09:00 - 10:30
Opening and Keynote
10:30 - 11:00
AM Break
11:00 - 11:45
45-Minute Sessions
11:45 - 13:30
Lunch
13:30 - 13:55
Agile 20 (A20) Talks
13:55- 14:15
Short Break
14:15 - 15:00
45-Minute Sessions
15:00 - 15:30
PM Break
15:30 - 17:00
90-Minute Workshops
18:00 - 20:00
Monday Mingle
Riverfront 1
A Journey through Agile in the U.S. Federal Government
Richard Cheng
Session Details
A Journey through Agile in the U.S. Federal Government
Richard Cheng
Room: Riverfront 1
Track: Agile Beyond IT
Session Type: Talk [Beginner]
Summary:

In this talk, we explore Agile efforts in the U.S. government. From the Office of Personnel Management to the Department of Defense, new agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and established agencies like the Census Bureau, we’ll explore these questions:

  • Why are federal agencies trying Agile?
  • What are the benefits realized?
  • What are the biggest issues and pitfalls?
  • How do federal agencies manage and govern these programs?
  • What does the future hold?

 

Learning Objects:

At the end of this session, attendees will have a sense of how Agile is changing and could change the way our governments deliver on their missions.

 

Riverfront 2
Are Recruitment and HR the Biggest Impediments to Scrum Success?
Gez Smith
Session Details
Are Recruitment and HR the Biggest Impediments to Scrum Success?
Gez Smith
Room: Riverfront 2
Track: Agile Beyond IT
Session Type: Talk [Beginner]
Summary: Building great Scrum Teams means changing recruitment and HR. Do we need to ban bonuses, abolish appraisals, and write user-story job ads?
Learning Objects: If there are recruiters or HR people in the audience, this session will start them thinking about the things they need to learn, and the ways they need to change, to help build high-performing and happy Agile teams. If there are practitioners in the audience, they will go away with a fire in their belly about the damage these problems are causing to the Agile community, and how they can bring about change by challenging these problems in their own organizations as soon as they go back to work.
Riverfront 3
Chef's Team
Zuzi Sochova
Session Details
Chef's Team
Zuzi Sochova
Room: Riverfront 3
Track: Agile Beyond IT
Session Type: Talk [Beginner]
Summary: Exceptional restaurants are built on a team spirit of collaboration, experimentation, and extreme customer focus, thus making them Agile.
Learning Objects:
  • Get inspired by how great teams work in environments different from software.
  • See that collaboration is the key to building high-performing teams.
  • Experience the true customer-centric environment.
  • Get a feeling for how different it can be if you make excellence and perfection your key values.
Waterfront 3
Delivering a High-Performance Agile Organization
Michael Sahota
Session Details
Delivering a High-Performance Agile Organization
Michael Sahota
Room: Waterfront 3
Track: Business Agility
Session Type: Talk [Advanced]
Summary:

Many of us dream of creating Agile organizations, where we have not just Agile practices but an Agile mindset, and the passion and results that come with this. But the approaches we are using are not yielding the results we hope for. Instead, we see culture challenges, resistance, leadership confusion, and low engagement.

Learn a proven path that places culture and leadership at center stage. When we use conscious leadership to approach Agile, we get deep and lasting results.

 

Learning Objects:
  • A proven path to organizational growth and high performance
  • The leadership challenges facing Agile organizations
  • The importance of a strong culture and leader behaviors to foster empowerment and collaboration
  • What traditional habits and practices are holding you back
  • A conscious approach to Agile, developing organizational coherence (e.g., quality, customer delight, agility)
  • Overcoming culture challenges and resistance
Waterfront 1
Distributed Agile in Large-Scale Teams
Hugo Messer and John Okoro
Session Details
Distributed Agile in Large-Scale Teams
Hugo Messer and John Okoro
Room: Waterfront 1
Track: Agile Beyond IT
Session Type: Talk [Advanced]
Summary: This talk will focus on how distributed Agile teams can work like colocated teams. We focus on how large-scale distributed teams can succeed.
Learning Objects:
  • Learn how to use popular Agile scaling frameworks such as SAFe, LeSS, Spotify, and Scrum-of-Scrums with distributed teams.
  • Learn how to look at the leaderrship challenges introduced by a distributed Agile team, and how critical leadership is the success of an Agile or Scrum Team.
  • Learn from our Distrubted Agile Approach and how its virtues and practices can benefit your Distributed Agile teams. 
Waterfront 2
The Structure of an Agile Organization: A Business Agility Primer
Evan Leybourn
Session Details
The Structure of an Agile Organization: A Business Agility Primer
Evan Leybourn
Room: Waterfront 2
Track: Business Agility
Session Type: Talk [Beginner]
Summary:

While business has never been predictable, technological and cultural change is faster than ever. This is where business agility comes in.

