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Where are the usual Agile topics at the Agile India 2018 Conference?

Monday, January 29th, 2018

I’m very excited to announce the 14th edition of Agile India Conference with brand new themes and a fabulous lineup of speakers. Agile India is Asia’s Largest & Premier International conference on Leading Edge Software Development Methods.

Meet:

  • Alan Cooper – The Father of Visual Basic, Creator of Goal-directed Design methodology and inventor of the Persona concept
  • Steve Denning – Author of several books on Management, Leadership, Innovation and Organizational Storytelling
  • Linda Rising – Author of four books, most recently the Fearless Change
  • Gregor Hohpe – Author of Enterprise Integration Patterns. Technical Director at Google Cloud Computing
  • James Stewart – Co-founder of the Government Digital Service and x-Deputy CTO of the UK Government
  • Bjarte Bogsnes – Author of Implementing Beyond Budgeting, Chairman of Beyond Budgeting Roundtable and Senior Advisor Performance Framework at Statoil
  • Dr. Denis Bauer – Team Leader and Research Scientist in Cloud Computing in Transformational Bioinformatics at CSIRO
  • Jeff Patton – Author of User Story Mapping and the person responsible for bringing user-centered design thinking to Agile world
  • And 75 more thought leaders from 16 countries

The program spreads across 8 days (March 4-11th 2018, Bengaluru) with two pre-conference plus two post-conference workshop days and four days of conferences in between:

Schedule: Check out conference schedule for the lineup of workshops and speakers.

Agile India 2018 Schedule

By now it should be obvious that the usual agile presentation on mindset, process, ceremonies, roles and responsibilities is not sufficient for organizational agility. Hence our shift in the focus this year.

Tickets: Conference registration is now open and Smart Price offers are going away soon. Register now for best deals!!

Check out the exciting offers for bulk registrations –  https://2018.agileindia.org/agile-india-2018-bulk-booking-offers/.

Sponsors: We thank Agile Alliance, Cooper, RedHat, Scrum.org, Shell, AddTeq/Atlassian, Scaled Agile, ICAgile and Scrum Alliance for sponsoring the conference. If your organization wants to support this non-profit, volunteer-run conference, please check out sponsorship options.

Look forward to meeting you at the conference.

P.S: Please help us spread the word and share these details with-in your respective organizations and social network.

Follow us on Twitter or Facebook

Why attend an Agile India Conference?

Tuesday, February 7th, 2017

Did you know @agileindia has hosted 900+ inspiring speakers in the last 12 years.

Agile India: Our Journey over the last 12 years

Tuesday, February 7th, 2017

This video captures it all…

Agile India 2016 – 5 Conferences + 16 Pre/Post Conf Workshops (March, Bangalore)

Thursday, January 28th, 2016

Agile India 2016 Conference

Over the last 9 months, our program team of 26 volunteers from 8 different countries have worked together to put together a fantastic program for you.

We got a total of 333 proposals and have selected 108 proposals spread over 10 days.

Proposed vs. Accepted Proposals for Agile India 2016 Conference

Conference Speakers

We are happy to confirm that we’ve 86 Speakers from 18 countries presenting at this very conference.

Agile India 2016 Speakers

Conference Program

The team has worked very hard to make sure we’ve a nice balance of topics selected for you at the conference.

Agile India 2016 Proposal Type

Online Registration

Choose from 5 Conferences:

And 16 Pre/Post Conference Workshops:

Register here: https://confengine.com/agile-india-2016/register

Agile India 2016 Sponsors

Big thanks to our sponsors for supporting the conference.

We’ve a couple of more sponsorship opportunities available.

Check: http://2016.agileindia.org/#sponsor/become-sponsor

Social Links:

Presenting Agile Pune 2014 Conference – Nov 21st and 22nd at Hyatt Regency, Pune

Tuesday, June 24th, 2014

We are delighted to present Linda Rising and Joshua Kerievsky, as our keynote speakers for the upcoming Agile Pune 2014 Conference. The conference will be hosted at Hyatt Regency, Pune on Nov 21st and 22nd.

The Agile Pune 2014 is a volunteer-run, non-profit event organised by the Agile Software Community of India (ASCI). The goal of the conference is to bring together Agile enthusiasts from around the world to share ideas, socialise, and work together on advancing the state of Agile/Lean Software development.

