Valtivity
Presentations
I am available as a speaker for software development related events such as conferences, seminars, webinars, and internal company events. Here are some of the presentations I have available
Scrum and Kanban Like Chocolate and Peanut Butter
As you adopt Scrum across your enterprise, you will find that synchronizing the work of interdependent Scrum teams is a challenge. Kanban has a number of principles and practices that can aid this synchronization and thus smooth out your adoption. This session will introduce Kanban from a Scrum perspective, show how the Lean practice of “One Piece Flow” is the key to both, and get into the nuts and bolts of specific practices and concepts from Kanban that can be adopted by an existing multi-team Scrum program.The Economics of Agile
Traditionally, many organizations have measured their software development efforts solely in terms of process efficiency and cost. When teams introduce Agile methods, they are suddenly able to measure their efforts from a broader business perspective - such as impact to the top and bottom line. This session discusses how to measure and optimize the economics of your software development, make economics-based decisions, measure and reduce the cost of delay, gauge the full cost of development within an Agile environment, and discover and validate the value of your user stories.Panning for User Story Gold - Increase Business Value and Reduce Costs
Putting User Stories into business value order is a key tennet of Agile, but that's just the first step. There's much more value to be extracted from your user stories using specific story splitting techniques combined with reducing cycle time. By splitting user stories you can separate the gold from the dirt as well as reduce the cost of implementation. This session will cover a variety of methods for splitting user stories and reducing cycle time including the "create/read/update/delete" method, the acceptance test method, the split by value method, frequent grooming, Kanban flow, and software tool support.
Agile in a Nutshell
What exactly is "Agile?" What are the specific principles and practices that are present in an Agile organization? When we say we have an "Agile" organization are we really just saying that we're more nimble than we used to be? Actually, you may have a very nimble organization that is not "Agile" at all! This session lays out exactly what it means to be Agile and gives concrete examples of some of the typical hallmarks of a truly Agile organization.Modern Best Practices for Software Development and Process Improvement
The past ten years has seen the introduction of many new software development practices. Many of these techniques have been billed as Agile techniques, but are just as applicable and just as useful regardless of what methodology you are currently using.This session provides an overview of the following modern practices: continuous integration, refactoring, unit tests, multi-stage continuous integration, one piece flow, cross-functional teams, product backlog, story point estimation, user stories, and burn-up charts.
The Top Ten Agile Blindspots
Traditional development has created an ingrained set of habits, opinions, mental models, and core beliefs both at the individual and cultural levels that don’t work in an Agile environment: blindspots. These blindspots can produce “faux Agile” which leads to few if any benefits and sometimes produces more harm than good. Take this opportunity discover which blind spots you or your organization may have so that you can work towards removing them and start experiencing the full benefits that true Agility offers.
The top ten Agile blindspots are:
“Agile is easy, we’ve done all that before”
“There’s no real benefit for individuals”
“There’s no real benefit for organizations”
“Traditional development is tried and true”
“The value of work is the work itself”
“Agile only affects the development teams”
“Reducing costs works, improvement efforts don’t”
“Individuals are the cause of the problems”
“People can’t be trusted/aren’t self-motivated”
Solving problems, adapting to new technologies, and conquering new markets requires creativity. But do we create creativity-friendly environments? What do people think when they see people staring into space, pondering? Creating a culture that supports innovation requires a commitment both inside and outside the team.
Explore the unique opportunities for fostering innovation that Agile provides and discover the invisible organizational and cultural barriers that can reduce it. Unlock the full innovation potential of your team and organization and unlock new paths to increased profits.
Getting Engineers and Managers Out of Each Other's Hair
As a manager, you’ve heard a lot about the benefits of self-organizing teams, but you’re not sure where to start, and you suspect self-organization may lead to chaos. You could just take a leap of faith, set self-organization as a goal and then look for ways to achieve self-organization. But there is another way.
We’ll cover self-organization from the bottom up using concrete examples of twelve widely adopted Agile practices: user stories, story points, product owner, product backlog, standup meetings, whole teams, collocation, assignment and estimation of tasks by team members, short iterations, Scrum master, burn-up charts, and retrospectives. You’ll learn how each practice contributes to self-organization by reducing and/or redistributing traditional management activities. These practices also help to reduce the temptation to get wrapped up in the details; provide a framework for delegation, communication and coordination; encourage team ownership, commitment and accountability; and create management artifacts that are appreciated by all.
The inevitable question that results from talking about self-organization is “what does a manager do in an Agile workplace?” We’ll wrap up with a group exercise that not only answers that question but also shows that Agile provides more leverage for managers to use the skills they already have.
We’ll cover self-organization from the bottom up using concrete examples of twelve widely adopted Agile practices: user stories, story points, product owner, product backlog, standup meetings, whole teams, collocation, assignment and estimation of tasks by team members, short iterations, Scrum master, burn-up charts, and retrospectives. You’ll learn how each practice contributes to self-organization by reducing and/or redistributing traditional management activities. These practices also help to reduce the temptation to get wrapped up in the details; provide a framework for delegation, communication and coordination; encourage team ownership, commitment and accountability; and create management artifacts that are appreciated by all.
The inevitable question that results from talking about self-organization is “what does a manager do in an Agile workplace?” We’ll wrap up with a group exercise that not only answers that question but also shows that Agile provides more leverage for managers to use the skills they already have.