 

Learning Objects:

Regardless of your role, the goals of this presentation are to:

  • Make you think about your role as a leader.
  • Learn how to structure an Agile organization around outcomes.
  • Introduce new possibilities and ways of doing business.
  • Understand how to tailor Agile to different business functions (HR, ICT, sales, finance, media, legal, production, and operations).

     
Riverfront 3
Blending Agile, Technology, and Design to Create New Customer Experiences
Stuart Smith
Session Details
Blending Agile, Technology, and Design to Create New Customer Experiences
Stuart Smith
Room: Riverfront 3
Track: Agile Beyond IT
Session Type: Talk [Beginner]
Summary: As we move further into the "experience economy," organizations need to learn how to continuously reinvent and redesign experiences and journeys for their customers. These experiences integrate physical and digital elements in new and exciting ways.
Learning Objects:

In this presentation, Stuart Smith, chief of Digital Innovation and Design at the National University of Singapore, will reflect on how practices from Agile, design, and technology are being blended to create these experiences, and what that means for organizations moving forward.

 

Waterfront 1
Embark on a Change Journey for a Sustainable Agile Transformation!
Ledalla Madhavi
Session Details
Embark on a Change Journey for a Sustainable Agile Transformation!
Ledalla Madhavi
Room: Waterfront 1
Track: Business Agility
Session Type: Talk [Advanced]
Summary: Sustainability: Is it a myth or a fact? Experience how leaders, managers, and teams embark on a sustainable change journey.
Learning Objects:
  • What it takes for Agile transformation to sustain
  • The role of Agile coaches, team members, managers, and leadership in easing into the entire journey
  • How important it is to start with the end in mind
  • The general phases through which the change journey goes in any organization
Riverfront 2
Everyday Agile: A Janitory's Journey
Li Yu Yo
Session Details
Everyday Agile: A Janitory's Journey
Li Yu Yo
Room: Riverfront 2
Track: Agile Beyond IT
Session Type: Talk [Advanced]
Summary: This is a case study from Ruzo Solutions about how Agile can be used in industries outside of technology projects. We will explore the use of Agile principles to create a business process improvement in a janitorial services company and describe the journey they have been on to improve customer satisfaction, employee morale, and bottom-line revenues.
Learning Objects: Agile methodologies outside of technology
Riverfront 1
Extreme Programming Should Be Dead! Here Is Why.
Trong Hiep Le
Session Details
Extreme Programming Should Be Dead! Here Is Why.
Trong Hiep Le
Room: Riverfront 1
Track: Technical Track
Session Type: Talk [Beginner]
Summary: This presentation will address why XP should be "dead" — and instead be considered a normal standard. It will conclude with reasons why XP should naturally be part of any Scrum Team.
Learning Objects:
  • Realize that XP is normal and simple.
  • Realize that calling it extreme programming is not good.
  • Encourage the Scrum Team to use "normal" practices and be normal developers.
Waterfront 2
Leadership Development for Business Agility on the Leader's Dance Floor
Angel Diaz-Maroto
Session Details
Leadership Development for Business Agility on the Leader's Dance Floor
Angel Diaz-Maroto
Room: Waterfront 2
Track: Business Agility
Session Type: Talk [Advanced]
Summary: The Leader's Dance Floor is a leadership development framework for Agile leaders, to nurture business agility and boost learning capabilities.
Learning Objects:
  • Business agility leadership development
  • Learning organizations
  • Leader's Dance Floor
  • Enemies of learning and friends of learning (according to ontological coaching)
Waterfront 3
The Human Side of Agile: Communication and Interaction
Dori Borden
Session Details
The Human Side of Agile: Communication and Interaction
Dori Borden
Room: Waterfront 3
Track: Business Agility
Session Type: Talk [Beginner]
Summary:

In this exciting Lightening Talk, I will cover the basics on how to focus on human interaction and communication when practicing Agile. Often, when implementing or practicing Agile, we tend to focus on the processes. But we can't forget the Agile Manifesto, which emphasizes communication and human interaction!

 

Learning Objects:

The principles I will cover are as follows:

  1.  What does it truly mean to put individuals over processes?
  2. How do you collaborate with the customer rather than negotiate contracts?
  3. How can you tell if your team is not communicating as they should?
  4. Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication.

