Everyone is a leader
Unleash Your Agile Leadership Potential and Guide Your Entire Organization Toward Agility
Leadership is one of the most significant challenges to business agility adoption faced by organizations. It is a key factor―individuals who welcome complexity and know how to leverage influence, culture, and organizational design to align widely distributed teams are integral to success.
In this talk, Zuzi will share her experience with changing organizations, embracing business agility, and helping others to develop a new leadership style. The talk is based on her book The Agile Leader: Leveraging the Power of Influence.
LO:
About the speaker:
Zuzana “Zuzi” Šochová is an independent Agile coach and trainer and a Certified Scrum Trainer with more than twenty years of experience in the IT industry. She started with Agile and Scrum back in 2005, when she was implementing Agile methods in a large USA corporation. From that time, she has been credited with Agile transformation and implementation for many companies and teams around the world.
As a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) with Scrum Alliance, Zuzi has trained thousands of ScrumMasters and Product Owners. She teaches Scrum Alliance certification classes CSM - Certified Scrum Master, CSPO - Certified Scrum Product Owner, and CAL - Certified Agile Leadership in English and Czech. By creating and sustaining Agile leadership, Zuzi believes the worlds of work and life can be made happier and more successful.
She is an author of The Great Scrum Master: #ScrumMasterWay book (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Cohn)), The Agile Leader (Addison-Wesley, 2020) book, and inventor of the #ScrumMasterWay concept.
She is a member of the Board of Directors of Scrum Alliance.
She holds several other well-recognized certifications such as Certified LeSS Practitioner (Large-Scale Scrum), Licensed Management 3.0 Trainer, ICAgile Authorised Trainer, Associate Certified Coach (ICF - International Coach Federation), The Leadership Circle Practitioner, Agile Coaching (ICAgile Certified Professional), Agile Team Facilitation (ICAgile Certified Professional), Certified Scrum Professional (CSP), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), and Certified Scrum Master (CSM).
She is a founder of the Agile Association (Agilni Asociace, agilniasociace.cz) Czech Republic, organizing the Agile Czech community and the annual Agile Prague Conference (agileprague.com). She is a regular speaker at international conferences.
Humble Planning: How To Make Your Plans Suck Less
In this talk, I will introduce the concept of humble planning and why it's crucial for succeeding with an Agile way of working and building products of exceptional value. When faced with uncertainty, risk, and complexity, our natural response is to focus on what we know and to spend more time talking, analyzing, planning, and predicting. As a result, our plans become filled with speculation and rooted in our imagination. Our plans as an anchor stifle the ability to respond to changes. We become locked into plans that prevent collaboration, learning, and discovery. In this talk, I will show why instead of starting with overconfident plans, we should start with humble plans. How can we encourage our teams to begin with humble plans and what do teams need to adapt their plans as they discover and learn what’s necessary while doing the work? The talk will cover concepts like friction, the three gaps model of Bungay, intent, intent-based leadership, humble planning, sprint goals, the fog of beforehand, and the fog of speculation.
About the speaker:
Maarten Dalmijn is a consultant, speaker, and trainer at Dalmijn Consulting. He is the author of the book Driving Value with Sprint Goals. Maarten helps teams to beat the feature factory all over the world. Millions of practitioners have read his best-practice articles on Agile, Scrum, and Product Management. He specializes in helping companies to build empowered teams that can discover better ways of delivering value. Maarten is a frequent speaker at Fortune 500 companies and international industry conferences. He has worked with many award-winning start-ups and scale-ups. He is an ambassador and editor at Serious Scrum, the largest Scrum publication on Medium.
No wishful thinking forecasting
‘When will something be done’ is probably the most common question asked by customers and businesses. Unfortunately, many professionals in digital products and services, be they Project Managers, Delivery Leaders, Scrum Masters, or Agile Coaches, struggle with finding reliable answers. Some people refer to tarot-like Story Points, calculate mythical man days, or torture specialists, demanding more accurate estimations.
Are there any better ways of finding the answers? Yes, there are. Using simple flow metrics we can build forecasts regarding the delivery time (how long) or the delivery rate (how much). It’s less complicated than you think and much more reliable than wishful thinking.
The talk explains common traps and misconceptions regarding statistical forecasting but also teaches what to measure and how to use the metrics to build reliable forecasts as well as figure out how to improve your organizations’ performance.
About the Speaker:
Radek Orszewski is a Lean Agile coach, consultant, and trainer. He has been practicing many methods and tools for over 15 years working in the international organization across Europe. He’s an Accredited Kanban Trainer (AKT) and he holds the prestigious title of Accredited Kanban Consultant.
He’s also an experienced Scrum practitioner (CSP-SM & PO). In his independent work, he focuses on optimizing business value flow by including all technical and non-technical stakeholders and working with C-level management. He founded Berlin and Wroclaw Lean Coffee meetups, he teaches at Berlin CODE University, and since 2019 he hosts a podcast “Kanban przy kawie”.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/orszewski/
Lean Agile Ninja: https://www.leanagile.ninja
Kanban przy kawie podcast (in PL): www.kanbanprzykawie.pl
The Power of Empathy in Estimation: (Because Numbers Alone Can't Solve Everything)
In our dynamic world, estimation is crucial to ensure the successful delivery of outcomes for our organisations, customers, stakeholders, and our teams.
While numerical data and quantitative analysis are indispensable components of the estimation process, there is an often-overlooked aspect that can significantly enhance the accuracy and effectiveness of estimation - empathy.
This presentation delves into the role of empathy in estimation and decision-making, providing a comprehensive understanding of how empathic engagement helps us to foster team collaboration, leading to better outcomes.
About the Speaker:
Nisha started her professional journey as a Business Analyst and then progressed to leading large-scale projects and programs across various industries.
Stumbling upon Scrum over a decade ago, and with a keen ability to rally teams and orchestrate successful change, Nisha quickly found her footing in Scrum Master and Delivery Manager roles. She's since honing her craft in servant leadership, building, and coaching teams to deliver outcomes that make Gantt charts blush!
Nisha Joshi is also the co-host of the engaging podcast, "The Delivery Space". Together with Sharon Williams and Oriche Williams. she brings a fervor for sharing authentic experiences of driving change within organizations.
Outside work, Nisha is an avid reader, and devourer of podcasts and her specialist subject on Mastermind would be Blackadder Trivia.
Own Your Energy Every Day, Project – Your Energy Management System
Loreta Pivoriunaite is a personal development coach, and author of the book “The Silent Coach. Using Your Divine Silence to Create A Legacy”. Having a decade of experience in public and private organizations within the NGO management, fintech, and education industries, she designed and delivered training solutions to facilitate employee growth. Her work has been featured in Nordic Business Report, Thrive Global, and Life Hack.
Loreta's programs and trainings led to distinctive results for self-leadership and management, and have been offered internationally in The Nordics, India, Sri Lanka, Germany, Serbia, Croatia, West Bank, UK, and Malaysia.
Loreta lectures to business students, mentors professionals, and explores cold bath and healing techniques.
Title of Presentation: Own Your Energy Every Day, Project – Your Energy Management System
This practical talk offers an immersive, scalable experience and is targeted at professionals at all levels of an organization. It is proven to improve engagement through effective energy management to help organizations, teams, and individuals perform to their full potential.
During this presentation you will assess your energy level, find the hidden spot to be, feel, and act better.
The Happiness Blueprint: Positivity Experiments for Powerful Teamwork
This talk aims to explore and highlight the tangible benefits of infusing positivity in teams through a series of evidence-based experiments.
It will discuss the psychological and physiological effects of positive emotions, emphasizing the importance of cultivating an environment of trust, collaboration, and open communication. It will then delve into a series of case studies illustrating the design and implementation of experiments that foster positivity within teams.
This presentation will also outline a versatile framework for designing and implementing positivity experiments tailored to infuse positivity into your teams. This framework will empower leaders and coaches with the tools to identify potential growth opportunities and establish targeted interventions to refine team dynamics.
This positive and informative session will share insights on running targeted experiments to infuse positivity in your team, resulting in higher performance and a more supportive work environment while harnessing the power of positivity to unlock your team's full potential and drive organizational success.
About the Speaker:
Antoni Tzavelas is an experienced Agile coach with 20 years of experience in the IT industry. He focuses on finding leaner ways of working within teams while challenging the cultural status quo to inspire and invite positive and learning mindsets.
Antoni’s past as a Systems Admin, DevOps Engineer, and Cloud trainer helped in serving the Agile, cloud, and DevOps community, teaching and mentoring those who are new to the domain while providing them with the necessary strategies and Agile mindset to help cultivate a learning culture.
Antoni is an active user on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonit/] and is always open to coach others and can also be contacted for various workshops through his company site, Lean Bowtie https://leanbowtie.com
Expanding Horizons: Lateral Thinking for Hypothesis-Driven Experimentation
Discover the power of experimentation as a game-changer for exceptional companies. Join us in exploring the art of lateral thinking, where we learn to ask insightful questions and craft creative hypotheses. Gain practical tips for conducting meaningful experiments, from understanding the problem to tracking progress and embracing failure as a stepping stone to success. Walk away with a ready-to-use toolbox to drive innovation in your organization.
About the Speaker:
Agne is a systemic agile consultant with over eight years of experience assisting product development organizations in various industries. Her expertise encompasses strategic planning, organizational design, and digital innovation. With a client-centric focus, Agne offers comprehensive training and coaching, empowering teams and executive management to implement agile practices and achieve business objectives.
The Agile Triforce: Pitfalls and Lifesavers for International Agile Teams
The Agile journey is never easy, not gonna lie. The challenges seem vast and never-ending, especially if you have never met your colleagues face-to-face, but there is a silver lining! Focusing on how distance, intolerance, and disengagement affect us, I will go through real scenarios based on my experience with international and distributed teams to unravel actual issues that Agile teams face on a day-to-day basis, providing down-to-earth tips so you can break the vicious cycle, Zelda-style! Join me and let’s deconstruct our problems, have a laugh while doing so, and gain some insightful and hopefully useful knowledge that you can apply in your distributed teams!
