PhxSUG Events
![March 30 [ONLINE]: Ideation to Implementation](https://phxsug.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/img-online-small.jpg)
March 30 [ONLINE]: Ideation to Implementation
Agenda
6:00 - Be Connected
6:05 - Meeting Start
6:15ish - Talk Start
7:45ish - Meeting End
Description
Great ideas can be sabotaged by poor implementation. Join in this hands-on, action-focused session to take our great ideas for products, initiatives, systems, and projects and actually implement them in a way that is effective, efficient, and sustainable. Attendees will learn from engaging stories, lively discussions, and fun activities practical ways to implement great ideas into your organization.
Attendees will:
- Gain an understanding of implementation processes
- Learn how to effectively lead change initiatives through discussion and practical activities
- Be able to address obstacles and challenges to implementation
Speaker Bio(s)
Amber Vanderburg
Amber Vanderburg is a multi-award-winning international businessperson, keynote speaker, and founder of The Pathwayz Group. In 2016, she was the only female, only American, and only blonde Academy elite football coach for the Adidas Gameday Academy/Paris Saint Germain Academy in Bangalore, India. She worked with an international team of coaches to transform the organizational design, training development, and corporate culture to cultivate a higher-performing team. Today, Amber works with international teams in an action-focused approach to guide teams to become more effective, more efficient, and more enjoyable.
April 23rd [ ONLINE ]: Introduction to Evidence-Based Management (EBM) – Measure and improve your ability to deliver value?
We're very excited to be able to our first completely online meeting. This is a great topic presented by Patricia and Kurt from Scrum.org. They have spend A LOT of time on this topic. The Evidence-Based Management (EBM) framework identifies four Key Value Areas that give organizations an Agile focus to MEASURE and DELIVER real business value.
Agenda
6:00 - Be Connected
6:05 - Meeting Start
6:15ish - Talk Start
7:45ish - Meeting End
Description
Evidence-Based Management (EBM) - How do you measure and improve your ability to deliver value?
Agile organizations know that frequent inspection of results limits risk and improves the ability to deliver value. Their leaders manage investments based on ROI and value. At the same time, they work to influence the organization to create an adaptive culture that allows it to take advantage of opportunities before their competitors do.
Evidence-Based Management (EBM) is a framework organizations can use to help them measure, manage, and increase the value they derive from their product delivery. EBM helps organizations put their right measures in place to invest in the right places, make smarter decisions and reduce risk using an iterative and incremental approach. Using empiricism helps organizations to embrace agile principles and values, helping them seek a better way forward by delivering value, inspecting the results, and adapting their approach to improve.
Kurt Bittner and Patricia Kong from Scrum.org present the Evidence-Based Management framework and address the following questions:
- What are organizations trying to achieve with agility?
- What are organizations trying to achieve with measurement?
- Why do traditional measures fail to achieve this?
- How can EBM help you continuously improve?
Speaker Bio(s)
Patricia Kong and Kurt Bittner
Patricia Kong is the Product Owner of the Scrum.org enterprise solutions program, which includes the Nexus Framework, Evidence-Based Management, Scrum Studio, and Scrum Development Kit. She is co-author of The Nexus Framework for Scaling Scrum published by Pearson. She is also a public speaker and mentor. She also created and launched the Scrum.org Partners in Principle Program. Patricia emerged through the financial services industry, and has led product development, product management and marketing for several early stage companies in the US and Europe. At Forrester Research, Patricia worked with their largest clients focusing on business development and delivery engagements.
Kurt Bittner has more than 30 years of experience delivering working software in short, feedback-driven cycles. He has helped a wide variety of organizations adopt agile software delivery practices, including large banking, insurance, manufacturing, and retail organizations, as well as large government agencies. He has worked for or with large software delivery organizations including Oracle, HP, IBM, and Microsoft, and is a former technology industry analyst with Forrester Research. His focus is on helping organizations build strong, self-organizing, high-performance teams that deliver solutions that customers love. He is the author of four books on software development-related topics, including The Nexus Framework for Scaling Scrum. He is based in Boulder, Colorado and serves as VP of Enterprise Solutions for Scrum.org.
