At the core of the agile mindset is learning. Continuous learning is only possible through active feedback loops. Linear approaches do not support learning and are doomed to fail in a world of uncertainty. The key is maintaining healthy feedback loops which incorporate new knowledge which enables learning leading to success. An iterative approach with broken feedback loops is similarly doomed.

From Todd’s background as a Chemical and Petroleum engineer the idea of feedback and control loops was natural and to a large extent how he got involved in the agile community. Todd will explain the basics of feedback loops and how they can enable agility and learning, or when broken they can destroy agility and enable other behaviors such as organizational politics.

At the core of the agile mindset is learning. Continuous learning is only possible through active feedback loops. Linear approaches do not support learning and are doomed to fail in a world of uncertainty. The key is maintaining healthy feedback loops which incorporate new knowledge which enables learning leading to success. An iterative approach with broken feedback loops is similarly doomed.

From Todd’s background as a Chemical and Petroleum engineer the idea of feedback and control loops was natural and to a large extent how he got involved in the agile community. Todd will explain the basics of feedback loops and how they can enable agility and learning, or when broken they can destroy agility and enable other behaviors such as organizational politics.

Little’s Law has been used in queuing theory for over half a century. It is an elegant explanation of the relationship between average throughput, Work in Progress (WIP), and cycle time. In a stable environment it gives us a good understanding of the performance of the system which can used for forecasting.

But where are the story points and estimation? Certainly, size must matter. But does it? In this workshop we explore Little’s Law through theory and the experience of simulations. Each attendee will come away with a better understanding of Little’s Law and the core assumptions necessary for it to be applicable and useful in forecasting. Through the simulation you will experience why estimation of individual items is often not necessary in an environment where Little’s Law applies.

Little’s Law has been used in queuing theory for over half a century. It is an elegant explanation of the relationship between average throughput, Work in Progress (WIP), and cycle time. In a stable environment it gives us a good understanding of the performance of the system which can used for forecasting.

But where are the story points and estimation? Certainly, size must matter. But does it? In this workshop we explore Little’s Law through theory and the experience of simulations. Each attendee will come away with a better understanding of Little’s Law and the core assumptions necessary for it to be applicable and useful in forecasting. Through the simulation you will experience why estimation of individual items is often not necessary in an environment where Little’s Law applies.

Many people think Kanban is just a project tracking board, whether it is stickies on the wall or in a tool like Trello or Jira. But Kanban is much more. And what does the Kanban Method mean to an aspiring agilist?

The Kanban Method embraces the constant change inherent to managing knowledge work and enables IT, financial services, insurance and global organizations to become more collaborative, unified and productive in the face of growing competitive pressures and organizational chaos. This is accomplished by teaching individuals and organizations how to understand, visualize and measure systems of work to continually improve and consistently deliver effective results. The Kanban Method provides a set of proven practices and approaches that scale from individuals and teams to the enterprise.

Whether you are starting from chaos, waterfall, Scrum, SAFe, or anywhere, the Kanban Method provides tools to start where you are at and to continually evolve and improve.

Join Todd as he shares how the Kanban Method focuses on the following areas in order to drive continuous improvement:

• Kanban’s 4 Foundational Principles
  • Start with what you do now
  • Agree to pursue evolutionary change
  • Initially, respect existing roles, responsibilities and job titles
  • Encourage acts of leadership at all levels in your organization – from individual contributors to senior management
• Kanban’s 6 General Practices
  • Visualize
  • Limit WIP
  • Manage Flow
  • Make policies explicit
  • Implement Feedback Loops
  • Improve Collaboratively, Evolve Experimentally

Todd will also give a brief overview of an education and professional development path offered through Lean Kanban University’s certified Kanban training.

Many in the agile community suggest abandoning performance reviews, but few offer suggestions for alternatives. A large percentage of software developers work in an enterprise environment where performance reviews are mandated. What if you could do performance reviews that will honor agile values and not only suck less, but actually provide value to the individual and the organization? We have rolled out such a system successfully with strong support across the enterprise--from the individual colleagues, to people leaders, and even including HR. We will demonstrate the principles and the specific implementation of our system which you can tailor to your organization’s values and constraints.

