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Keep Austin Agile 2019

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7:30am CDT

Registration & Breakfast

Friday October 4, 2019 7:30am - 8:30am CDT
Room D & E

Level All

8:30am CDT

Welcome & Keynote: Our Growing Space Traffic Problem: Another Inconvenient Truth!

There are currently about 26,000 objects in space, created by humanity, being tracked, out of roughly 500,000 that could cause the loss, disruption, or degradation of critical space-based services and capabilities we all depend upon. Add to that the fact that there is apparently a lot of money to be made from space services and so there is a new space race, with a planned 15,000 more satellites to be launched in the next five years, almost doubling the current space objects databases. Unfortunately, although we launch satellites into specific “space highways” we don’t have space traffic rules. How can software, algorithms, sensors, and data science/analytics keep up the pace with reality to deliver on space safety, security, and sustainability?

Speakers

Moriba Jah, Ph.D.

Associate Professor in Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, The University of Texas at Austin

Moriba Jah is an Associate Professor in Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics as well as the director for Computational Astronautical Sciences and Technologies (CAST), a group within the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at The University of Texas... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 8:30am - 9:30am CDT
Room D & E

Level All

9:30am CDT

Break & Sponsor Showcase

Friday October 4, 2019 9:30am - 9:50am CDT

Level All

9:50am CDT

An Appreciation of Agile from the CEO's Seat!

Feedback Survey

Is Agile in your DNA? Are you being Agile or just doing Agile? How can I get my C-Suite to look at Agile as something more than a methodology for delivery? Given everyone is looking for value, how does Agile get infused into large parts of the company in a way that can transform the company from an organization to a living, growing, and evolving organism? How can you assess and assist your CEO with Agile? These questions and many others will be presented through practical, real-world examples highlighting both successes and challenges from Joyce's company.

Lastly, in a world with so much data, how does Agile help you manage that? According to a McKinsey & Company report, Agile organizations emphasize quick, efficient, and continuous decision making, preferring 70 percent probability now versus 100 percent certainty later. Learning to lean on and into Agile when you don't have all the data takes some getting use to but it's certainly doable. The view from the CEO seat is interesting and might just surprise you.

Speakers

Joyce Durst

CEO and Co-Founder, Growth Acceleration Partners

Joyce Durst leverages 30 years of software industry experience to lead double-digit growth and profitability at GAP, all the while inspiring those who work with her. One of Joyce's guiding principles is that GAP doesn't just build software to solve critical business problems, GAP... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 9:50am - 10:50am CDT
Room C

Agile Leadership

Format Presentation
Level Beginner

9:50am CDT

Dynamic Reteaming: Acknowledge Reality, Chart Your Path

Feedback Survey

Let's debunk the myth that you must keep teams stable or "the same" in order to have a successful company. Changing teams can help reduce the risk of attrition, learning & career stagnation, and the development of knowledge silos. Heidi will share original case studies from companies that enable dynamic change to their teams propelled by retrospectives and other humanistic practices.

In this talk, you'll learn tips and tricks for building a sustainable company by changing teams whether it's by growing and splitting teams, merging teams, seeding teams, adding new people across multiple teams, and more. She'll also share reteaming anti-patterns and what not to do.

Speakers

HEIDI HELFAND

Director of Product & Technology Excellence, Procore Technologies

Heidi Helfand is author of the book Dynamic Reteaming. She coaches software development teams using practical, people-focused techniques, with the goal of building resilient organizations as they double and triple in size. Heidi is currently Director of Product & Technology Excellence... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 9:50am - 10:50am CDT
Room H

Format Presentation
Level Intermediate

9:50am CDT

Not Your Father's Retrospective!

Feedback Survey

Are you tired of Start-Stop-Continue? Has someone on your team suggested doing away with retrospectives? Do you need to inject variety? Can there be more to retrospectives than just improving your development process? If you answered "Yes" to any of these questions, you should attend this workshop.

We begin with an exercise that helps us understand why we have retrospectives. Learn about two important categories of retrospectives that are routinely overlooked by teams. Review why retrospectives often fail and receive concrete advice to avoid this outcome.

Get introduced to three retrospective exercises that most teams have never used:

We rocked the house! (Inject old, yes old, thinking)
A value-able exercise (Getting to know you, getting to know all about you.)
Climb the mountain (Chart your path to your goal).

Leave with actionable techniques for improving your team through innovative retrospectives.

Speakers

Scott Killen

Agile Coach, NetSpend

Scott Killen is an Agile Coach for Netspend. He tries to forget that, at one time or another, he's held CSM, CSP, PMP, SPC and CSQE certifications. Of more note, he's taught and mentored many, many hundreds of people fundamental and advanced Agile development skills in corporate... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 9:50am - 10:50am CDT
Room A & B

Format Workshop
Level All

9:50am CDT

Introducing the Roadmap Wall: Building Alignment and Buy-In at All Levels of Your Organization

Feedback Survey

Implementing a product roadmap in an Agile way can be tough. Roadmaps are often written as a document that isn't easily accessible. This leads to a variety of issues. A good Agile roadmap should allow for Agile practices such as daily standups and planning. They should create high visibility and transparency, operate with low overhead, and provide the right information to the right people at the right time.

In this talk, Chris will share how he's implemented a Roadmap Wall. He'll show how to incorporate the roadmap components into a highly visible and actionable format. The roadmap wall has multiple benefits and will:

Give leadership and executives visibility into how their business objectives influence features, story backlogs, and priorities
Leverage delivery teams to understand technical feasibility trade-offs
Show the options available to satisfy competing customer needs
Demonstrate a clear picture of how business objectives link to customer needs
Provide near real-time information for decision making

To realize these benefits, we'll leverage a variety of familiar tools. Chris will show you how to use a Kanban system to manage business objectives and OKRs. You'll learn how using an opportunity solution tree clarifies the customer's need when road-mapping. He'll show you a new way to use story maps when detailing features, improving communication, and planning.

In the end, you'll walk away with a new method for visualizing your product roadmap, giving your team better decision-making information.

