Too many ways to improve Scrum? Take them all!

Many teams, from small to large, not familiar with incremental and iterative delivery methods, struggle with getting started, keeping the momentum and focusing at the right things. Right tools and technologies can help!

A brief summary of organisational development tools for improving the implementation of Scrum, complemented with a few real-life use cases, where these tools have been used in different organisations – number of teams involved, characteristics, effects, outcomes etc

BIO: 18 years in the field of international software industry, from small to humongous-sized companies. I have collected a few excellent achievements over the years, combined them with many more how-not-to experiences. During the last five years I have been focused on building tools of organisational development to smoothen the merger of technology and business.

#NoComments /* about the worthlessness of comments in clean code */

What #NoEstimates is for agilists, #NoComments should be for all developers who <3 clean code!

Comments are – at best – a necessary evil” (Uncle Bob, “Clean Code”) – Over the years I gathered quite a collection of examples for bad code comments. The most precious gems among them I would like to share with you. You will listen in on developer monologues and dialogues, try to analyze cryptic bylines, experience different levels of UnCamelCasing(tm) skill and fight your way through a redundant, useless and misleading inline thicket. You will also hear about well-meant tools and plugins that should not even exist if the mantra #NoComments would be valued as it should be.

BIO: Björn Kimminich is working in the area of software development for Kuehne + Nagel for over 8 years where he is now responsible for Global IT Architecture. He is doing Clean Code trainings with Kuehne + Nagel’s globally distributed development staff since 2011. As a side job he lectures software development at the UAS Nordakademie where he teaches Java to engineering students as their first programming language.

Defining and executing a portfolio strategy

How to come up with a successful portfolio strategy and how to execute it?
How does a Chief Product Owner turn the company strategy into a portfolio strategy and build a suite of products and services to satisfy new and existing customers? What are some common pitfalls in aligning the organisational structure, governance, budgeting and legal issues and what to do about it?

In a perfect world everyone in our organisation knows what and why it should be achieved, has clarity around which decisions need to be made by whom and has the necessary competence, information, resources and authority to do it. Usually this is not the case. I will share practical examples, tools and models that I have used to help organisations make progress in executing their portfolio strategy.

From Tayloristic to Agile organization

What is common to Ford factories around 1900 and the collapse of Nokia Mobile Phones 2011? What leads most corporations towards Tayloristic organization? What is the other path to success?

“What is common to Ford factories a hundred years ago and Nokia about 20 years ago? In our session we explain the logic that takes the vast majority of leaders and corporations towards Tayloristic organization. We will also show the necessary and adequate changes to move from Tayloristic to Agile organization. Agile Adoptions tend to fall back to the old status quo. This happens for several reasons. First, a partial adoption introduces changes, which make the socio­techno­-economical system inconsistent and uneconomical. Second, partly because of the previous, the old status quo remains more comfortable for the individuals, and the new practices do not sustain. Third, the fundamental leadership assumptions have been cemented in the culture.
We will shed light on Taylorism versus Agile using several approaches: Ouchi’s theory of organizational control, Hackmann’s research on High­Performance Teams, Lean product development, Large­Scale Scrum, Complexity theory, history of Leadership, and our 20+ years of experience.”

BIO: After studying structural mechanics Ari built fault tolerant embedded real time systems for ten years. He has been full-­time organizational therapist since 1997. He has deep experience in organizational and group dynamics. He likes to explore and publish about patterns and unconscious phenomena in organizations. Ari is working with international Large­Scale Scrum (LeSS) adoptions, and contributing actively to the framework. In private life Ari listens to strange classical music (now playing), lifts iron, runs after the ball and tries to sit quietly in zen meditation.

Creating Value with Software: A Blueprint for Continuous Experimentation

Finding the right scope for product development in order to build products that customers want is crucial for success. An important approach for steering development towards the right scope is to continuously conduct experiments. Insights from such experiments directly influence frequent iterative deliveries. Success cases from industry show that such an approach helps companies to gain competitive advantage by reducing uncertainties and rapidly finding product roadmaps that work. However, defining and conducting the right experiments can be challenging:

How can we identify the relevant questions we need to answer for making good product decisions? How can we find the right hypotheses to test? How can we define metrics that inform product decisions? How can we justify the efforts for experimentation? How can we link the experimental findings with product decisions and dynamically change a product roadmap? This talk answers the questions above and provides a step-by-step blueprint to put continuous experimentation into action.

BIO: Jürgen Münch is a Professor of Software Engineering at Reutlingen University, Germany, and a Research Director in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He specializes in software engineering, in particular data- and value-driven software development, product management, agile engineering, and innovation. Results are documented in five books and more than 150 refereed publications. Jürgen has been a principal investigator of numerous research and development projects. He regularly teaches product management courses and helps companies to develop innovation capabilities and new digitally-enabled products and services.

Register now to the next Agile Saturday  http://bit.ly/1Ybv3oK and see you already on the 16th of April!