PhxSUG Events
[North] Aug 9th – De-scaling Organizational Complexity with LeSS
Description: De-scaling Organizational Complexity with LeSS
Organizations are frequently embarking on large scale product development initiatives that involve hundreds, sometimes thousands of team members. Scale brings in additional complexity, non-linear behavior and risk. In the pursuit of predictability, control and risk aversion, most organizations end up adding complexity to their context instead of reducing it. In this session Kamlesh Ravlani will discuss Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) framework and how you can apply it to re-design and descale your organizational complexity to scale (up) the value delivery. Large-Scale Scrum is Scrum applied to many teams working on one product. Scrum is almost linearly scalable, hence LeSS framework elements are essentially the same as (one team) Scrum. LeSS is well balanced between empirical process control and defined elements to work with multiple teams.Speaker Bio: Kamlesh Ravlani
[South] July 19th – The XP 2018 Conference & the 3X Model
Description: The XP 2018 Conference & the 3X Model
Thene will share ideas, findings, and photos from the recent XP 2018 Agile Alliance conference in Portugal. She’ll briefly discuss some of the “hot topics” at the conference, and then she’ll dig in deeper to one key topic, Kent Beck’s 3X model. Thene will provide an overview of the 3X model and then lead a group discussion about how this model is changing the shape of her thinking about agile vs. waterfall, scaling concerns, and factory models for IT.
Speaker Bio: Thene Sheehy
Thene has spent 35 years in IT, with roles from COBOL programmer (back in the dark ages), to Data Analyst/Architect and JAD Facilitator (in the Information Engineering years), IT Director, Project/Program Manager, Scrum Master, and Agile Coach. She has led teams of data analyst/architects, DBA’s, system/software designers, project managers, developers, business analysts, application admins, and scrum masters. She was instrumental in the creation of a strategic data model for a major airline and a long-distance telecom company, participated in the launch of the wireless industry, and created a strategic telemedicine technology architecture and roadmap for a healthcare system in the Midwest. She created a computer training center and internet café business, which doubled as a computer gaming center on weekends. Thene has worked with methodologies including structured analysis and design, information engineering, OO, iterative/spiral, and was most recently introduced to agile and scrum in 2013. Thene loves to work with highly productive teams in energizing and creative settings to solve big problems and create lasting solutions. She is currently with Ignite Technologies as a Project Manager.
Certifications: PMP (since 2005), PMI-ACP, CSP, SMC, SPOC, AEC, Trainer
[North] July 10th – The XP 2018 Conference & the 3X Model
Description: The XP 2018 Conference & the 3X Model
Thene will share ideas, findings, and photos from the recent XP 2018 Agile Alliance conference in Portugal. She’ll briefly discuss some of the “hot topics” at the conference, and then she’ll dig in deeper to one key topic, Kent Beck’s 3X model. Thene will provide an overview of the 3X model and then lead a group discussion about how this model is changing the shape of her thinking about agile vs. waterfall, scaling concerns, and factory models for IT.
Speaker Bio: Thene Sheehy
Thene has spent 35 years in IT, with roles from COBOL programmer (back in the dark ages), to Data Analyst/Architect and JAD Facilitator (in the Information Engineering years), IT Director, Project/Program Manager, Scrum Master, and Agile Coach. She has led teams of data analyst/architects, DBA’s, system/software designers, project managers, developers, business analysts, application admins, and scrum masters. She was instrumental in the creation of a strategic data model for a major airline and a long-distance telecom company, participated in the launch of the wireless industry, and created a strategic telemedicine technology architecture and roadmap for a healthcare system in the Midwest. She created a computer training center and internet café business, which doubled as a computer gaming center on weekends. Thene has worked with methodologies including structured analysis and design, information engineering, OO, iterative/spiral, and was most recently introduced to agile and scrum in 2013. Thene loves to work with highly productive teams in energizing and creative settings to solve big problems and create lasting solutions. She is currently with Ignite Technologies as a Project Manager.
