Agile development means self-management, collaboration, and working towards shared goals. Agile practices support much of this, but we can still learn more, both to better understand current practices and to develop new ones. This session is an introduction to cultural-historical activity theory, a psychological framework for understand collaborative behaviour. The framework has shown the role of tools in cognition and collaboration, and understanding structural tension between different activity systems: it can also be used to understand and improve agile software development.

What happens when you get Agilists together to build an organization within one of the most ill-reputed bureaucracies in the world?

When the Project Management Institute chartered the PMI Agile Forum, it was a huge announcement. However, now the team had to deliver a fully functioning organization to support the Agile-minded members within PMI’s membership…and do so on schedule and under budget. How do we build a business plan? How do we execute a marketing effort? How do we plan a launch event? Come see how this all-volunteer distributed virtual team extended PMI’s reach using Agile.

It is human nature to avoid loss. We make rational decisions to improve our situation and respond to circumstances. But are we always rational? Whether it be the tendency of people to hold stocks that have lost value or teams that continue a death march, this irrational fear of acknowledging a loss can cause people to keep investing in a poor undertaking. This discussion is a brief exploration of how our desire to avoid loss can cause us to irrationally make our situation worse in the hopes of somehow breaking even as well as some techniques to identify and avoid these situations.

Clear definitions of Role, Task and Authority are essential when people assemble to do work.

Unclear definitions of these items leads to all sorts of waste.

Scrum’s very clear Roles and associated Tasks and Authority are a big part of what makes actually Scrum ‘tick’.

A Boundaries ‘collection’ is an attribute of the Role, Task and Authority ‘objects’. This session deconstructs Role, Task & Authority in terms of associated Boundaries. Note that boundaries can come in many forms, including: boundaries of time, boundaries in terms of access to resources, etc.

Group Coherence (.com): Shared state allowing groups to perform tasks in rhythm and harmony with great energy to overcome obstacles. Evokes memories of fun, success, team bonding, desire to work together on future projects and improved group connection.

Group characteristics are invisible and have to be felt. We are not trained to detect them any more than we could detect radio waves without a radio.

We will Practice using group inquiry to: -Share your Agile GC experience -Identify GC ingredients and obstacles -Chart GC -Transform Agile practitioners to a coherent Agile group

This is a highly participative workshop for delegates to learn more about collaborative and organisational storytelling. Personal stories will be told, retold and analysed, to investigate underlying values, through a series of collaborative story-games. Collaborative storytelling will be explored as an activity for team building, coordination and problem-understanding. Attendees will participate in generating ideas for a set of story-cards that could be used to help teams explore their own values, beliefs and concerns through collaborative storytelling around software projects.

Welcome to the world of Visual Management! Task boards, post-its, mind maps, burndown charts, kanban boards, lava lamps… information visualization techniques and the visual workplace play a fundamental role in creating visibility and helping build transparency and trust among Agile teams. Come to this workshop to experience in person the value of Visual Management, and help cooperatively come up with the ultimate task board!

Many facets of Agile apply to simple principles of human nature. Because Agile is so effective in the workplace, I began applying Agile principles (after pleading with my wife) to managing the chaos of our family. For over 2 years now, my wife, 4 children, and I have been using Agile practices to manage our own home life.

The evolved methodology in our home has been discovered over two years of modification using Lean principles while working on weekly iterations.

This is a fun topic with actual learning points for managers learning to accommodate unique personalities in the workplace.

We find games and simulations incredibly valuable in our coaching and training. Given the number of times we’ve seen “Does anyone have a game or simulation to … ?” on the mail lists, we know we’re not alone. While there’s leverage in using games that others create, it’s even better to create your own games to address your specific teaching points. In this session, we will introduce some essential elements of game design and demonstrate a process for designing a game starting with a learning objective. Participants will then use materials we supply to create their own Agile games.

When most people think of the phrase “Agile won’t work here” they think of resistance to adopting agile. There are teams and situations, however, that are truly challenging even to the most dedicated agile adherents. During this sharing experience, I plan to take you on a “cook’s tour” of a dozen or so teams that had difficulty adopting agile, even after the team was sold on the benefits. Filled with humorous stories, how these teams succeed (or failed) is an object lesson for us all.