Simplicity, quick feedback cycles, systems thinking, mistake proofing, transformational leadership, building quality in, relentless improvement via inspect and adapt, evolutionary design, cross-functional collaboration, sustainable pace, self-organisation and safe-fail experimentation are some of the core tenants of the Agile and Lean mindset. They help teams embrace uncertainty and make them more change resilient. This conference is dedicated to deep-dive on these topics.

Agile Pune 2014 is a two-day conference, starting on Nov 21st (Friday), where experts and practitioners from around the world will share their experience on topics related to our theme, “Action Precedes Clarity”. The conference will host 3 parallel tracks. We also plan to host pre-conference workshops to help you get world-class training directly from our international experts at affordable rates.

If you are interested in presenting at the Agile Pune 2014 conf, please submit your proposals at http://confengine.com/agile-pune-2014

Super early bird registrations starts today. Register now at http://booking.agilefaqs.com/agile-pune-2014

To know more about the conference, please visit http://pune.agileindia.org

Agile India 2014 Conference Video DVD are ready!

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2014

Grab 72 hours of HD quality videos from Agile India 2014 Conference burnt on 16 DVDs (62 GB.) Visit http://booking.agilefaqs.com/agile-india-2014#dvd to order the DVD set online to be hand-delivered at your door-step (anywhere in the world.)

Agile India 2014 Recap – My Impressions

Monday, March 10th, 2014

tl;dr: Thank you for making Agile India 2014 (AI14) a grand success.

Slides: Several speakers have already uploaded their slides. They are available via http://present.agileindia.org/schedule/agile-india-2014. Rest will upload their slides in the coming days.

Videos: If you like to get a copy of all the videos from the conference, you can purchase the entire DVD set here: http://booking.agilefaqs.com/agile-india-2014

Feedback: Anyone who attended the conference would have noticed that the conference doesn’t provide any feedback forms. How bizarre is that for an agile conference? Let me tell you something, asking attendees to fill out feedback forms at the conference when there is so much going on is very ineffective. Have you ever wondered why after filling all those feedback forms or taking customer surveys things hardly change?

At Agile India, we take feedback very seriously and hence we believe in talking directly with you. If possible, we try and implement your suggestion right-away instead of waiting till the next conference. I’ve personally collected face-to-face feedback from over 300 attendees. However we were not able to talk to everyone and as a fall back option, we would encourage you to visit http://bit.ly/1nrjpVn and submit your valuable suggestions. The top 3 suggestions, selected by our program committee, will stand a chance to win an iPad mini or a free pass to next year’s conference. However please read the entire email, before you jump off.

Long Version:

As we are wrapping up the last few tasks from AI14, I would like to take a few minutes and share my reflections on conference and the growth of agile community in India since we started in 2004 (10 years ago.)

First of all, thank you for participating in our largest conference ever! We were happy to host 1236 Attendees from 28 different countries. We had attendees playing 342 different roles from 226 different companies: http://blog.agileindia.org/2014/03/04/agile-india-2014-conference-final-attendees-profile/

For 10 years we’ve been running these conferences and every year the community-feeling keeps getting better. This year, finally one could sense the true spirit of large scale community at the conference. It was not a one person show anymore. Also, it was amazing to see how well folks were networking and learning from each other (peer-to-peer learning.)

This year we got tremendous support from a diverse set of companies sponsoring the event. Many people appreciated that the conference was not only supported by Agile tools & consulting companies, but was also supported by companies like JP Morgan and Siemens. This clearly shows that the industry believes in the agile movement and wants to invest in nurturing our budding community. I greatly appreciate the support from our partners.

Another thing the participants really appreciated was, how inclusive the conference program was. In the early days of Agile India, we were very heavily influenced by eXtreme Programming. But over the years, we’ve tried our best to be more inclusive of other methods (Scrum, Kanban, Lean Startup, DSDM, etc.) and frameworks (SAFe, DAD, etc.) We strongly believe that our job is to create an equal platform for everyone, get the best in the industry and let people decide what makes most sense to them, in their context.

As you might know, the entire conference program was put together by a committee of volunteers (http://2014.agileindia.org/organizers/), who are selected via a nomination process. Also anyone is allowed to put in a proposal via our open submission system (http://present.agileindia.org). We got 263 proposals for talk, out of which 64 proposals were selected.