This session is all about what is truly important in Agile - Human interaction and communication.

Waterfront 3
Beyond Brainstorming: Innovation for Everyone
Duncan Campbell
Session Details
Beyond Brainstorming: Innovation for Everyone
Duncan Campbell
Room: Waterfront 3
Track: Business Agility
Session Type: Talk [Beginner]
Summary: A short journey into the world of TRIZ (the Russian acronym for the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) and the tools you can use to increase innovation.
Learning Objects:
  • Recognize the limitations of brainstorming as a tool for idea generation, even when following best practices.
  • Understand the background to the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) and the work that has gone into it.
  • Take away some tools that can be used immediately to help better identify problems.
Waterfront 1
Beyond the Challenges: Patterns for Empowering Organizational Effectiveness
Maria Matarelli
Session Details
Beyond the Challenges: Patterns for Empowering Organizational Effectiveness
Maria Matarelli
Room: Waterfront 1
Track: Business Agility
Session Type: Talk [Advanced]
Summary: Hear common challenges organizations face around the world, and learn powerful yet simple patterns to move beyond these challenges.
Learning Objects:
  • Hear the common challenges that organizations face, collected from multiple countries and industries.
  • Identify the common themes that continually emerge.
  • Discover how to approach similar challenges in your environment.
  • Learn patterns that have developed over years of enterprise coaching that can help your organization.
Riverfront 1
Business Operations: When Agile Goes Beyond IT, Marketing, Business, or Sales
Jeroen Molennar
Session Details
Business Operations: When Agile Goes Beyond IT, Marketing, Business, or Sales
Jeroen Molennar
Room: Riverfront 1
Track: Agile Beyond IT
Session Type: Talk [Advanced]
Summary: Scrum is so '90s; marketing Scrum is so 2010s. Business operations are where we implement the new Agile. What is it, and why does it matter?
Learning Objects:
  • What is a business operation and a call center in a bank?
  • How was the department set up, and why was this so slow and a bottleneck for the rest of the organization?
  • What should we consider different in this environment when designing a way of working?
  • What is the new way of working?
  • How do we manage to change the impediments and the leadership?
Riverfront 3
Experience Mapping: Capturing the Voice of Customer to Build the Right Products!
Venkataramaiah Satisha
Session Details
Experience Mapping: Capturing the Voice of Customer to Build the Right Products!
Venkataramaiah Satisha
Room: Riverfront 3
Track: Technical Track
Session Type: Talk [Advanced]
Summary: A user story is not a template but a conversation with users. User experience mapping helps you make that conversation effective.
Learning Objects: In this talk we will:
  • Discuss what user research is.
  • Understand different ways to conduct user research.
  • Discuss the different parts of an experience map, including a sample work flow, and conduct an interview with participants using experience mapping.
  • Discuss how to use the information from an experience map.
  • Discuss how the information from an experience map can help in using prioritization techniques such as Kano, MoSCoW, Need Gap, etc.
Riverfront 2
Experiential Education for Agile Software Engineering
Swarnalatha Ashok
Session Details
Experiential Education for Agile Software Engineering
Swarnalatha Ashok
Room: Riverfront 2
Track: Technical Track
Session Type: Talk [Advanced]
Summary: This talk highlights how Agile software engineering education is imparted to students in order to graduate industry-ready professionals. We at NUS-ISS have adopted an experiential learning approach to introduce Agile concepts to students pursuing their postgraduate education in software engineering. The objective of this approach is to promote stickiness and internalization of the concepts.
Learning Objects: The participants of this session will appreciate the value of introducing Agile in mainstream education, appreciate the benefits of the experiential learning approach, and get insight into how Agile has been woven into mainstream education to allow software professionals to be industry ready.
Waterfront 2
Making Scrum More Powerful with Some Kanban 
Kiril Klimov
Session Details
Making Scrum More Powerful with Some Kanban 
Kiril Klimov
Room: Waterfront 2
Track: Business Agility
Session Type: Talk [Advanced]
Summary: Actionable, pragmatic practices over frameworks — or frameworks over practices? We will explore this question.
Learning Objects: Each participant will decide on usable ideas within a given context, and whether that means  practices over frameworks or frameworks over practices.
Riverfront 1
A Quick Journey Through the UX Lifecycle
Saisudha Rajagopal
Session Details
A Quick Journey Through the UX Lifecycle
Saisudha Rajagopal
Room: Riverfront 1
Track: Agile Beyond IT
Session Type: Workshop [Advanced]
Summary: Bring your Agile transformation back to life using change management techniques.
Learning Objects: In this session, participants will gain a quick insight into what goes into a typical UX Lifecycle, understand the role of a UX Researcher/Designer, realise the benefit of practising UX, and appreciate the iterative approach that leads to useful and usable applications.
Riverfront 2
Changing the Mindset: A Lego-Based Workshop on Using TDD as a Problem-Solving Technique
Deepak Kumar Gupta
Session Details
Changing the Mindset: A Lego-Based Workshop on Using TDD as a Problem-Solving Technique
Deepak Kumar Gupta
Room: Riverfront 2
Track: Technical Track
Session Type: Workshop [Beginner]
Summary:

Test Driven Development or TDD is one of the most well known and used practice of eXtreme Programming (XP) family.

As its widely known, TDD is all about writing test code before writing production code followed by re-factoring as required.

However, contrary to popular belief, TDD is not just about writing unit test code to find coding bugs, but can also be used as a powerful technique of exploiting the problems for writing better code.

The proposed workshop intends to demonstrate how TDD can also be used as a powerful problem solving technique.

This workshop is all about changing the mindset to consider TDD beyond unit tests.

The proposed workshop shall be done in the form of a "Innovation Games" exercise with LEGO to provides a visual reference to problem solving technique(with and without TDD).

Learning Objects:
  • Understand what is TDD.
  • Use LEGOs to apply TDD as a problem-solving mechanism.
  • Apply scenarios where TDD may not be the best idea to consider.
Waterfront 3
Facing Challenging Conversations Smartly
Alison Gitelson
Session Details
Facing Challenging Conversations Smartly
Alison Gitelson
Room: Waterfront 3
Track: Business Agility
Session Type: Workshop [Advanced]
Summary: Communicating and resolving tough issues is key for trust, respect, and high performance. Learn a practical tool to do this with ease.
Learning Objects:

Learn the difference between assertiveness and aggression and how to initiate difficult conversations. Participants will be able to use a step-by-step framework to confront a person with respect, express a position fully, hear the other person’s position, and find a resolution.

Be equipped to have successful, challenging conversations. Effective communication improves relationships by decreasing resentment and increasing trust and respect. It also enables greater contribution and collaboration.

 

Riverfront 3
Psychology of Coaching: Understanding Science of Change
Pavel Dabrytski
Session Details
Psychology of Coaching: Understanding Science of Change
Pavel Dabrytski
Room: Riverfront 3
Track: Business Agility
Session Type: Workshop [Advanced]
Summary: This workshop explores the science of coaching through concepts of neuroplasticity, autonomous motivation, and activation states.
Learning Objects:
  • Understand that neuroplasticity is the reason why people take long to learn new behaviors.
  • Learn that the autonomous motivation is the most persistent type of motivation and that an Agile coach must strive for it.
  • Learn about seven activation steps and the ways to stimulate the brain's creativity.
  • Practice multiple reflection techniques during a coaching conversation.
Waterfront 2
Smart National: Discovering Meaning and Fulfillment in a Smart Nation
Stuart Turner
Session Details
Smart National: Discovering Meaning and Fulfillment in a Smart Nation
Stuart Turner
Room: Waterfront 2
Track: Business Agility
Session Type: Workshop [Advanced]
Summary: Create an X-ray of yourself in this self-discovery workshop. Increase your self-awareness, challenge your assumptions, and be surprised.
Learning Objects:
  • Be able to create an X-ray of your own thinking and behavior.
  • Gain greater appreciation of desired outcomes.
  • Acquire awareness and clarification of actual behaviors.
  • Obtain deeper understanding of the hidden values and assumptions that are sustaining those behaviors.
  • Acknowledge that adaptive change has a different time line than technical change.
  • Repeatedly use this technique for continued benefit.
Waterfront 1
To Affinity and Beyond
Jeff Lopez-Stuit
Session Details
To Affinity and Beyond
Jeff Lopez-Stuit
Room: Waterfront 1
Track: Business Agility
Session Type: Workshop
Summary: Learn speedy affinity facilitation techniques to eliminate waste and boost productivity in creating, prioritizing, and estimating a backlog.
Learning Objects:

By the end of this workshop the attendee should be able to do the following:

  • Use affinity to compare persona characteristics and generate stories based on similarities and differences.
  • Use theme affinity to facilitate collaboration on requirements gathering, using a story gallery.
  • Quickly evaluate story value, prioritization, risk, and estimated effort by using Fibonacci Popcorn facilitation.
Click on a section in the schedule to the left to see details, available sessions and more.