Agile around the world

Agile Consortium Belgium Annual conference 2021 Online Edition

Online
22 - 26 March 2021

A week-long, online conference with speakers from all around the world!

Get ready to be inspired during this online edition of the Agile Consortium Brussels Conference. The event will kick-off on Monday 22 March and continue until Friday 26 March, with morning, afternoon and evening sessions for you to choose from. Free for our members, a small contribution for non-members. Join us!

About Us

We are looking forward to hosting our first online edition of our annual Agile Consortium Belgium conference!

We have offered you inspiring presentations and workshops for years, and we won’t let COVID-19 get in the way. From Monday 22 – Friday 26 March you can join us with online sessions between 9am – 9pm, with speakers from all around the globe.

Our theme this year is ‘Agile around the World’.

Members can enjoy our online conference for free. Non-members are welcome to join this full week of inspiration for only €49.

Have a look at all the amazing speakers we have (so far) and our program. Tickets can be booked directly here.

We can’t wait to see all of you online!

The Agile Consortium Belgium Conference Team

Online Program (displayed in Central European Time)

Monday 22 March

08:00

Virtual Networking Space (open all week)

Opening of the Virtual Networking Space via Wonder. All speakers, sponsors, participants invited!

09:00 - 09:15

Opening Ceremony

09:15 - 10:45

Frederik Vannieuwenhuyse: Online interactions using Liberating Structures (Workshop)

How to make online meetings more interactive? There exists a whole range of facilitation techniques. The Liberating Structures extends your toolkit. Getting annoyed by one-directional communication or discussions going in all directions? Join this session to experience some techniques. The Liberating Structures are a collection (mini-library) of techniques to facilitate conversations. In this session you will learn a few by active participation and I’ll show you a few things how you organise this (in Zoom) yourselve. Liberating Structures are creative common licensed; visit to learn more about what exists and the origins http://www.liberatingstructures.com/

11:00 - 12:00

Jyoti Dandona & Darryl Wright: Personal Agility System - Priorities Map Workshop

How do you figure out what really matters? Are you doing what you want to be doing? Are you becoming the person you want to be? Does 24 hours in a day seem too short to you? In the times of COVID-19, these questions matter more than ever. In this 1-hour workshop we find out where is your true north and where are you headed. Are you on the right course to achieve goals or you need "re-routing"! Join Jyoti Dandona and Darryl Wright as they show you how to use the Personal Agility System’s Priorities map tool to answer what is important and urgent, and what would make you happy.

13:00 - 14:00

Jan Scheerlinck: SAFe + S3 = SW3LL! Agile transformation @ KU Leuven, powered by Sociocracy

Agile organisations also need hierarchy. At ICTS - the central IT service of KU Leuven - we have noticed that the concept of one hierarchy is shifting to a model with multiple hierarchies. ICTS currently has the WHAT / WHEN hierarchy, the HOW hierarchy and the WHO hierarchy. By means of concrete examples, we want to illustrate how the SAFe framework and Sociocracy (S3), among other things, have inspired us to shape these hierarchies and make them operate effectively. The presenters: Leen Van Rentergem/ Member of the ICTS management team / Sw3ll! Architect / Amongst others senior IT product expert in educational and research affairs. ------------------------ Barbara De Bruyn / Member of the ICTS management team / Sw3ll! Architect / Amongst others senior IT product expert in general administration and in SAP technology. ------------------------- Jan Scheerlinck / Member of the ICTS management team / Sw3ll! Architect / Amongst others senior IT product expert in university administration and in contracting.

14:00 - 14:30

Steve Holyer: Introducing Continuous Agile Chartering

Are you looking for an Agile Practice that promotes self-organisation, connects stakeholders with development, and optimises planning, discovery and delivery? Try Continuous Agile Chartering. It can super-charge the Agile Journey in your enterprise. It's a practice made for co-located teams working in the same room, and I found it moves flawlessly online to provide a natural template for remote teams and stakeholders working over Zoom (or any distributed communication tool). An Agile Charter builds and maintains a shared understanding between agile team members and stakeholders. It should be a shared understanding of three important components: the team's purpose in relation to the product, their alignment as a team, and the greater context in which they operate. You might think that Agile Chartering is a one time thing. Or at best, a big event that you do once in a blue moon. But wait. If chartering is good, what happens when you do more chartering? Let's explore Continuous Agile Chartering as a way to upgrade every sprint planning meeting, and your quarterly release planning, as well as your big room SAFe PI planning. Continuous Agile Chartering is even made for your daily standups. You might not believe that this one scalable practice can give you better outcomes at every planning horizon, but Continuous Agile Chartering does.

