Agile2019

Abstract:
Faced with complex multi-site, multi-language, multi-channel digital presences, many organizations struggle to provide exceptional digital customer experiences, especially those on an enterprise, distributed digital team. With the growing number of compliance requirements and international regulations, can you successfully deliver a digital strategy with repeatability and integrity?
This talk defines policies that can be leveraged throughout the enterprise for digital success—whether that is a website redesign, technology re-platform or implementation of mobile applications and social software. In a universe where digital transformational efforts are prolonged, this workshop will familiarize attendees with the agile approach to defining digital policy and simultaneously driving change adoption throughout the organization for fast impact and change.
Participants will participate in hands-on exercises and step away from the session with a clear methodology to take back to the office. Tips and case studies of successful projects (and failures!) will also be shared.

Learning Outcomes:

• 1. Understand how digital is disrupting enterprise work habits and customer experience delivery
• 2. Articulate the value of digital policies in creating freedom within a framework to balance digital risk and opportunity, as well as unleash team creativity
• 3. Learn the agile methodology for defining digital policy in 5 days with participation from across the enterprise (marketing, communications, legal, IT, human resources, procurement, finance, etc.)

Attachments:

• Agile Conference KPodnar.pdf

Abstract:
Digital transformations create a need for large-scale Agile initiatives to find ways to manage the dependencies they have amongst themselves. In State Farm's Digital Transformation, the number one question that Executives, Directors, and Product Managers asked was: how will we manage dependencies with each other in this new operating model?
The simulation is a puzzle-based exercise that focuses on identifying the problems associated with coordination across large, cross-cutting Agile efforts—along with possible solutions to managing those dependencies. It is fondly known as "The Puzzle Game" within State Farm's walls. Not only will this game help you gain a deeper understanding of the size and complexity of the problem--you will also walk away from this workshop with ways to solve those complex problems and a set of instructions for how run this same simulation in your own organization!

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the size and complexity of managing dependencies across multiple Agile efforts in a large organization
• Identify antipatterns when managing those dependencies
• List of potential solutions in alignment with the 12 Principles of the Agile Manifesto
• Receive facilitation instructions for how to run the simulation in your own organization

Attachments:

• Massive Agile Coordination Game Instructions.pdf
• Massive Agile Coordination Game - FINAL.pdf

Abstract:
Business Agility represents the ability of an organization to rapidly respond to changing market conditions by continuously delivering products and services that meet evolving customer demands. In a world being ‘eaten by software’, business agility is completely dependent on an organizations ability to create and deploy innovative digital systems. That, in turn, requires the mastery of core technical competencies — including team and technical Agility, implementation of DevOps and a continuous delivery pipeline, and lean portfolio management. And yet Business Agility demands even more. All aspects of the enterprise — leadership, sales, marketing, operations, supply, manufacturing, finance, legal, HR and more— must become more agile and adaptive, and more fluid in its organization. These teams need to be more Agile in their approach, and must also understand how to work with an Agile technology organization.
In this tutorial, Dean Leffingwell will describe the competencies needed to achieve true business agility —agility based on confidence in the ability to deploy innovative technical solutions more quickly than ever before—coupled with the business skills necessary to more rapidly adapt to evolving customer demand.

Learning Outcomes:

• An understanding of what Business Agility really is, and a description of the technical and business competencies needed to accomplish it.
• An initial self assessment of where an attendees enterprise is on the road to Business Agility.

Attachments:

• Agile Alliance 2019 Example.pdf

Abstract:
Welcome to Ultimate Baskets! You’ll be taken on a highly interactive journey through the evolution of our company as we progress through a challenging time. In this workshop, you'll become familiar with the learning loops of the Kanban Cadences and use them to manage projects, address risks, and foster innovation. Are you good enough to thrive or will you just survive? Hopefully, you won’t drive us to extinction.
During this interactive workshop, you’ll be exposed to a rich narrative, important metrics, and valuable data points. You will use this information make a series of decisions in Operations Reviews and the Risk Reviews, two of the most powerful Kanban Cadences. Those decisions will—hopefully—foster the growth of Ultimate Baskets over four exciting months. Make investments, initiate new projects, address critical risks, and see if you can help our company achieve a dominant "thriving" position in the marketplace.