![[SPECIAL North/South] – The Scrum Fieldbook: A Master Class on Accelerating Performance, Getting Results, and Defining the Future](https://phxsug.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/img-southnorth-location.jpg)
[SPECIAL North/South] – The Scrum Fieldbook: A Master Class on Accelerating Performance, Getting Results, and Defining the Future
Where: IntraEdge (Google Map)
5660 W Chandler Blvd #1
Chandler, AZ 85226
Agenda:
6:00 Registration Food and Drink
6:25 Announcements
6:30 Begin the Meeting
8:00 Closing Messages and Announcements
NOTE: This is a "Special" combined North/South Meeting. We have JJ Sutherland speaking. JJ is the author "The Scrum Fieldbook" (released 10/1/19). JJ is also the son of Jeff Sutherland (co-creator of Scrum) - see bio. JJ will be remote, but very much LIVE to answer questions. Sorry, this meeting will NOT be repeated.
Description: The Scrum Fieldbook: A Master Class on Accelerating Performance, Getting Results, and Defining the Future
On October 1st, JJ Sutherland's hands-on, practical guide to excelling with Scrum is released. In The Scrum Fieldbook, JJ takes leaders, managers, and employees deeper into the specific challenges and new opportunities of an Agile world. He shows how the Scrum framework can be successfully applied to any situation, in any industry, from automobile manufacturers in the US and Europe to home renovation contractors in Minnesota to accelerating US Navy special forces teams in regions of the world we can’t mention.
“Essential for any leader, innovator, or potential disruptor who wants their company to learn how to get out of its own way. Through the compelling stories and data-driven insights, JJ reveals the patterns and anti-patterns that actually matter and provides a practical guide on how to implement Scrum@Scale. . . and unleash its potential to truly nudge the world.”
Nathaniel Davis, CEO & Executive Product Owner, Drinkworks
Speaker Bio: JJ. Sutherland
JJ Sutherland is the CEO of Scrum Inc., a consulting and training firm that uses Scrum to rapidly deliver results in companies across the globe. He is the author of The Scrum Fieldbook: A Master Class on Accelerating Performance, Getting Results, and Defining the Future, and coauthor of Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time, written with his father, Jeff Sutherland, the co-creator of Scrum.
Previously, he was an award-winning Correspondent, Producer, and Baghdad Bureau Chief for NPR. He covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, and the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami in Japan. He has won Dupont, Peabody, Edward R. Murrow and Lowell Thomas awards for his work.
In his free time, JJ enjoys cooking complicated recipes, traveling to the four corners of the globe, and gaming. He lives in Washington, DC, with his family.
![Sept 19th [South]: Business Agility Portfolios – Selecting the highest business value](https://phxsug.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/img-south-location-small.jpg)
Sept 19th [South]: Business Agility Portfolios – Selecting the highest business value
Where: IntraEdge (Google Map)
5660 W Chandler Blvd #1
Chandler, AZ 85226
Agenda:
6:00 Registration Food and Drink
6:25 Announcements
6:30 Begin the Meeting
8:00 Closing Messages and Announcements
Description: Business Agility Portfolios - Selecting the highest business value
Now that most organizations are in some stage of their Agile Transformation journey, many have found the need or have already attempted to scale Agile throughout their organization. As most have found out, there are a number of scaling frameworks to choose from, different approaches, different theories, and more than anything; full of challenges to do so effectively in their organization.
The conversation and workshop is about using agile portfolio practices to enable stakeholders, product owners, scrum masters, UX, architects, and Dev Team to collaborate and select the highest business value that will receive investment dollars. What If we also spent some energy aligning business strategies to an investment portfolio? The investment portfolio would be comprised of value delivery outcomes. As organizations position themselves toward great business agility, strategic positioning helps to steer product development toward customer delight and a thriving business.
The workshop will include hands-on practices to simulate the in-take activity and discussions.