Certifications: PMP (since 2005), PMI-ACP, CSP, SMC, SPOC, AEC, Trainer
[South] June 21st: Welcome to the Dojo, a Magical Place!
Description: Welcome to the Dojo, a Magical Place!
Imagine you are a coach trying to help teams embrace the agile values and principles, to become truly empowered and self-organizing teams. Imagine that you have an idea for helping a team have better retrospectives or how to show them the value of maintaining a healthy backlog. What if, on average, you had to wait only a day to implement that idea? What if the team you are coaching could see and realize the value of changes in a matter of days? These are the realities of coaching in a dojo. A dojo is place set aside for learning new skills and improving existing ones. Teams, each with dedicated process and technical coaches, spend six weeks honing their agility by the working on their real project work in two and half day "hyper-sprints" where the very short feedback loops challenge the teams to learn, experiment and adapt. The dojo is a place of experimentation with expert coaches that yields rapid and "sticky" learning. In this talk we'll look at the mechanics of an Agile Dojo, how and why magic happens in the Dojo, and talk about how to succeed (or not) with a dojo.Speaker Bio: David Hammerslag
David is a senior Lean/Agile coach with Solutions IQ, an Accenture company. His passion is helping teams and individuals be the best possible versions of themselves. He has over ten years experience as coaching Agile teams and organizations and over thirty years software experience as developer, manager, project manager, process architect and Lean/Agile coach. David has spent the last eighteen months helping to establish dojos in various locations, coaching teams and developing other coaches for his client.
[North] June 5th: Welcome to the Dojo, a Magical Place!
Description: Welcome to the Dojo, a Magical Place!
Imagine you are a coach trying to help teams embrace the agile values and principles, to become truly empowered and self-organizing teams. Imagine that you have an idea for helping a team have better retrospectives or how to show them the value of maintaining a healthy backlog. What if, on average, you had to wait only a day to implement that idea? What if the team you are coaching could see and realize the value of changes in a matter of days? These are the realities of coaching in a dojo. A dojo is place set aside for learning new skills and improving existing ones. Teams, each with dedicated process and technical coaches, spend six weeks honing their agility by the working on their real project work in two and half day "hyper-sprints" where the very short feedback loops challenge the teams to learn, experiment and adapt. The dojo is a place of experimentation with expert coaches that yields rapid and "sticky" learning. In this talk we'll look at the mechanics of an Agile Dojo, how and why magic happens in the Dojo, and talk about how to succeed (or not) with a dojo.Speaker Bio: David Hammerslag
David is a senior Lean/Agile coach with Solutions IQ, an Accenture company. His passion is helping teams and individuals be the best possible versions of themselves. He has over ten years experience as coaching Agile teams and organizations and over thirty years software experience as developer, manager, project manager, process architect and Lean/Agile coach. David has spent the last eighteen months helping to establish dojos in various locations, coaching teams and developing other coaches for his client.
![[South] May 17th: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly of Paired Programming](https://phxsug.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/img-south-location-small.jpg)
[South] May 17th: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly of Paired Programming
Description: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly of Paired Programming
Come and hear about one of Nationwide’s agile team’s journey to adopt pair programming. "Pair Development?! Critics judge it does not work, it slows teams down, plus the teams do not fundamentally want to work in pairs. Here is the story of one of Nationwide’s agile teams journeys to adopt pair programming. A story of a successful implementation of dev/test pair development with metrics and proof it works.
Speaker Bio: Heather Salcedo
Heather Salcedo is a Scrum Master for Nationwide Insurance, where she is currently leading a lean/agile team implementing a cloud based software solution for Nationwide Private Client (one of the companies within Nationwide). She has been with Nationwide Insurance for 16 years. She has worked on many major Nationwide initiatives over the years and was instrumental in using Test Automation on a legacy platform as well as creating automation frameworks for mainframe systems. In addition to her IT knowledge she holds insurance licenses in both the personal and commercial lines sectors.