14:30 - 16:00

Steve Holyer: Handson Continuous Agile Chartering (Workshop)

This hands-on workshop follows on from the talk Introducing Continuous Agile Chartering. Please attend the talk before the workshop when possible, because we won’t repeat the introduction we will dive right in to begin working with the practice. In this hands on practical workshop you’ll work together to learn and practice chartering activities from the book Liftoff by Larsen & Nies. And you'll explore ways to apply the practice appropriately and continuously at every planning horizon. including in your daily standup. You'll also learn to use the Charter-mat as a guideline for Continuous Agile Chartering. Since this is a remote workshop you’ll also see how in-room Continuous Agile Chartering move nicely online for distributed teams working over Zoom (or your favourite communication tools).

16:00 - 17:00

Soledad Pinter: Heart of Agile as a compass to navigate complexity

Today, we face challenges beyond agility, down to teamwork core values, affecting effectiveness and results. Teamwork core values as communication, motivation, and trust to mention some. Through the 4 words and 3 enablers with people at the centre, we will walk together through actions and ideas to inspire you to identify & solve these challenges using Heart of Agile compass.

17:00 - 18:00

Jan De Baere: When working harder does not solve the problem anymore

Knowledge work in the context of ever increasing complexity and speed of change. Organizations report me that they experience an ever increasing pressure to deliver, that the priorities keep changing and that people feel undervalued. They run around the whole day to move things and at the end of the day they are exhausted and realize that they still have to start doing the stuff they planned for that day. In our new context of increasing complexity just working harder is only going to make things worse. This talk is a visual simulation of work. You will see what causes this symptoms and above all what you can do about it. Work smarter not harder.

18:30 - 19:30

Pia-Maria Thorén: The Psychological Safety Game

The importance of an approach that is permeated by security and confidence to increase profitability and innovation is emphasized in this session – we need psychological safety to increase creativity through a culture where it is ok to fail fast and try again. We play “The Psychological Safety Game” to facilitate the dialogue about difficult topics. And here is the link to the game: agilepeople.com/psysafegame We play it in breakout rooms of around 5 persons after a short introduction to the topic. Instructions on the link.

20:00 - 21:00

Mary Poppendieck: Too Much of a Good Thing - Finding the Balance

Efficiency is a good thing. But during the pandemic, super-efficient supply chains collapsed, leaving us with shortages of everything from personal protective gear to flour for baking bread. Value is a good thing. But delighting customers by providing great value without obtaining enough revenue to sustain the organization will eventually destroy it, along with the value it creates. Reducing friction is a good thing. But ice covered roads provide no traction at all, and organizations with no friction lack the challenges that spur innovation. Aristotle described virtue as the mean between deficiency and excess: You can be a coward or you can be rash, but courage lies somewhere in between. It’s time to pay attention to the principle that “There is no such thing as an unmitigated good.” We have learned during the pandemic that efficiency needs to be balanced with resilience, that autonomy must be balanced by the common good, and that impossible challenges often lead to remarkable creativity. Great products are the result of great tradeoff decisions – striking just the right balance between competing values. This talk is about how the skillful use of challenge, tension and diverse perspectives can help make excellent choices.
Tuesday 23 March

09:00 - 10:00

Hendrik Esser: Fit for Purpose

Is Agile fitting all situations? Is waterfall evil and must be avoided? In this interactive talk we will de-mystify agility. We will look at the full spectrum of approaches and discuss which one is the most suitable fitting your organization's and business's context. You will learn about the key characteristics that drive your decision for a certain way of working approach. You will learn what other aspects, like type of people, team composition, leadership and organizational approach need to be considered and how they fit to different contexts.

