Archive for the ‘Conferences’ Category

• Upcoming Conferences

  Date: 2011.05.04 | Category: Agile, Conferences, Innovation Games, Presentations, Scrum, Tools | Response: 0

  Been really quiet these past months, but I wanted to share some upcoming places where you can see me in action.

  1. PMI San Diego Annual Conference – On May 13th, I will be giving a class on Estimating and Planning.  On May 14th, I will be giving a short tutorial on how to use Innovation Games to prioritize.
  2. San Francisco Agile Conference – my colleague and friend, Angeline Tan (@agilemeister), invited me to be a speaker at this conference she has been working very hard to organize.  On June 16th, I will be presenting Improve Flow Through Prioritization.

  You can still register for both the PMI San Diego Conference and San Francisco Agile Conference.

• SoCal Code Camp Fullerton

  Date: 2011.01.29 | Category: Conferences, Presentations, Product Owner, Scrum, ScrumMaster, Team | Response: 0

  It is time for Code Camp in Fullerton this weekend.  I will be speaking on Saturday on this two topics.

  • Scrum Roles in Action: in Scrum, there are three basic roles – Team member, Product Owner and ScrumMaster.  Each role is defined with some basic specific rights and responsibilities and filling in the rest of what one is supposed to do is left as an exercise for the participants.  In this workshop, we will review the rights and responsibilities for the Scrum three roles (plus stakeholders) and discuss what those roles look like when preformed well.
  • ScrumMaster Toolkit: are you just getting OK results with Scrum?  Has Scrum not delivered on the much anticipated quantum leads in productivity everyone had been promised?  One common source of lackluster performance comes from following routine behaviors and ordinary patterns of teamwork associated with the “old way of doing things”.  In this hands-on workshop, Carlton Nettleton will share powerful techniques from his coaching toolbox that breaks these old patterns, unlocks the potential of Teams and gets them moving toward high-performance.

• Scrum Gathering Amsterdam – Nov 15th to Nov 17th

  Date: 2010.11.01 | Category: Conferences, Presentations, Scrum, Tools | Response: 0

  If you are looking for me in November, you can find me in Amsterdam!  I will be attending the Scrum Gathering and will be leading two really interesting sessions.

  1. Powerful Questions: picking the right question or reframing an issue can introduce a profound shift in the conversation. In this hands-on workshop, we will discuss how to create your own powerful questions and practice this skill. Leave with a practical tool you can use with your Teams today.
  2. Removing Impediments with Drawings: pictures convey ideas more clearly and have a greater impact than a simple conversation. In this hands-on workshop based on Dan Roam’s book, The Back of the Napkin, we will learn the six types of diagrams used in business and how select the right picture for your problem. Come ready to draw diagrams that will create a shift in how you visualize your impediments and help remove them from your organization.

• Musings on (Agile) Metrics

  Date: 2010.10.18 | Category: Agile, Conferences, Design Excellence, Design for Six Sigma, Lean, Measures, Scorecards | Response: 0

  Last week I attended a really interesting session at Agile Open NoCal about what are good metrics for Agile teams.  Since I spent a lot of time thinking about this when working with Cardinal Health on their Design Excellence program, here are some thoughts I have.

  Metrics are a powerful tool to influence behavior.  They should be applied judiciously and cautiously to any problem since they ALWAYS create unintended and unexpected behavior.  The larger the organization, the more important it is for measurement since that is the way big organizations receive feedback and can adjust their behavior.  However, it is unreasonable to insist all metrics are destructive and irresponsible to expect a large business to fly blind without some sort of data.

  I tend to think, most people do not understand how to design good metrics or they create metrics that are easy to gather, i.e. using time sheets or something else similarly foolish, or they pick metrics which are valuable to the data collector, not anyone else.  I don’t claim to be an expert, but I have some ideas which I think are consistent with Lean Thinking and Agile.  There are four guiding principles I can provide:

  1. The only metrics that matter are the one tied to customer value or satisfaction.  All the rest are intermediate measurements.
  2. The people being measured should have a say in creating the measurement system on which they are judged.
  3. Apply the Lean concept of Measure Up when creating your metrics.
  4. The best metrics are temporary.  Once the metric has produced the desired outcome, discard it.