Learning Outcomes:

• Our workshop has a series of Learning Outcomes. You will:
• Become familiar with how to use various Agile metrics for important business decisions.
• Learn how to use cadenced feedback loops to promote Business Agility.
• Gain exposure to system thinking concepts and their importance to Business Agility.
• Learn about different levels of decision-making (the enterprise, program, and project level) and the impact decisions at different levels have on an organization.
• Discover how the Kanban Cadences can support a modern, networked, service-based organization.

Abstract:
We have all heard of companies that have ‘gone agile’. ” We’re iterating and doing daily standups” they say, but are they really farming Agile or just maintaining a hobby garden. To truly have successful Enterprise Agile, you must make the shift from Agile Gardening to Agile Farming and learn to live off the Agile Landscape. Living off the Agile Landscape is about evolving from one small environment (ie. Garden) to scaling and system thinking (ie. Farming). To scale Agile, The Agile Landscape must be cultivated, tilled, irrigated, and fertilized. Meaning, it takes more than collaborative workspaces and morning standup meetings for an organization to live off an Agile way of being. It takes scaling agile. Scaling through establishing a Community of Practice, building a culture of validated learning across a portfolio of products, providing an atmosphere for safety, engaging areas beyond IT and include outside influencers to development team, and figuring out how to properly cultivate an organization that incentivizes people at an enterprise level to work collaboratively.

Learning Outcomes:

• • How to cultivate an Agile environment at an enterprise level?
• • Incentivizing individuals to work collaboratively
• • Fertilizing the Agile Landscape into rich soil to grow agile thinking at scale

Attachments:

• Agile Farming vs Gardening.pdf
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Abstract:
Is Enterprise Agility an oxymoron? We say we value Individuals and interactions over processes and tools however, the enterprise agility space is drowning in processes and tools. There are countless frameworks and innumerable tools to measure every part of a teams performance to dizzying detail. But what about individuals and interactions? Does this get overlooked because it’s “too hard”? How does an enterprise scale an agile practice beyond a team, into a team of teams, or boldly into an entire enterprise but not lose sight of this principle?
In this session, Em & Adrienne will trade war stories with you about with Agile in the Enterprise and what role valuing Individuals and Interactions plays in successful transformations.

Learning Outcomes:

• At the end of this session participants will be able to:
• Identify Enterprise behaviours that are incongruent with valuing Individuals and Interactions, including leadership pitfalls.
• Explain the economic benefit of valuing individuals and interactions
• Describe the types of behaviours displayed by Enterprises that values Individuals and Interactions
• Apply valuing Individuals and Interactions in an Enterprise context

Attachments:

• Is There A Place For Individuals and Interactions in Enterprise Agility.pdf

Abstract:
Are you sick and tired of hearing the word "Transformation"? Do you feel that it is one of the most over-used and least understood nouns/adjectives/adverbs in the English language? Would you be okay with not talking about transformations for the next 10 years? The good news is that you are not alone. The bad news is that the process to stop feeling this way is long and slow and perhaps painful as well. But first things first, why do you feel this way and how did you get here?
Many large Enterprises are undergoing some version of an Agile Transformation and have been at it for a more than a couple of years. However, the promise of wonderful results never actually materialized. Why? Are Enterprises solving the wrong problems at the wrong time? Is it just easier to do that so that they can "get started"?
When an Enterprise doesn't solve the really hard problems, when they try to fix what's not broken, Enterprise Transformation Fatigue sets in . This Fatigue is a real thing and any Enterprise that has decided to "Do Agile" is suffering from it. They may not know it, acknowledge or agree with it, but it's real and it's here.
Are you a change champion? Are you in the midst of a transformation? Are you considering transitioning to the coaching role? Do you have basic knowledge of Agile frameworks, values and principles?
If you answered "YES", then wouldn't you like to have a set of tools in your tool belt to deal with this fatigue? Or better yet, wouldn't you like some tools to help you keep your sanity!
If you answered "YES" again, then you're just the person who needs this session!
Let's get together to give this fatigue a clear definition that resonates in simple language.
Let's learn to recognize symptoms of these different types of transformation fatigue and tips to combat them
and last but NOT least
Let's explore how we can pivot from where we are to where we want to be
Aruna Chandrasekharan is an Enterprise Change Agent@Cognizant Technology Solutions. She is interested in leadership engagement for "Sustainable Transformations" where leaders are truly "leading" the change. Over these last several years, she has arrived at this notion of Agile Transformation Fatigue across the entire organization and the unfortunate inevitability of it.