Speakers

Chris Shinkle

Director of Innovation, SEP

Chris is a practitioner and maker. He is a thought leader and continually initiates new ideas and continuous improvement at SEP. His experience comes from building products with many large clients in a variety of industries: aerospace, medical, healthcare, finance, etc. He introduced... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 9:50am - 10:50am CDT
Room D

Product Management

Format Presentation
Level Intermediate

9:50am CDT

Pictures Are Easy, Words Are Hard: Give Context to Your User Stories with Visual Models

Feedback Survey

Have you ever found yourself struggling to explain the process of a system or user, the scope of a product/project or how something should work? Or are you on the receiving end, trying to make sense of a Product Owner's descriptions through user stories and conversations? During those times, did you ever draw a picture? That's a visual model!

In this presentation, we will discuss the value of visual models for managing backlogs, answering the question of why pictures are easy and words are hard. We'll then introduce some of the most commonly used visual models on Agile projects and give you a "quick reference" guide to take with you to use the next time you need a picture!

The four most useful visual models for Agile projects that we will talk about are:

Process Flows to show user/business steps and help derive stories
Feature Trees to organize the scope of the product and visually show perhaps scope for a release or even sprint
Ecosystem Maps that display connections between products/systems and help identify dependencies
Display-Action-Response Tables which pair a wire-frame/UI mock-up with a table for UI behaviors to identify gaps in usability

Speakers

Amanda Cardenas

Senior Product Manager, Seilevel

Amanda Cardenas, a Senior Product Manager, is a Seilevel Certified Instructor and practitioner. Seilevel is a Business Analysis and Product Management company that helps lead Fortune 1000 companies deliver quality, high-value software. Amanda works with her clients to effectively... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 9:50am - 10:50am CDT
Room E

Product Management

Format Presentation
Level All

9:50am CDT

Cognitive Automation: Applying AI to Tasks Within the SDLC

Feedback Survey

Members of the Software Engineering community are beginning to explore the exciting capabilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to remove even more of the mundane and manual tasks from our jobs. Engineering organizations that have already instilled a culture of automation with their prior adoption of Agile, Test Automation, and DevOps practices, are the best suited to begin the exploration of the AI-inspired solutions to the Engineering SDLC processes.

The next generation of Automation in Engineering SDLC comes to us in the form of AI-inspired approaches: Analytics, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing. Geoff refers to this as Cognitive Automation, which offers the promise of the automation of tasks that up until now could only be performed by humans.

Engineering practitioners going down the path of Cognitive Automation should proceed with caution due to the combination of excessive hype and unprecedented complexities as compared to prior stages of automation.

Join Geoff as he provides a framework for organizations to use when considering the application of AI to tasks within their SDLC. The approach, developed while leading the Dell EMC Test AI initiatives, provides Engineering teams with a means of countering the optimistic and sometimes unrealistic expectations of their leaders and subject matter experts with a pragmatic, yet goal-oriented approach.

Speakers

Geoff Meyer

Test Architect, Dell EMC

Geoff Meyer is a Test Architect in the Dell EMC Infrastructure Solutions Group and has 35 years of industry experience as a software developer, manager, program manager, and director. He drives the Test Strategy and Architecture for 400+ SW and HW Testers across India, Taiwan, and... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 9:50am - 10:50am CDT
Room G

Technical Practices

Format Presentation
Level All

9:50am CDT

How to Avoid a Toxic Transformation

Feedback Survey

Agile transformations are similar to road trips: without a map to get you to your destination, you will most likely end up lost. Avoid kicking off a toxic transformation by starting your journey out on the right foot.

In this workshop, learn the important steps an organization should take to provide a strong foundation for successfully implementing Agile. Attendees leave with a transformation framework they can customize for their organization to place them on the road to becoming more Agile.

The session takes attendees from the Org Level to the System Level to the Team Level. At the Org Level, take important first steps: create clear vision, develop clear business objectives, organize leaders, construct a transformation backlog, and create a roadmap. At the System Level, align around the transformation: identify value streams, align teams to the value streams, and develop mechanisms for cross-team coordination. At the Team Level, begin to transform the team: discuss goals, vision, and mission, determine success criteria, define roles and develop team agreements like Definition of Done and Definition of Ready.

Speakers

Brian Milner

Senior Agile Trainer, Agile Velocity

Brian Milner is a Senior Agile Trainer that brings over 20 years of software development experience to his classes. Over half that time, Brian spent working exclusively with organizations as they transitioned to Agile practices.Beginning as a developer, he worked up through management... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 9:50am - 10:50am CDT
Room F

Transformations

Format Workshop
Level Intermediate

10:50am CDT

Break & Sponsor Showcase

Friday October 4, 2019 10:50am - 11:10am CDT

Level All

11:10am CDT

Driving Flow, Value, and Innovation with the Agile VMO

Feedback Survey

Historically, Project Managers (PMs) and other middle managers have hustled in a bureaucratic system to drive teams to deliver value. As organizations transition from a project to product model, where can these leaders best add value in a fast-moving, Agile and entrepreneurial world? In this new and exciting world, middle managers are enabling rapid delivery of value and successful business outcomes via the creation of the Agile Value Management Office™. Learn how an Agile VMO™ drives business agility through small batches, frequent releases, and continuous adaptation. We'll explore how to:

Create a collaborative management team-of-teams
Bring Lean discipline to product portfolio prioritization
Establish an End-to-End team model of resource management
Track in-flight product work using a Visual Management System

We'll explore the transition for PMs and other leaders into this exciting role: facilitating the delivery of flow, value, and innovation end-to-end on the Agile VMO, even as they support their Agile teams in the quest for business agility.

