When dealing with metrics, most Agile or Lean teams begin with a Burndown Chart.  Unfortunately, that is also where most of them stop.  While a Burndown Chart is a great first step, it only provides a small sliver of the information the team has access to.

In this talk, we’ll be starting at the beginning with what a Cumulative Flow Diagram is, how it relates to a Burndown Chart, its advantages, and where it too ultimately stops.  We’ll then look at additional information radiators that the team can easily use based on existing data to provide transparency to stakeholders and the raw material for continuous improvement.

“We should do it because it’s more efficient.”  Well, perhaps not.  Do you mean it’s more locally efficient or more globally efficient?

In this talk, we’ll discuss the differences between local and global efficiency and how “it’s more efficient” is often times a fallacy that will lead to poor results.  We’ll look at the positive effects of optimizing for the whole (i.e., global optimization) and how to know where in the system to look in order to do that.

This talk will introduce the basics of Systems Thinking and Theory of Constraints so that participants are familiar with the concepts and continue their learning afterwards.

What does an Agile Coach do anyway?  We already have Scrum Masters, why do we need a coach also?  We have only a few teams or perhaps just a single team; isn’t an Agile Coach a lot of overhead?

 These are excellent questions asked by many organizations and individuals.  They deserve good answers.

 In this talk, we’ll provide those answers and discuss how Agile Coaches can have a huge multiplier effect for any organization striving to transform, execute, or improve.  We’ll cover coaching both at an abstract level as well as the nuts-and-bolts day-to-day level.  Participants will leave with an understanding of what an Agile Coach can do for them and how to explain to others why their organization should have one.

Why does the Agile community encourage cross-functional teams?  So many large organizations have naturally organized into system-specific teams.  This is a very common and logical approach.  At scale, though, it creates serious impediments to organizational agility and getting things done.  We'll discuss the roots of that phenomenon, one of our key interests in cross-functional teams, patterns for enabling such a team structure, some failure modes, and how to prevent them.  Please join us!