Learning Outcomes:

• We will define Transformation Fatigue
• We will discuss why it is inevitable and how we got here
• We will discuss the various types of Transformation Fatigue
• We will learn about how to recognize symptoms for each type of fatigue
• We will learns tools and techniques to combat or work around that type of fatigue
• We will explore how to pivot from where we are to where we want to be

Attachments:

• Transformation Fatigue - Agile 2019 Format.pdf

Abstract:
"You can motivate by fear, and you can motivate by reward. But both those methods are only temporary. The only lasting thing is self-motivation." ~ Homer Rice
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) have been well known for decades now, and John Doerr's book on Measuring What Matters became a hit immediately after it was published. However, while OKRs as a concept seems logical and straightforward, many companies struggle with implementing this concept in an aligned and inspirational way. As an Agile coach implementing OKRs in multiple large organizations, I experience five major anti-patterns:

• OKRs are implemented top-down. OKRs are not KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)** which are top-down arbitrary numbers provided by management to each employee at the beginning of a long-term period (usually a year). OKRs are set by teams, not individuals, and aligned with organizational objectives. In that, OKRs are inspirational and encourage teams to set up the objectives that motivate them and inspire self-organizing teams to make a difference.
  
• OKRs are used to measure performance and define compensation . Unlike KPIs which are used to measure performance and this influences compensation and promotions, OKRs are not related to performance in any way. Numbers are easy to game, and connecting OKRs to performance would negate the purpose of those. OKRs need to be aspirational and hard to achieve, and by doing that, the teams challenge them to continuously grow and become high-performing. This is the reason OKRs are self-graded, not measured by the managers.
  
• OKRs are focused on activities, not results. Frequently, OKRs are focused on activities or tasks, e.g. provide 100 training sessions, hire 300 employees, create a Playbook covering 50 topics. While sometimes there is a reason for task-based key results, in most cases, the objective is either customer-related (e.g. customer satisfaction), business objective (e.g. revenue growth), employee-related (e.g. retention data), or a related goal. In either case, it forces teams to pivot if the initial set of activities does not bring the intended result and fail forward to pursue the goal. OKR example
  
• OKRs need to be measured by managers. OKRs are self-graded by the team that committed to those. Pre-grading is a helpful technique which allows setting quantifiable success criteria from 0 (not started) to 1 (challenging but possible).
  
• OKRs are assessed at the end of the period for which they are set. OKRs are reviewed at frequent intervals (usually monthly for quarterly or annual OKRs), and it is important to keep in mind that the value of those sessions is not in grades but in alignment and collaboration discussions and outcomes.
  

During the workshop, we will be playing several OKR-setting games. The goal of these games is to experience in practice how to avoid common mistakes and set up cascading OKRs bottom-up by empowering teams, aligning divisions, and keeping the organizational objectives in focus - all of this while keeping employees motivated and inspired. Finally, we will discuss OKR implementation and review examples of how OKRs empower teams to self-organize while achieving shared goals within a scaled agile environment.