At the conclusion of this presentation the attendees will be able to:
- Triage requests for investments to determine readiness for business review
- Select the highest priority investment requests using WSJF
- Create transparency into the progress of an in-flight initiative
- Share the story with the organization
Speaker Bio: Dr. Dave Cornelius
Dr. Dave Cornelius is a Servant Leader at KnolShare.org. He is an entrepreneur, coach and trainer, and serves his community. His mantra is Helping People Achieve Awesomeness. Dave has helped Fortune 500 to Fortune 50 companies deliver over one billion dollars in customer value throughout his career using software and technology platforms. He is also an advisor at Tech Launch Arizona, a University of Arizona initiative focused on commercializing UA-created technologies and innovations. Dr. Cornelius is the founder of 5 Saturdays Agile Education, a program that enables high-school students to pursue a career in technology and business.
He is the author of the books: 1) Elastic Minds: What are you thinking?, 2) Transforming your leadership character: The lean thinking and agility way, 3) Prayers to my Abba Father God, and 4) Deliver Value. You may listen to his podcast “KnolShare with Dr. Dave” on iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify as well as on GrokShare.com (https://GrokShare.com).
![Sept 3rd [North] – Agile Coach: Who do you serve?](https://phxsug.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/img-north-location-small.jpg)
Sept 3rd [North] – Agile Coach: Who do you serve?
Where: Axosoft (Google Map)
13835 North Northsight Boulevard #205
Scottsdale, AZ 85260
Agenda:
6:00 Registration Food and Drink
6:25 Announcements
6:30 Begin the Meeting
8:00 Closing Messages and Announcements
Description: Agile Coach - Who do you serve?
Agile coaches face many challenges as they help guide organizations to agility. Teams may be hampered by deep and restrictive process. Fixed leadership mindsets might adversely impact transformational efforts. Organizations might view agility as it’s true solution to everything. With these factors in mind, one must ask, who do Agile coaches serve?
Come join us as we explain who we serve and the challenges we face on the road to agility. We will discuss how coaches work with teams on a daily basis, how they establish collaborative relationships while working frequently with leaders, and guide the organization/enterprise on a cadence towards agility for all.
You will leave this session with tools/techniques/insight to:
- Enhance your teams ability to solve problems
- Steer leadership to a “being” Agile mindset vs a “doing” Agile mindset
- Enhance the vision of agility within the organization
Join us as we discuss the importance of customer empathy through a simulation inspired by Jeff Patton's story mapping technique. In this workshop we will create personas, create a user story map and make connections to how this technique can be used in your business setting. Come prepared to engage in a hands on experience and take with you the know-how needed to facilitate persona creation and user story mapping in your company.
Speaker Bio: Bryan Agosto, Phil Ricci and Joe DeRomanis
Bryan Agosto has worked extensively with Fortune 100 companies nationwide, in charting their course towards business agility and guiding them on their quest to achieve an improvement culture focused on transparency, inspection, and adaptation. He has assisted organizations in discovering more effective practices for managing work and people, at times using tools from the Agile world and other times using more traditional management practices. Bryan's goal is to facilitate the creation of teams that consistently generate value through meaningful products that solve customer problems.
Shaping work using Agile methods has been the Center of Phil Ricci's career for more than 20 years. Phil has successfully guided companies across the country in Agile transformation efforts since 2010. He has worked pursing agile goals in Transportation, Manufacturing, Marketing, Health Care and Education. Assisting transformation at the team, ART, and leadership level, and making it happen in a humanistic way is definitely a passion.
Joe DeRomanis has successfully guided Phoenix area Fortune 100 companies with Agile transformation efforts since 2010. He has helped executives adopt a servant leader mindset while teaching, coaching and influencing agility to teams at all levels. During this time, he has also provided leadership in evaluating the maturity of given Agile frameworks while suggesting improvement opportunities. Within this space, Joe also works to identify and facilitate resolution for interpersonal dynamics that may be impacting a team or organizations ability to achieve success.
Aug 22 [North & South]: Objectives & Key Results (OKRs): Connecting the Outcomes & the Output
Where: Workiva (Google Map)
1365 N. Scottsdale Rd. #400
Scottsdale, AZ
NOTE: Location is at Workiva. Please give yourself an extra 5-10 minutes for parking and signing-in to the office (NDA & Visitor badge required). There is parking along both Skysong Boulevard and Innovation Place, and there is another surface lot North of Building 3 off of Innovation Place.