  Pascal Dennis in his book, Getting the Right Things Done (not my favorite book – long on story, short on specifics), gives some great guidance on the first principle when flushing out the concept of True North. True North is an emotional description of the strategic and philosophical goals of the organization tied to real-life, customer-focused metrics.  Not the kinds of metrics middle managers care about or software teams, but the types of metrics that show up in reports to shareholders and are on the minds of the executives and senior leaders.  These are the metrics EVERYONE in the organization needs to be focused on and thinking about every day.

  In my experience, the people doing the work know what metrics are meaningful to them and which have no impact on their day-to-day activities.  To create a powerful measurement system that gives accurate, real-time data, engage the people doing the work in creating this system.  In addition, the metrics they come up with, are the metrics on which they are evaluated.  The common objections one runs across when developing this idea with middle manager are “what if the workers don’t come up with anything?” or “what if they are not sophisticated enough?”  I feel if you explain to the workers what is the True North, the main business metrics, they will come up with meaningful metrics that tells them if their work is contributing to the objectives of the organization.  The people who work in the company want the business to succeed (and if you feel otherwise, you have a different, more serious problem).

• Speaking @ USC Code Camp – Oct 23rd & Oct 24th

  Date: 2010.10.15 | Category: Agile, Coaching, Collaboration, Conferences, Presentations, Scrum, ScrumMaster | Response: 0

  It is that time of the year again, time for a trip to USC for SoCal Code Camp.  Here are the topics that I submitted for this year’s event:

  1. Introduction to Scrum – Scrum is a framework for developing high-performing, self-organizing teams to deliver value to customers and the business quickly.  In this hands-on session, Carlton will explain how Scrum works and describe the roles, artifacts and rituals of Scrum.
  2. ScrumMaster’s Toolkit – Are you just getting OK results with Scrum?  One common source of lackluster performance comes from following routine behaviors and ordinary patterns of teamwork associated with the “old way of doing things”.  In this hands-on workshop, you will learn tools that breaks these old patterns, unlocks the potential of Teams and gets them moving toward high-performance.
  3. Selling Your Ideas With a Drawing – Ever stand at a whiteboard & not know what to draw?  Ever watch a good idea got lost in a lot of talk?  Pictures convey ideas more clearly & have a greater impact than a simple conversation.  Come ready to draw diagrams in this hands-on workshop and create powerful diagrams which shift how you visualize your work & convince others.

  I’m pretty excited about these sessions since all of them are new for me.

• Speaking @ PMI San Diego Soft Skills Breakfast on Oct 15th

  Date: 2010.10.04 | Category: Agile, Coaching, Communication, PMI, Presentations | Response: 0

  I have been invited to speak to at the PMI San Diego soft skills breakfast group on the topic of Powerful Question.  The breakfast meeting is for project managers to learn new techniques and interpersonal skills and to network with their peers.  The meeting starts at 7:30 AM and I probably will begin speaking around 7:45 to 7:50.  Here is the description of the topic.

  Want to unlock the creativity of your teams?  Would you rather guide your team members through their own thinking process rather than lead them down your own?  At the October breakfast meeting, Carlton Nettleton will describe the powerful question technique, how to ask powerful questions and why these open-ended questions are key to creating high-performing, collaborative teams.

  You do not need to be a member of PMI San Diego to attend, but they request people to sign-up in advance.

• Sponsoring Agile Open California – Oct 11th & 12th

  Date: 2010.10.01 | Category: Agile, Conferences, Personal | Response: 0

  This year Look Forward Consulting is a Silver Level Sponsor for Agile Open Northern California.  As a sponsor, I am very proud to be supporting the Agile community in California and would like to see the number of people doing good Agile grow.