Speakers

Sanjiv Augustine

Founder and CEO, LitheSpeed LLC

Sanjiv Augustine is the Founder and CEO of LitheSpeed, LLC and the Agile Leadership Academy. Sanjiv is an entrepreneur, industry-leading Agile and Lean expert, author, speaker, management consultant, and trainer. As a practicing executive, he has evolved LitheSpeed over the past 12... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 11:10am - 12:10pm CDT
Room D

Agile Leadership

Format Presentation
Level Intermediate

11:10am CDT

Scaling an Organization from First Principles

Feedback Survey

There is a set of organizational practices that seem to work. For example: "two pizza" teams, use of APIs between systems, and, the newly emerging, Service Level Objectives (SLOs). Why is that? Why do these "work"? It turns out that these are design solutions that solve the problem of scaling an organization. These solutions emerge as a consequence of organizational design from first principles, a design that considers scale, contention, coherence, and complexity. Join us on a tour of organizational scalability through the lens of the Universal Scalability Law. See how to tame the inevitable complexity through organizational structure and discover the "why" of it all via Wardley Maps.

Speakers

Tristan Slominski

Tristan, Capability, LLC

Tristan Slominski is interested in the design, development, and operation of autonomous self-directed teams and decentralized distributed systems. Tristan founded and operates capability.io. His current and past roles include Senior Site Reliability Engineer, Staff Software Engineer, Site Reliability Manager, Chief Technology Officer, and Head of Product Development. He's a former Army Aviator with combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 11:10am - 12:10pm CDT
Room A & B

Agile Leadership

Format Presentation
Level All

11:10am CDT

Agile Meets Mindfulness Workshop

Feedback Survey

Many companies are introducing Mindfulness based programs to their employees. These programs have proven highly successful. The main benefits of Mindfulness are raised emotional intelligence, greater self-awareness, and improved focus. This activity-based workshop will give you a taste of what Mindfulness is while exploring its connection to the Agile Mindset. We will dive into the science behind Mindfulness and its many benefits. You will be challenged to look at the world differently and you will learn several techniques you can use to either establish or reinforce your own Mindfulness practice. This workshop is for you if you've ever thought that some doors can only be opened from the inside.

Speakers

Wayde Stallmann

Agile Coach, World Wide Technology

Wayde is an Agile Coach at World Wide Technology. He has a passion for developing Great Team Players using the same techniques as Improv and Mindfulness teachers. Wayde has developed software for over 20 years, concentrating on Java since 1999. He is an XP practitioner and former... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 11:10am - 12:10pm CDT
Room C

Format Presentation, Workshop
Level Intermediate, All

11:10am CDT

Does Your Team Need a Detox?

Feedback Survey

Does your team bring the goods but feel bad? Shouldn't teamwork be supportive, collaborative, and friendly? Reality check: even high performing teams will eventually have conflict and disagreement. But when a team turns toxic, good results won't last. There are four sources of team toxins - and your ability to understand and neutralize these combustible agents help you achieve a happy, challenging, and empowering work life - and a great scrum team.

In this session, Leland and Heather will introduce you to four toxins that often poison teams and organizations. They'll talk about how to identify them, the root cause of the toxic behavior, and some common antidotes that can help you manage the toxins successfully, so you have a healthy team environment that is fun, supportive, and collaborative.

Speakers

Heather Canedo

Lead Scrum Master, WellSky

Heather Canedo is relatively new on her Agile journey, and has been a ScrumMaster at WellSky for 2.5 years.

Leland Newsom

Scrum Master, Emerson Automation Solutions

Leland Newsom has 20+ years of industry experience as a software developer, manager, managing director, Scrum Master, and Agile Coach. He coaches in Agile, Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, and DevOps and leads teams and organizations in their Agile and DevOps journeys. He is currently employed... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 11:10am - 12:10pm CDT
Room G

Format Presentation
Level Beginner

11:10am CDT

Understand Your Stakeholders and Their Journey

Feedback Survey

Stakeholders are a key to any project, and understanding our stakeholders, their wants and their needs, is essential for any successful project. While stakeholder management and stakeholder engagement are considered key activities, how many of us really spend the time to understand our stakeholders? Too often we get wrapped up in features and functions of our products instead of understanding what our customers really need.

In this session we are going to look at some diverse ways to analyze our stakeholders. We will look at and practice creating journey maps and empathy maps to help us understand how we can build and use them as part of stakeholder analysis. We will also look at how we can use these tools to help us write better requirements and deliver better products.

Speakers

Betsy Stockdale

Business Architect, Seilevel

Betsy Stockdale is a Business Architect at Seilevel, a professional services company that works to deliver 10x value for their customers. Betsy works with companies to lead their projects or modify their approach to software requirements to be more effective so IT projects deliver... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 11:10am - 12:10pm CDT
Room F

Product Management

Format Workshop
Level Intermediate

11:10am CDT

The Three Keys to Driving DevOps Adoption

Feedback Survey

Organizations that implement DevOps often find user adoption lagging as time progresses. They often just implement a DevOps tool like Jenkins and expect DevOps adoption to accelerate organically. What often happens is that DevOps adoptions stall beyond the first implementation of a DevOps tool. This leaves organizations scratching their heads about what to do, since they have made a significant investment in DevOps and the results are not what they expected.

As Leon has been working with his clients on their DevOps adoption journeys over the past couple of years, he's had some key findings on where they have had DevOps adoption successes and where DevOps adoptions have failed. He's discovered three keys to driving DevOps adoption and he'd like to share that with you so that your DevOps adoption journey will be a success. Don't let DevOps stall and hit a wall at your organization.

Speakers

Leon Sabarsky

President, HealthyAgile LLC

Leon Sabarsky excels at building high performing software development teams ‎for all types of organizations. He has 20+ years of IT experience and has been an Agile evangelist for the past 10+ years, primarily in regulated industries. Leon has been an Agile Coach and trainer... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 11:10am - 12:10pm CDT
Room H

Technical Practices

Format Presentation
Level Intermediate

11:10am CDT

Scaling Agile - Having It YOUR Way

Feedback Survey

Let’s face it, there are way too many Agile scaling frameworks today. And the list seems to be growing. Another reality is none of them really work so well “out of the box” and each has some distinct challenges.

Join Bob Galen and Mary Thorn in this interactive workshop, where they share scaling patterns from each of the leading frameworks that they've personally used and work well for them. No fluff, just working patterns for the real world.