Learning Outcomes:

• We know that mastery, autonomy, and purpose drive our professional satisfaction and create motivation. However, as human beings, we are all motivated by different objectives that may not be aligned with each other's or with organizational goals.
• How do we create a meaningful alignment of our team's goals, individual aspirations, and company objectives? How do we establish complete transparency across the organization so that at each moment of time anyone would see the same picture and understand how their individual or their team's activities contribute to this shared goal? How do we get a say in what are the objectives and a clear understanding of why they are so important for the whole company?
• Participants will leave the workshop with a clear understanding of the process of: (a) how to build a cascading OKR structure within a scaled Agile organization, (b) how to continuously pivot and self-assess their team's results, and (c) how to align the whole organization while allowing for team-level self-organization.
• In sum, they will have a framework of how to implement OKRs in an aligning and empowering way while having fun and building their network playing two exciting simulation games.

Attachments:

• Beginning with an End in Mind_Mariya Breyter_2019_final.pdf

Abstract:
What does a leader do to change technical culture?
Case study:

• Technical debt is costing customers and delaying products.
• You're a leader, not a coder.
• The debt is systemic. It's bigger than any one team can solve.
• You can't stop delivery. You can't break the organization.
• You have 1,000 people, 200 experts, and factions forming around contradictory solutions.

How do you solve this kind of technical culture problem? Come find out.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the role of autonomy in cultural change.
• Execute the core technique for unlocking technical improvement.
• Decide when to expect consistency and when to allow variance.
• Deconstruct accountability and metrics.
• See how to apply these ideas to other problems.
• Provide clear direction to your management team about your organization's next steps.

Attachments:

• Leading a 1,000-Person Technical Transformation Without Resistance.pdf
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Abstract:
Leaders often ask, “Will implementing SAFe® lead to my desired outcome?” This is like asking “If I put the cart in front of the horse, will the horse push it?”
At its core, SAFe® is all about events, roles, responsibilities, cadence, scaling, and process. It can read like a set of prescriptive rules and top-down regulations. Some agilists even claim that SAFe® is not agile!
Join us to explore an outcome-oriented approach to a scaled Agile transformation. Instead of the cart before the horse, we’ll start with desired outcomes. Then, we’ll collaboratively build a capability model within these outcomes that can actually drive improvement. Then (and only then) we’ll use SAFe® constructs to realize these capabilities in order to achieve our desired outcomes.

Learning Outcomes:

• Learn and apply an outcome-oriented approach for a SAFe transformation
• Integrate outcome-oriented thinking into your current situation
• Discover capabilities and SAFe constructs associated with a desired outcome

Attachments:

• Agile2019 - Outcome-Oriented SAFe Transformation-Final.pdf

Abstract:
You think you have your transformation figured out, but then you have a re-organization or a new vendor introduced. Or, in your efforts to address one issue, you create unintended consequences that become the next hurdle. The only way to find your way out of the transformation maze is to understand your complex ecosystem and plan for change.
The combination of culture, stakeholders, and policy are too complex to be addressed by stringing together a few agile practices. Stepping back and viewing all aspects of your agile eco-system will help you adopt a holistic approach to the journey. Let’s uncover the unspoken assumptions and bring them to the light.
In this workshop, we will explore how leveraging both the Integral Agile Model and SAFe can lead to executing successful transformation strategies. Together, Kerri Sutey and Claire Atwell have over 20 years of experience and learnings delivering in agile environments in a wide variety of organizations. Join us as we discuss how to pair the Integral Agile Model with Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) to create a holistic view of your entire eco-system of leaders, vendors, compliance needs, and policy. We will also explore how to bring organizational goals to life by creating a priorities-based roadmap. If you're feeling lost in transformation, this workshop is for you!

Learning Outcomes:

• Learn a model for a holistic approach to your agile journey
• Work with a transformation model and start to apply an agile framework
• Create a backlog of items for the organizations agile path
• Create a roadmap of prioritized items for your agile journey

Attachments:

• Lost in Transformation_ClaireAtwell_KerriSutey_080119.pdf

Abstract:
Today’s rapidly changing, and intensely competitive, business environment demands new approaches to everything from product development to the provisioning of IT services. Can the impressive results achieved by applying agile to software development also be achieved by applying agile to service delivery, especially at scale? They most certainly can, but having the right mix of people, processes and tools is key.
IBM Global Technology Services (GTS) is the largest service provider in the world, with over 115,000 globally distributed staff supporting 85% of the world’s commerce. In this session, I will share our team’s experience transforming GTS to more agile ways of working, all while protecting client operations and IBM earnings (essentially changing the wheels on the bus while the bus is moving!). I will describe the key challenges we faced, the actions we took to overcome them, and the results we achieved. I will describe our innovative approach for integrating selected lean and agile practices into a framework of repeatable patterns, and how we incrementally deployed those patterns, resulting in measurable business outcomes.
This session is intended for agile transformation leaders at all levels, who are driving the adoption of lean and agile practices across large, geographically distributed organizations. As a result of attending this session, attendees will learn specific patterns and techniques that they can immediately put to use, whether that means starting a transformation discussion, or refining an ongoing transformation to leverage the provided recommendations.

Learning Outcomes:

• The challenges encountered when transforming an IT service delivery organization to agile, and the recommended actions for addressing them.
• A core set of patterns and overall approach for transforming an IT service delivery organization to agile, including what practices to apply and what metrics to use to measure progress and showcase results.

Attachments:

• Patterns for Transforming IT Svc Delivery.pdf

Abstract:
Agile Scaling question - how do you divide work across multiple teams? We found ourselves asking ourselves this time old question at a Health Insurance company when our product lines required more than a two-pizza team. We could have started doing a lot of up-front planning (what most scaling methods do), or we had a hunch that there might be a simpler approach. This is a pioneering story of our experimentation with using Open Space Technology as a way of (self) organizing people around work. Every two days, teams would self-form around a marketplace of things that needed doing. This Open Space like event resulted in the right people working on the right things at the right time (one of the Open Space principals) and essentially created a complex adaptive human system. Not only did we manage to scale successfully, but it also unleashed creativity and - the human spirit.
People said things like:

• I feel like I’m being treated like an adult at last
• This is the only way I ever want to work again So what's in it for management? A lower cost of ownership (we had one agile coach for a tribe of 100 people with no scrum masters), higher morale (lower staff turnover), fewer meetings (more time for productive work) and it didn't require an army of agile coaches to come in and transform us.

If you like stories such as: Turn the Ship Around by David Marquet or Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal, you will love this session. If you are asking the question of how to scale for the first time, or have already started down the path and have hit challenges, there will be something here for you. Come with an open mind and spirit of curiosity to be inspired by a very different model of agile scaling.

Learning Outcomes:

• Harnessing self-organization to scale agile via a complex adaptive system
• Discover a highly effective, low cost to implement and run, method of scaling agile.

Attachments:

• Agile2019_FAST_Handout.pdf

Abstract:
Many organizations feel it is time to scale their teams and experience many challenges in their efforts. Are you asking yourself such questions as: Is the organization ready to scale? Are your agile teams stagnant and appear to be doing agile or going through the motions? Do you have a lack of team cohesion? Does your team appear to be falling back into the storming stage? Are scrum practices dwindling out with lack of enthusiasm? Are we wanting to scale due to governance or integration issues? Are you trying to scale your teams and facing struggles such as disengagement or unmotivated teams?
Let me introduce the concept of base camps to help with the questions and challenges in the teams' journey to scale! As in climbing, base camps are positioned throughout your climb to provide supplies and an area for climbers to regroup. We want to provide the same support for agile teams throughout their agile journey. The base camp concept helps teams acclimate to the culture change, new ways of working with stakeholders, socializing and collaborating techniques, and understand the overall business. By utilizing the base camp concept, the teams understand their interpersonal dynamics to constantly reflect and improve how the teams can work together.
This session will help you determine if your organization and teams are ready to scale, explain the various base camps, identify and provide recommendations/actions to move to the next base camp, and provide a template to take back to your teams.