This 2-day Foundations-level Kanban training class, certified by Lean Kanban University, is for managers, developers, and anyone wanting to learn the fundamentals of the Kanban Method. The class includes the use of a Kanban simulation as well as exercises to design an actual Kanban system.

Lean Kanban University Certification

Are you looking for an internationally recognized certification in the Kanban Method? Delivered by experts accredited by Lean Kanban University, this course satisfies one requirement toward the Kanban Management Professional (KMP) credential. The KMP II: Kanban Management Professional class will complete the KMP status requirement.

This day is all about the “Agile Mindset”, but what about the “Kanban Mindset?” What’s the same and what is different? Kanban is certainly consistent with the “Agile Mindset,” but also brings in concepts from Lean and other management approaches.

Join Todd as he shares how the Kanban Method focuses on the following areas in order to drive continuous improvement:

• Understand the system
• Manage the flow of value
• Balance Demand and Capacity
• Limit WIP to improve predictability
• Find and address bottlenecks
• Make Policies Explicit
• Incremental improvement through experiment and measurement
• Double loop learning (process improvement & product improvement)
• Scale through the enterprise

At the core to any agile approach is the ability to manage for uncertainty. This is only possible through a process of continuous learning which requires active feedback loops. Linear approaches are doomed to fail in a world of uncertainty. Feedback incorporates new knowledge which enables learning. The key is maintaining healthy feedback loops which will enable success. An iterative approach with broken feedback loops is similarly doomed.

Not only is this the foundation of business agility, empiricism is the foundation of the scientific method, Shewart-Deming process improvement cycles, and the Lean Startup model. Healthy agile approaches incorporate multivariate closed loop process control.

In the original book on Scrum, Ken Schwaber talks about his discovery of empiricism by trying to sell waterfall solutions to Chemical Engineers at DuPont Chemical. Todd’s background is as a Chemical and Petroleum engineer, so his journey was different. Empiricism was natural for him, so when people started talking about agility it fit nicely with the model he was already using. It was even better when the conversation became about “Business Agility.”

Many in the agile community suggest abandoning performance reviews, but few offer suggestions for alternatives. A large percentage of software developers work in an enterprise environment where performance reviews are mandated. What if you could do performance reviews that will honor agile values and not only suck less, but actually provide value to the individual and the organization? We have rolled out such a system successfully with strong support across the enterprise--from the individual colleagues, to people leaders, and even including HR. We will demonstrate the principles and the specific implementation of our system which you can tailor to your organization’s values and constraints.

Leadership is a dance of stepping up to provide guidance and then stepping back to let the team deliver. This is easier said than done. As one of the co-authors of the book “Stand Back and Deliver,” Todd will demonstrate some of the tools that he has used to help with this leadership dance. These tools include:

• Purpose Alignment Model
• Context Leadership Model
• Business Value Model
• Trust Ownership Model

Let’s explore the purpose and use of estimates in the management of software development efforts, and consider possible alternatives. Why do we estimate and are we making estimates that are actually useful?  We say we depend on estimates to make important decisions, and yet we’re often disappointed by the results.

Why are we so challenged at estimation?  Are estimates for cost, time, or effort always needed? Is it possible there are other ways to approach our work?  If we didn’t estimate, how could we still be successful at making businesses successful?

The default use of an "estimate-driven" approach is pervasive in software development efforts, and while estimates can be useful, it is worthwhile to scrutinize our use of estimates for cost, time, and effort, and to seek better ways to manage software development projects.

There are a number of things to explore and many questions to ask. For example, do we really need estimates for all the things we are currently using them? Are we getting a reasonable benefit from them? Is it possible to manage software development projects without these estimates, or at least with fewer estimates?  Is there a way to prove that estimates are helping us make good decisions?

In this session we’ll participate in some interactive information gathering exercises to see if we can gain a shared idea of our current understanding of the purpose and use of estimates.  We will examine the nature of software development projects and explore some real data to shed light on the art and science of software estimation.  Our exploration goal is to see if we can work together to come up with some ideas about improving on the traditional approaches to using estimates.