[North] May 8th – Balancing Delivery and Discovery
Description: Balancing Delivery and Discovery
Do your product teams frequently struggle to have groomed and well-defined stories ready for the developers? Do you find yourselves frequently in “feed the beast” mode to keep your development teams busy? Do your product teams have problems gaining shared understanding across product management, interaction designers, developers and QA? If you answered yes to any of these questions, your product teams have the symptoms of single-track agile and this session is a great choice for you. In the workshop, Sean clarifies the key steps in establishing dual-track agile methodologies at your company by presenting his experiences and providing discussion opportunities for participants. In addition, Sean discusses specific discovery techniques and tools that can be used to tackle difficult product problems. A major outcome of these changes is to always have 1-2 sprints of discovered and groomed backlog for your development teams. In addition, using dual-track agile methodologies result in more efficient use of your development resources, products that better meet your customers’ needs and ultimately more success for your company.Speaker Bio: Sean McKeever
Sean has worked in product management for 20 years with a variety of technology companies, primarily in the K-16 education market. He also spent two years on mobile app and mobile platform product management at Workiva, where he first started using dual-track agile methods. His work there involved frequent interactions with prolific Product Management consultants, Marty Cagan and Jeff Patton, which accelerated his understanding and implementation of great discovery and delivery methodologies. At his current company, Edgenuity, Sean leads the product management team and specifically has been working with the product teams to make the transition from single-track agile to dual-track agile methodologies over the past two years.
[South] April 19th: Cultivating the Vital Behaviors of Innovation
Description: Cultivating the Vital Behaviors of Innovation
Yes, innovation has become a buzzword – but for good reason – as it is the important process of creating new value in the form of novel products and services. Innovation is about doing, testing, and experimenting. True to that nature the format of this interactive workshop will focus on action and experiential learning. You will have the chance to learn why and how playful approaches can help teams become more innovative – especially when working in cross-functional teams. We will experience techniques for cultivating an appreciation and synthesis of different perspectives. We will explore what constitutes barriers to innovation, find out why innovation is so challenging, and learn about two avenues that can support innovation: 1) Innovation Frameworks and 2) Vital Behaviors of Innovation.
Speaker Bio: Camilla Nørgaard Jensen, PhD
![[North] April 3rd – Cultivating Culture in a New Development Team](https://phxsug.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/img-north-location-small.jpg)
[North] April 3rd – Cultivating Culture in a New Development Team
Description: Cultivating Culture in a New Development Team
In this discussion, we will look at some of the lessons learned while growing an agile development organization from 6 people to 26 people in less than one year. As a group, we’ll discuss what types of behaviors are desirable, why they are desirable, and ways to get those behaviors. You will leave with ideas and techniques for encouraging behaviors which are in line with company and agile cultures and how to discourage other behaviors.
Speaker Bio: Diana Sherwood
Diana Sherwood is an Agile Coach at Solera Health. She has a diverse background. She’s worked in software development for 10+ years, she has an iPhone App. Diana has worked as a software developer at General Dynamics, Motorola, and for Electronic Data Behandeling (EDB) in Norway. EDB basically means “IT” and she worked in their consulting team. Outside of technology, Diana facilitates experiential learning events for teams which include: rock climbing and using Legos to increase collaboration and reveal system flaws. Currently, she works closely with the leadership at Solera Health to cultivate an Agile culture and to incorporate metrics driven experimentation.
[North] March 1st: SAFe’s Continuous Delivery Pipeline
Description: SAFe's Continuous Delivery Pipeline
Speaker Bio: Charles Maddox
[South] Feb 15th – Design Studios: Unleashing Your Teams Creative Potential!
Design Studios: Unleashing Your Teams Creative Potential!
The early stages of product discovery and development can crucially influence the success and direction of any product. Yet these stages tend to be fuzzy, highly politicized, and under-documented. Design studios address this challenge by bringing the team together and allow ideas from various perspectives and insights to percolate within the team.
Design Studio methodology provides a collaborative, pragmatic process of illumination, sketching, presentation, critique, and iteration, leading to a shared vision and hopefully a more coherent and elegant solution.
This highly interactive session will showcase how teams can use Design Studio technique to explore opportunities and innovate products to better serve customer’s needs.