About the Speaker:
Federico Lahm is a Scrum Master and Agile Coach who is passionate about all things Agile, mainly empowering teams to work together towards a purpose. He has been working in IT for the last 14 years, 9 of which participated in Agile teams within the Scrum framework as a Business Analyst, Product Owner, and currently Scrum Master. Being initially from Argentina, he has also lived and worked in several countries such as Czechia, Gibraltar (UK) and now Lithuania, having collaborated with colleagues from over 25 countries across the globe. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/federicolahm/
Untrapping Product Teams
Product teams are drowning in anti-patterns. It’s time to help them untrap themselves and create value sooner.
Challenges. Anti-patterns. Deadlines. The lives of product teams have never been more challenging. With ever-increasing pressure, delivering value becomes daunting. Product teams become feature factories and end up maximizing features nobody needs. That’s not what Product teams are supposed to be.
It’s time to help teams untrap themselves and create value sooner! I will share with you what you can do from today on to transform your scenario and become a value maximizer instead of a feature factory.
About the Speaker:
David is a passionate Product Leader with ten years of product management experience. Over the last few years, David led many product teams in successful endeavors. His mission is to help product teams deliver REAL value faster and unlock their potential. Therefore, David helps companies and teams untrap themselves and overcome the multiple traps ahead of them. His biggest fear is the comfort zone. His motto is, the faster we learn, the faster we succeed.
One of David’s hobbies is writing articles. David shares his ideas on LinkedIn and Substack and he loves learning from everyone.
How to Launch Products 10x Faster?
At Revolut Business Vaidas with colleagues was launching a new product every few months. At Uncapped they launched digital banking in the USA from PowerPoint to first customers in less than 6 months. At First Circle, Vaidas with colleagues launched digital banking in the Philippines with a unique unbeatable USP (Unique Selling Point) in less than 6 months. Vaidas will share the “magic” that makes such speedy delivery possible. Be ready to launch your next product 10x faster!
About the speaker:
Vaidas Adomauskas is the founder of Agile Coach, the only Agile training and consulting center in Lithuania, the founder of the Agile Lietuva association, and an Agile (and digital products) evangelist in Lithuania.
Vaidas is currently serving as a Fractional Chief Product Officer (CPO) for several international clients. He previously held the CPO position at fintech startups First Circle and Uncapped and served as the Head of Revolut Business at Revolut, the fastest-growing startup in Europe.
For over 15 years, Vaidas has utilized Agile methodologies and digital products to expedite companies' path to achieving business results. He provides consultation and advisory to company boards, CEOs, and managers, conducts training, and serves as a coach.
Vaidas's ICAgile Certified Professional course is accredited by the international Agile Consortium (ICAgile), enabling participants to earn international ICAgile Certified Professional certificates.
Using Agile Self-Organization to Help Your Team’s “Return To Office” Suck Less.
Whether you’re excited to collaborate in person or you dread having to wear shoes again—or both—it’s clear the great Return To Office is a big adjustment for you and your teams. In the past 2-3 years, we tried to tailor our home office environments to help us work at our best. Now we must re-learn how to share space with others whose working styles, communication styles, needs, and preferences are very different. In some cases, our companies’ Return To Office policies is creating new problems that we might not be able to fix right away.
Teamwork and self-organization are the heart of any agile practice, and this fast-paced session will teach you several concrete techniques for resetting team norms in our new normal. We’ll talk about working agreements and conflict resolution that can help fully co-located teams as well as hybrid teams. Return To The Office might be challenging, but if your team can pull together and help each other through the transition, you’ll be set up to tackle any problem that comes next!
About the Speaker:
Cheryl Hammond, a.k.a. @bsktcase, has a couple of decades of experience as a software developer in the private and public sectors. She led her team's successful adoption of Scrumban for a mission-critical regulatory compliance project under multi-agency state and federal government oversight; mentored former COBOL devs into true-believing unit-testing XP evangelists; and turned a threatened software product at risk of litigation into a lean, revenue-generating flagship offering in nine months, all of which led her to believe that anything is possible. She is not sorry for her many biases, including strong preferences for servant-style leadership and team-based, holistic problem-solving and a strong aversion to agile zealotry. Whether consulting or in-house, Cheryl endeavors to make life suck less for software delivery organizations and the humans who inhabit them.
Continuous Improvement at Scale - How to identify and resolve systemic impediments to progress
The problem with retrospectives is that the learning identified often remain locally to the team. The wins, failures and improvements a team makes doesn't get shared widely. That knowledge is a resource & a powerful one.
What if you could zoom out across teams of teams?
Join me for an interactive exploration of my top tips, strategies, and hacks for continuous improvement at scale.
Together, we will explore how to break down silos and encourage collaboration between teams, how to identify systemic impediments that impact the entire organization, and how to leverage the power of retrospectives to drive change at scale.
Agenda
Outcomes
About the Speaker:
As The Virtual Agile Coach, Chris is on a mission to help people to continuously improve each and every day and have fun while they do it.
With over a decade of experience creating high performing teams across a range of industries, from smaller lean enterprises to some of the world's largest companies, Chris is dedicated to creating environments where people can be their best selves on their best day and be supported on their worst.
He is the Managing Partner of Virtually Agile, a challenger consultancy, a regular on the conference circuit, podcaster, trainer, blogger and soon to be author, Chris is always seeking new ways to share his expertise and inspire others to think creatively about how they can continuously improve.
Corporate Eats Product?
METRO.digital as the software house of the METRO wholesale business is on a journey from a classical IT provider to a true product organization. However, product management by the books in a corporate B2B environment goes hand in hand with a lot of challenges in the ways of thinking and acting. In this session, Christina will share with you the way how METRO.digital hacked the culture code through discovery and experimentation.
About the Speaker:
Making it simple! This is what Christina's heart beats for in both senses: simplifying things and getting things done. For 6 years she has been working for METRO as a Change Manager, Agile & OKR Master, and Product Coach. She loves supporting and challenging people and the organization with her team. She is passionate about digital product development and thus creates solutions for customers that add value and solve actual problems. In her free time, she enjoys being in the mountains and on the water, cooking dishes with a maximum of five ingredients, and writing her first book on Objectives & Key Results.
Cracking the Code of Cross-team Collaboration
The world is getting more complex and we need various skills to discover and create value. The organisational muscle that significantly speeds up the value delivery is cross-team collaboration. That’s an ability to effectively work between different teams and different departments like legal, marketing, security, and many more. In this talk, Paulius will share real stories and specific tactics you can use to reflect and improve cross-team collaboration in your organisation.
About the speaker:
Paulius Tuzikas is an Agile coach and authorised ICAgile instructor who has helped multiple companies in Spain, New Zealand, and Lithuania to discover better ways of working. Over the years Paulius had roles in VC funded startups, established SaaS businesses, banks, and billion dollar companies.
Transforming a Region - One Team at a Time
Tony's experience moving from the US and conducting Agile transformations in the Middle East (MENA). During the talk, he will explore the why in the region, Agile values are critical, but more importantly, what was learned, what challenges we faced, and what we did to succeed.
About the Speaker:
Tony is a customer-obsessed, people-centered, strategic product management leader and change agent with over 22 years of progressive experience delivering growth and innovation at the intersection of consumer businesses, technology, and analytics. Tony's passion is developing amazing teams and creating the conditions where we make a difference every day in delivering every customer a VIP experience. Tony is also internationally experienced building digital organizations within global companies such as Boeing and Hasbro, while accelerating the strategy and ecosystems of global products with multi-million dollar budgets that deliver experiences to millions of users around the world.
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-pagliocco
Page: https://www.pagliocco.com
How to Win at Zombie Kanban?
By now, many of us in the Agile world have learned about the concept of Zombie Scrum, thanks to Barry & Christiaan from The Liberators and their “Zombie Scrum: A Survival Guide” book. However, for the unwary traveler considering “moving from Scrum to Kanban”, a whole new and different horde of zombies lies in wait, ready to entrap teams everywhere in a web of sticky notes and Jira tickets.
Join Darren as you unearth these hideous beings and the speaker will share some hints and tips on how to avoid their ghastly embrace.
Darren thinks that he has probably used the zombie metaphor enough now.
Remember: Kanban isn’t a software thing, so this session will be applicable to anyone who’s considering using Kanban on whatever type of team they’re part of, whether that be software, HR, Recruitment, Finance, or whatever!
Oh, and in a classic example of being unable to limit his own work in progress, Darren will also explain why the phrase “moving from Scrum to Kanban” is illogical.
About the Speaker:
Darren Aitcheson has 30 years of experience in the IT industry, having been a developer, manager. and build/deploy pipeline expert. His passion for all things Agile and Kanban began 10 years ago whilst managing a team that was responsible for application deployments for a large US insurance company, where a way had to be found to bring order to what was a chaotic situation. Visualising the work of the team and introducing some very basic Kanban principles brought an immediate improvement to the quality of the team’s work and the success rate of the deployments, but, more importantly, contributed to having a much-improved working environment for the team.
Since then, he has spent time as a Scrum Master and Agile Coach and is currently a Lead Delivery Manager with the London Borough of Hackney where he has been helping the IT organisation learn how to improve its focus, beginning by taking the simple step of limiting work in progress across the organisation.
He is also a Certified Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Product Owner, IC Agile - Agile Product Owner, and Kanban Management Professional. Having decided during the COVID pandemic to grasp the nettle and start his own coaching and training business, he has been a Professional Kanban Trainer with ProKanban.org for the past two years and is looking forward to running his first public Applying for the Professional Kanban course the week after Agile Tour Vilnius!
