Agile ME Summit 2015

Today’s successful companies are recognizing that software is increasingly a competitive advantage for their business. Real, tangible software development value occurs only when end-users are successfully operating the software in their environment. To ensure a faster flow of value to the business, the Scaled Agile Framework helps teams successfully deliver a differentiated and engaging customer experience, achieve quicker time to value, and gain increased capacity to innovate. The process of deploying software builds to production is no less important than developing and testing the new functionality. As an industry, we are currently mastering more Agile, better and faster methods for incrementally developing potential user value. In practice, however, these achievements are jeopardized by poorly managed deployments that happen too late in the lifecycle and delays value delivery. Bringing deployment operations (DevOps) onboard the Agile Release Train, engaging them in the PSI planning and other program level events, and establishing environments, practices and disciplined procedures in support of a continuous deployment pipeline helps the enterprise enable faster feedback and a more predictable value delivery rhythm. Join Michael Stump (Principal Contributor to SAFe), Thought Leader from Scaled Agile Inc. and software industry veteran to get an in-depth overview of how SAFe together with DevOps can provide the most customer value and quality in the sustainable shortest lead time.

When used correctly Agile will help organizations to unleash the creative and innovative powers of its employees, making it a perfect fit for the UAE National Innovation Strategy aiming at turning the UAE into one of the most innovative countries in the world within seven years. As Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE, said at the launch of the Innovation strategy “The competitiveness race demands a constant flow of new ideas, as well as innovative leadership using different methods and tools to direct the change.” This talk will go to the roots of Agile to show how it fosters innovation and directs it towards the benefit of the organization, as well as take a look at what innovation really is and what's usually blocking it, giving Agile adopters the tools they need to become more creative.

The success of Agile relies heavily on the performance of “the team”. The Agile manifesto principles refer to the team directly and on closer inspection relies heavily on the team as a key component to the success of the Agile principle. Frameworks such as Scrum, XP, DSDM all refer to the team, but all in a very different composition. In my talk I hope to cover the essential meaning of what an Agile team is and show directly an example of a team evolution. The main premise is to look at the organizational dysfunctions such as constraints, processes and rules that not only hurt teams, but teams and organizations could use to their advantage to make sure they are at the top of their game.

Several recent surveys show that agile methodologies like Scrum, Extreme Programming and Kanban have been successfully adopted by many companies for product development. However, the same surveys show that only few of the agile practices are applied consequently and thoroughly. This is to a great extent due to the lack of skilled personnel. University is the place where you can develop such skilled personnel. Like any other discipline taught in a university , “Agile” could also be a part of university curriculum and like other graduates produced by universities, an Agile project manager could also be produced. This session analyzes the current situation of teaching Agile at university level.

With a short introduction to the role of Product Owner in a Scrum team, this lecture aims at demonstrating the unique leadership role that the business representative could and should assume in agile projects. Business representative as a Product Owner provides more direct availability of functional knowledge and stakeholder expectations to the project. Decisions can be taken on the spot. Mutual understanding of the business and development perspective is much higher, so any functional, budgetary, legal or other issue is less demanding. But great power of Product Owner comes with huge responsibility – as this person’s professional life becomes dedicated to the well-being of the project and the product being developed. Lecturer will provide a hands-on experience with thinking and collaboration tools and practices in moving and shaping a product vision to a product that the end-users will love.

Learn how to apply principles of lean to discover and eliminate waste throughout the development lifecycle. In this interactive session, participants will experience a simulated production line, encounter common challenges and apply lean practices to improve in their efficiency and effectiveness. Participants will be introduced to concepts such as push versus pull systems, traditional versus Agile, elimination of waste through interactive presentation, discussions and hands-on activities.

The presentation will cover the agile transformation story and practices of Turkiye Finans Participation Bank information technologies group that include organizational changes and development of all IT projects using Scrum framework.

