We are people who love Agile. We want to share experiences and unite like-minded people. For us this is the only natural way to think, work and sometimes to live.

Posts by Julia Vastrik

Meet The Speakers – Eric Reppo and Vadym Davydov

April 5, 2023 Written by Julia Vastrik

Meet Agile Saturday Tallinn XVI speakers Eric Reppo and Vadym Davydov (Swedbank), with a talk “Benefits of SAFe implementation in Finance sector – Swedbank user story“

Topic: Benefits of SAFe implementation in Finance sector – Swedbank user story

About the talk:

The financial sector is extremely competitive as well as highly regulated.

Banks and others in the financial sector have to change their priorities and processes very quickly. 

This story takes you on an agile journey of engraining a new culture in Swedbank, including harmonization of our way of working to allow us to be even more nimble and customer-centric by adopting SAFe.

We will SAFely take you through this journey and show you all the benefits we get from the perspective of Release Train Engineer (RTE) and Product Manager (PM) roles.

About Eric:

  • I am a certified Product Manager (SAFe) at Swedbank. I have been working at Swedbank for 15+ years and have been involved with Baltic/Group level projects/programs since day one.
  • I have worked in several countries and enjoy working with people from diverse backgrounds.
  • I believe in creating positive feedback cycles with every program. Happy stakeholders lead to happy development teams, which then lead to motivated productive teams and finally to happier stakeholders.

About Vadym:

  • I am a Certified Release Train Engineer (SAFe) at Swedbank and a Certified Professional Scrum Master (PSM I, SAFe).
  • I am extremely passionate about Agile and start-ups – validating hypotheses, working with uncertainties, building high-performance teams.
  • I was one of the co-founders of an Agile community – AgileTalks in Kyiv – a Ukrainian AgileTalks community with a vision to support Scrum Masters and Product Owners in their journey of learning and implementing great practices and approaches.
  • I am a decisive and committed individual who knows how to create an environment in which great ideas can happen!

Agile Saturday Tallinn XVI will take place 15th of April 2023 and you can register through Eventbrite.
More information about Agile Saturday Tallinn XVI



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Meet The Speakers – Vasco Duarte

April 4, 2023 Written by Julia Vastrik

Meet an Agile Saturday Tallinn XVI speaker Vasco Duarte (Finland), the host of famous Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, with a talk “What are you missing to be a world class Scrum Master or Agile Coach?“

Topic: What are you missing to be a world class Scrum Master or Agile Coach?

About the talk:
Have you thought about this question before?
In this session we will cover 3 ideas that may make you a world-class Agile Coach, and we will discuss what we can do in our own personal learning journeys to achieve that goal.
But first, we will discuss what makes us world-class Scrum Masters/Agile Coaches! Bring your thinking hats, and let’s explore success for Scrum Masters/Agile Coaches together!

About Vasco:
Vasco Duarte is a leading voice in the agile community, known for his contributions to the development of agile methodologies and practices. He is the co-founder of Agile Finland and the host of Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, the most popular Agile podcast in the world, which has more than 8 000 000 unique downloads. He is also the author of “NoEstimates: A novel look at how Agile can transform software development, making it both more sustainable, as well as incredibly profitable.” Vasco is a keynote speaker at many conferences and events, sharing his knowledge and experience with the agile community. With his passion and expertise in agile, Vasco has made a significant impact on the way software development is done today, helping organizations to become more efficient, flexible, and responsive to changing requirements.

Agile Saturday Tallinn XVI will take place 15th of April 2023 and you can register through Eventbrite.
More information about Agile Saturday Tallinn XVI

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Meet The Speakers – Juan Gutiérrez Plaza

March 27, 2023 Written by Julia Vastrik

Meet an Agile Saturday Tallinn XVI speaker Juan Gutiérrez Plaza (Estonia), with a talk “Heresy! Mixing Together Large and Dynamic Teams.“

Topic: Heresy! Mixing Together Large and Dynamic Teams.

About the talk:
Long-term static teams of about 7 +/- 2 people is currently the most accepted set-up and it has been the de-facto approach for many years. But would it be so bad to have larger teams? and very dynamic ones in composition? How could we do this without becoming heretics in the world of Agile? Let’s explore in this session how to take the idea of “dynamic re-teaming” to the extreme.