Unlocking Agile Culture with the Leadership Circle Model
Often transformations toward agility fail. Why? Usually, it's due to a clash between a company's existing culture and the values needed for agility. From Humble Associates' point of view, it's the leaders who shape this culture. But agile leadership isn't something you can just teach like a school subject - it needs a coaching approach.
In Tomasz and Arif's talk, you'll be focusing on a leadership style called the Leadership Circle Model. Speakers found it's really useful when a company needs to change its culture to embrace agility. Tomasz and Arif will show you the basics of this model, help you work out where you sit within it, and explain its importance for agile leadership.
But it's not just about this one model. You'll also discuss how all leadership styles can either help or hinder an organisation's move toward agility. Speakers goal? To give attendees the tools they need to become agile leaders and drive successful transformation in their companies.
So come along and let's make agility and your company culture work together.
About the Speakers:
Tomasz 'TK' Kropiewnicki is an experienced Professional Coach, change agent, facilitator, and systems thinker, focusing on objective results and Servant Leadership. Tomasz is a certified Leadership Circle™ Coach, helping organisations develop and scale their Agile Leadership.
Arif Bobat is an experienced Leadership and Team Coach whose passions include product management, team culture, and supporting leaders through periods of change. Arif holds an ACC accreditation from the International Coaching Federation alongside various Agile certifications from ICAgile and Scrum Alliance.
Enhancing Agile Teams with AI: Communication, Automation, Coaching
Agile teams constantly seek innovative ways to improve their collaboration, efficiency, and overall performance in today's fast-paced and competitive business landscape. The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has brought forth a new realm of possibilities for Agile teams to unleash their full potential. This online conference presentation explores how AI can transform Agile teams by focusing on two key aspects: communication and technical competencies and process automation and coaching.
Effective communication and diverse technical competencies are essential for Agile teams to thrive. By harnessing AI-powered chatbots, virtual assistants, and natural language processing, teams can streamline communication channels, bridge gaps, and foster a collaborative environment. Furthermore, AI can facilitate identifying and utilizing individual technical strengths within the team, enabling efficient task allocation and optimizing resource utilization.
Beyond communication and technical competencies, AI presents exciting opportunities for process automation and coaching in Agile teams. AI algorithms can analyze historical data, predict project risks, and offer real-time insights for informed decision-making. Moreover, AI-powered tools can automate repetitive tasks like testing and documentation, leading to increased productivity and improved product quality. Additionally, AI-driven coaching tools can provide personalized guidance and recommendations, enabling teams to improve their Agile practices continuously.
Through this presentation, attendees will gain insights into the potential of AI in Agile teams, ranging from enhancing communication and technical competencies to automating processes and enabling effective coaching. Real-world case studies and practical examples will be shared to illustrate the transformative power of AI in Agile environments. Attendees will leave with a deeper understanding of how AI can unlock new productivity levels, collaboration, and success for Agile teams.
Join us for this enlightening session as we delve into the realm of AI and discover how it can unleash the untapped potential of Agile teams, propelling them towards more remarkable achievements in an increasingly dynamic and competitive world.
About the Speaker:
As a forward-thinking C-level manager, Tomas' expertise lies in leading teams and driving digital business value transformation that produces top-notch financial and service outcomes. His leadership philosophy revolves around prioritising customer value, streamlined digital processes, and team collaboration without obstacles. With a track record of successfully delivering results through transformational change management, Tomas possesses a range of skills, including inquisitiveness, is a quick learner, is adept at transformative storytelling, is an experienced coach, and is committed to continuous improvement. With over five years of experience in product ownership and scaled Agile mastery, Tomas is a visionary servant leader with a black belt in business intelligence and an Agile mindset.
No More Tension! Create the Perfect SPA Atmosphere for Yourself and Others
Be cautious! We are surrounded by perfectionists and they can drive everyone crazy. Maybe it is your boss, colleague, or... You. Perfectionists are people who have high requirements for themselves and others. High is fine when it is achievable and motivating, but if high is too high or even impossible - everyone suffers from that. And you can say whatever you want, e.g. “Mistakes are ok”, and “I don’t need perfect”, but if deep down you have this part of perfectionism, everyone feels your inner standard and doesn’t believe a word. And that creates a lot of tension, pressure, and self-destruction that is firstly damaging for the perfectionist himself, then - very contagious to the team and organization and affects many people's lives after work.
How to get out of that vicious loop of perfectionism? How to match seeking great results with working with ease and joy? How to avoid burnout if you are a perfectionist or work with the ones? Raminta has been exploring perfectionism for 8 years professionally and her whole life as a person. She has found effective practical ways how to benefit from perfectionism, defeat self-criticism and stress, how to match super results with self-care. She will share with you her knowledge and heart. Perfectionism is the phenomenon we meet each day, so the speech will be beneficial for anyone who cares about their emotional well-being and relationship with others.
About the Speaker:
Raminta Girdvainė is an inspirational speaker and transformation coach. She helps people from all over the world to move from the starting point to their dreams by speaking at conferences, doing workshops and seminars, sharing insights in the media, and conducting 1:1 CBT sessions (Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy).
She is a Certified Coach (ICF), and Points of You® Certified Trainer, has Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Communication, and studied Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for 4 years. In order to serve better others and her own life, each year Raminta spends around 80 days for learning, self-reflection, and raising expertise with world-renowned teachers. Currently, she is studying Body and Movement Therapy (UK program), exploring dance therapy and different other approaches to self-development. While being a curious perfectionist, she always is looking for ways how to match theory with practice, old with new, and great results with ease and relaxation.
Raminta has been working in the field of personal development and psychology for more than 8 years, and in the fields of education, communication, and event organization for 16 years. She is a public speaking enthusiast and has been on stage in various roles (dancing, singing, hosting events, giving speeches and presentations) for almost 30 years. Her projects and experience range from event organization and book publishing to journalism, radio presenting, and university lecturing.
With all her experience and know-how, she helps people to get a broader view of their lives and the world around them, notice different angles, and search for their authentic way to be fulfilled at work and in life. She believes that everyone is worthy to live the life of their dreams and you can start today, from the place you are. No need to quit everything or do radical changes - changing your attitude is more than enough. That starts not from your organization, boss, or team, it starts from… You. The one and only.
It Needs to be a Mess: Ambiguities in Organizations
Organizations are embedded in a colorful land of shades of gray. They need the capacity to deal with ambiguity, allowing opposing polarities to coexist.
In complex environments, best-practice solutions cannot exist. All interventions lead to unintended consequences. Solutions have built-in problems, some that we might be aware of and some that are unknown. Leadership is not about finding the optimal solution but allowing tension to exist.
We claim that organizations have an innate need to balance the unknown and order as much as we humans do. They thrive under the tension of coexisting opposing polarities.
In this talk, speakers will take you through some of the significant ambiguities in organizations and show you how science can help us navigate in a context-sensitive world.
About the Speakers:
Martin and David met as they volunteered in the Frontiers initiative to build a community in the Sociocracy 3.0 space. They found they had a similar interest in the field of organizational development and complexity and have since been sound boarding and discussing the topics.
Martin Berg is a seasoned agile coach and change management expert with over a decade of experience helping organizations improve their agile practices.
He is also an active member of the leadership board at Agile People, where he contributes to shaping the future of agile methodologies.
Martin has a deep passion for understanding people and their interactions, which he leverages alongside his impressive drawing and illustration skills to help explain complex concepts. For instance, his visualization of the Cynefin framework and his work-related comics are great examples of how he uses his talents to convey ideas that might be difficult to grasp otherwise. You can find Martin's illustrations and comics on his website, www.vige.se.
David Symhoven has worked as a Scrum Master and Agile Coach for over six years. Currently, he is working as an organizational designer and is a member of the leadership board of a young consultancy. He is also a podcaster who answers questions from the agile community and helps organizations to find new ways to solve problems with a science-based approach.
The 10 Vicious Circles at Work: Detecting and Breaking Them Up
A vicious circle (or cycle) is a complex chain of events that reinforces itself through a feedback loop, with harmful results.
They can be happening today, anywhere at your company, creating friction, misalignment, bottlenecks, and even making the best employees quit.
In the last ten years of working as an agile coach and Scrum Master in several types of companies and departments, I’ve listed 10 very common vicious circles that I saw again and again, and that can be a true pain in the ̶a̶s̶s̶ neck.
(And you might be in one of these loops without even knowing!)
Let’s explore the 10 vicious circles together and get to know powerful practices, tools, and tips to break them up.
About the Speaker:
Artur Margonari is passionate about Agile, which he applies daily in his personal life. He works as Agile Coach, Trainer, and Facilitator at InspirationOwl Belgium and has more than 10 years of experience in practicing and helping organizations in their Agile journey, forming high-performing teams, and delivering great products/services.
Having worked as an Agile Coach and Scrum Master in different departments (IT, HR, payroll, procurement, marketing, portfolio) and in various industries (banking, insurance, software house, pharmaceutical, brewery), he was able to learn more about the end to end flow and product cycle, with a 360° view.
He invests his free time organizing conferences (Agile Tour Brussels and Agile Consortium Belgium Conference previously), and meetups.
His essence can be represented by Mahatma Gandhi’s saying: “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
Hobbies & passions: music (listening and playing), archery, martial arts, fast learning, and traveling.
The Mental State of Flow - Our Evolutionary Superskill To Deal With Complexity
Have you ever done something where you felt like you were in a higher state of awareness, your focus sharp like a knife, and time seemed to stand still? Imagine you could harness that same feeling with your Scrum Team?
Even cooler, imagine you could measure that feeling, and use it to guide you in the choices you make at work?
That feeling is Flow. Using insights from Erik's work as an ecologist he will show you how over millions of years we humans have evolved an instinctive feeling for Flow, as a way to deal with complexity.