You might not be aware, how much blood and sweat goes into putting together a conference of this scale. Every single person, who helped us with the conference is a volunteer. People who have regular day time jobs, just like you. Our team has spent many sleepless nights starting from June 2013 to Feb 2014 (9 months.) It is a big commitment. I sincerely want to thank every volunteer who made this possible.

We encourage you to participate in this process as well. There are 3 level in which you can participate:

  1. Join the Program committee (chairs, core members and reviewers)
  2. Share your experience by putting in proposals for talks you would like to present at the conference
  3. Give constructive feedback via votes and comments to other proposals, to refine them.

Please follow @agileindia on twitter to get updates. We’ll have a call for all of these (May time-frame.)

Quick note to presenters: If you would like to present at the next year’s conference, start now. Start by presenting inside your company. Then at a local user group. Then at one of the regional conferences. Agile India runs many regional events every year: http://agileindia.org/events Also consider pairing with an experience speaker. There are no shortcuts to presenting at our annual, international conference.

Dave Thomas Keynote:

After signing the Agile Manifesto, this was the first Agile conference in 13 years that Dave Thomas was attending. I think this is special. Many attendees told us that Dave’s keynote was the highlight of the conference. Dave can tell you, how much I pestered him to accept our invite. We always strive to bring you the best.

Paid Workshops:
=============

Unlike last year, this year we got a really good response for the paid workshops. Just the workshops attracted over 300 people and the feedback from the workshops was very promising. The paid workshops not only gives you an opportunity to spend quality time with an expert, but it also helps us to cover some of the speaker expenses and attract more experts to the conference. If you were to attend the same speaker’s training outside the conference, it would cost you at least 3 times more. The conference, massively subsidies the cost for the greater good of the community.

Food:
====

Overall the feedback on quality & taste of the food was very positive. Many attendees commented that they hate hotel food, esp. since it creates a burning sensation after eating. But they were surprised they did not have any such problems. Nor did the food make them sleepy. We know that food is a big part of the conference experience. And hence I had personally tasted and selected the entire menu. So if you did not like something, blame me.

Some tweets from the conference:
==========================

#AgileIndia2014 – an awesome conference and one to consider adding to your must-attend events.

As world conf traveler, I can say #AgileIndia2014 is 1 of world’s top Agile confs;

Leaving #agileindia2014 – what an amazing time! Thanks to @nashjain and everyone else who made it happen 🙂

It’s great to hear “understand the problem you are trying to solve” as a common theme from many #agileindia2014 speakers.

Our team had a wonderful learning experience at #AgileIndia2014. Congratulations for organizing such a brilliant event.

Few other things worth highlighting:
============================

First Registration Slab was sold out in flat 7 mins. This was even before the conference program was available. Trust me, this is unheard of in India. There are at least 200 people who’ve been attending Agile India conferences for more than 3 years and they mostly pay out of their pocket to attend. To encourage such passionate folks, we kept a super-early-bird registration slab. We believe they are a key part of our community.

Experience Reports and Case Studies:
==============================

As you know, this year we’ve focused a lot on getting as many case studies and experience reports at the conference. To further maximize your learning from these sessions, we’ve published all these reports here: http://2014.agileindia.org/program/reports/ These reports will continue to be freely available for anyone interested in learning.

Lightning Talks:
============

Lightning talks were very well received. Many people having great ideas to share. Next year we plan to structure them little better and make them more visible.

Not everything was perfect at the conference, however the attendees did a great job in cooperating with us. It was amazing to see them take ownership of the conference and work patiently with us.

A few unexpected things worth highlighting:
==================================

Different floors: Original plan was to have all the 3 parallel tracks on the same floor, but only 3 days before the conference the hotel told us that the divider in the grand ballroom, which is used to split the grand ballroom into 2 halls is not working. We had to shift one of the tracks to Sigma hall (which was 2 levels above) and move the paid workshops elsewhere. I could see the frustration in people trying to find Sigma hall and move between floors. But hardly anyone complained. They gave us the benefit of doubt. Thank you!

Speaker Dropouts: We had a few speakers (including a keynote speaker) dropout last minute. We tried our best to cover up the slots with something equally interesting. IMHO this is true agility in action.