About Juan:
Juan has worked as developer, agile coach, manager and other roles in Spain, Finland, France and Estonia. Software Engineer by education, he is passionate about computers and about finding new and better ways of developing software. Currently he works as VP of Engineering at Scoro. He re-founded Agile Spain community in 2009 and every now and them gives some talks in different conferences and events.

Agile Saturday Tallinn XVI will take place 15th of April 2023 and you can register through Eventbrite.
More information about Agile Saturday Tallinn XVI

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Meet The Speakers – Ivo Peksens

March 22, 2023 Written by Julia Vastrik

Meet an Agile Saturday Tallinn XVI speaker Ivo Peksens (Latvia), with a talk “Team effectiveness or deep dive into Agile principle #12.“

Topic: Team effectiveness or deep dive into Agile principle #12.

About the talk:
This is an original talk based on writing at https://www.ivopeksens.com/effectiveness. 

I invite you to look deeper at the word “effective” from the Agile’s 12th principle. We will break it down into team efficiency, productivity and effectiveness and explore those in the context of knowledge work. Then, I will tell you about my original term “diversivity” that I propose to introduce instead of productivity term. As we go, you will be able to self-assess yourselves a bit, think, reflect and applaud me at the end :). Hopefully. See you soon!

Ivo about himself:
My name is Ivo Peksens. I am a natural intelligence Agile and Team Coach from Riga, Latvia. I help organizations develop and improve healthy team dynamics in various contexts. My recent interest is team research and team effectiveness models merge with Agile context and vice versa. I have worked with teams in various industries over the last 15+ years. Managed to be the first CTC from Scrum Alliance in the Baltic States (I know there will be a few other CTCs in Agile Saturday Tallinn XVI :)).

More about Ivo: https://www.ivopeksens.com/, https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivopeksens/

Agile Saturday Tallinn XVI will take place 15th of April 2023 and you can register through Eventbrite.
More information about Agile Saturday Tallinn XVI

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Meet The Speakers – Petri Heiramo

March 20, 2023 Written by Julia Vastrik

Meet an Agile Saturday Tallinn XVI speaker Petri Heiramo (Finland), with a talk “The World’s Most Expensive ‘Hello World!’ “

Topic: The World’s Most Expensive “Hello World!”

About the talk:
In an Agile project in 2008, at the Sprint Review of the first Sprint, the Team demoed their first increment – the text “Hello World!” in the top left corder of an otherwise empty browser window – and everybody celebrated. 

Why did this apparently simple result elicit such a powerful response? What was the point of spending two weeks of time, and the effort 8 people working on the project, for this apparently trivial outcome?

This story takes us to an exploration of “learning value”, and how it can affect the planning in an Agile project. In fact, learning value often trumps business value in the very first Sprints. We will look at some exercises that allow us to explore our Backlog in a few different ways, and then use that knowledge to sort it collaboratively into a meaningful release plan, seeking to optimise our chances of success.

Petri about himself:
I’ve been an Agilist since 2005 when the “lights turned on”. Since late 2008, I’ve done over 400 certified Scrum course as a Certified Scrum Trainer by Scrum Alliance. I’ve worked quite internationally and with both small and big organisations.

In Agile, I’m most excited about the human element – team formation, motivation, self-fulfilment – and I see them as platforms for everything else. Sure, we need also good ways of working, but if we can get the people to really work together and want to do a good job, everything else becomes possible. 

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Meet The Speakers – Cliff Hazell

March 13, 2023 Written by Julia Vastrik

Meet our third keynote speaker, Cliff Hazell (Sweden), with a talk “Beyond Copy Paste Agile”!

Topic: Beyond Copy Paste Agile

About the talk:
Today it’s common for company leaders to express a desire to be more agile, and many embark on expensive change journeys, to make their teams more agile.

After years on this journey fraught with “resistance” and lots of change, and yet seldom able to show results that are meaningful to customers or the business.

Part of the problem is the core assumption that the problems, and therefore solutions exist at the team level.