During this talk, you will discuss how this makes Flow the perfect alternative for our struggles with dashboards, assessments, metrics, and the like. And how Flow is an example of the new kind of tools we need to make sense of complexity and find our way as change agents.
Erik using examples from his own experience, will show you how to use Flow, providing you with a step-by-step approach to start using Flow in your work.
Erik hopes to inspire you to join him in finding other patterns in nature to help us deal with complexity!
About the speaker:
Ecologist turned programmer turned Scrum Master. Erik believes in the philosophy of Agile and fights for the essence of it. He thinks that with Agile we are catalysing major social change starting at the place where we spend most of our time - our work.
Befriend AI: Introducing to Persona Engineering
In a world increasingly shaped by AI, the "Befriend ChatGPT: Unlock the Power of Expert Personas" talk is designed to empower Agile/Scrum professionals with the mindset and practical skills needed to maximize the utility of ChatGPT's 'Expert Personas' feature. Focused on the agile space, Dov will brainstorm and provide key insights into making your life more efficient by conducting in-depth AI-driven strategy sessions, and aiding Agiles Coaches and Scrum Masters in improving their techniques, making AI a true ally.
About the speaker:
Dov is a former Talent Sourcer and Career Coach who has transitioned into a ChatGPT trainer and now is the founder of Befriend AI. Dov uses his background to help both individuals and companies better understand and leverage AI technologies. His workshops and trainings aim to demystify AI and offer practical solutions for career development and business improvement.
Set OKRs With Confidence
In this highly interactive workshop, participants will draft a team charter to connect their team with a longer-term mission and learn how to craft OKRs with confidence. In the beginning, we'll spend some time covering core concepts before jumping into each section.
About the Speaker:
As Vice President of Product Evangelism, Jenny Herald champions Quantive's vision and shares how customers achieve better business outcomes with the world's most potent Strategy Execution Platform based on the OKR methodology.
Jenny also hosts the Dreams with Deadlines podcast where she interviews business leaders on aligning teams and organizations around a common purpose, the ups and downs of goal management, strategy execution, and everything in between.
Navigating Engagement and Ownership in Agile Teams: How to Control Attention, Prevent Burnout and Protect Momentum.
Building Agile teams is easy. A lot of people could tell you how to do that. But building teams in a way that everyone would get closer to the things that matter to them and perform in an optimal way long-term is a lot more difficult. There is a gap between the current position of a person/business/organization and the desired one (the goal achieved, change implemented). You are not the person you were before, but not yet the person you want to become. It's an uncomfortable, messy place to be. This area of unowned, unclaimed, or uninhabited land is where miracles happen but also significant risks are at play.
There is no surprise that the best Agile teams are adaptive, flexible, and creative.
Yet, the most significant risks remain - the human factor and time. We are so focused on formal systems, structures, and frameworks that we often forget this.
In this workshop, we will uncover - how to systematically navigate ownership and initiative in the team, how to increase and decrease the temperature in your team using optimal tools to ensure high engagement when necessary and guard the team against blowing themselves up.
About the speaker:
Tomas consults tech teams and executives on leadership & performance. His primary focus is on technology companies facing high levels of complexity, risk, and ambiguity. Tomas' clients are powerful, passionate, and successful. He helps them grow their people and their businesses, adapt and thrive in challenging environments, create more strategic clarity, and achieve what’s truly important to them. In the past three years, Tomas has been training and consulting 1000+ managers and high-performers in tech companies. Before becoming a consultant he spent more than a decade building technology products and leading international Agile teams by himself.
Build-A-Retro Workshop - Creating Engaging Retrospectives That Resonate
As The Virtual Agile Coach, Chris is on a mission to help people to continuously improve each and every day and have fun while they do it.
With over a decade of experience creating high performing teams across a range of industries, from smaller lean enterprises to some of the world's largest companies, Chris is dedicated to creating environments where people can be their best selves on their best day and be supported on their worst.
He is the Managing Partner of Virtually Agile, a challenger consultancy, a regular on the conference circuit, podcaster, trainer, blogger and soon to be author, Chris is always seeking new ways to share his expertise and inspire others to think creatively about how they can continuously improve.
Title of the workshop: Build-A-Retro Workshop - Creating Engaging Retrospectives That Resonate
Tired of the same old retrospective format? Noticed the same problems coming up time after time? Struggling to keep the energy levels high? In this workshop, you'll learn why it's important to mix things up when it comes to retrospectives and how doing so can unlock fresh new insights that help your teams soar to new heights. You'll practice creating brand new retrospectives that mean something to your team and their microculture. You'll leave this workshop with practical tools and strategies that you can leverage with your teams immediately to drive continuous improvement. How many new retros will we build during this workshop?
Learning Agility Through Games
Agility can be daunting and even boring in theory. When we come into practice we struggle with many fancy names and techniques. Have you ever thought about demonstrating something by involving people in exercise instead of monotonously showing the slides and discussing nuances of frameworks? If at least partially you have answered “yes”, join us in the session.
There is a saying by Benjamin Franklin “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn”.
Having this in mind, we will use some selected and curated games for demonstrating elements of agility, values, practices, etc.
Last but not least - having some fun and joy in learning is assumed.
About the Speaker:
Agile Coach and Design Thinking Coach trying to humanise the workspace. Supporting people in creating a learning environment where value is based on empathy and supported through empirical, network and system thinking. Certified trainer, team coach and facilitator. Lifelong learner, hobbyist scientific researcher, and contemporary art geek. Active participant in Agile communities and conferences.
DeAgile - Easy Way to Build Your Own Agile Framework
Probably all of us know or at least have heard at least a dozen of different Agile frameworks. We all know Scrum, Kanban, Scrumban, SAFe, LeSS, SoS, etc. But while working with Agile for more than 8 years Gražvydas noticed that it is rare that organizations or teams adopt those frameworks fully by the book. And it is natural as different companies work in different markets, and have different histories and organizational set-up. So, exceptions to the rules start to be applied which hinders the adoption of those frameworks.
So, after witnessing quite a few of these kinds of cases Gražvydas decided to create a way of empowering organizations to construct an Agile framework that works best for them. In other words, Gražvydas deconstructed Agile into a Lego-like piece (just following some patterns) and present those pieces to everyone. Now anyone can build up a framework of their own. So, this is what you will do in this session: Gražvydas will try to put those Lego pieces together and help you to construct your brand-new Frameworks. It is both fun and useful as you can bring your own frameworks just after this one hour.
For Gražvydas, Agility is not following a pre-defined framework but adopting it for the best result for the company. So, during the workshop, he will share his experience with DeAgile, what it is, how it works, and how to use it. Then together with participants Gražvydas will work on creating new Agile frameworks for their use cases using DeAgile. The result will be that participants will have a few brand-new frameworks to present to each other!
About the Speaker:
Gražvydas Šedys is an Agile Coach, Consultant, and Trainer. He is a believer and practitioner of Agile Philosophy over Methodology. This is the mindset he tries to spread to his clients and the companies Gražvydas works with. He has been working with agility for more than 8 years. In the past, Gražvydas had his own consultancy company, working with efficiency, Lean, and Agile topics. Then Gražvydas founded his tech startup, failed with it, and moved to the corporate sector (banking industry) for a few years. He has been working with Fintech companies quite a lot. But throughout his journey, Gražvydas saw very different companies applying Agile (from classical IT, to completely IT-unrelated, from very small to very large), which helped him to build an all-around understanding of this mindset. Now Gražvydas loves to spread and share this knowledge he built with everyone around him. Gražvydas also loves networking, so he will be glad to connect and get to know everyone in person.
An Exploration of Clean Language
What if there was a way for teams to gain clarity, to gain a better understanding of what success looks like for each of them? How would this change your team dynamics?
I could be talking about a workshop that went awry - however, what came to your mind when you read the word "workshop"? Was it online? In-person? How many people?
Too often, we move forward on a project, with a team and might not have checked for understanding.
Clean Language - developed by psychologist David Grove - offers us a way to get there and we will discover together how we could use it to work better together.
Since it's a workshop, we will be practicing and discovering Clean Language and its applications simultaneously.
About the Speaker:
Charles-Louis de Maere’s mission is to make the world a better place one step at a time by reducing frustration levels in the workplace. His main area of expertise is in the field of human relationships.
As a Scrum Master/Agile Coach, Charles-Louis thrives when bringing people in contact with agile values and letting them apply their understanding of it to their context. This can be limited to the IT department. However, he’s noticed the benefits are much higher when everyone is on board. Charles-Louis is also more interested in pragmatism than applying dogmas without reflection. The goal should still be to work on something of value and perform relevant work. He’s worked both with start-ups as well as big institutions, adapting his coaching to what’s needed.
As a trainer/facilitator, Charles-Louis strongly believes people learn at their best when they are given the space to experiment and start important conversations. Although he has a fair idea of the structure of the training, he also lets the training topics emerge from what the participants need to enrich their experience, rather than enforcing his strict training program.
Follow Charles-Louis here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charleslouisdemaere/
The Power of Visuals in the Agile Domain
We have developed our Power of Visuals workshop since our presentation at Agile Your Vilnius 2022.
The Workshop will provide an overview of Visual Practices in the Agile Domain, introducing Visual Agile Coaching and the Visual Agile Coaching Toolkit to help attendees become more creative and successful Agile Practitioners.
Agile is already a visual way of working, we will show how when combined with Visual Practices, the Visual Agile Coach Toolkit provides powerful ideas and solutions for improved communication, engagement, delivery of value – and fun.
Our workshop will help attendees start their Visual Agile Coaching journey and will help any Agile practitioner add Visual Practices to their Agile Toolkit. Agile Coaches – and any Agile Practitioner - will be provided with a working introduction to the Visual Agile Coach Toolkit to enable them to use Visual Practices in their Agile ways of working. We will show how the Visual Agile Coach Toolkit provides a template for better, more creative and more collaborative team interactions – this supports the introduction of progressive ways of working that better engage the workforce.