Speaker Bio: Kalpesh Shah
Kalpesh is a Culture Hacker, Speaker & Enterprise Agile and Product Coach with experience in creating and working with different shapes and sizes of Agile teams. He is invited to industry leading regional and global Agile conferences and has presented his ideas and experiments in over 13 conferences in Asia, Europe, Africa and Americas.
He has worked with organizations ranging from Fortune 50 companies to startups, helping them make the transition to Agile way of working, implementing Agile at Scale, employ Lean Product Development approaches and instill Lean Startup mindset.
His latest passion is Culture Hacking through continuous experimentation which will promote innovative thinking, extend openness, embody rationality, and bring design thinking into teams.
[North] Feb 6th – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly of Paired Programming
Description: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly of Paired Programming
Come and hear about one of Nationwide’s agile team’s journey to adopt pair programming. "Pair Development?! Critics judge it does not work, it slows teams down, plus the teams do not fundamentally want to work in pairs. Here is the story of one of Nationwide’s agile teams journeys to adopt pair programming. A story of a successful implementation of dev/test pair development with metrics and proof it works.
Speaker Bio: Heather Salcedo
Heather Salcedo is a Scrum Master for Nationwide Insurance, where she is currently leading a lean/agile team implementing a cloud based software solution for Nationwide Private Client (one of the companies within Nationwide). She has been with Nationwide Insurance for 16 years. She has worked on many major Nationwide initiatives over the years and was instrumental in using Test Automation on a legacy platform as well as creating automation frameworks for mainframe systems. In addition to her IT knowledge she holds insurance licenses in both the personal and commercial lines sectors.
[South] Jan 25: Cultivating Culture in a New Development Team
Description: Cultivating Culture in a New Development Team
In this discussion, we will look at some of the lessons learned while growing an agile development organization from 6 people to 26 people in less than one year. As a group, we’ll discuss what types of behaviors are desirable, why they are desirable, and ways to get those behaviors. You will leave with ideas and techniques for encouraging behaviors which are in line with company and agile cultures and how to discourage other behaviors.
Speaker Bio: Diana Sherwood
Diana Sherwood is an Scrum Master/Agile Coach at Solera Health. She has a diverse background. She’s worked in software development for 10+ years including a recent development effort on the iPhone. She has worked as a software developer at General Dynamics, Motorola, and for Electronic Data Behandeling (EDB) in Norway. EDB basically means "IT" and she worked in their consulting team. Outside of technology, Diana has been a facilitator of team-building rock climbing classes as well as a business and life coach. Currently, she works closely with the leadership at Solera Health to cultivate a supportive and collaborative development environment.
[NORTH] DEC 5th: Agile at Play – Using Lego Serious Play to accelerate the value cycle
Description: Agile at Play - Using Lego Serious Play to accelerate the value cycle
Whether your team develops hardware or software three elements are crucial to successful value creation:
- Communicating effectively - both externally with stakeholders and end-users and internally among the design team members.
- Making informed design decisions - i.e. testing assumptions through prototyping.
- Matching methods with the type of knowledge task - ensuring that incentives and activities support your goal.
In this session you will learn about a novel model for understanding knowledge-driven value creation processes called The Wheel of Knowledge (WoK), which provides a framework for navigating the development process and a language for discussing next steps for accelerating the value cycle. The different stages of the model reflect how all knowledge-based value originates from tacit knowledge (e.g. and idea). Next, the challenge is to make the knowledge explicit so that it can be shared between individuals and developed into a solid solution. Finally, once a satisfying solution has been reached it is time to bring it to scale and to market. Different facilitation methods serve different purposes that are conducive to high engagement in different stages of the process. Knowing which type of approach to prescribe to a given knowledge conversion challenge is a key contribution of Dr. Jensen’s research.
Next, you get to be playful! Dr. Jensen will demo different LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® activities that can help accelerate the different stages of the value creation process. In the debrief you will be encouraged to share how challenges your teams face map to the Wheel of Knowledge.
