Lean process has an exceptional focus on providing value to the customer. I’ve often seen when groups are considering an agile transformation they are focusing on faster iterations, but faster iterations of what? An agile team can certainly deliver faster iterations of what the customer doesn’t want. This lightning talk shows simple methods to ensure that Agile teams are focusing on value delivery along with speed. I will show how the user story/acceptance process can also focus on customer value. We will focus on Kanban and Kaizen as methods to utilize in the Agile value stream.

Are your team members dreading going to your grooming meetings. Do you struggle with the typical poker playing methodologies of determining an effort value. Come and learn a grooming methodology that will make these meetings efficient, provide total consensus in your results, and re-inspire your team on the value of grooming and velocity measurements.

Stories give the customer what they asked for, but not always what they really wanted. Learn three practical tips for how to integrate UI design work with story development, to both get more realistically sized stories, and the user experience that the customer wanted but didn’t know how to ask for.

We started scrumming in 2008 and have since then experimented with different agile methods, including TDD, Kanban board, pair programming, peer reviewing and the several different flavors of retrospectives. We are currently working on a new product for which we don’t have customers yet with a team of 20+. It has been challenging to coordinate everyone and to get us all in the same direction, I’d say we’re still struggling, but product managers are now more involved and we have a clearer goal.

In this talk you’ll learn a technique that makes it much easier and faster for a team to estimate backlog items & stories, without using story points. The technique allows an entire team to participate in estimating the relative scope and have fun doing it. I have used this technique to estimate a backlog of 200 items in only 90 minutes.

In a complex environment, it can be impossible to write user-valued, end-to-end user stories that fit in a short sprint. In this talk, we’ll understand the potential waste of trying to make stories too small. I’ll explain ways for teams to keep the value and fast feedback of short sprints without sacrificing the goal of having end-to-end user stories. Hint: you may have to set aside some of your Scrum dogma.

One of the most important components of successfully applying an Agile approach is ensuring that the right product owner is identified. This attempt to find the right business representative has proven to be challenging in most organizations because they are uncertain about what they should be looking for. This short session will review the 3 most important ingredients you should consider when seeking to fill the role of product owner.

Since the beginning of 2011, I’ve been standing, not just during the daily stand-up, but throughout the entire day! Why? To stay focused, energized and healthy. New medical studies are showing that hours of uninterrupted sitting can be surprisingly bad for your health, even if you already exercise vigorously. Moreover, studies show that slow activity such as walking or standing reduces these risks considerably.
Come to this talk to learn about the dangers of sitting and see how you can easily setup different types of agile workstations at your office upon your return from the conference.

The Agile Release Train (ART) is a scaling model for enterprise Agile programs. How can the key event — the Release Train Planning Meeting — be kept on track? Enter: The Release Train Conductor, a strong leader with the tools to run a two day meeting of 100+ people to synchronize large-scale planning!

The use of social networks within the enterprise is begining to impact agile project management. The intersection of agile project management and social collaboration has the potential to improve complex project management by leveling customary organizational boundaries and facilitating interdepartmental co-creation. By doing so, innovation is crowd sourced at an enterprise level, enabling and filtering out the best ideas rather than the loudest. This area of cloud adoption could potentially change organizational behavior as we know it. I would be happy to assemble a panel on this topic.