Cramped Hallways: The hallways were quite cramped esp. during the breaks. We had not expected such a great response from sponsors, when we originally planned the conference. Other than the hallway, we could not find an alternative, central location for the title sponsor stalls. The stalls certainly added to the space constraint in the hallway. But it was also fun to have some ongoing action in the hallway.

Registration process on the first day is always challenging. We had so many last minute changes (attendees swapping names and days) which makes it extremely hard to streamline the process. As far as I’m aware, we embraced it and accommodated all the changes. Our team of volunteers did their best to make it as smooth as possible. Next year we are planning to revamp the whole registration process by using RFIDs and other technology solutions.

Wifi Connection: Internet Wifi connection is still extremely expensive (~ 10 Lakh Rs.) for conferences. So we get it sponsored from Airtel. But there is only so much we can demand when we get something sponsored. Having said that, compared to last year, this year the wifi connection was much better. We had 5 routers and few of them were constantly overloaded. With over 200 people trying to connect to each router, there were moments when new connections could not be established. Whenever we noticed something like this, we tried to reset the route, but all of this took time and I could see some people unhappy about it.

Few things we tried for the first time:

Agile Art!
=======

During all the three evening receptions, the participants created a visual art piece together with the help of Richard Kasperowski and the team from McAfee. This helped the participants to create new connections and build/reinforce the community of Agilists in India and around the world. On the fourth day, we displayed our art, which was a big hit. I saw many people posing in front of the art piece for pictures. Finally, we invited attendees to take pieces of the art as gifts as reminders of our potential to create greatness together.

Book Signing and Book Store
=======================

Every year Agile India attracts top speakers from around the world. Most of these speakers have a track record of writing very influential books. To enable the fan/follower of these authors, we set up a book store at the conference and had book signing events where attendees were able to get a personal autographed book by the authors. Many folks appreciated this initiative. And we plan to make it even stronger next year.

Agile India Webinar Series
=====================

We invited many speakers to the Agile India 2014 Conference. However due to travel constraints or other conflicts, they were not able to make it. However few of them agreed to do an exclusive webinar (Google Hangout) with us. The recordings of their webinar is available at: http://2014.agileindia.org/program/webinars/

Agile India Job Fair
===============

Agile India was happy to host the world’s first job fair dedicated for hiring Agile practitioners. The goal of the Agile Job Fair was to create a platform dedicated for the Agile practitioners to meet their potential Agile employers and for companies to find Agile practitioners to enable their journey to Agile adoption and excellence. We had over 200 people who applied to participate in the job fair. Also we had a total of 6 companies who participated as employers. On the day of the event, we had only 40 odd people show up. This was disappointing. However the 40+ who showed up, really appreciated the initiative. Next year we plan to host the job fair, during the conference itself.

P.S: Every week, I get at least 10 emails from people asking me about Agile India membership. I don’t get it! Why do you want to give me your hard-earned money for no good reasons? The current membership program has no real benefits and hence we’ve closed it. I’m currently working on a new membership model for Agile India, which will provide real membership benefits. At that point you can justify spending money on membership. If you have ideas on how we should structure the membership program, please drop me a note. Good ideas win free membership. Stay tuned for more…

Agile India 2014 Conference Attendees Profile (20th Feb)

Friday, February 21st, 2014

As of Feb 20th 2014, the following folks have registered for the Agile India Conference