Agenda:
6:00 Registration Food and Drink
6:25 Announcements
6:30 Begin the Meeting
8:00 Closing Messages and Announcements
Description: Objectives & Key Results (OKRs): Connecting the Outcomes & the Output
Objectives & Key Results (OKRs) are a framework for defining and tracking objectives and their outcomes. Since 1999, Google has used them and they've "helped lead [them] to 10x growth, many times over. They’ve helped make [their] crazily bold mission of 'organizing the world’s information' perhaps even achievable. They’ve kept [them] and the rest of the company on time and on track when it mattered the most."
After 5 years of iterating on their OKR process, Workiva has found a balance between using OKRs as a strict rule of law and a flexible alignment tool across over 30 development teams. Due to their success in R&D, OKRs have spread throughout the entire organization as they're used by Workiva's HR, IT, and other departments.
Speaker Bio: Mike Robbins, Jeremy Keefer, Leah Ward
Mike Robbins has worked as a Scrum Master/Delivery Manager over the last 10 years in the Tempe/Scottsdale area. He is passionate about helping build strong development teams and developing strong leaders within the Delivery Management team at Workiva. He has presented several times on Agile vs Waterfall Project Management at project management classes and software clubs at Arizona State University and Iowa State University.
Matt Keefer has worked at Workiva for the past six years and has taken on the role of Delivery Manager over the past two years. He has grown from working directly with our customers to working with our engineers. This progression has given him the ability to have a deep understanding and insight into how our customers use the software he is now helping deliver.
Leah Ward has worked as a Delivery Manager at Workiva for 8 months. After graduating from a coding program she immediately sought a position that would integrate her new skills with her existing strengths, scrum master seemed a natural fit. New to the Delivery Manager position she is enjoying exploring her role as servant leader.
June 20th [South]: Scaling Agile is sooo EASY (in theory!)
Where: IntraEdge (Google Map)
5660 W Chandler Blvd #1
Chandler, AZ 85226
Agenda:
6:00 Registration Food and Drink
6:25 Announcements
6:30 Begin the Meeting
8:00 Closing Messages and Announcements
Description: Scaling Agile is sooo EASY (in theory!)
Now that most organizations are in some stage of their Agile Transformation journey, many have found the need or have already attempted to scale Agile throughout their organization. As most have found out, there are a number of scaling frameworks to choose from, different approaches, different theories, and more than anything; full of challenges to do so effectively in their organization.
Join me in a discussion around popular frameworks, their pros and cons, as well as common challenges organizations deal with when trying to scale and some ways overcome them.
Speaker Bio: Jeremy Wood
Jeremy Wood leads the Phoenix market and serves as the Director of Agile Transformation Practice at MATRIX. Jeremy has over 15+ years of management, consulting, and academic career spanning from small companies to Fortune 10 organizations. His expertise spans from his diverse background encompassing manufacturing, retail, higher education, non-profit, K-12 education, and airline industries. His passion for creating tailored solutions for each client is largely based on his passion for the Agile mindset. With a focus on outcomes and overall business agility to adapt to ever changing market changes; he leverages best practices from popular Agile frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, and XP to scaling solutions including SAFe, LeSS, DaD, Nexus, and Scrum at Scale. He emphasizes the importance of adopting an Agile mindset across the entire organization, not just IT; where true business agility exists.
June 4th [North]: Persona Creation and User Story Mapping Simulation
Where: Axosoft (Google Map)
13835 North Northsight Boulevard #205
Scottsdale, AZ 85260
Agenda:
6:00 Registration Food and Drink
6:25 Announcements
6:30 Begin the Meeting
8:00 Closing Messages and Announcements
Description: Persona Creation and User Story Mapping Simulation
Join us as we discuss the importance of customer empathy through a simulation inspired by Jeff Patton's story mapping technique. In this workshop we will create personas, create a user story map and make connections to how this technique can be used in your business setting. Come prepared to engage in a hands on experience and take with you the know-how needed to facilitate persona creation and user story mapping in your company.
Speaker Bio: Nicole Bucher
Nicole is an Agile Coach who provides guidance, support and coaching to teams, individuals and leaders in all agile roles to reach their highest potential. 15 years of Nicole's work experiences have been in Financial and Educational industries where she specialized in large ERP implementations and integrations. She has experiences with leading waterfall to agile transformations and has deep knowledge of product management, agile principles and frameworks such as Scrum, Kanban and SAFe.