My experience is that to delight customers, collaboration is required between teams and departments. This focusing on the parts (individuals and teams) rarely improves the whole, in ways customers will appreciate or pay for.

We’ll explore this through three lenses.

  • Sapiens – How creating a healthy environment unlocked our potential.
  • Science – How to Improve our understanding of what works and what doesn’t.
  • Systems – How building effective interaction between teams produces more effective results.

About Cliff:
Cliff has made a career out of breaking down the obstacles that stand in the way of great work. He is often challenging the status quo in his quest to develop the right culture and systems for creation of excellent Companies and Products.

After a tour of addresses across South Africa, Cliff moved to Stockholm where he led a team of Coaches at Spotify for 4 years.

Now he Helps tech Scale-ups remove their Growth pains.

Agile Saturday Tallinn XVI will take place 15th of April 2023 and you can register here:  Eventbrite ticketing system.

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Meet The Speakers – Heldin Rikk

March 8, 2023 Written by Julia Vastrik

Meet an Agile Saturday Tallinn XVI speaker Heldin Rikk (Estonia), with a talk “Strategy dipped in Agile”!

Topic: Strategy dipped in Agile

About the talk:

Too often I have seen leaders who focus mostly on operational tasks, micromanaging, firefighting and, if we are lucky, they talk about Strategy once a year. But sometimes, when fortune is particularly kind to us, we might be lucky enough to get leaders who are different  😊

In this talk I am going to take you on the journey that our Leadership team embarked on together to improve our Strategy ways of working. The objective was to become more responsive to change whilst continuously focusing on our strategy, and to capitalize on the full potential of all our 2000 employees with the help of relatable and tangible strategic objectives.

We will explore how buy-in was created, how we set up a participative approach and how the outcome looks in practice today. I will share our challenges, our vision for the future and what you can learn from our journey.

Sounds interesting? I am looking forward to seeing you there

About Heldin:
Country girl who became part of big city agile mafia since 2009. Now she is a high flier, has necessary mindset and fitting lifestyle too – in the summer she drag raced in Haapsalu, today she spearheads Strategy ways of working at Ericsson.

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Meet The Speakers – Angel Diaz-Maroto

March 6, 2023 Written by Julia Vastrik

Meet our second keynote speaker, Angel Diaz-Maroto (Spain), with a talk “Building business resilience and disruptive innovation in practice”!

Topic: Building business resilience and disruptive innovation in practice

About the talk:
Many organizations around the world are learning that in order to ensure the continuity of a business, Agility is mandatory but not sufficient. Building Resilience must be a key factor in the organizational strategy.

In this session you will learn a simple and effective framework to develop business resilience in your organization. As part of this framework, I will explain how to run crisis simulations and how those simulations help organizations not only to be prepared to overcome extreme changes in the market and adapt more quickly to new conditions, but also to become the disruptive change within the market.

What will a new crisis bring to your business? Is your company ready for the next disruption? Did you decide to build resilience and get ready, or to accept the cost of not being ready? Do you have a proactive strategy to boost disruptive innovation within your organization?

About Angel:
Angel is an energetic and forward-thinking Agile coach specializing in leadership development and organizational agility. His pragmatism and experience in organizational coaching and Business Agility are the driving forces behind his methods. Throughout his 15+ years of hands-on experience as a coach, trainer, and mentor, Angel has provided expert guidance to organizations and Agile leaders in North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

Angel’s leadership has been particularly notorious at the ING Group, where he has performed as the first Agile Champion at ING Spain and chairman of the first Global ING Agile Experts Group since 2010. He has also supported companies from more than 40 countries, contributing to the Agile journeys of King, Toyota, Falabella, Banco de Chile, Roche, BBVA, Sunhotels, DEWA, FAB, PZU Group, El Palacio de Hierro and the Catalan Institute of Oncology.

Angel holds the Scrum Alliance’s highest-level certifications in the field. Being the first Spanish CST (Certified Scrum Trainer), the first Spanish CEC (Certified Enterprise Coach), and the first European CALE (Certified Agile Leadership Educator).