Roles – 320

Job Title
Account Qlty Manager Agile & Lean Coach Agile Business Analyst
Agile Coach Agile Coach and Strategist Agile Coach, Trainer, and Consultant
Agile Coach Wrangler Agile Coach/Scrum master Agile CoE Leadership Team
Agile Consultant Agile Practitioner & Consultant Agile Product Manager
Agile Program Consultant Agile Project Manager Agile Strategist & Coach
Agile Technologist Agile Trainer and Coach Agile Transformation Consultant
Agile Transformation Manager APA ALM R&D Analyst IT
Application Analyst Application Developer Architect
Assistant Manager Assistant Manager Process & Quality Assoc. Director – Projects
Associate Associate Architect Associate General Manager – Consulting
Associate Java Developer Associate Professor Associate Project Manager
Associate VP Asst Manager Process & Quality Author
Blogger BTS Head of Corporate Business Analyst
Business Manager Business Transformation Coach, Agile Coach, Open Space Facilitator CEO
Chief Consultant Chief Architect Chief Consultant
Chief Functional Architect Chief Scientist CI Expert
CIO Client Partner Client Principal
Coach Code Monkey CoE Head
Co-Founder and CEO Collaboration catalyst Competence Group Manager – M2O
Consultant Consultant – Agile Center of Excellence Consultant Manager
Contact Centre Team Lead CTO Customer Care Associate, GM Solutions & Tech
Delivery Excellence Head Delivery Head Delivery manager
Delivery Manager / TTS / Delivery Services Dev Management Products Dev Staff Engineer
Developer Development Line Manager Development Line Manager – EPG Product
Development Manager Development Manager/Expert Development Project Manager
Development Vice President Director Director – Agile CoE
Director – Head of Software Development Director – Product Marketing Director – Products
Director – Projects Director, Agile Software Engineering Director, Engineering
Director, India Sales Operations Director of Engineering Director of Platform Development
Director Quality Director, R&D Director- R&D Competency
Director Technology Director-Projects Doctoral Student
Engineer IT Engineering Manager Executive
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Executive Manager, Risk Advice Expert Software Engineer
Foudner Founder Founder & CTO
Founder CEO General Manager General Manager – Quality
General Manager and Market Principal GM, Head : Continuous Improvement Group Manager – Consulting
Head – IT,Defence and Aerospace markets Head – Technology Competences Head of Delivery
Head of Engineering Head of IT Delivery Competence Groups Head of Offshore Development
Head of People and Culture Head of Project Management Head of R&D Operations
Head of Technology – Customer Systems Head of Technology – Group Platform Head- Organisational Markets
Independent Integration Manager IT Architect
IT Portfolio Manager Lead Lead Application Architect
Lead Consultant Lead Consultant – Business Analyst Lead Program Integrator
Lead SCM Engineer Lead Software Engineer Lead System Designer
Line Manager Manager Manager – Application Development
Manager – Engineering Manager – Projects Manager / Scrum Master
Manager – Software Development Manager Delivery Services Manager IT
Manager Program Management Manager QA Manager Software Development
Manager, Software Development Engineering Manager-Software Development (ERP) Managing Director
Marketing & Events Specialist Marketing Manager Marketing Programs Manager
Marketing Programs Manager1 Portfolio Manager Portfolio Project Manager
Practice Head Practice Head – ATS Practice Head – Lean and Kanban
Practice Manager – SMAC Practice Tech Lead, MCDE Pre-Sales Manager
Pre-Sales (Technical Consultant) President, Asia Pacific Operations Principal
Principal Agile Coach Principal Consultant Principal Consultant – ERP, EAS Analytics
Principal Engineer Principal Engineering Project Manager Principal Group Program Manager
Principal Program Manager Principal Researcher Principal Software Developer
Principal Software Engineer Process Manager Product Developer
Product Governance Head product Management Product Manager
Product Manager B2B/B2G Product Manager, Solutions Product Marketing
Product Owner Product Specialist Product Test Analyst
Program Architect Program Director Program Director – BSC
Program Management Advisor Program Management Senior Advisor Program Manager
Program Manager – Agile Transformation and Scaling Program Manager – CM Programmer Analyst
Project / Program Manager Project Analyst Project Lead
Project Manager Project Manager IT QA Associate Manager
QA Engineer QA Head QA Manager
Quality Analyst Quality Assurance Architect R&D Head
RM – South Sales Manager Sales Specialist
Scrum Master Senior Agile Coach Senior Agile Practitioner
Senior Architect Senior Business Analyst Senior consultant
Senior Delivery Manager Senior Delivery Manager / TTS / Delivery Services Senior Design Engineer
Senior Dev Senior Development Manager Senior Director
Senior Director – Projects Senior Engg Project Manager Senior Engineer – Process
Senior Engineer Specialist Senior Engineering Manager Senior Engineering Project Manager
Senior Group Manager Senior IT Engineer Senior Manager
Senior Manager – Agile Working Group Senior Manager – Development Senior Manager – LEAN
Senior Manager , Program Management Senior Manager – Projects Senior Manager – Quality
Senior Manager – Release Management Senior Manager – Test Engineering Senior Manager Business Development
Senior Manager of Engineering Senior Manager Projects Senior Manager Software Development
Senior Manager Technology Senior Product Manager Senior Productivity Expert
Senior Professional Senior Professional – Technology Analyst Senior Program Manager
Senior Project Lead Senior Project Manager Senior Quality Engineer
Senior Software Developer Senior Software Engineer Senior Software QA Engineer
Senior Sofware Engineer Senior Sourcing Specialist Senior Systems Analyst
Senior Systems Specialist Senior Tech Lead Senior Technical Architect
Senior Technical Lead Senior Technical Presales Specialist, Sales Senior Technical Staff Member
Senior Test Engineer Senior Vice President Senior Quality Assurance Engineer
Software Architect Software Artisan Software Consultant
Software Developer Software Development Advisor Software Development Engineer
Software Development Manager Software Development Staff Engineer Software Engineer
Software Engineer Manager Software Engineer Senior Manager Solution Architect
Solutions Director Speaker SQA
Sr Analyst – Apps Prog sr. developer Sr IT QA Manager
Sr manager SR. MANAGER, IT SR. QA ENGINEER – II
Sr Quality Engineer Sr Technology Manager Staff Engineer
Student SYSTEM ANALYST System Specialist
Systems Analyst Systems Analyst – Test Engineering Systems Engineer
Systems Specialist Team Lead Team Manager
Tech Lead Technical / Process Advisor Technical Architect
Technical consultant Technical Director – Product Management Technical Lead
Technical Program Manager Technical Specialist – Quality Technologist
Technology Specialist Test Practice Lead Test Senior Engineer
Test Technologist UK Director UX wrangler
Vice President Vice President – STB Solutions Vice President and Regional IT COO
Vice President, R&D Vice President-Engineering and Delivery VP, Chief Quality Officer
VP Global Sales VP Solutions