Leaders today face constant, accelerating change driven by technology and incredibly high expectations from both internal and external customers. Surviving and thriving in this environment requires IT leaders who can reliably deliver the following:

• Innovation that drives the organization forward
• Innovation centered on creating competitive advantage
• Results in the face of dramatic change and ambiguity
• Excellence in delivery
• A culture of motivation and agility
• Relationships of trust both inside and outside of the organization

In short, as IT leaders we need to transform our roles and our departments. But, what can we use to pull off this transformation? In this workshop, we focus on, teach and practice the tools of transformational leadership.

Part one of the training dives deep into the Purpose Alignment and Business Value Models. These tools are proven and can be put to use immediately. Part two of the training covers tools leaders use to re-define their roles using the Trust / Ownership Model including agile principles.

All of these tools are concrete, pragmatic, and usable. After each part of the training, participants are ready to use the tools to re-define their roles and deliver what their organizations need – brilliant leadership.

One of the biggest challenges for many organizations is that they have too many good ideas and are unable to fully staff all of them.  A good strategy will act as a decision filter to help with portfolio prioritization.  But too often strategies behave more like buckets than filters, and all new initiatives just get accumulated into the strategy bucket.  This results in an overloaded portfolio that cannot be delivered resulting in frustration throughout the organization.  Todd will show some practical tools that can be used to help create effective decision filters.

 This is about agile “anti-patterns”: “something that looks like a good idea, but which backfires badly when applied” (Coplien). Todd has been around agile development from before it was called agile.  In that time, he’s seen teams fall into the trap of many of these anti-patterns, becoming stuck without ever realizing it. Frequently, this is due to a dogmatic understanding of what is right and wrong about scaling and agile development. The first step to getting unstuck is to be able to detect these “sins.” The presentation aims to expose teams to these common pitfalls and then also provide a vision for a virtuous path to take them to the Promised Land.

The #NoEstmates twitter hashtag was intended by Woody Zuill "..for the topic of exploring alternatives to estimates [of time, effort, cost] for making decisions in software development. That is, ways to make decisions with ‘No Estimates’."  Based on twitter traffic it has been successful at generating activity.  It's a bit debatable as to whether it has really spawned much exploration.  In this talk Todd will actually do some exploration using real data from over 50 projects at companies ranging from startups to large enterprises.  In addition to the analysis of the data, Todd was able to build a simulation model of the software development process to both replicate the data to and explore the conditions under which estimates add value and when they do not.  Based on the findings from the data and the simulations, along with an analysis of the types of business decisions that organizations need to make, Todd will provide some pragmatic advice for estimators and #NoEstimators alike.

In this highly engaging workshop attendees will experience estimating, planning and delivering a new product and product features.  The uncertainty in value and costs will be resolved through rolling dice based on the stories that the team selects and prioritizes.   The teams will run through 3 iterations of story cost, value estimation, and product feature delivery.  Points will be scored for delivering product features and meeting release and iteration commitments. 

Dealing with uncertainty is one of the largest challenges that teams face.  The simulation aims to have levels of uncertainty in value and delivery that are commensurate with those found in software development.  Some of the key tools for dealing with uncertainty are integrated into the simulation.  In particular, the simulation covers these 4 areas:

• Value of Information
• Value of Flexibility
• Cost of Delay
• Value of Uncertainty

Attendees will come away with a better understanding of the challenges of working with uncertainty in software projects, and will learn some of the tools that are at their disposal for managing this uncertainty.

Leadership is a dance of stepping up to provide guidance and then stepping back to let the team deliver.  This is easier said than done.  As one of the co-authors of the book “Stand Back and Deliver,” Todd will demonstrate some of the tools that he has used to help with this leadership dance.  These tools include:

• Purpose Alignment Model
• Context Leadership Model
• Business Value Model
• Trust Ownership Model

Estimating software projects has proven to be particularly challenging.  Over-running schedules happens frequently in our industry.  As a result software estimation is often viewed as a black art.  In this session Todd will look into some of the reasons for these challenges by exploring a number of myths of software estimation and then setting out to validate or bust these myths.

Some of the myths that will be explored include:

• Historical Estimation Accuracy
• Relative Estimation
• The Cone of Uncertainty
• Velocity
• Scope Creep
• Estimation Tools
• Wisdom of Crowds