Thank you to all who participated in the largest gathering to date, the Scrum Gathering Las Vegas. Looking forward to seeing everyone at the Global Scrum Gathering Paris. Registration is now OPEN.

Session presentations are now available for downloading. Check out the Presentation Tab.

Thank you to our Platinum sponsor SolutionsIQ, Silver sponsor VersionOne, and Bronze sponsors David Consulting Group, Agile Learning Labs, CollabNet, Platinum Edge, RippleRock, and PMI! Interested in becoming a Scrum Gathering sponsor? Contact Yvonne Dewar at ydewar@scrumalliance.org

In the course of approximately 75 years, Las Vegas went from being a small stop along the westward pioneer trail to one of the most visited cities in the world. Almost 37 million people each year come to enjoy the rich entertainment and culture which Las Vegas has to offer. This vast tourism industry was not the work of one individual but rather many successful entrepreneurs who followed their passion-driven vision and, with some risk, turned it into a business.

An entrepreneur is an enterprising individual who builds capital through risk and/or initiative. Entrepreneurial Spirit, then, is the overall mindset and attitude of individuals which enables them to see opportunities; opportunities to create or rethink, engage or facilitate, opportunities to do or not do when it makes sense. Successful entrepreneurs have a vision for how they fit into the puzzle; they are able to choose or see the things that require their attention and dedicate themselves to achieving success at that level. They know how to serve their customers. Successful entrepreneurs are able to be transparent and honest, if not to everyone, most certainly to themselves.

When we think about what it takes to be successful in the world of work, there are certain values that come to mind: focus, commitment, courage, openness, respect. Scrum embodies these values by providing a framework of practices that help unite individuals with entrepreneurial spirit. Those who are successful with Scrum practice the art of the possible as they seek to collaborate more effectively. They look for opportunities and take appropriate risks. Ultimately, those with an entrepreneurial spirit inspect and adapt in order to transform the world of work.

This Gathering challenges you to "Up the Ante" on your Agile game. What would it take for you to go from good to great? What does an entrepreneurial spirit look like in your industry or organization? Where do you stand on the five core values and how might you develop competency in these to transform your world of work?

Each of the Scrum Values guides you down the path of self-discovery during this conference wherein the presenters help identify where you might "Up the Ante." Within each of these tracks is a level of competency and mastery represented by different standard poker chip levels: White $1 (entry), Blue $10 (intermediate), Black $100 (expert). These poker chip levels serve as a fun way to reference the intended level of the sessions within each track. Please refer to them as you plan which sessions to attend.

Tracks

See The Future

Establishing a vision is the first step in understanding the future. Planning, focusing on value, delighting customers. Don't live in the past with teams and organizational dysfunction. Keep a mind toward the art of the possible. This is the "What" in terms of delivery. It also includes the bigger picture and includes topics on organizational development, coaching, product road mapping, and similar activities.

Build The Future

This is where we focus on "How" to create the valuable work product. We think about the elements of Scrum like the Daily Scrum, Scrum Roles, Sprint Backlog, etc. Topics for this track include activities throughout the Sprint: effective retrospectives, collaboration techniques, removing impediments, and others.

Tools of the Trade

Here we focus on the tools and techniques for engineering practices such as continuous integration, code refactoring, pair programming, and unit testing. These constitute the technical aspect of "How" when it comes to value delivery.

About Daniel Gullo, Chair of the Scrum Gathering Las Vegas

Daniel has extensive experience teaching, coaching, and consulting for organizations of many sizes. He specializes in Agile adoption and transformation from an enterprise perspective; that is, focusing on not just the practices (what and how) but the underlying culture and attitudes (why) which contribute to an organization's growth and maturity.

Daniel is the President of the Wilmington Chapter of the Agile Leadership Network and a frequent volunteer and speaker for the Agile Alliance and Scrum Alliance. He is the Conference Chair for the 2013 Scrum Gathering in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Daniel is a Certified Scrum Coach (CSC), Certified Scrum Practitioner (CSP), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Agile Certified Professional (ACP), and PMP certified Project Manager. He is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Organizational Leadership and Development and is a candidate for the Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) credential.

Follow us on the social networks:

Please use hashtag #sglas when tweeting about the Gathering.

Dates:

6-8 May 2013

Venue:

The Westin Las Vegas Hotel, Casino & Spa

Address:

160 East Flamingo Road

Las Vegas , NV 89109

Price:

Your registration gives you full access to all keynotes, sessions and special events. Breakfast, Lunch, and AM & PM breaks are included [Monday - Wednesday] plus any evening events. Regretfully, we cannot offer 1-day passes or allow sharing of passes.

Please be sure to read all the information below before beginning your registration.