May 16th [South]: Agile Coach – Who do you serve?
Where: IntraEdge (Google Map)
5660 W Chandler Blvd #1
Chandler, AZ 85226
Agenda:
6:00 Registration Food and Drink
6:25 Announcements
6:30 Begin the Meeting
8:00 Closing Messages and Announcements
Description: Agile Coach - Who do you serve?
Agile coaches face many challenges as they help guide organizations to agility. Teams may be hampered by deep and restrictive process. Fixed leadership mindsets might adversely impact transformational efforts. Organizations might view agility as it’s true solution to everything. With these factors in mind, one must ask, who do Agile coaches serve?
Come join us as we explain who we serve and the challenges we face on the road to agility. We will discuss how coaches work with teams on a daily basis, how they establish collaborative relationships while working frequently with leaders, and guide the organization/enterprise on a cadence towards agility for all.
You will leave this session with tools/techniques/insight to:
- Enhance your teams ability to solve problems
- Steer leadership to a “being” Agile mindset vs a “doing” Agile mindset
- Enhance the vision of agility within the organization
Join us as we discuss the importance of customer empathy through a simulation inspired by Jeff Patton's story mapping technique. In this workshop we will create personas, create a user story map and make connections to how this technique can be used in your business setting. Come prepared to engage in a hands on experience and take with you the know-how needed to facilitate persona creation and user story mapping in your company.
Speaker Bio: Bryan Agosto, Phil Ricci and Joe DeRomanis
Bryan Agosto has worked extensively with Fortune 100 companies nationwide, in charting their course towards business agility and guiding them on their quest to achieve an improvement culture focused on transparency, inspection, and adaptation. He has assisted organizations in discovering more effective practices for managing work and people, at times using tools from the Agile world and other times using more traditional management practices. Bryan's goal is to facilitate the creation of teams that consistently generate value through meaningful products that solve customer problems.
Shaping work using Agile methods has been the Center of Phil Ricci's career for more than 20 years. Phil has successfully guided companies across the country in Agile transformation efforts since 2010. He has worked pursing agile goals in Transportation, Manufacturing, Marketing, Health Care and Education. Assisting transformation at the team, ART, and leadership level, and making it happen in a humanistic way is definitely a passion.
Joe DeRomanis has successfully guided Phoenix area Fortune 100 companies with Agile transformation efforts since 2010. He has helped executives adopt a servant leader mindset while teaching, coaching and influencing agility to teams at all levels. During this time, he has also provided leadership in evaluating the maturity of given Agile frameworks while suggesting improvement opportunities. Within this space, Joe also works to identify and facilitate resolution for interpersonal dynamics that may be impacting a team or organizations ability to achieve success.
May 7th [North]: Scaling Agile is sooo EASY (in theory!)
Where: Axosoft (Google
Map)
13835 North Northsight Boulevard #205
Scottsdale, AZ 85260
Agenda:
6:00 Registration Food and Drink
6:25 Announcements
6:30 Begin the Meeting
8:00 Closing Messages and Announcements
Description: Scaling Agile is sooo EASY (in theory!)
Now that most organizations are in some stage of their Agile Transformation journey, many have found the need or have already attempted to scale Agile throughout their organization. As most have found out, there are a number of scaling frameworks to choose from, different approaches, different theories, and more than anything; full of challenges to do so effectively in their organization.
Join me in a discussion around popular frameworks, their pros and cons, as well as common challenges organizations deal with when trying to scale and some ways overcome them.
Speaker Bio: Jeremy Wood
Jeremy Wood leads the Phoenix market and serves as the Director of Agile Transformation Practice at MATRIX. Jeremy has over 15+ years of management, consulting, and academic career spanning from small companies to Fortune 10 organizations. His expertise spans from his diverse background encompassing manufacturing, retail, higher education, non-profit, K-12 education, and airline industries. His passion for creating tailored solutions for each client is largely based on his passion for the Agile mindset. With a focus on outcomes and overall business agility to adapt to ever changing market changes; he leverages best practices from popular Agile frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, and XP to scaling solutions including SAFe, LeSS, DaD, Nexus, and Scrum at Scale. He emphasizes the importance of adopting an Agile mindset across the entire organization, not just IT; where true business agility exists.