13:00 - 14:00

Naveen Kumar Singh: Enable transparency through an effective product backlog

Product Backlog consists of the work that helps in meeting the product goal. The Product Backlog is an emergent, ordered list of what is needed to improve the product. It is a crucial artifact in the Scrum Framework, but how to develop a product backlog that enables transparency? Let's discuss developing a product backlog that enhances transparency. I will share below during our online webinar:- 1. How to prepare a product roadmap 2. Come up with MVP and releases 3. Writing user stories and acceptance criteria 4. Estimation user stories 5. Ordering user stories

15:00 - 16:00

Juan Banda: De-Scaling Agile Teams

Scaling up has been the default mode for trying to get multiple Agile teams to work, but this approach has two mayor flows: one, it introduces hierarchies, and two, it adds up extra complexity in the form of processes and tools. Observing the problem from the complete opposite angle, what if we de-scale Agile teams by flattening hierarchies and use the simplest processes than can possible work? This session will address this question and build a case for simplicity.

17:00 - 18:00

Ardita Karaj: Business Agility without focusing on frameworks

Are you working for a large organization? Are you trying to find the right framework for you? I have seen this challenge put on many organizations that I have coached and consulted. It is clear that a specific framework is not going to solve the problems they have with many different teams and many different contexts. They need to pull from many frameworks and many practices. I will share stories of learning, dealing with challenges, successes and building capabilities in some Canadian organizations that can help anyone, anywhere

18:00 - 19:00

Valérie Wattelle: Cracking the code of your tough decisions with Agility (Talk & Workshop)

Opening with a crisp talk on how you can make better decisions with the help of a performing agile team as well as a workshop to live it. Part 1 : experiencing the ultimatum effect: the impact of emotions on decision making. Part 2 : creating conditions for an improved decision through a practical and shared example – klaxoon Part 3: conclusions

18:00 - 19:00

Yves Hanoulle: Meta Coaching (Workshop)

Yves Hanoulle hosts a coaching practice session, the Meta Coaching session. During this event we will have 3 sessions of one hour, where people can bring their challenges. We will help you find your solution. During these sessions, you will have two coaches. - A person who doesn't call themselves an experienced coach. - This person is helped by one of our meta coaches. These are experienced coaches. These meta coaches will give feedback in the same session. That was all you can learn. That means there are two kinds of participants for this session: 1/ "I want to be coached" - I bring a challenge, frustration, anything I want help with. 2/ "I'm ready to coach" - I have probably done some coaching, maybe followed a CoachRetreat or an Agile Coach Camp. Yet I want to have some more experience before they dare to call ourselves an experienced coach.

19:00 - 20:00

Yves Hanoulle: Meta Coaching (Workshop) - part 2

Yves Hanoulle hosts a coaching practice session, the Meta Coaching session.

20:00 - 21:00

Yves Hanoulle: Meta Coaching (Workshop) - part 3

Yves Hanoulle hosts a coaching practice session, the Meta Coaching session.
Wednesday 24 March

09:00 - 10:00

Deepti Jain: State of Agile Transformation in India

India has not seen many successful Agile Transformations, and in this report we have worked over 2 years, first with 30, and then with 40 Lean Agile Practitioners and Thought Leaders from Industry who have played a pivotal role in their organisation’s journey for Agility, to understand why Agile Transformation are not achieved, or sustained here. This report also reflected on how the country's culture, mindset and socioeconomic position impacts. Key Takeaways: Learn the framework that you too can use for your team, organisation or country to showcase key factors impacting the state of anything. Understand what are possible factors influencing any transformation of a group. Learn about Indian culture and industries there. You can use it when you are planning work in India. Credits: This is an original content, created by me, along with Tathagat Verma, and then as an experience report researcher, I got Shepherded by Rebecca Wirfs-Brock.

