Chris Hedgate

The real difference between agile thinking and other ways of developing software is the emphasis that agile methodologies put on people and collaboration. Born out of the will to succeed, as opposed to the fear of failure, agile thinking advocate creating an environment where people working in teams can self-organize around their work. They are encouraged to collaborate to find better ways of working, rather than trying to control and direct them. While hardly anyone would disagree with the positive effects of this, in practice it turns out to be a difficult shift of mindset to implement it. Since we are raised to reward people as individuals, agile practices often seem counter-intuitive. Having two developers work together on one task must be very ineffective, right? How can we be sure that someone on the team will take that boring task no one wants to do? In this session we will explore these counter-intuitive practices to find out why they are more effective in the end. You will also come away armed with knowledge and tools to help make the mindset shift happen in your organization.

Having a retrospective means to reflect in a group over work done, with the purpose of finding better ways of working. With their focus on continuous improvement Scrum and other agile methods have made retrospectives more popular than ever. Effective retrospectives however include so much more than simply answering the questions what went well, what went wrong and what do we want to change. Effective retrospectives gives the group a chance to explore their strengths and weaknesses together, define work rules and a common goal to strive towards. Regular retrospectives are one of the best techniques to support a group in it's development into a high-performing, self-organized team. Do you feel that your group's retrospectives have become boring and monotonous, and that they rarely lead to any real improvements? Then you should come to this session, where I will provide concrete ideas on how you can improve your retrospectives for a better result. Your group will get to know each other better, have more fun together and most importantly find ways to perform better.

"I know you believe you understand what you thought I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant." - Unknown author The first value in the agile manifesto is 'Individuals and interactions over processes and tools'. While this is easy to agree with, interactions between individuals are all too often frustratingly ineffective. There are many opportunities for a thought to get corrupted on it's path from deep inside your mind, going through your mouth into my ears and finally arriving in my mind. Based on my understanding of what you meant I respond with something completely different from what you were expecting to hear. We can avoid these problems by increasing our awareness and knowledge of what happens in a discussion. In this session you will participate in a hands-on exercise where we will break down an interaction into small steps. We will hear, see and feel what happens both on the inside and outside of two individuals during an interaction. By participating you will improve your own interactions, and you will also be better equipped to lead your team through effective discussions.