Speaker Bio: Camilla Nørgaard Jensen, PhD
Camilla Nørgaard Jensen, PhD, is an innovation scholar and process consultant certified in the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® (LSP) facilitation method. Since leaving her career in Industrial Design Engineering to return to graduate school and complete her dissertation, "Constructive Conversations: Serious Play Approaches for Creating, Sharing, and Mobilizing Tacit Knowledge in Cross-disciplinary Settings", she has dedicated her career to enable cross-functional teams to work well together while tackling complex problems. In 2013 Jensen landed a grant from the National Science Foundation to introduce LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® in a cross-disciplinary class at Arizona State University. She has since worked with several industry clients, contributed to the book "Serious Work", and served twice as the invited keynote speaker at the annual LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® conference for the Americas and Oceania.[North/South] Sept 28th – What’s New in SAFe 4.5?
Description: What's New in SAFe 4.5?
The Scaled Agile Framework has released SAFe 4.5, which is to be leaner, more Agile, and more supportive of faster innovation and learning than any of its predecessors. Moreover, SAFe 4.5 helps enterprises get better, business results, faster, more consistently and reliably. SAFe 4.5 can be configured to match your organization’s needs. This new version allows companies to:- Test ideas more quickly using the Lean Startup Cycle and Lean User Experience (Lean UX)
- Deliver much faster with Scalable DevOps and the Continuous Delivery Pipeline.
- Simplify governance and improve portfolio performance with Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) and Lean Budgets.
- Essential SAFe and Configurability
- Innovation with Lean Startup and Lean UX
- Scalable DevOps & Continuous Delivery
- Implementation Roadmap
- Other Important Stuff
Speaker Bio: Rapana Togiai
Rapana Togiai is currently an Agile Coach and Release Train Engineer (RTE) for Vantiv Inc., the largest payment processor in the U.S., and soon to be the largest in the world with the upcoming merger with WorldPay. He is leading Agile Release Trains (ART’s) to become more efficient through faster deliveries. In addition, he has supported the Agile and Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) transformation company-wide. See the case study here: https://www.scaledagileframework.com/vantiv-case-study. In the past, Rapana has assisted other companies in the Phoenix area, such as Apollo Group and Choice Hotels, in their Agile ventures. Rapana is a Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Certified Scrum Professional (CSP), SAFe Scaled Agile Program Consultant (SPC), and PMI Agile Certified Practitioner. He regularly provides SAFe training and has recently participated in the inaugural SAFe RTE training. He has been assisting enterprises by using Agile methodologies to deliver significant value and superior products to their customers. Fast, efficient, and great quality is what he is passionate about. As a change agent, he enjoys teaching and coaching organizations to reach their full potential by embracing Agile values and Lean thinking.[NORTH/SOUTH] Aug 29th – When are we going to ship? (Answering the hardest “easy question” in software development)
Description: When are we going to ship? (Answering the hardest “easy question” in software development)
When are we going to ship? It’s a question that’s easy to ask and exceedingly challenging to answer. This talk will focus on what’s required to answer it well, including:- Command of agile principles
- Effective use of agile practices
- Strong “gut feel” for team dynamics
- Understanding of risks encountered and tradeoffs made
- Clear communication to, and resetting expectations of, stakeholders of varying roles, responsibilities, and perspectives
Speaker Bio: Dave Lesser
Dave Lesser is the Director of Product Innovation for Scientific Technologies Corporation (STC) where he leads blue-sky/greenfield product engineering and is jointly-accountable for overall company technology vision, strategy, and execution. STC is a health technology innovation and services company that facilitates public health information exchange between the clinical care community and health agencies. In past lives he served as Director of Project Management for Unicon (an education-focused professional services organization), co-founded a $100 MM “extrapreneurial” global trade consulting venture inside of DHL, managed large-scale technology infrastructure projects, and wrote more lines of COBOL than he cares to admit publicly.[NORTH/SOUTH] July 27th – Three Strategies to Create Highly Visible and Predictable Teams
Description: Three Strategies to Create Highly Visible and Predictable Teams
Join Jeremy Wilson, as he introduces you to three proven strategies that will help to create project and initiative visibility as well as team backlog predictability. Provide your organization with much better estimates when things will be done, and create a cycle of shared ownership and responsibility for the product plan and outcomes.Speaker Bio: Jeremy Wilson
I specialize in leading organizations to be more principled in decision making using Agile in the SDLC, with an emphasis on autonomous teams with a high degree of accountability. My key areas of focus are removing process and impediments, adding automation, creating visibility and teams achieving mastery; which are all essential in a mature engineering organization. I also have extensive experience in replacing legacy software systems with an iterative approach so value can be continuously delivered and the organization can see immediate and frequent value without disrupting the roadmap. I am at heart an Agile evangelist and have incorporated Agile thought leadership into organizations early on to fundamentally transform software delivery in the enterprise. I work to provide visibility, accountability and predictability into the software development organization. Hobbies: I am also a published music producer with works on over 20 syndicated TV episodes and have been on 9 major TV networks.