The Visual Agile Toolkit not only enhances the role of an Agile Coach – we believe that it enhances other Agile roles as well as ‘traditional’ Change Roles (BA, PM) – in fact all leadership and team based roles that require engaging and motivating communication and creative problem solving and value creation.
Workshop Schedule – per time allocation:
The workshop is fully interactive with participants encouraged to get drawing and start collaborating through the use of Visual Practices.
Part 1: Everyone can draw (Exercise: Intro)
Following the Introduction, we will get started with some simple and fun activities to prove that everyone can draw – or draw well enough in a business context. We’ll experiment with squiggles or doodles, before playing word association-type games and looking at how drawing can be used to convey different emotions.
Part 2: The Science
Before embarking on the Visual Agile Coaching journey, we will look at the science behind the Power of Visuals. This will allow participants to understand why Visual Practices are such an effective communication and collaboration tool to be used by Agile Coaches (or anyone really).
Part 3: Parts of the Process (Exercise 1)
To help place visuals within a work context, participants will be invited to process map common everyday tasks with visuals – making toast or a cup of coffee for example. Not only will this assist in building confidence in using visuals it will also illustrate how effective visuals are in representing and communicating processes.
Part 4: What is Visual Agile Coaching? (Exercise 2)
We will review the Visual Agile Coach Role Profile, inviting the participants to pick up their pens again and visually represent the roles and responsibilities of an Agile Coach as Icons – as well as discussing the Agile Coach role as a group.
Part 5: Visual Agile Coach Toolkit (Exercise 3)
We have created a number of tools and templates to compliment the Visual Agile Coach role. Using both whiteboard/flip charts and online tools (like Drawify and Miro – if available to show on screen) we will explain the purpose of the Visual Agile Coach Toolkit and complete some case study examples i.e. for teambuilding, stakeholder management, D&I and leadership. Participants will be able to practice incorporating Visual Practices into their own meetings and workshops.
Q&A session with discussion on how to practically apply visuals in the Agile domain) (+ expect need for a break within this session)
Part 6: Reflection and Summary
We will close by asking the participants to reflect on their Visual Agile Coaching journey – answer any questions and give tips or advice on how to develop their utilisation of Visual Practices within their ways of working.
About the Speakers:
Olina Glindevi
I help people and organizations leverage the power of visuals for improved communication, engagement and delivery of value.
My deep experience in Agile roles - Agile Coach, RTE and Scrum Master - combined with my creative and artistic qualities has allowed me to develop new ways to raise engagement from my colleagues, creating a productive and fun work experience!
As the Visual Agile Coach I help people explore using visuals as a powerful collaborative tool - from creating a sketch-note to summarize an event, defining a desired future state, facilitating a workshop or setting out a change roadmap.
Ben Walder
As a Change Leader I am always seeking new ways to enhance the environment in which is Change delivered.
Whilst in Head of Change and Transformation roles I have sought to optimize ways of working to enable the Change Portfolio to deliver value with control, seeking to create the best Change conditions for all involved in delivering Change.
I am inspired by Enterprise Agility and Future Ways of Working thinking, which is changing the way we work in change, bringing us closer to the business and the customer. The Visual Agile Coach has given me the opportunity to combine the Agile Mindset with Visual Practices, creating a created a powerful framework for improved communication, engagement and delivery of value – and having fun!
Congruent Coaching - Supercharging Agility
Understanding the value of and techniques for coaching to encourage agile team identity - and the individuals within them - to adopt congruent behaviours in their day-to-day work. This session will give participants a theoretical understanding of the psychology behind the concept of congruence, why it's such a vital and overlooked dimension of high quality and effective agile coaching and they will have a take-away technique to practise for themselves and the teams they work in outside of the workshop.
About the Speaker:
Susannah Chambers is an Agile Coach Lead for a major international fintech organisation. However, she is also the creator of the Metrix & Chill approach for agile teams articulating their value through creating a culture that is ready for engaging in methods to measure impact and that is the capacity in which Susannah primarily joins us. Alongside Susannah's day-to-day agile coaching, ScrumMastering experience and strategic guidance around agile transformation Susannah has presented the Metrix & Chill approach at the inaugural Enterprise Agility World Conference, Lean Agile UK and the Silicon Valley Agile Project.
A key hallmark of Susannah's agile coaching style - and which has gained her recognition as a thought leader in this field through her LinkedIn community - is in the professional coaching wing of the Agile X-Wing. Susannah brings a unique perspective in the agile coaching field here as she has vast experience of one-to-one professional coaching with a diverse range of people from new joiners through to C-suite executives. In addition to the usual agile qualifications and certifications you might expect for an Agile Coach, Susannah also holds an 'excellent'-graded Diploma in Coaching from the University of Cambridge; studied Leadership Coaching at the Harvard Extension School and a Diploma in Business Performance Coaching.
A particular aspect of professional coaching in a tech context which Susannah is recognised for is around coaching teams and the individuals in them to be 'congruent'. This is because Susannah feels hugely passionate about individuals and teams having their unique voices heard and respected, especially those who are disempowered and so may face additional challenges. This golden thread of empowering and amplifying the voices of others by modelling a growth mindset is at the heart of Susannah’s approach to life and also extends to her 'agile parenting' of her 3 school-aged children!
From Zero to Scrum Master
These days, more and more people desire to be Scrum Masters. Many of them come from various industries and have no previous experience in that role or in the IT field. The majority of them have an issue with getting their first job as a Scrum Master. Dawid had also this problem. During the workshop, he will present the process that Dawid used during his "from Zero to Scrum Master" journey with key takeaways. There will be also a time to discuss with the speaker, as well as with other participants, your problems and what you can do to overcome them.
About the Speaker:
Dawid is the Scrum Master, podcaster, and author of the blog about personal development. He helps people and companies implement Agile methods and practices through workshops, courses, and consulting. Currently, as a Scrum Master, Dawid is working in the automotive industry. Also, Dawid is the co-organizer of the Agile Community in Kraków called "Agile pod Wawelem".
Leaders at All Levels
Traditional definitions of leadership focus on charisma and position. But most people in any given organization don’t have formal leadership. Most of us aren’t brimming with charisma, either. Does that mean you can’t be a leader? NO! In fact, you can exhibit leadership no matter where you are in the organization. (No, this does not mean sucking up to your boss.) In this talk, Esther will explore a definition of leadership that doesn’t rely on either role or rah-rah. And she will talk about what that sort of leadership looks like when you are a member of a team, a manager, or at the top of the hierarchy.
About the speaker:
Esther Derby draws on four decades of experience leading, observing, and living organizational change. She works with a broad array of organizations. Her clients include both startups and Fortune 500 companies. Based on experience and research, her approach blends attention to humans and deep knowledge of complex adaptive systems. Esther has been called one of the most influential voices within the agile communities when it comes to developing organizations, coaching teams, and transforming management. Her work over many years has influenced coaches and leaders across many companies. Esther started her career as a programmer. However, over the years she’s worn many hats, including business owner, internal consultant, manager, and team leader. From all these perspectives, one thing was clear: individual, team and even organizational success depends greatly on the work environment and organizational dynamics. As a result, she’s spent the last twenty-five years helping companies shape their environment for optimum success. Her formal education includes an MA in Organizational Leadership and a certificate in Human Systems Dynamics. She’s trained as a Satir Mentor Coach. She’s also the host of the popular podcast, Change by Attraction.
The 5P's of Personal Engagements
Facilitation is more than using mere formats, tricks, structures, and templates.
In this session, you will go beyond the surface and uncover the reasons behind their usage.
Evelien will share the reasons to use these supported by scientific evidence. During the keynote speech, you will explore how they contribute to effective communication, collaboration, and personal engagement.
The session is designed to be interactive and to engage the participants along the way. Together with the speaker, you will think of practical strategies to apply in your own facilitation, which could empower you to become a more effective facilitator. Join Evelien in her session to explore the why behind powerful facilitation and how you can maximize personal engagement.
About the speaker:
Evelien Acun-Roos is an experienced Agile Trainer at Xebia Academy and a Professional Scrum Trainer at Scrum.org. Evelien loves to give training. She is a certified trainer for Training From the Back of the Room and her training courses are filled with brain-based learning activities.
She has a profound knowledge of Agile and Scrum and knows how to transfer that to Teams, Scrum Masters, Product Owners, their surrounding environment, and their management.
She loves to share her knowledge in training, workshops, and talks and was co-author of the Scrum Master Playbook.
Evelien has over 13 years of experience in the Agile domain and has helped many different organizations to become more Agile (Unilever, ING, Rabobank, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, APG, Philips, VodafoneZiggo a.o).
At Agile conferences you can find her sharing knowledge about Personal Engagement, Scrum Values, Liberating Structures, Brain Science, Situational Leadership; essentially a variety of ways ‘to Boost your Scrum’.
Agile Assessment Insights: 5 Key Lessons From Real-World Agile Coaching
In this talk, you will uncover five lessons drawn from Maria's diverse coaching experiences. From navigating the intricacies of agile assessment frameworks to harnessing the power of continuous improvement, Maria will share her insights and revelations that have shaped her understanding of effective agile assessments. Discover practical strategies, pitfalls to avoid, and innovative approaches that can elevate your agile assessment practices to new heights. Whether you're a seasoned coach or just embarking on your agile journey, this session promises to provide actionable takeaways that can transform the way you approach and execute agile assessments.
About the speaker:
More than 15 years of proven track record in building efficient teams and ensuring smooth delivery in various business domains (Banking, Retail, Business Operations, Education) in the role of Agile Coach, Scrum Master, RTE, and Product Manager.
Some career highlights about the speaker: founder of professional agile training and international certification center in Georgia (1,000+ trainees), author of first self-paced agile course in the Georgian Language on Udemy international platform, associate professor at 3 universities in Georgia, driver of Agile Community Regular Agile Summits in Georgia and agile practitioner in various international projects at EPAM Systems.