Organisations – 205

Organisation Names
IIM Bangalore 3Five8 Technologies. 7N
Aconex Aditya Birla Minacs ADOBE SYSTEMS
Agile Coaching Institute Agile FAQs Agile Partnership
AgileSparks Aguai Solutions Alcatel Lucent
Alliance Global Services Allscripts India Amadeus Software Labs India
Amazon India Development. Amdocs AON
Aptean Arc Alternatives ARICENT
Artech Infosystems Arts Interstices Asprotunity
BA Continuum Bankdata/7N Bankwest
BigVisible Bizsciences LLC BMC Software Inc. Pune
BNP Paribas India Solutions Bold Mover Brainysys Technologies
bwin.party CA Technologies Catalise Consulting
CatalystOne Info Solutions ceezone CeeZone Consulting
CenturyLink India CGI Cisco
CodePink Cognizant Technology Solutions CollabNet
Consulting Crest Premedia Solutions CSC
Cybage Software David J Anderson & Associates Dell
Digite Inc Directing the Agile Organisation Direction Software Solution
DispatchTrack Inc DreamOrbit Softech DSS
E. Slomba Arts Interstices Edventure Labs EMC Corporation
Enteleki Enteleki Technology Solutions Entrib Technologies
Envestnet Equal Experts ExelPlus Servcies
Exfo Exilesoft Fiberlink Software, an IBM Company
Fidelity IBS Fidelity National Financial FMR India
Ford Technology Services India GE Energy GE Healthcare
Gembatech Geometric Gislen Software.
GlobalLogic gnuyoga.in GOA UNIVERSITY
Groupon Hansoft HCL Technologies
HeadEnd Group Honeywell Technology Solutions Hoppr
HP Huawei India Huawei Technologies India.
IBM IDRBT IFS Research and Development International LTD
IHS Global IIM Bangalore IIT Bombay
Impelsys Independent Industrial Logic
Infocareer Infosys InMobi
INNOVENTES TECHNOLOGIES INTEAMO INNOVATIONS & SOFTWARE PRIVATE LIMITED Intel Corporation
Intel Technology India Intelliant IQ Business
Ishi Information Systems IVY Comptech Jeeves Information Systems
J.P. Morgan Khanyisa Real Systems L&T Infotech
Lynne Cazaly managewell.net Manipal Global Education services
Marin Software Markit India McAfee Software India
Mckinsey & Company Mic Micromen Software Solutions
Microsoft Milaap Social Ventures Mindtree
Misys Multunus Software Napa India
Nokia Nokia (Maps Division) (HERE India) NotiPhi
NSN Oracle Ostrya Labs
P5Systems Paypal India Persistent System
Philips Electronics India Pitney Bowes PMI India
Pragmatic Programmers, LLC Principal Global Services. Prowareness
PubMatic Purple Candor QAI India
Qualcomm QUALCOMM INDIA Quintiles
Rally Software REA Group Red Panda.
RENISHAW METROLOGY SYSTEMS Rotary International Sabre
Sabre Holdings SAP Labs India Sapient Consulting
SAS Research & Development Scaled Agile, Inc. Schlumberger
Self SHOPPERS STOP LTD SIEMENS
Siemens AG Healthcare Siemens Technology & Services. SITA
Smartesting Societe Generale Software AG
Software AG Bangalore Technologies Software Artisan SolutionsIQ India
Sparks59 Suncorp SunGard
SunGard Consulting Services Symphony Teleca Corporation Synerzip Softech India.
Target Corporation Tata consultancy services Tavisca Solutions
TENAGA NASIONAL BERHAD Tesco Hindustan Service Center Tesco Hindustan Service Center, Bangalore
TheTrainline Thomsonreuters ThoughtWorks
Toobler Technologies Unicom Learning Valtech
Valuemomentum VMware Walmart
WaveTable Winjit Technologies WIPRO Technologies
With Great People Woolworths Xebia IT Architect
Xerox Xicora Consultants Zen Digital

