Agile Virtual Summit 2021

Learn ways to detect your value so that you can believe it, convey it to others, and help improve the measuring sticks for us all. When done well, Agile Coaching, or any 21st century leadership role, is impossible to see from a distance and can even be invisible to those who you work with up close. How do you react when you hear this at performance management time: “Yes, I know the team is doing well, better than we could have imagined, and that’s great. But, what did you do? What was your specific contribution to their success?” If you’re like many Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches, you are hard pressed to answer this challenge. In this session, we will take a deep dive into the Coaching Agile Teams book to uncover the practices that help you become specific and solid in recognizing your contribution. We will also work through the ways common measuring sticks need to change so that we can start valuing the value of 21st century leadership skills, such as coaching and team capacity building.

Bruce Lee said: "Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot." Masterful facilitators have a way of making the hard work of holding space for their teams look simple. When they are doing their job well, they often appear formless, enabling their team to discover their own direction without getting in the way. In this session, we'll explore 3 frameworks you can use back at work to help your team find their own brilliant solutions to whatever they're currently struggling with.

Agile Anti-Pattern Deathmatch! In the twenty years since the signing of the Agile Manifesto, countless teams have used Agile frameworks to deliver awesome things. We’ve also seen many, many ways that Agility can be derailed into chaos, misery, boredom, and other unfortunate outcomes. So let’s fight it out to discover what the absolute worst of the worst Agile Anti-Patterns are! Bring your anecdotes and prepare to argue for your (least) favorites in a March Madness style Single Elimination Death Match!

Tips for Facilitating Team Decisions Is your team struggling to make decisions collaboratively? As a leader, observing this pain over and over may lead to a desire to just make the decision on behalf of the team. Sure, this might get some short-term results and relief but this will also absolutely impede achieving long-term high-performing results. Instead, let's level up our leadership capabilities to facilitate team decision-making. In this session, expect to explore several practical facilitation techniques that support all voices being actively engaged.