Then, Bob and Mary will help you analyze your scaling context and select the patterns that might work best for you. For example, if you’ve got an entrenched project-focused culture, we’ll explore product organizational patterns. Or a pattern for effectively handling UX and architecture across multiple teams.

You’ll leave this session with your own list of practical scaling patterns that are customized for your organization and ideas of what “not to do” in your future scaling efforts

Learning objectives include:

A complete set of useful scaling patterns
Tools for discovering keys to your own organizational contexts with respect to scaling approaches
How to effectively pull the patterns together to assist effective Agile scaling

Speakers

Mary Thorn

Agile Practices Lead, Vaco

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

Friday October 4, 2019 11:10am - 12:10pm CDT
Room E

Transformations

Format Workshop
Level All

12:10pm CDT

Lunch - Sponsored by Growth Acceleration Partners (GAP)

Friday October 4, 2019 12:10pm - 1:35pm CDT
Room D & E

Level All

1:35pm CDT

Behind the Agile Curtain: Why Leaders Choose Agility

Feedback Survey

How do you convince your boss and peers that Agile is the answer to your organization's issues?

As a former "unconvinced" turned "convinced" leader, the question of "How do I win over my boss?" really hits home. How was I convinced? How was I changed? When did I start to see the results I needed?

In order to convince someone else of the value you see, it's ideal to start by understanding their needs, constraints, and challenges. Once you see things through their eyes, then you begin to understand the precise ways Agile can facilitate the outcomes they're looking for. What better way to understand leaders than to ask leaders questions directly?

Join Erik Cottrell along with panelists, Nicole Tanzillo (CO-Founder & COO, Ceresa), Ron Dovich (Assistant VP of Technology, AT&T), and Amy Green-Hinojosa (VP, Project Management Office, Texas Mutual Insurance) to get an inside look into what it takes to convince leaders of Agile, the challenges and rewards of leading change, and the benefits they realized once they began to embrace agility.

Speakers

Erik Cottrell

SVP of Client Success and Marketing, Agile Velocity

Erik Cottrell is the Senior Vice President of Client Success and Marketing at Agile Velocity. After 20 years of experience in Product Management and leading strategic growth, Erik believes the path to lasting high performance goes beyond process change. He champions that a uniquely... Read More →

Ron Dovich

Assistant Vice President of Technology, AT&T Cybersecurity

Ron Dovich is the Assistant Vice President of Technology for the Cybersecurity Business Unit at AT&T. He is an experienced software executive with 25 years of product development, product strategy, product management, and technology consulting in both large-scale SaaS and enterprise... Read More →

Amy Green-Hinojosa

IT Senior Manager, Texas Mutual

Amy Green-Hinojosa joined Texas Mutual in 1995 in the premium audit department and has served in a variety of roles including premium Audit Processor, Software Support Specialist, Project Leader, and Quality Assurance Manager. In her most recent role as Information Technology (IT... Read More →

Nicole Tanzillo

COO, Ceresa

Nicole Tanzillo is a co-founder and the COO of Ceresa, a platform for mentoring designed to grow women leaders through radically better mentorship. She was a key Agile transformation stakeholder at Spiceworks in 2018 as the VP of Business Strategy. Nicole is an engineer by education... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 1:35pm - 2:35pm CDT
Room C

Agile Leadership

Format Panel Discussion
Level All

1:35pm CDT

How to Get Answers to Powerful Coaching Questions

Feedback Survey

Powerful questions are excellent tools for any Agile practitioner, but they carry a big punch. "Why” might be the smallest among them, but it often has the biggest thrash and churn when it is asked. It goes deep to the heart of the matter, and it can get uncomfortable for the person receiving it. If you aren’t careful, a powerful question like "why" can shut down the conversation. In this session, David and Erin will get to the root of just how answering questions can be so difficult. They will help you modify questions like “why” to make them less threatening and easier to receive. By the time you leave, you’ll have a deeper appreciation for the art of interrogation, tools for modifying your own questions to make them more accessible, and hands-on practice to apply what you've learned and understand its impact.

Speakers

David Staab

Trust Architect, Starling Teams

David Staab is a true hybrid, having succeeded as a software architect, team leader, business owner, and career coach. His approach to any role is to develop and inspire his teammates, serving as a multiplier effect on teams’ outputs. As a linguist and polyglot, he focuses on the... Read More →

Erin Randall

Agile Coach/Scrum Master, Charles Schwab

Erin Randall is a longtime Agile coach and Scrum Master with a deep passion for helping teams transform from humdrum to remarkable. She grounds her work in foundational Agile principles, coaching people and teams to greater group cohesiveness. Her goal is to help teams find joy... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 1:35pm - 2:35pm CDT
Room F

Level Intermediate

1:35pm CDT

Using Improv to Improve Agile Teams

Feedback Survey

Learn improv techniques and try out some silly (and fun!) games to help your team collaborate, build trust, and become more adventurous.

Warning: If you do not like fun and games, this is not the session for you. If you're still reading, here's what we will cover:

We will learn about the first principle of improv -- "Yes, and." This principle is crucially important as it helps teams build trust and creativity.
We will create a few improvised scenes and embrace our failures by "wiping" the scene.
We will see how the ideas of a group are better (and more fun!) than the ideas of a single person.

Throughout this session, we will practice loads of quick, silly, and effective games that bring fun and variety to team ceremonies.

Speakers

Erika Flora

Principal, BEYOND20

Erika Flora, CSP-SM, CSP-PO is an experienced advisor, instructor, and Agile Coach across a variety of industries and sectors. She started her career as a Microbiologist turned Project Manager and has always had a passion for improving how companies manage work, deliver great products... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 1:35pm - 2:35pm CDT
Room H

Format Workshop
Level All

1:35pm CDT

"He's Going Vertical. So Am I" - Making and Keeping Your User Stories Vertical

Feedback Survey

Jester went vertical and then so did Mav and Goose. They were ahead of their time. 80% of the value we deliver to our customers resides in just 20% of the features. Even worse, according to the Standish Group Research, 65% of the features we deliver are below the hard deck. They have little to no value at all for our customers.