10:30 - 11:30

Deepti Jain: Understanding Your Team - The Compass Activity (Workshop)

The Compass Activity allows any team (distributed or collocated) to understand the work preferences for each team member. From understanding these preferences, a team can create working agreements. Key Takeaways: Establish initial working agreements for a new team, especially a distributed team that can't meet in person. But the real power of this exercise comes when a team member enters or leaves the team. The exercise can be run again to see what a departing team member is taking with them or what a new team member brings to the team. This activity can also be great for team building, helping members see how their differences can help them, more like how they all can complement each other. Credits: I learned this game from Mark Kilby. All details are here: https://bit.ly/compasspts-Kilby.

11:00 - 12:00

Peter Stevens: Three Secrets of Agile Leaders

Agility as a movement started with software developers uncovering better ways of doing what they do. Today that movement is driving even business leaders to rethink how they lead their organizations. What does it mean to "be" agile? How can agility be applied to leading organizations? Where do successful agile leaders start? Three stories, three secrets and three tips to apply agility for more impact in your life and work.

14:00 - 15:00

Oana Juncu: accessing our collective fears to reach shared leadership, purpose driven Agile organisations and Product Ownership

If you are a manager, did you feel excited by a more collaborative way of working, then felt lost because your hierarchy has the same "old ways" type of expectations from you? Whether you are an Agile Coach, an Agile transformation facilitator or a a Scrum Master, did it happen to you to feel frustrated because the change you wanted to see was not the one that was taking place? Did you ever think that the values and principles you promoted had not the desired echo? Did you ever feel the pressure to succeed in a transformation, while people had other operational priorities? If you ever felt this way, this session invites you to explore another path toward leadership, a path that I believe helpful either for coaches, facilitators, and managers, the path of the servant leader, who I'd rather call "leader at service". In the talk you are invited to play with the "Human Element" model created by William Schulz to explore the root causes of our fears, and discover the transformation model toward selfless leadership for a shared purpose driven Agile organisation, model inspired by the Theory U. It will highlight the "leader at service" posture beyond our own fears, our ego and eventually, our own involvement in power games.

15:15 - 16:15

Oana Junco: going deeper into the presentation topic (Workshop)

See Oana Junco's presentation description (previous session)

16:00 - 17:00

Aanu Gopald: Agility in Africa - The Past and the Promising Future

All around the world, digital transformation is becoming a critical factor in long-term, sustainable economic development, and Africa is no exception. Research shows that the continent is still trailing behind not just in adoption but embracing the agile mindset compared to other continents in the world. While there are several factors behind this slow adoption, the next two decades seems to be promising to the young continent, as the world is expected to see more changes, digital transformation and innovation in Africa than any other continent in the world. In this session, I will share some of these challenges and what the future of agility looks like for Africa.

18:00 - 19:00

Heitor Roriz Filho: Reinventing the greatest invention of the last 120 years

Agile is the tip of the iceberg of a New Era in Management. Management is an invention and a technology. Like any tech it is subject to change following an S-curve. Guess what? We are way past its inflection point and right now the New Business Administration is being literally invented by practitioners around the world, just like 120 years ago when the foundations of mass production, task design and brand management were laid out by industry practitioners! I will cover in this talk what is being challenged in general management, how Agile worked as a spark plug for this whole process, what concepts are already in practice, and where we are heading. Simply put: I show the missing piece of the puzzle that EVERY change agent aka Agile Coach MUST know in order to truly succeed in transformation projects. Even if you don't have a management background. Welcome to the New Era in Management.

19:00 - 20:00

Yves Vervloesem: The New New MBA - Master of Business Agility

In this fast-train talk, you will find inspiration on how relevant the skills and techniques of the typical MBA, Master of Business Administration, still are. Understanding deliberate versus emergent strategy, understanding the learning organization, understanding the matrix versus the network organization, ... we will take you through some of the typical MBA skills and theories for sense-making, but do they still matter in a Business Agility context?

