This session will describe our experience in using the Scrum process of Software Development to create complex tools for use in animated movie production. Our process evolved out of the need to keep the task of UI design at least one sprint ahead of software development. Our products are designed for the creative in-house artists who use the tools for long hours over the course of movie production. We will also share ways to capture the complexity in the artists workflow and methods to break it down into reusable components both for graphical user interfaces and for software development.

This tutorial focuses on the detailed specifics that will make distributed agile meetings effective. We will demonstrate several key agile meetings, run in a distributed fashion, so teams can immediately improve their projects. To do so, I will highlight specific tools available in the market place to facilitate each of these different kinds of discussions (retrospectives, planning meetings, stand ups). I’ll demonstrate the processes to enable more effective communication between remote locations and describe the key roles required on a project to encourage the best exchange of information.

You’re negotiating a project with a client or internal customer, but they balk when you don’t present a fixed budget and a predefined list of requirements. How do you convince them that the benefits of an Agile team outweigh a top heavy and fragile requirements document? Based on Agile experience with government and commercial clients, we will discuss ways to make your customer feel comfortable with process changes that don’t always result in the same set of documents they are used to.

Summary for Event Guide

A high-performing agile team is tight knit. They have worked hard to become a cohesive unit and have developed a bond. This chemistry can be thrown off balance when someone is added to the team in the middle of a project. It does not matter how flexible, capable, or agile savvy the new team member is. If they have not been involved in the care and nurturing of the team’s culture and is not invested in the same way that the other team members are. When the new team member is not flexible, capable or agile savvy, the effect can be devastating.

Understanding the forces driving and restraining the adoption of Agile in your organization is key to your success. This audience participation workshop creates two teams, the Drivers and the Restrainers and has them present the forces at work in the most original and humorous way possible.

This results in a lot of fun and learning.

The workshop will be led by two experienced coaches to bring out the subtle details of the forces and lead the discussion on how to improve the success given the forces at work.

Starting up an Agile team is one of the first things you might be asked to do when a company wants to “go Agile.” What do you need to know before starting up a team? In the start-up, how much do teams need to know about Agile before they “go”? What do they need to know about each other…what the project is all about…who they will become as a team? These and other questions are answered as we walk through good ways to start-up Agile teams.

This is a journey starting in 2005 when establishing a new software company in Bangladesh 7000 km away from Denmark. Hiring 20 people in one week in Bangladesh and start using CMMI processes to integrate development in Denmark and Bangladesh. After some challenging time aborting the CMMI project and switching back to agile and lean techniques to make it work. Experience from implementing global big bang Scrum and building a kaizen culture. From long running projects, technical dept and integration nightmares to small batches, continuous integration and faster delivery of business value.

Inkubook.com came into existence in March 2008 when an existing software development and marketing organization received a new CEO and was immediately tasked with building an entirely different product. This report discusses the evolution from the existing Scrum process through four major changes as the team’s process shifted to meet the team’s goals and management’s demands. Focus will be given to the barriers benefits that the team perceived with each stage. Where possible, a discussion of the unintended consequences of the team’s actions will be explored with specific examples.

Could an executive team be happy using Scrum? Yes, it’s possible! Picture the scene: executives of strategic departments (financial, HR, IT, sales & marketing, production, etc.) being part of a cross-functional executive team…an executive Product Owner prioritizing an Executive Product Backlog that helps the team to follow the company’s vision. What are the main challenges of an executive ScrumMaster? In this session I will show a real case of a Brazilian company that uses Scrum in their executive team.

How do you scale Scrum to hundreds of people? This presentation will explain a way of organizing your development so that it scales up well. It involves breaking the link between architecture and organization, breaking code ownership and organize the development in a more customer centric way. This has its drawbacks too! These are explained and some techniques for overcoming these drawbacks are discussed. This talk is based on the “feature teams” and “requirement areas” chapters in the recently published “Scaling Agile & Lean Development” by Bas Vodde and Craig Larman.