Countries – 28

Country # of Attendees
Australia 17
Bangladesh 9
Canada 2
China 12
Denmark 6
Egypt 7
Finland 2
France 5
Germany 1
Gibraltar 1
India 789
Indonesia 9
Israel 5
Japan 2
Malaysia 5
New Zealand 4
Norway 1
Pakistan 3
Russia 21
Singapore 13
South Africa 3
Spain 1
Sri Lanka 15
Sweden 2
Uganda 1
Ukraine 3
United Kingdom 8
United States 34

Gender

Gender Count
Male 746
Female 244

Interview with Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spayd – Coaching Agile Teams

Wednesday, February 19th, 2014

The need for an Agile coach and a right channel for coaching has become imperative for many Agile organisations. This forces us to nurture a community of coaches who understand the role requirements and goes beyond the usual to tackle the implementation challenges. Lyssa Adkins and Michael Spayd are pioneers in coaching the Agile coaches to handle large enterprise problems. Their experience in life coaching and expertise in the industry gives them an edge. They have more than 15 years of experience in leading projects and organisations.

Lyssa is also trained as a Co-active coach and leader. She authored ‘Coaching Agile Teams: A Companion for ScrumMasters, Agile Coaches, and Project Managers in Transition’ in 2010.

Lyssa Adkins

Lyssa Adkins Book

Michael is trained as a Team and Organisational coach, in co-active leadership and in executive coaching.Currently he is writing a book called Coaching in the Agile Enterprise.

Michael Spayd

Lyssa and Michael are running a workshop at Agile India 2014 for Agilists who wants to increase their overall Agile coaching skills, including in the areas of Teaching, Mentoring, Facilitation, and Professional Coaching.

We had a short chat with them to understand their views about Agile Coaching

1. What is the role of an Agile Coach in the Agile transformation journey?

Lyssa Adkins: You know Agile coach is a word that we just use generically because almost every corporation has their own version of these words. They’ll say “XP coach” or “Scrum Master” or “Agile Project Manager” or something like that. And we’re not really religious about which form or the word we use. What we care is about how the coaches help teams move beyond just getting the practices up and running and, into helping teams on their joyful and deliberate pursuit of high performance. It’s really going beyond what we would consider as a basic Scrum Master or XP coach for example.

Michael Spayd: It is, as Lyssa is saying, a pretty broad range of definitions. The word “coach” is interesting too because it’s such an overloaded term. You know, it means sports coach to some people, it means professional coach – like a life coach or an executive coach to some people, and it means kind of you having coaching by your manager which really means telling you what you need to do or you are going to get fired.And that’s created some confusion around what Agile coaches do and a really wide range of activities they do.

We’ve done some writing about that and talked about all the competencies that Agile coaches need to have. But basically they stand in a position or work in a position that’s kind of like a team leader in a certain way and kind of outside the team, helping the team, serving the team, and helping the team become a better team. Not like doing things for the team, not getting and making all the decisions for the team – anything like that, but really trying to help the team become a better team.

