

Bio: Charlie Villare has been in healthcare IT for over 35 years. Throughout his career, he has held positions as a developer, R/D Manager, traditional project manager, Scrum Master and is currently an Agile Coach with teams working in Kanban. Charlie’s career has largely been in the development of the financial software for hospitals; with a few years in clinical development.

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The 4 P’s of Product Management

by Anu Smalley

Product development is a fickle business.. Everyone wants something, but it's hard to navigate the forest through the trees. Opinions run rampant. Needs and demands seem to conflict one another. And there is always more functional expectation than there is capacity. Agile product management has provided techniques, patterns, and mindsets that have proven useful in navigating your course through these mazes. And Anu Smalley is an experienced guide who has been helping organizations and teams be successful for years. Anu will explore vision-setting and chartering as critical initial focus points—beginning with the end in mind. Then she'll share a set of Do's and Don'ts when it comes to evolving a product. She'll also bring a fresh perspective to the notion of an MVP and how to chart your course (pivot) successfully while avoiding those rocks and shoals. And finally, Anu will explore the lost art of experimentation and finding your customers compass by effective listening towards understanding and delivering what they truly need.

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Put the FANTASTIC back in Facilitation - 4 techniques to great facilitation!

by Anu Smalley

Whether you are a trainer, coach, leader or team member - facilitation is key to the success in an Agile environment.

This session will explore:

Active listening – Are you really hearing what others are really saying?
Group dynamics – Are you Developing trust, teaming, and authentic collaboration among the group.
Communication skills – Knowing “how to” present yourself ensuring that what you say is heard and understood.
Critical thinking – Pulling together the fragments of the message into a whole to form a better understanding helping people synthesize what has been said.

Bio: Anu is the President and Founder of Capala Consulting Group, LLC where she specializes in Executive coaching and Agile Transformations. She is also an Enterprise Agile Coach and Certified Scrum Trainer - providing education and coaching, consulting services to clients across the United States. An IT professional with over 25 years of industry experience, Anu holds a Master’s degree in Psychology from Osmania University in India and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Bowling Green State University, Ohio.

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Lean Metrics and Systems Thinking

By Rashmi Chafale

Velocity, stability, lead time cycle time, productivity, value, quality.. there are so many measurements and metrics.. What do we measure? How do we measure to get most value without being wasteful? Come spend some time with us to understand how to apply lean principles, systems thinking approach to metrics and measurements to derive actionable feedback that will help you deliver value quickly and improve continuously.

Bio: Rashmi Chafale is an agile and Lean practitioner. Rashmi is certified Scrum Master and certified LESS practitioner. The last 8 years, Rashmi worked with multiple agile teams in their transformation journey as coach and Scrum Master. Rashmi has a Master of Science in Physics for Nagpur University India and a Master of Science in Software Engineering from Andrews University.

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Myths and Realities of Lean Software Development

by Vaibhav “VG” Gandhi

Learn what a true lean software development mindset looks like. Is it methodology agnostic and why? I will be sharing real-life examples on how your teams and organization can benefit by embracing the principles of lean software development.

Bio Vaibhav “VG” Gandhi has co-presented in AgilePhilly Conference in Oct 2017, in Spring Agile Philly aka DrupalDelphia in May 2018, in Agile Delaware in May 2017 as well as in SECON (internal conference at Capital One) on “Agile games – Using Simple Play to Generate Lasting Insights” and was well received.

VG has also led a full-day workshop attended by 20 Scrum Masters/Agile Coaches on “EazyBI”, an analytics tool to visualize and analyze Jira issues in May 2017. VG currently works in Vanguard as a Scrum Master for a Journey lab laser focused to improve the client experience/journey across all online channels.

Fall 2018 Conference Topic Descriptions

Instructions

A Lean Coffee Hour

Fun Daily Scrum Social Networking: Alternative to Lean Coffee

Mentoring: How to Get a Mentor and How to Be a Mentor

Scaling - Getting Big is Not the Answer

Authentic Leadership

Using Mapping Techniques to Navigate Problem Areas

A Case Study of using Objectives and Key Results (OKR's) for Team Accountability and Transparency

Is Humility an Agile Team Superpower?

Help, My Agile Team Has Fallen And It Can’t Get Up ! * CANCELLED *

Measuring the Urgency Index

From “Shu-Ha-Ri” to “Ba” - Looking at Lean Culture, a Culture you can Lean On”

Color Personalities: Lead with Your Strengths | Personality, Interaction and Collaboration

An Outcome Measurement Model; Is Your Agile Adoption Moving the Needle

Lean Costing Approaches: Getting to Lightweight Methods for Effective Decision Making using A.V.C.

Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

Using Improv to Create High Performing Teams *IS CANCELLED*

What are Agile Anti-patterns Costing You?

There is No Silver Bullet: Metrics Reflect Your Organization's Culture

Coach the Coach | The Coaching Backlog

What’s in your Agile Suitcase?

The 4 P’s of Product Management

Put the FANTASTIC back in Facilitation - 4 techniques to great facilitation!

Lean Metrics and Systems Thinking

Myths and Realities of Lean Software Development

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Using Improv to Create High Performing Teams IS CANCELLED