20:00 - 21:15

Brock Argue & Erkan Kadir: Integrated Agile - How to gracefully manage the reality of agile mixed with waterfall (Workshop)

Agile mixed with Waterfall exists in every product development organization globally, yet current thinking teaches us to crusade for one approach at the expense of the other - an approach that creates unnecessary resistance and alienates people with different perspectives. The question is: How can we manage the reality of a mixed-methods environment while still receiving the intended benefits of both approaches? In this talk, Brock Argue and Erkan Kadir will introduce Integrated Agile, a groundbreaking and practical approach that leverages Polarity Thinking to manage the predictable dynamics between Agile and Waterfall while maximizing the upsides of both approaches.
Thursday 25 March

09:00 - 10:00

Shane Hastie: The Ethics of Agile Coaching

Agile Coaching is hit and miss--there are no industry guidelines and standards around what good coaching is and active harm is being done by some unethical coaches out there today. While having a voluntary 'Code of Conduct' might not prevent this from happening, it could raise visibility around what good behaviors should be expected of a professional and ethical agile coach. A volunteer group have been working on drafting a Code of Ethical Conduct for Agile Coaching. During this interactive session, Shane Hastie will present the ideas from that work and share and a draft code. He will engage the audience (that's you!) to provide feedback on what has been done and to add anything that should be included in such a code.

10:00 - 11:00

Arne Åhlander & Kurt Nielsen: How to Organize for Radical Improvement through Transparency and Collaboration

The presentation will describe a modern, non-hierarchical way of structuring organizations to be highly resilient and able to create sustainable value for all stakeholders in complex times of rapid change. A reliable and innovative approach that provides consistency of purpose and enables constant learning, adaptation and improvement. “We want to be able ro turn on a dime for a dime”. We call it Agile Lean Leadership. Important aspects of Agile Lean leadership are: Customer Centricity, The Value Stream and a consolidated set of Values and Principles. In the presentation we will show a set of a few practical, enabling constraints that are easily implemented and will govern the individuals and the organization on the journey towards agility.

17:00 - 18:00

Johanna Rothman: Modern Management - Adapt Management to Enable Business Agility

Too many people say, “With agile, we don’t need no stinkin’ managers.” However, because managers create and refine the culture, modern managers create and refine the agile culture. Without modern management, any agile initiative will die. It’s time to invite managers to change their behaviors and create a real agile culture. Learning outcomes: * Identify the three management principles that create modern management (managing yourself, creating a harmonic whole, management innovation). * Establish the 7 principles that create leadership (as opposed to management). * Review many of the myths that prevent management from achieving leadership excellence and agility. Focus on three myths and offer options. * Consider how managers can change their behaviors, realizing they don’t have to be perfect.

18:15 - 19:45

Johanna Rothman: How To Create a Career Ladder for Vertical and Lateral Movement (Workshop)

Many career ladders assume that people have linear careers. They move “up” to a new role. However, many people don’t have linear careers. They bounce between a technical role and management—often several times. Even after they bounce, they might not make a permanent career decision. Worse, most career ladders nudge technical people into management. Instead of pushing people “up” into management, why not support people as they experiment in their career, such as “over” to a different role? Learning Objectives: * Identify the problems when organizations push great technical people into management, especially without training. * Identify what a career ladder is. * How a job analysis intersects with a career ladder. * Options to create a career ladder focused on supporting other people and influence across the code/tests and the organization.
Friday 26 March

10:00 - 12:00

Kris Philippaerts & Vincent Vanderheeren: Using Causal loops to develop Team learning (Workshop)

Teams mastering the habit of continuous improvement have learned that problems are part of the game. They start seeing them as opportunities for growth and learning instead of going in defense and opening the umbrella. As you become more and more aware of the system(s) surrounding your team system, you also learn to focus on the opportunities that matter. Systems thinking and the use of causal loop diagrams encourage a holistic view and avoids short-termism. It makes the various perspectives, the ones that underpin our actions, decisions and behavior inside the team explicit, providing a better basis for high-performing teams. Causal loop diagrams offer a powerful means of communication and enable you to avoid quick-fixes that are likely to backfire. This workshop is an introduction on how teams can apply causal loops to generate insights on common patterns Agile teams have to deal with.

