TeamAgility

Meet The Speakers – Julia Västrik

Meet an Agile Saturday Tallinn XVI speaker Julia Västrik (Estonia), with a talk “The Whole Team Approach to Innovation.“

About the talk:

Who is responsible for innovation? People with a word “Innovation” in their job title, like Innovation managers in Corporate Innovation Hubs? Well, definitely they might be great catalysts of innovation.

At the same time, the vast potential of very intelligent, creative, and educated people, who could contribute to the company’s innovations on an everyday basis, stays mostly unused. Usually, these people have a Software Engineer job title.

Over the last two decades agile way of working became prevailing within many cross-functional teams in the software development industry. Still, most of those teams can be called cross-functional just so far, as what they are mostly doing is just transforming a set of requirements, received from outside, usually from stakeholders, into working software.

In more progressive product companies decision-making regarding product has moved from stakeholders to product managers and eventually it is moving to the whole cross-functional teams, still this mindset shift is not that common.

During this session we will explore what are the benefits of placing product discovery inside the cross-functional team using the great potential of all its members, including Software Engineers, and how to start in practice with embracing the whole team innovation mindset. 

Presentation slides are available here

About Julia:

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

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 – Ivo Peksens

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

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 – Amir Peled

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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