Looking Through Agile Lenses in Branches Network
In the era of rapid change and fierce competition, branches of organizations must adapt and evolve to stay relevant and efficient. Agile organizational structures offer a promising solution by emphasizing cross-functional collaboration and faster decision-making. In this concept, Erik and Merita explore the application of agile organizational structures specifically within branch operations.
Implementing agile organizational structures within branch operations is a strategic move to enhance cross-functional collaboration and accelerate decision-making processes. By aligning branch activities with customer-centricity and fostering a culture of continuous improvement, Erik and Merita created branches that are more responsive, efficient, and capable of delivering superior customer experiences. Branches that embrace agility are better positioned to thrive in today's ever-changing business landscape.
About the speakers:
Erik Roka is an accomplished leader with extensive expertise of more than 18 years in Mass, Premium Banking, and Branch Network operations, boasting a proven track record within the banking sector. Also, serving as the Vice-chairman of the Supervisory Board at Raiffeisen Insurance Broker Kosovo. Proficient in Banking, Agile methodologies, Leadership, Pricing, Behavioral Economics, Business Strategy, and Product Management. A seasoned professional and distinguished leader renowned for team building and fostering personal development in others.
Merita Qerimi as Enterprise Agile Coach guides agile initiatives by reshaping the organizational framework to enhance business processes that contribute greater value at the organizational level. Supervised end-to-end product development through agile methodologies, collaborating with cross-functional teams. Implementing agile WoW in branch networks in retail banking by leading the change as a pioneer in the market.
An accomplished leader with over two decades of extensive experience in HR management and a deep understanding of Agile methodologies. Demonstrated proficiency in collaborating with senior management to seamlessly integrate new work methodologies into the broader business strategy. Extensive expertise in various HR functions, including department establishment, job analysis, organizational structuring, talent acquisition and retention, compensation and benefits planning, departmental restructuring, closures, training and development programs, and performance management.
Bring the Data: Retrospectives
A good retrospective is one that benefits from the opinions of all in the room. A great retro is informed by data.
In this talk, James will explain and demonstrate tools & techniques that support inspection of your system processes, regardless of whether or not you’re utilising Agile practices. You’ll look at ways to help teams inspect their past and present performance so that they can make better decisions about improvements aimed at improving their flow of work.
About the speaker:
James Farley is an independent agile consultant, based in the UK. He is a Scrum and Product Mastery Guide for the Agile Mastery Institute, and also a licensed Kanban trainer with ProKanban.Org.
He shared that, “Discovering Kanban, and ‘bringing the data’ has not only helped me to be more effective in the teams I serve, but also improving the wider system that those teams deliver within.
Kanban doesn’t care about Agile or Waterfall, or personal opinions. It only matters that you have a process. Capturing and analysing data on these processes, or workflows helps to support empiricism, and improved decision-making. Importantly, the more teams use this data, the better it … gets.”
He'll be with us virtually, explaining how you can ‘Bring the Data’, and improve your own system improvement initiatives.
Not Giving a Sh*t Enables Self-organization
Steve Trapps is the co-owner of Scrum Facilitators, an experienced Scrum Master, and a Professional Scrum Trainer with 20 years plus of experience in delivering complex products in many different business sectors. He started his career as a software developer, working for Nestle before working for Sky, building applications & websites for many of the English Premier League football teams.
Previously being a developer, Steve has worked in various teams (Scrum and none Scrum) so he comes packed with real-life stories, from Start-Ups building the next social media network up to large corporations handling thousands of transactions a second. If you want to learn from someone who has been there, then Steve can share experiences to help you on your way.
Steve focuses on helping individuals & teams reach their full potential through professional development coaching and professional training.
Ziryan Salayi is the co-owner of Scrum Facilitators, an Agile professional, and scrum.org certifies Professional Scrum Trainer and is passionate about getting the most out of people and teams. Helping organizations and individuals to become more agile, customer-oriented and creating high-performing teams has become his mission over the years. Ziryan aims to help people to be fully empowered and support self-organization. He believes in stimulating and enabling continuous improvement and is experienced in working in cross-cultural and virtual teams. Being part of international companies has further allowed him to develop his social and intercultural communication skills over the past 15 years.
Title of Presentation: Not Giving a Sh*t Enables Self-organization
Scrum Masters have many accountabilities and aim to improve the self-managing aspects within the Scrum Team to deliver Value. In this quest, Scrum Masters take a lot of ownership in ensuring this happens. Ziryan and Steve talk about what would happen if the Scrum Master wouldn’t give a sh*t about all these accountabilities.
Agile vs. Product-led Growth
In today's fast-paced digital world, time to market is a critical factor for success. However, balancing time to market with customer centricity and collaboration is a significant challenge for organizations. Product-led Growth is a strategy that emphasizes product use as the primary driver of user acquisition and retention. Some argue that this approach is more effective than traditional Product Management in Agile, as it prioritizes user feedback and data-driven decision-making. Others argue that it can be difficult to implement Product-led Growth in Agile without sacrificing development speed and agility. In this interactive talk, we will explore with you whether balance can be achieved.
About the Speaker:
Kadri is a seasoned digital solutions creator with over 25 years of experience, applying Agile principles to solve any challenge. As a co-creator of the digital revolution in Estonia during the early days of the internet, she has since then used the experience to make a difference in multiple industries, ao travel, retail, recruitment, and finance, and for enterprises such as AmEx TRS, John Lewis, and Rabobank.
While a Product Manager at the core, she is a catalyst for transformational change and thrives in building highly productive and engaged teams.
As a leader of a global team of exceptional product experts, she is currently working at EPAM to help clients improve their Product Management maturity and create Product-Led Growth. Her goal is to drive positive impact for clients and communities alike, through collaborative and innovative solutions.
From Chaos to Clarity: The Power of an Outcome-Driven Team
Imagine this: You've spent months building a new product or feature, and you finally launch it to the world with great anticipation. But how do you know if your customers are happy with what you've built? Do they love it or hate it? Are they using it or ignoring it? And most importantly, are they telling their friends about it or running away screaming?
In this session, you're going to talk about outcome-centric teams and why they're the key to making sure your customers are happy with what you're building. Archana will be sharing her experience, in transforming teams to outcome centric. But be warned: this journey is not without its blunders and mishaps. Archana will be sharing the mistakes she made and the learnings she had.
So, if you're looking for ways to help your agile team build products that customers love then join Archana in this session.
About the Speaker:
Archana is a Product manager passionate about delivering products that have a meaningful impact on people. With 18 years of experience in the software industry, she has developed a deep understanding of effective methodologies and has experience in leading cross-functional teams to deliver successful products. Prior to her current role, Archana worked as an Agile Coach for nearly seven years, gaining valuable experience in topics such as Agile coaching, OKR implementation, facilitation, and change management at both the team and organisational levels.
In her current role as a Product Manager, Archana collaborates with her team in co-creating great experiences for their mobile app customers. She prioritises data-driven approaches and experimentation while building features, always putting their customers first to ensure they deliver valuable solutions that meet their needs.
Archana believes in giving back to the community, she actively engages in mentoring and coaching initiatives, as well as sharing her learnings and experiences at various conferences.
Scrum Values Unleashed: Tangible Tactics For Every Team
This talk explores the role of scrum values in enabling the true essence of the framework. The talk starts with the values at first glance and the common traps I fell into by not giving the values the respect they deserved. The session then runs through each of the values and while illustrating the importance of each also gives a handful of practical ideas and steps Scrum Masters and teams can take to grow and foster the values within their teams.
About the Speaker:
Dave has worked in several roles in and around agile software delivery and currently serves as Delivery Manager at a large scale digital consultancy. He is an avid agile enthusiast and has been working within agile approaches and frameworks in a variety of roles and industries from developer to delivery manager and from central government to fashion & retail.
Dave is a regular contributor to the wider agile community and shares much of his work around session templates, facilitation, coaching, and L&D opportunities freely with community spaces and groups. He has spoken at several agile conferences and meetups and is a passionate advocate for improving teams, organisations, and work environments through agile practices and ideas.
Why and How to Combine OKR & Scrum?
In all these years Cansel worked for/with Scrum Teams, one common problem she observed was that most of the teams didn’t have access to the big picture. There was a huge gap between vision and strategy and the work the teams delivered. Almost nobody had a transparency if and how they’ve contributed to the success of the company.
Most Scrum Teams are unfortunately turned into “Feature Factories” who deliver a feature and start developing the next one. They don’t pause to reflect and analyze if the feature really solved a problem or made the life of their customers or users easier. The question about the outcome of their output remains unanswered.
If the team and organization want to escape from the feature factory, outcome-oriented OKRs could help.
In this talk, Cansel will elaborate on the differences and similarities between OKR and Scrum, how to connect artifacts and roles from both frameworks, how to connect Scrum and OKR iterations, and when to do which event.
Key learnings:
About the Speaker:
Cansel Sörgens works since 2008 as Product Manager and Agile Organisational Development Manager in organisations that scaled from 100 to 1000 people rapidly, where she managed strategic cross-department projects and was responsible for (Agile) Organisation Development. Since 2016 Cansel implemented OKR many times in B2B, B2C, B2B2C, and B2G organisations of all sizes from different industries such as MedTech, FinTech, Consumer Electronics, Pharma, E-Commerce, and more. She shares her long standing and practice proven OKR expertise as public-speaker, co-author, and and founder of OKR Lean Coffee, OKR Open Space, and Reshaping the Future of OKRs. More: https://cansel-soergens.com
Unleash (Zombie?) Scrum In Your Organization
During this session, we’ll explore the following questions:
Join the session and unleash Scrum (and Agile) in the organization!