Learning Outcomes:

• Understand the different agile maturity levels by utilizing base camps
• Capability to identify the anti-patterns at each base camp
• Utilization of the “Agile Team Assessment” tool to help teams at various base camps
• Recommendations for a successful agile scaling

Attachments:

• TravelingAgileBaseCamp2019c.pdf
• Agile2019 Team Agile Assessment Sample.pdf
• LINKS TO DOWNLOAD THE EXCEL FILES.pdf

Abstract:
An Agile transformation probably is never complete. Even when an Agile way of working is introduced company wide, there’s always more to wish for regarding your time to market, customer satisfaction or employee engagement. This certainly also applies to ING where a large scale Agile transformation was started in 2015. The Agile transformation already lead to many valuable results, but there is room for improvement. How do you keep the daily work of hundreds of squads aligned with the strategic goals of the organization? How can you help Agile leadership taking the right decisions, at the right time, based on the right information? It was necessary to explore what practices could be added to ING’s Agile Way of Working to help the organization to better deal with these challenges.
Inspired by a few local initiatives, ING chose to adopt Obeya as an add-on to the Agile Way of Working. An Obeya (“Big Room” in Japanese) is a place where top-down information about the strategic direction is connected with bottom up information about the actual results that we are achieving. This makes an Obeya a great enabler for effective Agile leadership. Based on the content presented in the room and a structure of rhythm and routine for meetings Agile leaders can apply validated learning in their day-to-day work.
The Agile Coaches initiated and supported the introduction of Obeyas in all Tribes of ING in the Netherlands and Belgium. Nienke Alma was one of them. In this presentation she will show the standardized approach the Agile Coaches used to set up the Obeyas from scratch and get them up and running. Based on her experience in multiple tribes, she’s able to compare the success of the introduction of Obeyas between these tribes. The significant differences in the success rate have provided valuable insights in the do’s and don’ts for the introduction of Obeya as a new Agile practice.
Do you want to know more about Obeya and how it fits in an Agile Way of Working? Are you looking for tips & tricks for how to set up an Obeya? Or learn how Obeya can help smoothen the flow of information about strategic direction and actual results in large organisations? Then this is a presentation you’d like to hear!

Learning Outcomes:

• - Learn what an Obeya is and how it fits in an Agile way of working
• - Learn how Obeya can help smoothen the flow of information about strategic direction and actual results in large organisations
• - Get tips and tricks for how to set up an Obeya from scratch
• - Get inspired by ING's Obeya Coaching successes and failures

Attachments:

• Agile2019 - Obeya - Nienke Alma.pdf

Abstract:
As Agile eats the world, most medium and large organizations are faced with the necessity of an Agile transformation. Surveys show that more than 90% of executives give high priority to becoming agile, yet less than 10% see their own firm as “highly agile.” Implementing Agile is a means, not the end. The goal is to enable the organization to generate instant, frictionless, intimate, incremental, risk-free value at scale, and the financial rewards that flow from that capability, as exemplified by the five largest and fastest-growing firms on the planet. For most, this is a major challenge—one that will involve deep change over many years. If the organization has been traditionally managed, the journey will include radical shifts in attitudes, values, mindsets, ways of thinking and ways of interacting with the world—in effect a change in organizational culture.
Some organizations’ Agile journeys have been spectacularly successful, whereas others have failed and many have stalled. What are the causes of success or failure or stalling? What are the common features of these different journeys? What patterns are emerging? How can failure or stalling be anticipated and prevented?
For those in the midst of an organization’s Agile journey, how do participants communicate simply and clearly where the organization is on its journey? What steps have been accomplished? What steps remain? How can an organization anticipate and avoid failure or stalling?
Many executives who would like to undertake an Agile transformation journey don’t know where to begin or what the journey will look like. Where does one start? What does the journey look like? How long does it take?
The session will show an approach to graphically mapping the Agile journey and provide answers to these questions, at both the organizational and individual level and the relation between the two. The examples of Microsoft and GE will be highlighted.
In the course of the session, participants will graphically represent both their own organization’s Agile journey and their own individual Agile journey and evaluate the relationship between the two.

Learning Outcomes:

• - Enhanced understanding of the emerging patterns in Agile journeys of medium to large organizations.
• - Capability to map the organization's Agile journey
• - Capability to map individual Agile Journey
• - Capability to relate individual Agile journeys to the organization's Agile journey

Attachments:

• Mapping the Agjile Journey Steve Denning Agile2019 Aug 8 2019.pdf