Apr 18th [South]: Persona Creation and User Story Mapping Simulation
Where: IntraEdge (Google Map)
5660 W Chandler Blvd #1
Chandler, AZ 85226
Agenda:
6:00 Registration Food and Drink
6:25 Announcements
6:30 Begin the Meeting
8:00 Closing Messages and Announcements
Description: Persona Creation and User Story Mapping Simulation
Join us as we discuss the importance of customer empathy through a simulation inspired by Jeff Patton's story mapping technique. In this workshop we will create personas, create a user story map and make connections to how this technique can be used in your business setting. Come prepared to engage in a hands on experience and take with you the know-how needed to facilitate persona creation and user story mapping in your company.
Speaker Bio: Nicole Bucher
Nicole is an Agile Coach who provides guidance, support and coaching to teams, individuals and leaders in all agile roles to reach their highest potential. 15 years of Nicole's work experiences have been in Financial and Educational industries where she specialized in large ERP implementations and integrations. She has experiences with leading waterfall to agile transformations and has deep knowledge of product management, agile principles and frameworks such as Scrum, Kanban and SAFe.
April 2nd [North] – Benefits of Customer Journeys and Agile Value Streams
Where: Axosoft (Google
Map)
13835 North Northsight Boulevard #205
Scottsdale, AZ 85260
Agenda:
6:00 Registration Food and Drink
6:25 Announcements
6:30 Begin the Meeting
8:00 Closing Messages and Announcements
Description: Benefits of Customer Journeys and Agile Value Streams
Many people are familiar with Agile Value Streams, but what are Customer Journeys? Who within an organization generally drives Customer Journeys and/or Agile Value Streams? What are the benefits and business outcomes of using Value Streams and Customer Journeys? Often times these tools can have a profound effect on increasing brand loyalty, product adoption, and reducing customer churn.
In this talk, we will quickly cover the basics of what are Value Streams and Customer Journeys. We’ll look at the relationship between the two, and we’ll look at examples of each. The examples will highlight both challenges and successes of implementing Customer Journeys and Agile Value Streams. We’ll also review the key Success Factors of a successful Customer Journey program.
Speaker Bio: Mike Ray
Mike is the Chief Architect at Chassi, a platform for Business and Technology Professionals. Mike is a Technology leader, strategist, and a builder. He leverages many types of technologies to achieve the desired business outcomes. Mike has expertise in a number of different industries as well as experience in applying different forms of technology in those industries.
Mar 21st [South] – Benefits of Customer Journeys and Agile Value Streams
Where: IntraEdge (Google Map)
5660 W Chandler Blvd #1
Chandler, AZ 85226
Agenda:
6:00 Registration Food and Drink
6:25 Announcements
6:30 Begin the Meeting
8:00 Closing Messages and Announcements
Description: Benefits of Customer Journeys and Agile Value Streams
Many people are familiar with Agile Value Streams, but what are Customer Journeys? Who within an organization generally drives Customer Journeys and/or Agile Value Streams? What are the benefits and business outcomes of using Value Streams and Customer Journeys? Often times these tools can have a profound effect on increasing brand loyalty, product adoption, and reducing customer churn.
In this talk, we will quickly cover the basics of what are Value Streams and Customer Journeys. We’ll look at the relationship between the two, and we’ll look at examples of each. The examples will highlight both challenges and successes of implementing Customer Journeys and Agile Value Streams. We’ll also review the key Success Factors of a successful Customer Journey program.
Speaker Bio: Mike Ray
Mike is the Chief Architect at Chassi, a platform for Business and Technology Professionals. Mike is a Technology leader, strategist, and a builder. He leverages many types of technologies to achieve the desired business outcomes. Mike has expertise in a number of different industries as well as experience in applying different forms of technology in those industries.