[South] June 15 – This doesn’t feel very Agile . . .
Description: This doesn't feel very Agile...
It seems most companies are doing some form of Agile these days; but when you speak to people that work in these “Agile” companies, the stories and examples they share seem to be far from the benefits and Utopian environment you’ve been promised Agile will bring. Do you share some of these same pain points and wonder why that might be? Come and join the conversation around the myths, processes, and practices that many companies experience in their quest to realize the benefits of Agile. There will be a fun and interactive workshop activity to experience these things first hand!Speaker Bio: Jeremy Wood
Jeremy has a passion for helping individuals and organizations better understand where they are today, and how to achieve their goals. He has led process improvement, Agile Transformations, customized trainings, Agile adoption strategies, and Enterprise coaching for medium to Fortune 500 sized companies. He is currently the Lead Agile Coach and Delivery Manager for MATRIX Resources in Phoenix. Jeremy also teaches Agile, project management, and process improvement courses at 3 universities for undergraduate and graduate students. In his off time, he enjoys spending time with his wife and two kids, playing with his labs, and enjoying the outdoors as much as possible.
[North] June 6th – This doesn’t feel very Agile….
Description: This doesn't feel very Agile...
It seems most companies are doing some form of Agile these days; but when you speak to people that work in these “Agile” companies, the stories and examples they share seem to be far from the benefits and Utopian environment you’ve been promised Agile will bring. Do you share some of these same pain points and wonder why that might be? Come and join the conversation around the myths, processes, and practices that many companies experience in their quest to realize the benefits of Agile. There will be a fun and interactive workshop activity to experience these things first hand!Speaker Bio: Jeremy Wood
Jeremy has a passion for helping individuals and organizations better understand where they are today, and how to achieve their goals. He has led process improvement, Agile Transformations, customized trainings, Agile adoption strategies, and Enterprise coaching for medium to Fortune 500 sized companies. He is currently the Lead Agile Coach and Delivery Manager for MATRIX Resources in Phoenix. Jeremy also teaches Agile, project management, and process improvement courses at 3 universities for undergraduate and graduate students. In his off time, he enjoys spending time with his wife and two kids, playing with his labs, and enjoying the outdoors as much as possible.
[South] May 18 – Mentoring the Agile Mindset
Description: Mentoring the Agile Mindset
Speaker Bio: Tara Bluford
Fresh from the Inaugural San Diego Scrum Gathering CSP Retreat, Tara is always looking for new ways and ideas to innovate and motivate Agile processes and users. She has led high-value Process Improvement initiatives in the Financial Sector, coached teams through Continuous Improvement and Transformation projects, as well performed the duties of Agile Coach and Trainer throughout her corporate career. Tara loves to train, coach, and mentor others, and is also passionate about discovering what fuels the transition into the Agile Mindset. During the day, Tara is a Scrum Master at Isagenix. At night, she is a swim mom, a dog mom, and an amateur fiction writer. On the weekends, she can be found head-down writing at Starbucks during swim practice, or at poolside during swim meets. Contact Taraat [email protected].