  As in years past, the event will be held at the Fort Mason Conference Center and will be using Open Space Technology.  If you have not had the chance to participate in an Open Space, you are in for a treat since each Open Space is a special experience.  For only $250, you will get to interact and learn from fifty to sixty of the leaders in the California Agile community in an intimate and thought-provoking environment.  The topic this year is “Agile Out of the Box”

  

• Innovation Games® at PMI Silicon Valley – Sept 21st 2010

  Date: 2010.09.15 | Category: Collaboration, Communication, Conferences, Games, Innovation Games, PMI, Presentations | Response: 0

  Just wanted to alert folks I will be facilitating an Innovation Games^® session at the PMI Silicon Valley 2010 Annual Symposium on Tuesday, Sept 21st from 3 PM to 5 PM.  The theme of the conference this year is “Beyond Project Success – Business Success” and I have been working with Luke Hohmann and Margaret Motamed to select some fun games to play that will open up some minds on the value of collaborative games in helping your enterprise grow and succeed.  We have also planned some exercises to ensure the participants walk away with a memorable learning experience.

  Stop by if you are looking to do something different, have a little fun and say hello!

• Lean and Agile: Roommates, Married or Twins?

  Date: 2010.08.02 | Category: Agile, Conferences, Lean, Presentations | Response: 1

  On August 11th from 9 AM to 10:30 AM, Gil Broza and I will be moderating an all-star line-up of Alan Shalloway, Jim Shore, Jean Tabaka and Mary Poppendieck who are panelists at the Agile 2010 conference.  Here is our summary of the panel:

  What is Lean? Is Lean the next “big thing” I need to learn — or is Kanban enough? Is Agile still relevant? To add to the confusion, there seem to be several different interpretations of Lean Thinking in the Agile community! In this panel, four Agile/Lean thought leaders and practitioners will discuss the essential elements of Lean and its relationship to Agile. Our panelists will share their ideas about Lean, show similarities they see between Lean and Agile, and help attendees understand (and perhaps reconcile) any differences.

  This panel came about during last year’s conference in Chicago where Gil and I discussed what does our community really know about Lean.  Are we trying to reinvent the wheel?  Are there misconceptions about Lean in our community?  In our conversation, it became clear we were really passionate about hosting a conversation between members of the Agile community and thought leaders on the Agile and Lean communities on this topic to help everyone get a deeper understanding of both.  We also wanted to make sure that the experience is very interactive with the audience members giving the panelists feedback on how well they communicated their ideas.

• The Scrum 50000 Mile Maintenance – April 28th

  Date: 2010.04.01 | Category: PMI, Presentations, Scrum | Response: 1

  I will be offering a short seminar about Scrum for PMI San Diego at the end of the month.  I am looking forward to speaking to a new audience about Scrum and providing education on what Scrum really is and what it entails.  In this two-hour seminar, I will be building on the concepts, principles and ideas I plan on exploring in the Welfare CSM class (more on that later) and at the PMI San Diego 2010 conference in May.  This should be really fun and a great opportunity to build your personal network, so if you are interested in attending, register here.

  Here is the description of the meeting to help you understand my focus:

  Having problems with Scrum? Are you getting all the benefits you were promised? Scrum is a framework for managing complex programs and projects by combining collaborative, self-organizing teams with short, iterative cycles. While Scrum is easy to set-up, true success and real improvements are frequently difficult to achieve. The simplicity of the Scrum framework regularly hides the essential principles – collaboration, visibility, self-organization, empowerment and respect – which your organization must support and cultivate for Scrum to succeed. In this 2-PDU workshop, Carlton Nettleton will share his insights into Scrum and lead you through a number of hands-on exercises and simulations to help you re-focus your efforts on the fundamental Scrum principles.

  Hope to see you there!