So, how do we develop the most valuable features first and then cut the tail once we have gotten the highest market value out? We start by slicing the work vertically through all the horizontal architectural layers. A vertical story slices through the web, middle, and persistent layers. This isn’t our natural way of decomposing problems.

Yet, the benefits of vertical stories greatly outweigh horizontal and make the paradigm shift compelling. Vertical stories are more efficient, delivering immediate value, and force continuous integration. They are user-centric and can be demonstrated to your users for feedback. Vertical stories even promote cross-functional swarming which reduces development time.

If you "feel the need ... the need for speed" then fly by this session and go vertical. You'll walk away with key vertical slicing techniques that work. You’ll understand why vertical stories are a cornerstone of Agile software development.

Speakers

Mark Ulferts

Director of Engineering, HomeAway

Mark Ulferts is a Director of Engineering at HomeAway/Expedia. He has 10+ years of management backed by 25+ years of software development experience in a variety of industries including Travel, CRM, Telecom and Defense. Mark is also an avid Agile and Lean/UX Evangelist in what he... Read More →

Melissa Ugiansky

Technical Program Manager, HomeAway

Melissa Ugiansky is a Technical Program Manager at HomeAway who works directly in the Agile trenches with her development teams. Melissa also trains and coaches others at HomeAway on Agile values & principles and tools & techniques. Having worked in software development for over twenty... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 1:35pm - 2:35pm CDT
Room E

Product Management

Format Presentation
Level Intermediate

1:35pm CDT

Measuring Customer Success: I Paid You for My Problem NOT for Your Feature

Feedback Survey

Customers are not paying for your product, they are hiring your product and are paying for positive outcomes and impacts. Agile was marketed with promise of faster value delivery to customers but, as it went mainstream, many organizations focused only on mastering different elements of Agile frameworks and progress is being measured by vanity metrics such as velocity and burndown charts leaving customer success sideways.

Taking teams to the next level of satisfying customers through the continuous delivery of valuable product requires an alignment between the product engineering team and their customers. Join Kalpesh as he shows, through storytelling and practical techniques, how connecting teams to customers can move them from "feature factory" to collaborative partners in driving customer success.

Speakers

Kalpesh Shah

Director, Agile Transformation, IntraEdge Inc.

Kalpesh Shah is a Digital Product Coach, Speaker and Culture Hacker. He works with clients ranging from Fortune 50 companies to startups, helping them make the transition to an Agile way of working, implementing Agile at Scale, employing Lean Product Development approaches, and instilling... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 1:35pm - 2:35pm CDT
Room G

Product Management

Format Presentation
Level All

1:35pm CDT

Attacking Things Incrementally

Feedback Survey

Small increments tend to result in better software. They give more opportunity for feedback. It is easier to ensure quality and to track down issues. And there is more visibility into the progress that has been made. They enable agility by making it easier to change as the team learns more.

In this session, we'll establish principles to identify which ways of splitting the work will help and which might hurt. We'll discuss some difficult scenarios and talk about tricks and techniques for splitting your backlog items up so that each part adds incremental value and provides meaningful information towards making better next steps while remaining releasable.

Speakers

Walter Bodwell

CEO, Planigle

Walter Bodwell is the founder of Planigle, a company which provides consulting, training and tools to help teams get the most out of Agile development. While at Planigle, Walter has worked with companies from start ups to large enterprises to assist them in their software practices... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 1:35pm - 2:35pm CDT
Room A & B

Technical Practices

Format Presentation
Level Beginner

1:35pm CDT

Are We There Yet? How to Know You Have Achieved Agility

Feedback Survey

How do you know you are doing Agile well? How do you measure the progress of your Agile adoption? Are you assessing based on implemented practices or achievement of outcomes? What decision framework are you using to decide what to focus on next?

These are some of the questions you may be asking yourself as you get into the nitty-gritty of agility. In this workshop, we will discuss the importance of being outcome vs. practice-driven and how that will lead to sustained impact. We will work together to break down desired business outcomes into core capabilities, leaving you with action items that will help you determine where your organization should focus next.

Speakers

David Hawks

Founder, Agile Velocity

Founder and CEO of Agile Velocity, David Hawks is a Certified Enterprise Coach and Certified Scrum Trainer who is passionate about helping organizations achieve lasting organizational agility beyond the basic implementation of Agile practices. David’s primary focus is to guide leaders... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 1:35pm - 2:35pm CDT
Room D

Transformations

Format Workshop
Level Intermediate

2:35pm CDT

Break & Sponsor Showcase

Friday October 4, 2019 2:35pm - 2:55pm CDT

Level All

2:55pm CDT

Austin Women in Agile: Lean Espresso Round Tables

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Looking for that session where you can find answers to all manner of Agile questions? Are you wondering where you can find women who are just as passionate as you are about practicing Agile? We've got you covered! We're Austin Women in Agile. Yes, we're part of a national chapter, but we have an Austin flavor all our own. We are building a trusted, personal community of Agile practitioners who live and work with integrity and intention. We practice vulnerability, kindness, and radical accountability. We empower others, celebrate our wins, learn from our mistakes, and step together into our full potential.

Mindy Honcoop, Taylor Frank, Sydney Markle, Kate Kolchier and Erin Randall will lead Lean Espresso round-table discussions. They have experience as Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, Tribe Leaders to Agile squads, Product Owners, a Marketing Whiz, a Bikablo fangirl, a Human Resource Dynamo, and even a Chief JIRA Goddess. They banded together to make Austin Women in Agile a reality in the autumn of 2018, and they want to bring intentional, authentic Agile practices to even more people.