Feb 21 [South] – Writing and Grooming User Stories (With an emphasis on splitting)
Where: IntraEdge (Google Map)
5660 W Chandler Blvd #1
Chandler, AZ 85226
Agenda:
6:00 Registration Food and Drink
6:25 Announcements
6:30 Begin the Meeting
8:00 Closing Messages and Announcements
Description: Writing and Grooming User Stories
(With an emphasis on splitting)
User stories are part of an agile approach that helps shift the focus from writing about requirements to talking about outcomes. They are expected to be simple brief descriptions, written from the perspective of the user who desires the functionality. But before a story can be recognized as "ready" and the implementation started, we need to ensure that it is “Sized Right”. However, many user stories start out too large. "Splitting" is the art of breaking up a user story into 2 or more smaller ones, while retaining the independence of each user story, so it has measurable business value.
Join me Todd Sussman, as we discuss the problems that user stories were intended to solve, learn how to recognize high quality stories, as well as look at common patterns for decomposing larger ones.
Speaker Bio: Todd Sussman
Todd Sussman, Escape Velocity Consulting and Nextiva, is an process improvment coach who specializes in agile and gamification. He is a Certified Scrum Professional and Professional Scrum Master with 18 years of experience delivering solutions in various industries as a developer, architect, scrum coach and serious game facilitator. Todd helps companies realize their full potential by creating and working with learning teams to deliver innovative, disruptive solutions.
Feb 5 [North] – Writing and Grooming User Stories (With an emphasis on splitting)
Where: Axosoft (Google Map)
13835 North Northsight Boulevard #205
Scottsdale, AZ 85260
Agenda:
6:00 Registration Food and Drink
6:25 Announcements
6:30 Begin the Meeting
8:00 Closing Messages and Announcements
Description: Writing and Grooming User Stories
(With an emphasis on splitting)
User stories are part of an agile approach that helps shift the focus from writing about requirements to talking about outcomes. They are expected to be simple brief descriptions, written from the perspective of the user who desires the functionality. But before a story can be recognized as "ready" and the implementation started, we need to ensure that it is “Sized Right”. However, many user stories start out too large. "Splitting" is the art of breaking up a user story into 2 or more smaller ones, while retaining the independence of each user story, so it has measurable business value.
Join me Todd Sussman, as we discuss the problems that user stories were intended to solve, learn how to recognize high quality stories, as well as look at common patterns for decomposing larger ones.
Speaker Bio: Todd Sussman
Todd Sussman, Escape Velocity Consulting and Nextiva, is an process improvment coach who specializes in agile and gamification. He is a Certified Scrum Professional and Professional Scrum Master with 18 years of experience delivering solutions in various industries as a developer, architect, scrum coach and serious game facilitator. Todd helps companies realize their full potential by creating and working with learning teams to deliver innovative, disruptive solutions.
[NORTH] Nov 6th – The Magic of Involvement!
Description: The Magic of Involvement!
The importance of involvement and the potential of game-based training has been known since the beginning of mankind. From the early city-states of Mesopotamia and the Pharos of Egypt to the Emperor's Court in China and the Prussian army, board-games and simulations have been used to train and support leadership skills. Simulations offer a highly efficient and engaging method to design meaningful conversations, accelerate understanding of complex issues and anchor new leadership behaviour. Game-based training provides a safe ‘training ground’ where leaders can test different options and learn from mistakes without jeopardising real-life budgets, clients or colleagues. Today’s event will address how to work with change management in an engaging and involving manner and if time allows, we will also touch upon global leadership and the challenges related to creating high performing teams across distances and cultures.Speaker Bio: Gitte Pfeffer, Director of International Services at Workz A/S
Speaker Bio: Klaus Meier Olsen, Senior Consultant at Workz A/S
About Workz A/S
Workz A/S is a Scandinavian based change agency. We work with change management, leadership development, organisational culture and the development of game-based tools for involvement and training. Our award-winning portfolio of leadership simulations are distributed globally through a network of international partners.[South] Oct 18th – Everything I never expected to learn at the Agile Alliance 2018 conference!
