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The Product Owner acts as the bridge between company strategy and the Scrum team and yet, how this is done varies greatly from organization to organization.  In some organizations, the Product Owner has budget authority, and in some, the entire Scrum team reports to the Product Owner.  This lecture will provide an overview of the different types of Product Owners as well as the characteristics of a great Product Owner. 

The best Scrum teams that I have worked with were supported by management leaders focused on removing impediments, providing resources, and promoting an agile mindset and culture that supports the Scrum values. It’s not an easy job.  This keynote explores the impact that great leadership has on Agile teams.

Scrum is simple, but that simplicity means that each of its elements is essential.  The values, accountabilities, artifacts and events are all part of the framework for a reason.  Teams that mess with the framework are messing with Scrum.  Teams that make changes to the elements limit Scrum's effectiveness and aren't really using Scrum.  Learn from a  born Texan  about some of the common ways that teams often mess with Scrum - and why they shouldn't!

The 2020 Scrum Guide includes five values that are essential to every successful implementation of Scrum.  The Scrum values are courage, commitment, focus, openness and respect.These values don’t get much attention, but the longer I practice Scrum, the more important I find them.  This keynote explores each of the five Scrum values and provides examples of how they play out in the real world.

Scrum is the most popular Agile framework.  This session provides an overview of the concepts underpinning Scrum as well as an overview of the values, roles, events and artifacts which make up the Scrum framework.  

An Agile transformation is really a change initiative.  In this lecture we will discuss lessons learned from the WPS Health Solutions Agile Transformation.  WPS grew from fewer than 5 Agile teams in 2018 to over 60 Agile teams in 2022 while also transforming from technology silos to Product teams.  

Agile frameworks (including Scrum) perform best in complex environments where more is unknown than known, and creativity rules the day to determine the best path forward.  In this hour-long presentation, we will define Agile and discuss the contexts where the use of Agile makes sense... and when it doesn't.

Scrum is a framework; not a set of instructions.  The very simplicity of Scrum is what makes it powerful for work in complex environments where there are a lot of unknown variables at play. Unfortunately, some people like having black and white instructions and consequently, a lot of misconceptions have evolved about the “right” and “wrong” way to apply Scrum. Let’s kill these myths once and for all!

According to the 15th Annual State of Agile report, 46% of survey respondents report struggles with inconsistent practices and 43% report cultural classes.

Why is this?  Often, organizations and teams that adopt Scrum have not fully embraced the concepts behind empiricism (making decisions based on what is known), and have not adopted the three pillars that make empiricism possible:  transparency, inspection and adaptation.

In this keynote, Mary Iqbal discusses the common signs of pretending to be agile and how you can use Empiricism to stop pretending.

Lots of “experts” pedal the idea that they hold the secret ingredient to greater team productivity. The truth is that there is no mystery as to why some teams perform better than others. Team members who understand the purpose and goal of their work, have the autonomy to make products better, and have a method to continuously improve will deliver more value.