Speakers

Erin Randall

Agile Coach/Scrum Master, Charles Schwab

Erin Randall is a longtime Agile coach and Scrum Master with a deep passion for helping teams transform from humdrum to remarkable. She grounds her work in foundational Agile principles, coaching people and teams to greater group cohesiveness. Her goal is to help teams find joy... Read More →

Mindy Honcoop

Director, People Team, Spiceworks

Mindy Honcoop is a 20-year Human Resource professional who started out her career at Microsoft, built her HR project management skills at Expedia, and stumbled upon Agile along the way. Mindy found herself leading an Agile transformation within a local HR team, and becoming a Scrum... Read More →

Taylor Frank

Manager, Toolbox@IBM, IBM

Taylor Frank came to IBM in 1999 while still squeeeeezing her undergrad from the University of TX at Austin into a tight eight years. Somehow, a Radio-Television-Film degree proved useful at Big Blue, where Taylor has honed her left-of-the-dial perspective and project management skills... Read More →

Sydney Markle

Agile Marketing Coach, IBM

Our ability to think, act, and reflect is the greatest asset to any team or organization. I am an Agile coach with a passion for helping people work together to achieve outcomes that matter. Using coaching, and facilitative leadership, I help groups tap into the power that comes from... Read More →

Kate Kolchier

Sr. Product Owner, NSS Labs

Kate Kolchier is a seasoned Agile professional, having played every role on an Agile team over the years: Developer, QA, Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Agile Coach. She currently is a Sr. Product Owner with NSS Labs building automation to test the world's security products. As a... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 2:55pm - 3:55pm CDT
Room H

Agile Leadership

Format Other
Level All

2:55pm CDT

When to Promote, Encourage, or Fire Your Scrum Master

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How do individual agilists hold themselves accountable? What are legitimate data points to measure and provide context of performance? It's not often that people ask specifically how they evaluate a Scrum Master, especially as a direct report. Development Managers may have developer score cards or measurements for lines of code or commits. Product Managers can be held accountable to feature ideas, implementation, and even P&L. But how do you evaluate your Scrum Master? Do you rely on 360 feedback, velocity, or some measurement of team morale? Is it, honestly, gut feel? Hoping you have a career path for your agilists, how do you know they're progressing?

The reference points of team health, 360 (candid) feedback, and milestone delivery facilitate the discussion of how Jason has evaluated performance of a Scrum Master or Agile coach, their successes, misses and ideas for improvement from the perspective of a hiring manager.

Speakers

Jason Morillo

Director of Engineering, uShip

Jason Morillo is very active in the Agile Austin community, currently serving as Vice President on the Board. He frequently serves as an Agile Austin U instructor/facilitator. He enjoys learning and takes pride in mentoring.Having experienced and led successful Agile transformations... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 2:55pm - 3:55pm CDT
Room A & B

Agile Leadership

Format Panel Discussion, Presentation
Level All, Intermediate

2:55pm CDT

Rise of the Relationship Worker: Networking Skills for Engineers

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In the six decades since its first usage, the term Knowledge Worker has become synonymous with Software Engineers. With an almost singular emphasis on STEM skills and an excused lack of people skills, the reputation of the successful software engineer evolved into that of the genius in a cubicle. Two factors have caused us to re-examine the relative importance of hard and soft skills in Software Engineering. First, the very nature of how we produce software changed dramatically with the advent of Agile practices compelling us to develop software…socially. Second, Automation and AI are reshaping the tasks which can be performed by machines putting even more emphasis on soft skills. This confluence doesn't diminish the demand for Engineers. According to Geoff Colvin, tomorrow’s most valuable engineers will not be geniuses in cubicles; rather, they’ll be those who can also build relationships and collaborate. Colvin calls these Relationship Workers.

So how do we as test engineers thrive in an environment where we were never taught, nor encouraged to develop, these skills? Join Geoff as he goes beyond the "whys" and explores the "hows" of relationship building such as establishing a "How can I help?" mindset and other tips and tricks that he's gathered from the research of contemporaries such as Simon Sinek, Geoff Colvin, and Rob Lambert and his own personal and professional experiences in his 35+ years in software engineering.

Speakers

Geoff Meyer

Test Architect, Dell EMC

Geoff Meyer is a Test Architect in the Dell EMC Infrastructure Solutions Group and has 35 years of industry experience as a software developer, manager, program manager, and director. He drives the Test Strategy and Architecture for 400+ SW and HW Testers across India, Taiwan, and... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 2:55pm - 3:55pm CDT
Room G

Format Presentation
Level All

2:55pm CDT

Value Stream Mapping: Seeing and Improving Your Product Flow and Process

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The very first principle of the Agile Manifesto is “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.”

However, our capabilities to deliver valuable software, and to satisfy our customers is often impeded and blocked by partially done work, extra features, paperwork & relearning, hand-offs, task switching, delays, and defects.

Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a technique that can help uncover the queues, bottlenecks, and silos in any of your team’s, group’s, or organizational processes. Have you ever wondered about:

The three weeks (or months!) it takes to get a release deployed into production?
The time it takes to get a laptop provisioned?
The time it takes to get hardware installed in the data center?
The time it takes to get from “We need help!” to a new teammate being on board?

VSM will help you see how your customer value flows, create a real baseline visualization of your process(es) and their relationships, and allow creation of a vision of the future process.

In this session you'll learn what VSM is, and how to create one, allowing you to optimize your process steps, your business capabilities, and your people by organizing around value. Implementing VSM will help deliver the real results of faster value delivery, higher quality, and higher customer satisfaction.

Speakers

Earl Everett

President / Principal Agile Coach, Advancing With Agile, LLC

Earl Everett is a hands-on Agile practitioner who coaches and guides teams and organizations on their journeys of agility. His first Agile experience was in 1974, when he began playing rugby, a game which provides an immersive experience of high-performing cross-functional teams utilizing... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 2:55pm - 3:55pm CDT
Room E

Product Management

Format Presentation
Level Intermediate

2:55pm CDT

Agile Development and the Era of Quality Intelligence

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Five years ago, who would have expected that test automation would be the hotbed of innovation that it is today? Previously undervalued by software executives, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists alike; many in the software industry now recognize that effective, approachable test automation is a critical enabler for Agile, DevOps, and Continuous-Delivery software development practices. In this talk, we will introduce how and why, in quality assurance (QA), we expect former manual testing practices to evolve and ultimately morph into a broader test-automation movement, via what we refer to as "Quality Intelligence". Next, we will cover the human, the business, and the technical forces that come into play. Third, we will discuss how you can lead Agile teams to harness Quality Intelligence to automate work and work more effectively. Finally, we will highlight real-world examples of Agile teams who have transformed their work via new QA tools and methods.

