Often the landscape of exploration and freedom is reserved for "greenfield". So much so, that we refer to established markets as "brownfield". What happened? When did the grass die out? At what point did the fruited plains become a wasteland of Mad Max resource clawing? Probably when your organization stopped engaging in novel ways to explore continuous product improvement- or worse!- segmented out an entire division that gets to go do "cool things".

If constraints create creative solutions and your product is already a necessity, our challenge is to forget everything we know about how the products we build got to their current state but instead continuously reevaluate their fit. This action is harder done than said. Where do you start?

Changing legacy products is hard, transforming them is even harder. Over the last two years, we set out to do just this and we would love to share what we learned about this process, the skills you will need, and the challenge of repetition, failure, and human dynamics in uprooting.

Learn how a tenacious group of humans attempted to let go of everything that had gotten them to success until that point and rather than bury their heads in the sand- wrapped their arms around reality.

Change is inevitable. In this talk we will discuss the four facets of change that are constantly affecting us: changing products, changing priorities, changing people and changing process. We will look at where these changes comes from, the impacts they have on us and explore concrete tools we can use to get better at responding to them. Attendees of this session will leave with a new attitude on the churn that takes place around us everyday. They will learn to acknowledge the benefits that changes have so they can truly welcome it into their team, their practices, and their life.

Peer coaching can make a huge difference in reaching your work and personal goals, but how do you get started and and make it stick? We’d love to share our informal peer coaching method that combines personal responsibility, agile, and goal setting in a way that is guaranteed to be successful. We call it “Thing Three.” In this interactive session, we will teach you the basic format we follow, along with the research to back up why it works. We will also demonstrate how it has helped even the busiest colleagues stay accountable consistently, over years, and continue to reach every goal they set. You’ll get to exercise these skills too and immediately see the value of peer coaching!

Just as the way teams work is evolving, the role of the manager is evolving too. Agile teams don’t want or need someone delegating tasks and micromanaging how the work gets done. Instead, to perform at their best, agile teams need someone who can evolve and adapt. Someone who will trust, support, and enable them. They need a true agile leader!

The transformation from manager to agile leader takes work, and not every manager you encounter is excited for their role to change. So, how do you get them on board? How do you coach them through this critical change to ensure the success of their teams?

In this interactive session we will:

• Examine the key differences between a traditional manager and an agile leader
• Share the stories of how we have approached coaching managers challenged with this transformation
• Practice hands-on tools and techniques you can use to help managers evolve into an agile leader

A 2018 study found that 63% of companies have remote workers. Gone are the times when you can expect your entire team will be co-located and will collaborate in-person every day. In today’s global economy, remote teams are basically a given, and fully-distributed teams are becoming more & more prevalent each year.

Knowing this, how can you ensure a remote or distributed team will become just as high-performing as one that is co-located? Is it even possible? We have proven that it is possible, and we can't wait to tell you all our secrets!

In this interactive session we will:

• Acknowledge the power remote and distributed teams can unlock for an organization
• Examine some of the common challenges and pitfalls remote and distributed teams experience
• Share tips & tricks from our experiences coaching remote and distributed teams
• Practice hands-on tools and techniques you can use with your remote or distributed teams to improve engagement, participation and collaboration

Nearly everyone nowadays in the agile community says that they are an “agile coach”. But there’s so much more than simple certifications and a declarative statement. The first step is the self-awareness to acknowledge what you don’t know first. Then developing a plan to develop your coaching skills.

In this workshop, we’ll explore the on-the-job skills, training classes, and mentoring that can make you a great agile coach. First, we’ll talk about the agile coaching competency framework and how to leverage it as a backdrop for your development planning and strategy.

Next, we’ll do a personal assessment of your strengths and gaps according to the framework. And we’ll explore some simple strategies (books, tools, techniques, classes, activities, etc.) that will help you fill in those gaps to become a much more well-rounded coach.

And finally, we’ll break into groups of two so that you can peer review your strategies and make adjustments. You’ll leave this session with a well-balanced game plan for becoming a better (possibly a great) agile coach.