10:30 - 12:00

Koen Vastmans: Build-Run-Improve-Repeat - a game about implementing and improving your DevOps cycle (Workshop)

When talking about technical aspects of agile, DevOps is the next thing to focus on, bridging the gap between development and operations. Big tech companies wouldn't be big tech companies without applying DevOps principles and practices. So what works for big tech companies, could also work for your organization, right? Which includes an automated CI/CD pipeline for faster delivery, right? If this is the direction your organization is going, that might not be the right choice to start with... But how do you avoid taking the wrong decisions? How can you experience the impact of your decisions in a safe environment? Well, then Build-Run-Improve-Repeat can help you. Build-Run-Improve-Repeat is a board game (only online for now) that revolves around the different stages of the DevOps cycle and their corresponding activities. It makes you decide how to invest in improving your way of working on all these stages and experience what happens if something goes wrong. And some things can really go wrong: what about bugs, security breaches, excessive load, performance issues, or system outages? And what can happen if your technical debt piles up because the teams absolutely need to deliver new features? During this 90 minutes hands-on session you will get to know the gameplay of Build-Run-Improve-Repeat, experience what the impact of your decisions is and learn how you can get started yourself with this game in your own organization. Not convinced yet? Then check out this video: https://youtu.be/cudbgA-hbnU

12:00 - 14:00

Patrick Steyaert: The Agile Capabilities Model (Workshop)

Change in an organization introduces friction just as surely as applying the brakes of a car. A major source of friction is not just people that resist change, but more than that, practices that do not fit together. Introducing new practices creates friction with old practices. As an effective tool for change, the agile capabilities model helps practitioners to understand how agile practices relate. More specifically, it helps to understand how one set of practices creates the fertile ground for the introduction of other practices. It is a foundation for reducing friction when leveraging methods for developing agile capabilities at scale.

13:00 - 14:00

Eliana Philip-Amulum: Psychological Safety - Not A Part Of Agility?

The African culture is deeply rooted in organisations hindering the benefits of Agility. Leaders are afraid to adopt Agile but rather adopt the systems of work that help in Agile Transformation journey. Without Agile Principles, Agile Transformation is just a dream than will not come through or to be precise “a fantasy’’. When Leaders consciously abstain from the Principles of Agile and expect to get results it becomes a fallacy to the entire organisation and its people. Leaders often wonder why the rate of attrition is high after the adoption of Agile? Some Leaders boast ‘We have gone Agile!’. In the so called Agile organisations in these times of uncertainty, employees are still in the organisation because of their monthly income, and of course they are used to the norms and behavioural patterns of leaders. And so, for you to survive you must be a sycophant and play by the rules. These acts have gradually eaten up innovation, ability to learn, unlearn and relearn etc. Employee engagement is no more than a meeting where the leaders just speak for some hours on what they want to see in the Financial status of the organisation and expect feedback from the employees. Quite absurd! In this World of Work, the concept “Psychological Safety” has been drowned by culture, norms and behaviour of leaders. There are so many “Unwritten/unspoken rules” in these so called Agile organisation hence the great difficulty in reaching Agile transformation. A 2017 Gallup report found that if organizations increase psychological safety, it makes employees more engaged in their work and can lead to a 12% increase in productivity.

14:00 - 15:00

Tomasz Wykowski: Why your scaling Scrum fails

“When our organization grows, the things we used to do often stop working. We try “harder”, “better” or “faster”, but the problems remain. Let’s talk about common patterns I’ve seen in a number of companies that prevent them from building larger agile organizations and how to address them.”

15:00 - 16:00

Diego Quesada Allué: Agile around the world in the Public Sector (Workshop)

Agile is very much about culture. What are the differences between public and private organizations` culture -if any? Is there a Public Sector culture that makes adopting an Agile culture more or less challenging? In this workshop we ́ll reflect around these questions and explore attendants` perceived characteristics of the Public Sector in their own countries.

16:00 - 17:30

Charles-Louis de Maere: How has Agile Changed the World? (Workshop)

Twenty years after the "Manifesto for Agile Software Development" was written, let's take a look at how this has changed the world. And what better way to observe that than to come with our own stories, our own experiences, and share them back for the world to hear? How are the values and principles reflected in the way we interact with one another? And in a world hit by the COVID-pandemic with lockdowns all over the place, what would be your take on "The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation."?