Keep Austin Agile 2019

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.