2. What does it take to be an effective Agile Coach?

Michael Spayd: Well this is where the term Agile coach is both overloaded and really big actually, there’s a lot of things to do as an Agile coach. So we look to impart facilitation, like professional facilitation and having skill at being a neutral facilitator of meetings and events (you know games whatever it is in the Agile environment). And help leading teams through that without getting involved in the content without voting on “Oh you should do this way” but actually helping the team get better themselves.

The thing that most people think about when they think about an Agile coach is what we call an Agile-Lean practitioner, so knowing about the Agile processes, knowing how the values relate to the principles, relate to and generate the practices, how you innovate, how you modify them in a consistent way – that sort of thing – so all the world of knowing all about Agile and Lean. That’s one big, big piece but it’s definitely not the whole shooting match.

Lyssa Adkins: The predominant role we’re playing now is to help coaches create awareness in themselves of which of those disciplines (we didn’t even go through all of them but we’ve gone through a good number of them) they have solidly and which they don’t. And how at any given moment they will choose which one serves the purposes of the transformation best.

Michael Spayd: So making for an Agile coach in terms of transforming or working with a team they have to draw on this pallet, if you think about this, because coaching, facilitation, teaching, mentoring, Agile Lean practitioner. It’s like a pallet of colours that you are painting with so to speak, and the art of it, in a lot of ways, is which one do you choose at which time to help an organization make this transition.

Lyssa Adkins: We recognize that transformation is about “transformation”. Which means you can’t consult your way into it, you can’t cajole someone into it, you can’t make them do it. It’s a lot about each individual person and how that radiates out to a whole organization. So, in the center of all of those disciplines is this thing we call the coaching stance. Which is very much just like a home base that an Agile coach comes back to as a way to help activate in other people their next positive steps towards the transformation they see needs to take place. And that’s how the results stick. That’s how an organization continues to transform once the Agile consultants have left the building. And that’s an important thing for us. I guess the higher calling of why we’re together is that Agile is this incredible positive transformation virus. It is unleashing a wave of positive change everywhere that it goes. And we believe that Agile coaches when they are well equipped are powerful transformation agents to help that virus spread in a positive and useful way. Not only for people but also for products.

 3. What are the key take-aways from your workshop?

Lyssa Adkins: Well instead of us telling you about the take-aways from our workshops, you can find the testimonials from our participants on ‘Our Impact’ page in our website.

This workshop has limited seats. Book early to avoid disappointments: http://booking.agilefaqs.com/agile-india-2014#workshops

Agile Art! @ Agile India 2014

Thursday, February 13th, 2014

Goals: Learn and practice Agile by doing Agile. Build community. Make art!

The concept: During three evenings, we’ll create a visual art piece together. We’ll create new connections among attendees and build and reinforce the community of Agilists in India and around the world. On the fourth day, we’ll display our art. Finally, we’ll give pieces of our art as gifts to each other to take home with us as reminders of our potential to create greatness together.

The art piece will be a large two-dimensional wall hanging. The center of the piece will be the Agile India logo. We’ll create both the central theme and smaller scale contributions that represent each of us as individual people. We’ll get help from a small team of artists and designers from McAfee in Bangalore.

We’ll use Scrum to execute the piece during the first 3 evenings of the conference. We’ll work in 1-hour sprints to create the piece in three-hour-long sessions. Richard Kasperowski will play Product Owner, Nagendra Kumar will play Scrum Master, and the attendees will be the Development Team. Every hour, we’ll plan our sprint, do the work, hold a review, and retrospect to improve our creativity and velocity toward our goal-to complete the piece and hang it on the wall by the end of the third day.

Here is a small video, which demonstrates a similar art event:

On the morning of the fourth day, we’ll unveil the piece, and it will be available for attendees to enjoy. During the afternoon of the fourth day, we’ll dismantle the project by offering pieces of it as gifts to each other to take home. Thus the piece will be both ephemeral and permanent. The unified piece will exist for only a short time, the fourth day of the conference, before we dismantle it. Small individual pieces of art will live on permanently in the homes and offices of the people who take them home with them, as reminders of the community, and as symbols of the power of art and Agile to create greatness together.

Interested to join us? Apply Here!

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