agile

Despite thinking that organizations are slow to innovate, innovation actually abounds at many companies. Kodak, DEC, and Xerox did not fail due to lack of new, cutting-edge innovation; they failed because their organizations were tuned to their traditional markets, and a failure to change their business models and organizations led to their eventual disruption. The key to achieving business agility lies in leadership that transforms organizations. Transformational leaders succeed by changing the system, leading with purpose, and steering from the edges. They own their responsibility and boldly lead their organizations into the future. It's time for all of us to undergo personal transformations and start leading for innovation, disruption, and business agility.

When coaches encounter resistance to agile transformations, we often treat it as a phenomenon to be overcome, confronted, or combated. But resistance is a natural reaction to change, and that reaction can't be alleviated by violent opposition. Rather than meeting resistance head-on, the clever coach will work around it by helping people recognize and resolve the negative emotions that drive it. Once those negative emotions are resolved, people are more likely to let down their guard and embrace change. In this interactive session, you will learn to use a method known as humble inquiry to help people uncover the emotional roots of their resistance so that they can resolve their reluctance to embrace agile transformation. You'll identify common resistance behaviors, then practice by engaging in humble inquiry. You will learn ways to use humble inquiry to build trust and rapport in your agile team.

In agile, most companies and teams associate “product” with the product owner role. While the product owner role is very important, how does this scale? How do you coordinate priorities across product owners, groups, and product lines? The product owner responsibilities are well-defined for how they interact with their team, but what about other product-related activities? Todd Olson will explore scaling the notion of product in agile organizations. He’ll look at the role beyond the product owner with a renewed focus on the profession of product management, which is often de-emphasized or forgotten in agile transformations. Using the Pragmatic Marketing framework and responsibility definitions as a backdrop, Todd will explore responsibilities like pricing and packaging, sales enablement, growth, investment decision-making, marketing communication, forecasting, and product expectations management.

Substantial confusion exists about the roles and responsibilities of test management when using an agile software development process. Agile seeks to streamline project management and leadership under the role of a ScrumMaster, but what does this mean for test managers? How do they stay...