Mike's Agile2008 Abstracts

The Agile 2008 conference is just around the corner. This is a great opportunity to hear some fantastic speakers and get to know the broader Agile community. It is a blast getting together with other folks that are passionate about Agile and want to make a difference. You can get more information about the conference by clicking here.

For those not familiar with the content selection process, the entire community was encouraged to submit session proposals. These proposals were publicly reviewed and all comments were available to everyone. Some people really did not pull any punches, it was pretty brutal. After a period of review, the selection committee took a crack at the proposals and made their decisions. Everything was very transparent and I was really impressed with the process.

I will be giving three talks over the course of the week, all three on topics I am very passionate about and have blogged on over the past few months. If you happen to be at the conference, I would love to meet you and hear your feedback on my writing at Leading Agile or over on Agile Chronicles.

Here are the session titles and abstracts I've submitted for the conference proceedings:

Leading Volunteers With Agility

Volunteer organizations are unique because people are not paid for their contribution and your organization is in competition for space in an already over-booked schedule. By necessity, volunteer organizations require a more human-centric approach to leadership. This workshop will explore the 10 things you better be doing if you want to harness the passion and enthusiasm of your team of volunteers. Topics such as empowerment, self-organization, and short-cycle delivery will be addressed using real world scenarios.

Wednesday August 6th from 2:00 - 3:30 in the Huron Room

The Good and Bad of Agile Offshore Development

Companies today are attempting to lower costs and increase their staffing flexibility by taking some [or even all] of their development activities overseas. Simultaneously, many of these same organizations are exploring agile development practices in an effort to increase quality and to improve project performance. This report explores the intersection of these two significant trends common in today’s software development organizations. We will show how our team built an effective agile offshore development capability, what we learned along the way, and what we would do differently next time around.

Thursday August 7th from 4:00 - 5:30 in Conference Room H

Using the Unified Process as a Scaling Framework for Scrum

One of the common complaints about the Unified Process is that it is too prescriptive and document focused. An often heard complaint about Scrum is that it does not scale to large projects and you never quite know where you are going until you get there. What if we could leverage the best of both methodologies? What if we could deliver with just enough structure and documentation to scale the project but maintain the collaborative, human centered approach of Scrum? This talk will show you how it’s done.

Friday August 8th from 8:30 - 10:00 in Conference Room C

My Bio

Mike is a Product Consultant and Agile Evangelist for VersionOne. Prior to joining VersionOne, Mike was a Senior Project Manager for CheckFree Corporation where he led a portfolio of projects for their online banking and bill payment business unit. Mike has a background in traditional project management but has worked primarily with agile methodologies for the past four years.

Mike is a certified PMP project manager and a certified ScrumMaster. Mike co-created the DSDM Agile Project Leader certification. He holds this certification at the Foundation, Practitioner, and Examiner levels and was recently named an honorary member of the DSDM consortium. Mike is on the board of APLN and the current Treasurer.

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The Agile Edge Conference

Next week Valtech and VersionOne are co-sponsoring a one day conference called the Agile Edge. This will be an intense introduction to Agile designed to give attendees tools they can use to drive organizational transformation and breakthrough performance. David Anderson will be kicking off the event so it should prove to be a very informative and exciting day.

The conference will offer three tracks, each covering a different role on the project: product owners, developers, and project managers. I have the honor of doing the talks on the Agile Management track. We've prepared three presentations that are geared toward traditional project managers making the switch to agile.

Refactoring your PMPs
Successfully moving to Agile Project Management will hinge largely on how well we adopt new ways of thinking about project structure and control. Building on the principles of PMI and the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) we will explore how a PMP can adapt their knowledge and experience to become an effective Agile Project Manager.

The Agile Power Shift
Agile methods build high-performing project cultures and put a great deal of emphasis on trust, empowerment, and self-organization. Agile moves us away from command and control project structures and toward structures that help us tap into the passion, creativity, and enthusiasm of the team. This team centric approach can leave the traditional project manager wondering about their new role on an agile project. This talk will explain the essentials of agile team dynamics, how teams contribute to project success, and what we must learn to become effective agile project leaders.

Agile Project Management Explained
Agile represents a dramatic shift in thinking about project management. It also represents a pretty radical shift in what a project manager does. At some point project managers have to transition from thinking about Agile to actually making it happen. This talk will explain the mechanics of running an Agile project and how these techniques support the principles behind Agile methodologies.

For those that cannot make the talk next week in DC, we'll be offering this conference in other cities around the country. Next up is New York on June 25th. Click here for more information and to register for the event. Looking forward to seeing everyone there!

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