People & Teams

"Move fast and break things” tells quite a story of the relationship between speed and agile. Speed has been a driver in our industry before it was even an industry. Books promise that certain frameworks can deliver twice as much in half the time, yet teams still struggle delivering what's expected of them. This session describes a six-month case study of a multi-team transformation. The orders were to make the teams deliver faster, but they were consistently missing deadlines. Frustration was on the rise. Only after taking the time to understand what they meant by "faster" could the teams improve—and the solution ended up being to slow down. Chris Murman will help you learn how to make the case to slow down, work in increments, deliver frequently, and delight customers. He will explain which metrics to use to measure progress, patterns of successful teams, and the necessary coaching stances.

Most agile practitioners first learn agile by reading a book, attending a class, or attending local meetings. But learning lean and agile concepts works best when we're able to put some concrete examples and practice behind the concepts. By adding a set of games and exercises that teach and reinforce lean and agile concepts to our toolboxes, change agents can provide some practical basis for conversations both inside and outside their organizations. In this talk join experienced agile coach Bill DeVoe, as he shares two of his “go to” games. First, up will be The Name Game, a game that reinforces the downsides of multitasking and benefits of completing work. And second will be a modified version of the Scrum Penny Game – a multi-round exercise that demonstrates many lean-agile concepts, like flow, prioritizing value, and delivering small batch sizes over large ones.

Understanding how our brains take shortcuts to process all the data they take in can help us recognize when its happening, take measures to correct our course, and use that information to build stronger teams. This talk sprang from my curiosity about the intersection of neuroscience and organizational behavior. It is my hope that attendees will leave with the ability to recognize when they and their teams are using processing shortcuts, as well as some techniques for mitigating their impact.

Learning Objectives:
- Identify several ways in which our brains short cut processing in order to deal with the wealth of information they take in and decisions they must make
- Understand how those processing mechanisms manifest in our daily lives, both at home and at work
- Recognize when we are falling prey to our brains' misguided ways and learn to mitigate their impact

Think about your latest retrospective. Were people interested and engaged, or did they complain and accuse? Did you leave the retrospective feeling like you learned something valuable, or were you simply there to check the retrospective off your list? Retrospectives are hard work, but effective retrospectives can have a transformative effect on your team’s performance and, ultimately, your organization’s ability to achieve its goals. Join retrospective expert David Horowitz as he explores tangible steps you can take to turn your retrospectives into the catalyst of continuous improvement they were designed to be. He will show you how to create an environment of equality while doing something physical to reinforce action. He'll also share how to create and use a Retrospective Radiator and how to organize a circle of retrospective facilitators so that you invest in this valuable skill.