About the Speaker:
As the co-founder of The Liberators, Barry liberates teams and organizations from outdated working modes. He creates space for everyone to be involved in shaping the future and making a positive impact on their organization.
Barry highly enjoys providing (Scrum) training and workshop facilitation. As a trainer & facilitator, he helps teams and groups to do their best thinking and to find local solutions to persistent challenges. Barry's toolkit is packed with facilitation techniques, of which Liberating Structures are the most prominent. They make everyone feel heard, seen, and respected and help Barry to get the most out of group interactions.
Barry writes blog posts, hosts meetups, and speaks at conferences to share his lessons learned.
Who is Afraid of a Little Meeting?
Meetings are the bane of our existence most of the time. We have calendars full of them, one after another, most can be replaced by emails or a chat, some are boring, others are interesting and all have (or should have) a facilitator behind them.
If you are the facilitator, finding the right time and place is a struggle. Preparing for a meeting or a workshop takes time and having some experience or certain tricks helps a lot. Especially in this continuous work environment, where you need to adapt to all different types of meetings/workshop setups: Face-to-Face, fully virtual, and hybrid. That is why, Andreea-Ruxandra wants to invite you to a presentation about meetings and what we can do, as facilitators, to stop being afraid of meetings.
She will talk about general aspects of meetings like preparation, keeping track of time and results, but also what needs to change depending on what setup you have. Andreea-Ruxandra can also suggest some activities that can be done in order to improve the results of your meetings and not replace them with an email.
About the Speaker:
Andreea-Ruxandra Peter is a mother and a wife at home, a Project Manager, a Scrum Master, or what the team needs at work.
She enjoys being a meeting facilitator and sharing her knowledge with others. She learned a lot from the Agile/Scrum classes that she had taught. She also learned from her experience in Agile that nothing is as simple as it seems. But being Agile should be about responding to change, about being able to help your client have the best product they could have.
Andreea-Ruxandra’s current focus is on improving meetings, improving motivation, and helping teams learn what works for them.
On Shaky Ground: What Plate Tectonics Can Teach Us about Resistance to Agile
Alfred Wegener.
Not a household name in the Agile community, but he should be. This turn-of-the 20th Century German scientist knew a thing or two about resistance to change.
Over 100 years ago, Wegener made a startling discovery, and like anyone who challenges “the way we’ve always done things,” he was met with extreme resistance from the scientific community.
Like Galileo who boldly turned the entire understanding of the universe upside down, Wegner proposed the idea that the Earth’s crust was broken up into huge plates that moved and interacted with each other, producing incredible, and sometimes catastrophic, results.
Only 50 years later, with the advent of WW2 technology, the pushback subsided, and scientists realized his value. Since then, they have pooled together their research to create a full understanding of what produces huge shifts, changes, friction, and yes, sometimes explosions, when plates interact.
So what can we learn from Alfred Wegener and the scientific community’s subsequent discoveries that relate to an organization’s journey of agility? It turns out, quite a bit.
In this talk, we will:
About the Speaker:
Patty Aluskewicz, founder of Agile Mindset Consulting, is a Scrum Master Career Coach, Agile Coach, and Professional Educator. With over 15 years of experience, she assists businesses and their employees in building fundamental Agile and Scrum skills and successfully implementing them into their teams.
Her science background in Geology brings a unique perspective to Agile and she is delighted to share the connections between Plate Tectonics and the challenges of organizational change with you.
Her recent speaking experience includes the Serious Scrum Conference, the TriAgile Conference, the Project Management Innovation Conference, the Scrum Masters of the Universe, and Stanford University. She also facilitates her own meetup, Agile Conversations, bringing other Agile practitioners' inspirational career journeys to light.
An Agile Coaches Guide to Storytelling
Bob is going to tell you a story.
Bob was coaching an agile coach who lamented that they weren’t connecting with their coaching client, in this case, a development manager. He asked them to share a typical coaching conversation, and they spoke about a series of questions they asked that largely went unanswered—leaving them and the client quite frustrated. Bob asked them what other coaching techniques they had tried, and it boiled down to only coaching stances and only open-ended questions.
Bob suggested that they experiment with weaving some stories into their coaching conversations. Personal stories, lesson-learned stories, teaching stories, purpose or vision stories, and relationship or connection-building stories. Bob spoke to them about sharing their knowledge and wisdom with the client via story. Not dominating the conversation but augmenting the conversation and using the story as a backdrop to their questions and explorations with the client.
They later told Bob that after a bit of practice, this small change had a significant impact on their coaching. This talk is about bringing the power of Storytelling INTO your agile coaching and discovering the magic of the Story. Now, please share this story with others, and Bob hopes to see you in the talk…
About the Speaker:
Bob Galen is an Agile Practitioner, Trainer & Coach based in Cary, NC. In this role, he helps guide companies and teams in their pragmatic adoption and organizational shift towards agile methods of working. Bob has been doing that since the late 1990s, so he’s deeply experienced.
He is the Director of Agile Practice at Zenergy Technologies, a leading business agility
transformation company. Bob is also President and Head Coach at RGCG a boutique agile coaching firm.
Bob regularly speaks at international conferences and professional groups on topics related to agile software development, testing, scaling, and organizational leadership. He is a Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC), Scrum Alliance CAL trainer, and an active member of the Agile & Scrum Alliances.
He’s published four agile-centric books: The Three Pillars of Agile Quality and Testing in 2015, Scrum Product Ownership, 3rd Edition in 2019, Agile Reflections in 2012, and Extraordinarily Badass Agile Coaching in 2022. He’s also a prolific writer & blogger (at - www.rgalen.com and www.agile-moose.com) and podcaster (at www.meta-cast.com)
Bob may be reached directly at: bob@rgalen.com or by networking via:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/bobgalen
Scrum is Better with More Lean
People are celebrating and enjoying the 28th anniversary of Scrum, mostly with many successes and evidence about how it supports agility, leaving limited space for the other side of the coin, including but not limited to:
For possible solutions to such issues, Necmettin will provide suggestions for Scrum based on Lean Thinking and Kanban in particular, including but not limited to:
Scrum can be better than some “others” or “the best way to do software”, yet it still has some ways to go ahead. Necmettin does not intend to classify Scrum as good or bad, adequate or inadequate; on the contrary, he aims to support Scrum by providing solutions to its shortcomings, as the name and spirit of agility demand such an attempt.
About the speaker:
Necmettin Özkan has first-hand professional experience in IT quality, process, and performance management, Agile Software Development, and agility. Among the frameworks, he closely works with ITIL, COBIT, Scrum, and Kanban. Necmettin is passionate about contributing to the body of knowledge by sharing through public speaking, organizing events, as a lecturer at universities, mentor and reviewer for international journals and conferences, and with academic publications. He is working toward his PhD degree at Gebze Technical University in Agile and as an R&D, Quality, and Process Team Leader in a bank. Nowadays, he is deeply interested in agile mindset and real agility.
Unveiling Scrum Master Archetypes: Behaviors, Team Impacts and Real-life Situations
During this session, you will explore 3 types of Scrum Masters that Raul has observed over the past 9 years:
You will examine their bad practices and their impact on teams. For each type, Raul will walk you through the behaviors, consequences, and real-life scenarios he observed while working with Scrum teams.
This is a real-life experience sharing. You will take away tangible examples of ineffective scrum mastering and how it can affect teams.
About the speaker:
Raul Barth is a seasoned Agile consultant, coach, and trainer, with a deep understanding of Lean and Agile.
Over the past 13 years, Raul has gained extensive international experience (Brazil, France, UK, Netherlands, Germany) in Lean, Agile, software development, IT, R&D, team management, and leadership. Throughout his career, he has dedicated more than 9 years to Lean and Agile.
His practical experience in Agile spans various roles, including team member, Product Owner, and Scrum Master. For the past 5 years, he has been actively engaged as an Agile Coach, consultant, and trainer in guiding organizations - such as Schneider Electric, Philips, Air France, KLM, and ASML - through Lean-Agile evolutions.
Passionate about Agile and Lean, Raul firmly believes that successful evolutions and transformations depend on mindset and people. He views frameworks, methods, and processes as tools to achieve goals such as faster time-to-market, quality, motivated teams, and customer satisfaction.
Want to know how to lead and manage in the 21st century?
“Release the potential of your staff and they will release the potential of the business.”
What comes to your mind when you hear that statement?
In the 20th century, the boss was assumed to know best and told the workers what to do. Leadership came from the top. The top was in charge and power trickled down. In comes 21st century, the world changed. People nowadays say leadership occurs at every level. What does that actually mean?
3 years ago, the world changed even more. How are we supposed to lead in this remote & hybrid world?
In this interactive talk, we’ll discuss what is at the heart of our 21st-century business and workplace, and how that affects the way we manage and work.
About the Speaker:
As a business agility consultant and executive coach, Mun-Wai specializes in creating and maintaining innovative organizations. Her clients learn from and appreciate her pragmatic and people-first systems approach. “Release the potential of your staff and they will release the potential of the business” is what she goes by. She has over 20 years of corporate and agile experience. Started in Engineering, Mun-Wai ended up being Chief of Staff when she started messing around in HR, Finance and Facilities. She works in organizations around the world, from startups to large enterprises, across various industries. Mun-Wai ability to make the complex simple allows her to help the executives understand how their decisions affect the rest of the organization across the globe.
Mun-Wai frequently speaks at global conferences and professional gatherings. She also shares her experience, thoughts, and insights through her podcast, blogs, articles, and monthly Leadership Memos at https://www.munwaic.com.
I'm a scrum master! Now what?
In this talk, Algirdas will delve into the real-world experiences, pitfalls, and valuable lessons learned throughout his career. He will share "things I wish I knew" insights and recommend practical resources, steps, and actions to navigate various scenarios. Brace yourself for an immersive exploration of Scrum, Kanban, OKR, and other ways of working, following the thought-provoking framework of "What? So what? Now what?"
