Tiffany Lentz

Presentations

Agile Project and Management Metrics: Measuring Success Downward and Upward

This session focuses on visibility of team progress and correcting team "bad smells" using Agile metrics. Since we use metrics to self-correct and sharpen the team, they are an integral part of each iteration and flow into release planning. We will discuss some of the How's and Why's of team metrics and review the risks that are inevitable when it comes to gathering metrics.

Examples that we will talk through are: Burnup, Velocity, Lean "Finger Charts", Efficiency/Availability, Utilization and Estimation Accuracy.

The Agile Mindset: Applying Agile in Non-Technical Areas of an Organization

Agile techniques are often pigeon-holed as just applying to software projects and IT organizations. Agile techniques are a mindset more than a list of rules to follow and can bring efficiency and improvements to all areas of an organization.

This presentation will cover a case study of ThoughtWorks experience with a major bank and credit card company in the US and their application of Agile techniques. We will cover the process, outcomes and challenges of the Agile implementation.

Iteration Management: What's in your Toolkit?

Is your Agile team running smoothly? How do you know? This answer is found in your iteration and your toolkit for constant team improvement! Comparing Iteration Management skills and tools to those of the Agile Project Manager, Scrum Master and Technical Leader roles, you will see that Iteration Management encompasses end to end activities of the iteration, which are crucial to unblocking your software production line and making your team a success.

This session will enable participants to employ critical and industry proven techniques that will improve a team’s processes immediately upon application. An Iteration Manager encompasses not just project management activities, but ALL activities of iterations, including: story writing, development, testing, facilitation, visibility, communication and metrics. The session will provide hands on, proven and critical techniques to successfully managing the inner workings of iterations.

Dealing with Organizational Growing Pains

Change is upon us. We change to stay relevant. Many organizations are faced with the options of change or die. Change is admittedly painful, so how do you balance all the moving parts of finding a starting point, prioritizing which processes to change, implementing change, and dealing with the aftermath? And all of these steps are complicated by people, their comfort levels and their personal agendas and motivating factors.

The goal of this session is to equip you not only with a better understanding of people, but with a process for implementing change in your organization and some ideas to use immediately.

4 Tales of Enterprise Agility

Change is upon us! We change to stay relevant. Many organizations are faced with the options of change or die. Change is admittedly painful, so how do you balance all the moving parts of finding a starting point, prioritizing which processes to change, implementing change, and dealing with the aftermath? This session covers ideas for managing the delicacy and complexity of change and looks at the successes and failures of 4 organizations who embarked on programs of change.

Change programs are complicated by people, their comfort levels, personal agendas and motivating factors. This session covers the psychology of change, how to deal with personal agendas and motivating factors and 4 real world examples of organizational change. We will look at approaches for changing People, Processes and Tools. We will also discuss models for implementing Agile as a change program in your organization.

Agile Clarity

What is Agile? Where did it come from? What does it mean to me? This session gives some history of Agile as a response to the software industry in a time when it was struggling with processes that just didn't make sense. We will cover the What, the Why, the How and the Who of Agile processes.

This session does more than just scratch the surface of what Agile means. We will seek to clarify definitions, business reasons, and technology reasons for the Agile approach. We will compare and contrast Agile with traditional methods and seek to understand how the roles differ as well. We will look at samples of management, analysis, development and testing responsibilities. Building on the theory we will discuss, we will have a holistic picture of What Agile is, Why we use it, How we use it, and Who the players are.