Description: Everything I never expected to learn at the Agile Alliance 2018 conference
Come and hear Carla talk about her learnings from the most recent Agile Alliance conference. You'll hear about her favorite "hot" topics from the conference, and the tips, tricks, and techniques that worthy of putting into practice...followed by results of the few she's already implemented.Speaker Bio: Carla Bulmer
[North] Oct 2 – Everything I never expected to learn at the Agile Alliance 2018 conference
Description: Everything I never expected to learn at the Agile Alliance 2018 conference
Come and hear Carla talk about her learnings from the most recent Agile Alliance conference. You'll hear about her favorite "hot" topics from the conference, and the tips, tricks, and techniques that worthy of putting into practice...followed by results of the few she's already implemented.Speaker Bio: Carla Bulmer
[NORTH/SOUTH] September 12th: Agile Therapy – Overcoming the “Grrr” Moments!
NOTE: This is another “summertime roadshow” meeting! It's hosted by the Nerdery and STC at the STC facility.
Where: Scientific Technologies Corporation (STC) (see Google Map - also see "*** Parking Instructions ***" at the bottom) 411 S. 1st St. Phoenix, AZ 85004 Agenda: 6:00 Registration Food and Drink 6:25 Announcements 6:30 Begin the Meeting 8:00 Closing Messages and AnnouncementsDescription: Agile Therapy - Overcoming the "Grrr" Moments!
Join a panel of four of the most talented project leaders in the valley as they discuss what it’s like to be a Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and just “get it out the door” people. This hosted panel format will put them to the test with a probing questions about challenging and frustrating moments in their career...and how they overcame them. There will be some time at the end for questions from the audience.Speaker Bio: Moderator and a Panel .....
The Moderator: Danny Estavillo - Managing Director for the Nerdery The Panel: José Tafla, PMP, CSM - Delivery Manager at STC José has over 20 years of experience as a technical project manager and agile practitioner, having performed in multinational and multicultural environments, as well as diverse industries. A native of São Paulo, Brazil, he has been living in the US since 1997; after working for companies in Detroit, Philadelphia, Raleigh, and Pittsburgh, he moved to Phoenix last year to join STC. Omar Torresola - Director of Public Sector Product at STC With over a decade of experience, Omar is a passionate agile manager, having significantly improved many processes at STC, particularly product delivery. He’s a proud member of PHX Core and lead facilitator for PMI Phoenix Chapter. Toni Miller - Program Manager for The Nerdery Over 19+ years of professional services experience managing enterprise data warehouse and software development projects. Practicing Agile methodology since 2012 and Agile Scrum Project Management Certified - PMI. Currently specializing in Agile coaching and consulting helping organizations develop high performing agile and Scrum teams. Allan Dean - Delivery Lead for The Nerdery, US West Region Allan has over 20 years of professional services experience facilitating projects and programs with agile and waterfall techniques in the US, Canada, and Europe for government clients, as well as startups, joint ventures, mid-tier SMB, and Fortune 500 clients. He brings an MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management, a BS in Engineering from Cornell University and is certified by both the Scrum Alliance (CSM & CSPO) and the Scaled Agile community (SAFe SPC4). *** Parking Instructions *** Luckily, there are no other major events taking place downtown, so you should have no problem finding a spot on the parking lots shown See the parking options in the picture below with the following options:- A few parking spots available in front of STC (green area - come early!).
- Metered parking spots on the street (blue area - in and near).
- Parking lot across the street (yellow area - may cost $5 to $10).
Important Note: the food and drink is still free, and there will be beer at this event (As Brian Powers from the Nerdery put it "I'm in sales...I'd never host an evening event without BEER!")![[South] Aug 23rd: Deliver Quality Customer Value Faster – Agile Accelerator](https://phxsug.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/img-south-location.jpg)
[South] Aug 23rd: Deliver Quality Customer Value Faster – Agile Accelerator
Description: Deliver Quality Customer Value Faster - Agile Accelerator
Business competition is global and customers have many choices. How do you respond to customer demands or market change as either an existing or startup company? The answer according to Forbes magazine is people working collaboratively in an agile environment with the ability to respond to change. This workshop style presentation requires your participation so come ready to actively engage to learn something new or expand on existing experiences. Agile Principle #1: Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable products or services (software). Learning Objectives:- Discover why lean thinking and agile practices deliver 4X more value
- Discern the use of working agreements to create psychological safety boundaries
- Learn techniques that help teams build quality into deliverables