Speakers

Dan Belcher

Co-founder, mabl

Dan Belcher has been spending his career building products to make life easier for software teams. Dan is a co-founder at mabl, a venture-backed startup that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to make end-to-end testing easier. Prior to co-founding mabl, Dan was the lead product manager... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 2:55pm - 3:55pm CDT
Room C

Technical Practices

Format Presentation
Level Intermediate

2:55pm CDT

Make Shift Happen: Harnessing Culture for Change

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Culture is listed in many surveys as one of the biggest barriers organizations have in adopting Agile frameworks. While it is true that a culture can be a blocker for change, culture can also be used to help accelerate adoption and transformation. Being able to identify and understand how culture is used at your organization is an important first step in your Agile framework adoption.

Learn some background in various types of culture, including how culture impacts an organization's performance. As it turns out, there may even be multiple cultures existing at the same time in your organization. Additionally, culture may come in various forms at different levels in the organization, which can further challenge your implementation approach. Through a blend of discussion and interactive work with your fellow session attendees, see how you can determine which culture(s) are present at your company and what you might be able to do in order to harness it to make shift happen.

Speakers

Steven Martin

Principal Enterprise Agile Coach, Agile Velocity

Steven Martin is a Principal Enterprise Agility Consultant, Coach, and Certified Scrum@Scale Trainer who works with all levels of an organization from executives to management to delivery teams. He helps senior leadership teams become more effective by applying Agile values and principles... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 2:55pm - 3:55pm CDT
Room D

Transformations

Format Presentation
Level Intermediate

2:55pm CDT

The Most Essential Ingredient for an Agile Transformation

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Why do some agile transformations fail, while others thrive? Factors such as training, skill sets, and Agile experience all play a part - but is it possible that one factor is most important in making or breaking the transformation?

Salt is the single most important ingredient in meals. It is naturally present in all foods, and adding the right amount at the right time is essential to achieving a successful meal. Similarly, there is one ingredient in agile transformations that will exponentially increase your chance of success and happiness!

Max's 20 years of experience and insight point to one essential ingredient that drastically impacts every agile transformation!

This session will include:

Introduction to agile transformation essential ingredient
Supporting case studies
Step-by-step approach to implementing essential ingredient

Speakers

Max Ekesi

Agile Program Manager, Whole Foods Market

Since 2001, Max Ekesi has held various roles in Systems & Storage Engineering, Business Analyst, Project/Program Manager, ScrumMaster, People Manager, and now an Agile Program Manager at Whole Foods. He has been leading Agile IT Transformations since 2007 in Fortune 30 and above companies... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 2:55pm - 3:55pm CDT
Room F

Transformations

Format Presentation
Level Beginner

3:55pm CDT

Break & Sponsor Showcase

Friday October 4, 2019 3:55pm - 4:15pm CDT

Level All

4:15pm CDT

Whoever Fails Fastest - Wins

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"Whoever can handle the quickest rate of change is the one who survives." - Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War.

Boyd was the king of feedback loops and taught the world how closing feedback loops faster wins wars. Agile teaches the same thing.

One feedback loop in particular makes EVERYTHING in Agile dramatically faster, better, and easier. Strangely, many people do not seem to know what it is. They do not practice it. Would you like to learn what it is?

Agile is not about methods, it's not about practices, it's not about Scrum. It's about sensing and responding to change. But what does that mean? Agile methodologies have given us a framework to sense and respond to change in a product development environment, but how much further can this be applied? Discover how to unleash the power of feedback loops everywhere in your life, including:

Three feedback loops to make you a better spouse
Four feedback loops to dramatically increase your effectiveness as a leader
Two feedback loops to make you a better parent
One feedback loop to make you a better lover

Most importantly, learn the single most powerful technique to release feedback on everything you do. You will learn it in minutes and practice applying it immediately. Keep doing it and it will change everything

Speakers

Matt Lasater

Founder, Engaged Agility

Matt Lasater sees the opportunity for an Agility Mindset in much more than an IT setting, and he strives to help organizations find ways to sense and respond to market changes. He is an Agile Coach, Trainer, and Mentor, with specific interests in business and organizational agility.Matt... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 4:15pm - 5:15pm CDT
Room E

Agile Leadership

Format Presentation
Level All

4:15pm CDT

Stop Coachsplaining!

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As Agile Coaches we straddle the fine line between "expert" and "coach". We work tirelessly to create the right environment and ask the best questions to unlock the goodness in those around us. Sometimes, though, we get asked a question or facilitate something, and we forget. We get excited. We get on a roll and jump into expert mode and forget to come back up for air. We start "coachsplaining".

In this workshop, we will discover how to probe continuously to ensure we are still listening and questioning when we are in a mentoring conversation.

Speakers

Reese Schmit

Sr. Agile Coach, Agile Velocity

Reese Schmit is a Sr. Agile Coach at Agile Velocity. Over the past 15 years, she's done just about every job in the software industry, from User Experience Designer to Product Manager, QA Engineer to Scrum Master. This varied experience has taught her to frame problems from different... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 4:15pm - 5:15pm CDT
Room F

Format Workshop
Level Intermediate

4:15pm CDT

The Nitty-Gritty Practices of Agile Coaching

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How do you coach a team from showing progress every two weeks to delivering multiple times a day? Research has shown that utilizing the right kind of metrics can promote a generative culture – creating a space where people want to continuously improve and innovate.

Allison Pollard will blend her stories with an interactive workshop where you will leave with practices that you can implement with your teams the next day. Regardless of your job title, learn how to ally with four key delivery metrics to inspire new thinking and practices from your teams.

Speakers

Allison Pollard

Leadership and Team Coach/Trainer

Allison Pollard is a coach, consultant, and trainer who brings the power of relationship systems intelligence to go beyond tasks, roles, and frameworks to create energy for change. She engages with people and teams in a down-to-earth way to build trust and listen for signals to help... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 4:15pm - 5:15pm CDT
Room C

Format Workshop
Level Intermediate

4:15pm CDT

Innovation Through Customer Co-Creation

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Learn how to co-create with your customers using modern collaboration techniques. Teams need a solid understanding of how to engage and collaborate to be successful at innovating for their customers. Only then can teams deliver high-impact projects and products that are important to their user base.