About the Speaker:
Algirdas Milasius is a software engineer, business solution analyst, and passionate scrum master. With expertise in Agile methodologies, he empowers teams to embrace Scrum, Kanban, and OKRs. Holding PSM 1 and OKR foundation certificates, Algirdas has shared his knowledge as a speaker at Agile Tour Vilnius 2022 and led open space sessions at Agile Day Kaunas in 2022 and 2023. Connect with Algirdas on LinkedIn.
How We Learn and How To Teach
As an expert, you will be asked to facilitate the learning of others, not to mention your personal eternal learning in your field.
Join an interactive session about how our brains accept new knowledge and store it for later use.
Your takeaway will be three-fold; how to chunk information you give to others, how to improve your own learning, AND something to entertain with at dull parties.
About the Speaker:
Aino Corry, author of "Retrospectives Antipatterns", is a teacher, a technical conference editor, and a retrospectives facilitator. She holds a master's degree and a ph.d. in computer science. She has 12 years of experience with Patterns in Software Development, and 20 years of experience with Agile processes in academia and industry (in other words; she is old). She also teaches how to teach Computer Science to teachers, and thus lives up to the name of her company; Metadeveloper. In her spare time, she runs and sings (but not at the same time).
Systems Thinking for Agile Practitioners
Hundreds if not thousands of Agile implementations have been side-tracked or completely undermined due to impeding organisational structures or policies. Quite often, challenging those is also not what Scrum Masters or Agile Coaches get “hired for”.
But what if the organisation actually needs to change in order to enable Inspection & Adaptation and achieve sustainable agility? Or do you need to help the Team to see its current state from a side? What can be the Agile practitioner’s “secret weapon” empowering them to challenge the status quo? If I had to choose only one, my answer would be “Systems Thinking”.
During this workshop You will:
• Get to know the condensed ideas and laws of Systems Thinking.
• Discover how performing Systems Modelling together with decision-makers and stakeholders creates space for often avoided conversations.
• Try out Systems Modelling in practice (lots of practice!).
• Learn some tips & tricks on how to kick off Systems Thinking Katas or Community of Practice at your workplace.
• And much more!
About the Speaker:
Denis Salnikov is a certified Scrum Master, Kanban Coach & LeSS Practitioner working with development teams and company leaders since 2014. He has taken an active part in multiple Agile transformations and organised Product development Scaling at various startups and enterprises in Europe and the US, including “unicorn” startups N26 (Germany) and PandaDoc (USA).
Denis's main goal is to help organisations and their development teams deliver successful high-quality product(s) or service(s) while preserving a vibrant working atmosphere and eliminating the gap between tech and business. That includes supporting and leading change initiatives and (de-)scaling efforts, helping to redefine Organizational Design, and optimising the system by applying Systems Thinking.
Website: https://agileexpat.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dsalnikov23/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/agileexpat/
Build your OKRs
In this workshop, you’ll learn OKRs anatomy. Together with the speakers, you will collaboratively create a checklist to guide the creation of impactful OKRs. You'll gain invaluable insights by exploring the anti-patterns and typical errors in writing OKRs. Additionally, speakers will share the preconditions of meaningful OKRs and last but not least, you'll have the opportunity to write your own OKRs and discover effective measurement techniques. Get ready for a captivating learning journey!
About the Speakers:
Maria Chec is a Head of Agile Practice and a Content Creator - who delves into the world of Agile with her YouTube channel, Agile State of Mind. She has been working as an Agile Coach for years now and has a pragmatic and fun approach to Agile. As Maarten Dalmijn says “She’s making Agile fun”.
Joan Lozano is a Development Lead, Agile Coach, and Content Creator who shares flash learnings on TikTok. After working for several years as an Agile Coach, he is now applying all the knowledge gained to lead an engineering team.
A Tale of Images
Every day we are surrounded by stories that have a deep impact on our lives. Some make us cry, some make us buy a new car, and some inspire us to focus on getting fit. One trait they have in common is that they are told through images on the television, on our news feed, and on our social media.
And yet at work, we forget how powerful images are and fall back on boring, never-ending text-based documents.
During the workshop, you will try to re-discover the power of storytelling delivered through supporting images. Also, you will be exploring the life journeys of others, unlocking collective creativity, and creating a story that you could tell the following day at work. Don't forget to bring pen&paper and together try to have fun.
About the Speaker:
Francesco is a Collaboration Alchemist on a mission to make the world of work more fun. His current focus is on building learning experiences in a safe and inclusive environment by leveraging all of the cutting-edge techniques for Visual Thinking, Brain-Based learning, and Facilitation for highly collaborative meetings to ensure people are and feel at the center.
He blogs a lot about visualization and how he leverages it in his work every day.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francesco-bianchi-4b49784/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/visualagilists/
Elevating Team Performance: Facilitation for Improved Awareness, Intention, and Impact
Are you struggling to improve your team's performance?
In this interactive workshop, we'll delve into one of the most critical aspects of team performance - team members' perceptions of their collaboration, purpose, and results.
You'll learn why team cohesion is so important and how to increase it for maximum performance.
Many agilists struggle with this because they lack these 2 things:
We are going to show you some of the ways to get these two in place.
What are we going to do together?
Using a proven facilitation approach, you will get the answers to the following:
• Do your teams know why they exist? What is their mission?
• What glue keeps your team together and helps them work in complete agreement? How do we handle conflict? How do we work together?
• What goals do they follow, and what results do they want to achieve?
You'll be introduced to three engaging exercises that will help you put the theories into practice.
You'll see how to enhance your team's awareness, intention, and impact and drive long-lasting improvements in their performance.
So why wait? Join us for an exciting and informative session!
About the Speaker:
Agile Coach, Trainer, and Consultant Anna is the founder and CEO of PrimeProjekt - helping companies to transform how teams collaborate and how the work gets done to create value with no delay.
Anna has 17 years of experience in leading teams, an Agile practitioner since 2010, and has worked with companies such as SGS Digicomply, Krisp, Ucraft, HSBC, Ameriabank, and Joomag.
She has helped 50+ companies, coached more than 200 teams, and trained more than 3000 individuals.
She has been a speaker at various Agile events and conferences, including Scrum Global Gathering 2019, Agile Z-Day 2020, Lebanese American University Agile Event 2020, Frug’Agile 2021, Agnostic Agile Conference 2022, and Agile Tour Vilnius 2022.
Being herself a true humanist, she loves working with people, craving together an "Agile mindset" and getting the most out of each team.
Dysfunction Mapping - a Tool for Hypothesis-Based Agile Coaching
Dysfunction mapping is a tool that gives Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches a starting point to categorize all problems in their teams and organizations. By going through its simple steps, you can capture the reality of your current situation and form a hypothesis that gives you a concrete plan for change. No more fighting every fire or trying to solve every problem, instead, this tool creates a coaching backlog that will tackle the most significant wins first.
About the Speaker:
Michael is an Agile Coach, Trainer, and Scrum Master with 8 years of experience helping teams to improve their value delivery practices. Both PSM-3 and SPC certified, but framework agnostic, Michael believes in creating practical tools to help agile practitioners solve real problems.
Facilitating Collaborative Design Decisions
If we want to make sustainable design decisions for our architecture that are embraced by everyone, the most effective way is to do this collaboratively. Everyone can feel a part of the decision and can potentially give the input they have. The group is aligned and knows what is to be expected onward. On paper, this sounds great, but in reality, we know it is hard to do because we need to deal with all sorts of group dynamics. Dynamics like cultural differences, conflicts of opinions, cognitive biases, and polarities that the group is part of. These dynamics cause people to stop sharing what they want, which ends up in resistance behaviour from sarcastic jokes to stopped communication or leaving the session. No wonder a lot of people resort to a more autocratic form of decision-making, where the architect analyzes and makes the decision. So how can we make collaborative decision decisions better?
Join Evelyn and Kenny in this hands-on workshop where we explore different models of decision-making that can help facilitate collaborative design decisions. We will dive into a variety of facilitation techniques such as:
About the Speakers:
Kenny Baas-Schwegler
A lot of knowledge is lost when designing and building software — lost because of hand-overs in a telephone game, confusing communication by not having a shared language, discussing complexity without visualisation, and hassle that comes from conflict by not leveraging the full potential and wisdom of the diversity of the people. That lost knowledge while creating software impacts the sustainability, quality and value of the software product.
As an independent software consultant, tech lead, and software architect, Kenny Baas-Schwegler steps in to tackle this issue through sociotechnical system design. By facilitating collaborative modelling and applying Domain-Driven Design and Deep Democracy, he catalyses organisations, teams, and groups of people to design and build sustainable software systems. He explains his approach in the co-authored book 'Collaborative Software Design: How to Facilitate Domain Modelling Decisions'.
One of Kenny’s main value-based heuristics is sharing knowledge. You can see that in action at his blog on baasie.com, and curating the Leanpub book "Visual Collaboration Tool". Being an active figure in the Domain-Driven Design community, organising events for Virtual Domain-Driven Design (virtualddd.com) and Domain Driven Design Nederland. Additionally, he routinely shares his experiences at conferences and meetups through informative talks and workshops.
Evelyn van Kelle
Evelyn van Kelle is a strategic software delivery consultant, with experience in coaching, advising and guiding organisations and teams in designing socio-technical systems. Her Master’s degree in social sciences brings new and valuable perspectives when it comes to optimizing both delivery- and team processes.
Being a firm believer of context shaping meaning, she is focused on understanding company- and team culture before anything else. Finding the actual problem to solve and adding business value are starting points in her work. Evelyn is convinced that we need a shared sense of reality including shared values, goals and language in order to perform best as a team. She is curious, driven and pragmatic. “Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection” describes her line of reasoning.
Besides her daily work, she has a predilection for books and linguistics and highly appreciates good food.
