Agile meetings do not always go smoothly. Especially when you work in a geographically distributed team or get moved from one team to another. How can you discover what might be going on when things go awry? This session will have a brief simulation of a meeting. Three volunteers will play agile roles with typical challenges we experience. As a group we will share observations about the interactions, and what we thought we understood, but may not have. This session introduces the Satir Interaction Model and a broader understanding of how we might correct mis-interpreted behavior and commenting. 

At Stack Overflow, we are a remote-first company. That means no matter where you are in the world, if you are a great developer, we want to make sure you’re treated just like you’re in our headquarters in New York. How do you build agile teams when most people are remote? We take this to an extreme: get my first-hand account of what it’s like to work full-time as an engineer at Stack Overflow traveling to 22 cities in 7 countries in three months. You’ll learn what it means to build a truly remote culture, what tools we use to make it possible, and how we do standups, iteration, and communication in a truly international engineering team.

Many businesses value predictability over agility. Becoming more agile is secondary to becoming more predictable. Fortunately, Agile is not only more adaptable than traditional waterfall project management, it’s also very predictable. How is that possible? First, Agile project plans are based on the empirical velocity of the Agile team –not an estimate made months before during the planning phase of the project. And second, the Agile project plan is refined at the end of every sprint based on the actual performance of the team. Agile project burn charts give you most of the measures and metrics you need to manage the iron triangle of project management: scope, schedule, and budget.

How do you know if Agile is right for you? The success of an Agile transformation in an enterprise depends on a number of factors – the experience of the teams, the type of software you’re building, the availability of resources, the iron triangle of scope, schedule, and budget, and last but not least the corporate culture. This session will provide an overview of a survey instrument to assess critical success factors for Agile within an organization to help the leadership team decide whether Agile is a good fit.

Part of working Agile is about having collaborative teams with minimal friction. How can we encourage a culture that builds trust in any organisation regardless of size and composition?

Having worked with startups, SMEs and MNCs, Daylon will share his experiences as a product and project manager. Daylon will also draw from his experiences going through and applying learnings from a group dynamics course (Understanding Group and Leader) administered by the Swedish Defence College.