Embark on a journey with the latest set of techniques that help teams discover insights sooner and delight their customers faster. Take part in Shahin Sheidaei and Carlos Oliveira's latest workshop and learn everything you need to know to succeed in collaborating with customers. After all, innovation is best served when co-discovered with customers.

Their interactive and fast-paced workshop is based on Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and Lean UX principles. It is designed to help you uncover better ways of working with your customers and boosting collaboration and creativity on your team. After many iterations and essential feedback, they've developed a fun and thought-provoking workshop, where you learn by doing, engage with real people and work on challenges that enrich your learning experience.

Speakers

Shahin Sheidaei

Principal Coach, Elevate Change Inc.

Shahin Sheidaei is the founder and principal coach at Elevate Change Inc. A change agent, professional disruptor, leader, and developer at heart, Shahin is passionate about elevating organizations to reach their utmost potential. Offering 13+ years of experience, Shahin has strong... Read More →

Carlos Oliveira

Coach Partner, Lean Enterprise & Co

Carlos Oliveira has presented at Lean Startup conferences as well as Spark the Change. He is an entrepreneur and coach partner at Lean Enterprise & Co. and is passionate about helping teams build products customers love and in supporting established organizations as they innovate... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 4:15pm - 5:15pm CDT
Room H

Product Management

Format Workshop
Level All

4:15pm CDT

Value Streams at the Tipping Point: Remaking Organizations and Putting Value First

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Bob Payne has worked for 20 years in the Agile Industrial complex and as a community we have focused way too much on the build side of the house and not enough on the business side. That is increasingly changing to a model of Strategic Execution and focusing on the value first and then optimizing delivery with Agile.

Many organizations are adopting End 2 End Value Stream Teams (E2E VSTs) and redesigning their organization's structure, funding, and governance to support these value delivery engines. These organizations are still a minority, but the rate of adoption of this model is at a tipping point. This change requires a discussion of what is value and constantly prioritizing value first. To do this, many people are aligning E2E VSTs with product lines or lines of business. To truly go E2E, many of them are embedding business functions with delivery teams. These are functions such as business operations, marketing, HR, legal, planning, funding, and, of course, the folks that define what the right thing to build is. By cutting across all those silos to create delivery teams, we allow things to go from "Idea to Implementation" or "Concept to Cash" very quickly.

Speakers

Bob Payne

SVP of Agile Transformation, LitheSpeed

An early adopter of Extreme Programming, Scrum, and SAFe, Bob Payne has worked exclusively as a Lean+Agile Transformation leader since 1999.Bob hosts the Agile Toolkit podcast and has produced over 170 podcasts, recording a variety of industry leaders and Agile practitioners. His... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 4:15pm - 5:15pm CDT
Room G

Product Management

Format Presentation
Level Intermediate

4:15pm CDT

Help! I Am Drowning in Two-Week Sprints...Please Tell Me What NOT to Test!

Feedback Survey

Mary hears it all the time, testers complaining at retrospectives to their teams that they do not have enough time to test everything. She often sees testers work overtime the last week of a sprint to ensure the definition of done is accomplished. Why do they do this? Why do we as testers enable the bad behaviors of “Scrummerfall” or a lack of whole team ownership of quality?

Her quest in this session is to arm testers with techniques that will allow them to test smarter and not harder and to enable the testers and the team to have better conversations that make it clear on what they are testing in the sprint. Most importantly, Mary wants you to come out of the session being able to answer the question “What are you NOT going to test this sprint?”.

Speakers

Mary Thorn

Agile Practices Lead, Vaco

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

Friday October 4, 2019 4:15pm - 5:15pm CDT
Room D

Technical Practices

Format Presentation
Level All

4:15pm CDT

All the Sugar and Twice the Caffeine: Applying Design Thinking Within an Agile Transformation

Feedback Survey

Design Thinking explores the problem space, Lean UX tests the hypotheses that emerge from Design Thinking, and Agile builds the thing right. While this is a cutting-edge concept, there are many articles, blogs, and books that discuss these topics. During this session we will focus on how you can apply Design Thinking methods in your everyday work during a Lean UX and Agile Transformation.

Design Thinking can be used to:

Evaluate and prioritize (such as a Lean experiment , or an Agile backlog)
Gain consensus in a group (group consensus is one of the biggest challenges in a large enterprise)
Visualize a meeting during the meeting (minimizes waste and focus on meeting outcomes)

During this session, we will conduct an interactive, hands-on workshop to demonstrate the Design Thinking methods that we use on a day-to-day basis to cut through the problems we run into in an enterprise environment.

We will start by asking participants to jot down on Post-its questions they have about Lean UX. We will then demonstrate how to:

Visualize the conversation
Quickly prioritize the themes that emerge during the conversation
Generate a large number of ideas to address the themes

Finally, we will show how to communicate the outcome of the workshop instantly with minimal effort.

Speakers

Mary Grace Francisco

User Experience Design Lead, Emerson Automation Solutions

Mary Grace Francisco has 18+ years experience in the area of product development, design, UX, UI, user research, usability studies, information architecture, and interaction design. She has worked with Waterfall and Agile methodologies. She has served in multiple industries including... Read More →

Andy Switzky

Interaction Design Lead, Emerson Automation Solutions

Andy Switzky has more than 20 years experience in UX, IX, IA, Usability, etc. Over the last five years, he has been growing as a facilitator and learning how to apply Design Thinking in workshops to:Align teams on strategyIdentify and prioritize a plan of attackGuide a group to consensus.He... Read More →

Friday October 4, 2019 4:15pm - 5:15pm CDT
Room A & B

Transformations

Format Workshop
Level All

5:15pm CDT

Happy Hour - Sponsored by Atlassian

Feedback Survey

Friday October 4, 2019 5:15pm - 7:15pm CDT
TBA

Level All