Archive for the ‘Conferences’ Category

• Speaking at SFAgile 2012

  Date: 2012.05.14 | Category: Agile, Conferences, Personal | Response: 0

  I wanted to let people know that I will be attending the SFAgile2012 conference from June 4th to June 6th.  On June 4th, I will be participating in a panel on the Pay It Forward program sponsored by a business partner of mine Conscires Agile Practices.

  This year the SF Agile conference  is being produced by two good friends of mine – Angeline Tan (@agilemeister) and Mike Sutton (@mhsutton) and they opened up the program using a crowd sourcing model.  Anyone who had a topic they wanted to speak about were encouraged to submit their session using IdeaScale and then other interested participants could comment and vote for the sessions they felt should be included in the program.  I helped the conference in a couple of ways – was a reviewer of sessions, my business made a donation to help sponsor the event and I helped arrange Jim McCarthy to be the keynote speaker on June 5th.

  Finally, San Francisco is just an awesome city and the conference venue is right on Market Street in downtown San Francicso.  It just cannot get any better than this, so please register and join in on the fun!

• Visit to Auckland Agile

  Date: 2011.10.06 | Category: Agile, Presentations, Scrum, Tools | Response: 0

  Just finished a trip to New Zealand and had a chance to speak at Auckland Agile on September 29th.  The session was another run of my “Removing Impediments with Drawings” that I have presented numerous times in the past year (the most recent at Agile 2011 in Salt Lake City).  I am not sure exactly, but I think we may have had about 40+ people in this session.  A lot less people than Agile 2011 and I thought the outcomes were better.  Glad I had a chance to meet with this group and share some ideas that might not have made it to their part of the world.

  I want to send a special thank you to my hosts for the evening Carolyn Sanders and Stephen Reed (@ScrumMasterNZ).  They completely took care of arranging for the venue, meeting me and taking me out for drinks afterwards.

• Agile 2011

  Date: 2011.08.20 | Category: Agile, Conferences, Presentations, Tools, Travel | Response: 0

  Wow!  Another Agile conference under my belt.  This year was a visit to Salt Lake City and two talks at the conference.  Both of these talks are continuations of my sessions from the Amsterdam Scrum Gathering in 2011.

  1. Powerful Questions – this was one of the largest sessions about Powerful Questions that I ever ran.  I think there were more than 40+ people in the room and people were standing along the walls.  Even though it was a large group, I felt the interaction was good, the main points were communicated and the participants “got it”.  There are two good write-ups on the session from Kenji Haranbe (the stage manager) and Sam Laing.  For more on Powerful Questions check out this really great PDF  from The World Cafe to get you started.
  2. Removing Impediments with Drawings – this session is based on Dan Roam’s visual framework, Back of the Napkin, as a way to share ideas that stick.  This session was HUGE!!  When I walked in the room, I immediately knew I did not have enough materials for my session – I had brought enough materials for 70 and I needed about 50 more!  At some point, I had to tell the proctors that we cannot accept anymore people and I know some people were angry about that.  Since the room was so large with so many people, it was not as interactive as I hoped and the next time I run this session, I would have a co-presenter.  Craig Smith wrote up a really great review with awesome pictures on his blog.  Thanks!!

  Next year, I will remember not to spend so much time with consulting work while at the conference.  I felt like I spent the whole time on conference calls, did my sessions and then went home.  Not that much fun

• 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”