Angel is also a PCC (Certified Professional Coach) by the International Coach Federation, a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC), Certified specialist in team coaching and systemic leadership, Management 3.0 facilitator, Certified Kanban Management Professional (KMP), Certified LeSS Practitioner (CLP), Certified SAFe® Program Consultant (SPC), Licensed NLP Practitioner and TTI-certified Behaviour and Motivation Analyst.

In addition, Angel has participated as a speaker and keynote at more than 60 international conferences and Agile events worldwide and has been a significant contributor to the international Agile community since 2009.

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Meet The Speakers – Amir Peled

March 1, 2023 Written by Julia Vastrik

Meet an Agile Saturday Tallinn XVI speaker, Amir Peled (Romania), who will run a workshop “Antidotes to Team Toxins – Visual Edition”!

Topic: Antidotes to Team Toxins – Visual Edition

About the workshop:

Do you have experience with teams that resorted to unskillful communication occasionally or during some challenging times? You are not alone!

It’s time to acknowledge that when these unskillful communications persist without being addressed, they become toxic to relationships and eventually erode performance, trust, and morale within the team.

I believe that high-performance teams are not only aware of the existence of toxins, but they also recognize that they are present in their relationship, and they are willing to address them together. Those high-performance teams do understand that toxins are normal, and they are engaged in a constructive conflict with the intention to become a strong entity. However, in my experience, too often people who work together in teams with a different maturity prefer to avoid conflict at all costs by choosing not to address the conflict, pretending that it never existed, and sometimes even hiding it “underneath the carpet”.

In this practical and highly visual workshop (4 hand-drawn posters created by the speaker), we will expose the four team toxins that exist in all teams and their respective characteristics. The speaker will bring them to life with some real-life examples. Next, the participants will share with each other their examples from teams that they were part of in the past, followed by identifying our default toxin in a relationship (the speaker is going to model it first). Finally, we will cover the antidotes to team toxins and determine next steps for improvement.

Do not miss this learning and sharing opportunity!
You can help the team to take responsibility for toxic communication and to consciously design their own agreement for constructive conflict. They deserve it. And you deserve it too!

Learning Outcomes:

At the end of this session, participants will be able to:

  • State the 4 team toxins most people use from time to time
  • Comprehend how using them daily can destroy teams and relationships
  • Review the antidotes which counteract team toxins
  • Pick up an antidote and practice!

Amir about himself:
I became the first Scrum Alliance Certified Team Coach (CTC) in Eastern Europe in 2018 and served as a volunteer on the European Gathering Team (EUGT) for planning Global SCRUM GATHERING® Vienna 2019 and Global SCRUM GATHERING® Lisbon 2022. Additionally, I am a CTC Review Team Member and Women in Agile 2020 mentor. Lastly, I am also the founder of the first Scrum Alliance User Group in Romania called Agile Coaching and Beyond.


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Meet The Speakers – Ricco Nourzad

February 27, 2023 Written by Julia Vastrik

Meet an Agile Saturday Tallinn XVI speaker, Ricco Nourzad (Austria), who will run a workshop “Unlock the Key to Success with Effective OKRs”!

Topic: Unlock the Key to Success with Effective OKRs!

About the workshop:
Do you struggle with setting and achieving your organizational goals? It’s time to take control with Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). In this high-energy workshop, we’ll demystify the process of creating successful OKRs that drive business growth. You’ll learn how to set clear and measurable objectives, align your OKRs with company strategy, and engage all stakeholders in the process.

We’ll also cover techniques for setting attainable key results, tracking progress, and regularly adjusting goals as needed. Say goodbye to guesswork and hello to accountability and transparency. I’ll share best practices for creating a culture that supports and celebrates the achievement of OKRs. By the end of this session, you’ll have the tools to create and implement effective OKRs that drive results and take your organization to new heights. Don’t miss this opportunity to turbocharge your OKR game! Join me to learn how to unlock the key to success with effective OKRs.

Ricco about himself:
Climbing to the top of Austria’s highest peaks, I discovered a diverse and ever-changing landscape – much like my career journey as an Agilist, Consultant, and Founder. With over 10 years of Agile experience and a global consulting practice, I bring a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the table with the clear goal of creating environments, where people work best together. Here, one of many possible ingredients is the best possible rollout of OKRs – that’s where I come in.


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