Many organizations compromise on the quality of product in pursuit of quick time to market and in greed of cramming more features in. The end result is the exact opposite of a “shippable product increment” at the end of each Sprint. Tactics like employing several hardening sprints towards the end of release cycle to prepare the product for release are far too common. In a way, this anti-pattern bemoans a waterfall approach and is in total contrast to the Agile Manifesto and the Principals behind the Agile Manifesto. In this talk, we will discuss the set of tools that an agile team can employ to continue delivering a potentially shippable product increment at the end of every Sprint.

The agile manifesto introduced a new way of implementing software development projects which resulted in a dramatic improvement in these types of projects. Agile success at the project level has prompted IT leaders within organization to try to scale it to the enterprise level with less success rate. In this interactive session, we will review the various approaches to large-scale agile transformation, discuss the transformation road map and organizational change management required as well as key drivers/sponsors required for a successful agile transformation. We will discuss how to measure transformation progress, and outline possible challenges and corresponding solutions.

There are two eternal challenges to Software Development Projects. One is that there are always more to build than we have time or resources to do. Always! The other is that all project problems ultimately comes down to poor communication. User Stories is really the promise of a conversation and User Story Mapping is a proven way of using Stories for doing release planning. Thus, this session will address both eternal challenges. The simplicity of the technique makes it a great starting point on the agile journey for most companies and will also help you improve the User Experience of your product. Join Andreas in an interactive session filled with hands on exercises that provides you with all the tools you need to start using User Story Maps at your work place.

Based on real examples we are going to introduce & play to the innovation game® And see how they can be used to achieve the prioritization challenges that we are facing at different level of the project (portfolio, features, and tasks). There’s no question that modern work practices have solved much of the quality and process issues that plagued organizations in the past but there are still hard problems to be solved. One of the largest is prioritization. It’s not enough to know what features your customers want; you need to know which features are essential and which ones can be tabled until the next phase. However, many of the methods for prioritization even after the advent of agile leave much to be desired. Based on real examples we are going to introduce & play the innovation game® and see how they can be used to achieve the prioritization challenges that we are facing at different level of the project (portfolio, features, and tasks).

Agile Adoption is a big organization transition project. A big bang approach to Agile Adoption involves real risks and may lead to failure. Instead, small, continuous, and valuable improvements are more viable for most organizations. In this interactive session, we will start with an overview of the Agile mindset, values and principles, and will highlight the major differences between Agile and traditional approaches to managing software projects. Then, we will explain our approach for adopting agile which is incremental and iterative in nature. Finally, we will present some case studies and will share some interesting observations and conclusions collected through working with more than 40 companies during the last 6 years.

New ways of doing and thinking evolves as the world changes. During the first half of the 19th century operational efficiency and productivity were the most important ingredients in manufacturing, that’s way Taylor’s Scientific Management was popular and was actually working. The fact was, the need for change was low. But after 80’s things have started to change faster than ever. Hence, the market became turbulent and responding to change has become a necessity for the enterprises. Taylor’s thinker and doer separation was no longer working as a result of need for thinking and acting fast. This fact brought us to ‘Agility'. Agility is about responding to change fast and efficiently. Enterprises need to learn the new way of managing and doing things without wasting time with bureaucracy, command-and-control and too much audit to gain Agility which requires a mindset shift in management at all level. Enterprises need to explore the value in flexible strategical management, self-organization, bottom-up intelligence and having highly motivated individuals. The point is: shift will happen. Where will you position your organization? On the Agile side or the old-school side.

When starting with Agile we often use the metaphorical approach of the story of « Lambs & Chicken » (former Pigs & Chicken). Animal are used to highlight and sketch our behavior within a group or across several groups. Based on scientific research outcomes, we will learn why instead being a Lamb, we are sometimes also Chicken, Cats, Bulls, Rats, Seagulls and so on. This session addresses the fundamentals of agile i.e. human being in a funny manner. If you want to learn with fun that’s the one for you!