Registration Type	Early Bird *(Ends April 8th, 2013)*	Regular	Information
Member	$1,150	$1,350	Don't know if you are an active Scrum Alliance Member? Contact: support@scrumalliance.org
Non-Member	$1,400	$1,600	Not a Scrum Alliance Member? Sign up today and receive a 2-year subscription for only $100 USD
CST/CSC	$950		Discount code is required to receive the CST/CSC rate. Discount codes will be sent shortly from scrumgathering@scrumalliance.org
First-Time Attendee	$200 Off!		To receive First-Time Attendee discount code, please contact scrumgathering@scrumalliance.org
Academic	10% Discount		To receive the academic discount code, please contact:scrumgathering@scrumalliance.org
Group Discounts***	10% Discount		Groups of (3) or more enjoy a 10% discount, applied automatically off the total registration cost. Note: Registration and payment must be processed at the same time.

* All prices are in USD
** % Discounts are calculated based on the selected registration type fee.
*** Group discounts are calculated on the total cost of all registrations in the group. You will have the opportunity to add additional group members during this registration process. The total fees for all registrants in the group will be charged to the first person in the group's registration.

Download the official Program Guide

Schedule @ a Glance

WHAT’S HAPPENING @ #sglas

« back to top

Welcome Reception

When: Sunday, May 5th - 18:00 – 19:00pm

Where: Casuarina Ballroom at the Westin Las Vegas

Vic Alejandro is not your ordinary stand-up comedian. He has the unique distinction of having 24 years of experience in Information Technology and 13 of those years in Project Management. He is also a Certified Scrum Master. In short, he is one of us! His humor covers project management, Scrum mastery, corporate anomalies and everyday life.

Vic has appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, HBO, CBC, Fox Sports and is published in the book The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Jokes. His likeable and relatable style (and shiny head) will keep you mesmerized. What a hilarious way to kick off the Scrum Gathering Las Vegas! Check out Vic’s website, and plan on swinging by the Casuarina Ballroom when you arrive on Sunday.

« back to top

Networking Night @ Margaritaville!

When: Monday, May 6th – 18:00 – 20:00pm

Where: Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville Las Vegas - 3555 South Las Vegas Boulevard

Celebrate a great first day at the world-famous Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville. Just a short walk up to Las Vegas Blvd from the Westin Las Vegas, Scrum Alliance will provide great food and a couple of drinks while you enjoy a performance by one of the finest acoustic performers ever, Cliff Erickson!

His musical instincts are clearly portrayed in his original work along with his amazing ability to capture the passion evoked by countless cover tunes. His extraordinary talent on his signature 12-string acoustic guitar captivates his listeners as he takes them along on what has been best described as an “unparalleled musical excursion.” Top entertainer stars including Ringo Starr, Kenny Rogers, The Beach Boys, Wynonna Judd, and America have selected Cliff to open their show. Check out Cliff’s website, and we’ll see you there!

« back to top

Open Space: The Magic of Collaboration

When: Wednesday, May 8th

Where: Acacia Ballroom & Breakouts

What most challenges you and your organization? Through the Magic of Collaboration, we’ll spend the third day of the conference helping each other remove impediments and discover new tools and approaches to solve our real-world problems together.

Days one and two of the Scrum Gathering are all about great sessions. They’re about learning new things. On the third day of the Gathering, you’re invited to help our community realize untapped potential. In what ways can we up the ante on our use of Scrum? Perhaps you need help with a specific challenge you’re facing using Scrum at work to develop software with your team, or you have a fantastic idea for improving user stories. Maybe you have an idea you want to bounce off like-minded folks for using Scrum to help public schools or nonprofits in your community. Since you care about Scrum, you have the skills, insight, and experience that are essential to make it better. And if we up the ante, we might even be able to help the world outside of software. Regardless, we’ll help each other move Scrum forward.

Bring your ideas, concerns, and challenges.

Find your friends, mentors, and collaborators.

Leave with a plan, purpose, and even more passion for Scrum.

Facilitator: Adam Weisbart

Adam is a Certified Scrum Trainer and Agile Coach based in San Francisco, who is passionate about helping groups create spaces in which they can thrive together. He has created several training modules including Build Your Own Scrum, which is used by trainers around the world to teach Scrum from the back of the room. He's the creator of the viral video "Sh*t Bad Scrum Masters Say," the baker of Retrospective Cookies, and author of the upcoming book Agile Antipatterns: The Scrum Master's Guide to Traps, Tripwires, & Treachery. When he's not teaching for CollabNet, he's likely blogging at http://weisbart.com (where you can find out more about his projects), cycling some ridiculous distance on a hilly California road, or writing about himself in the third person.

« back to top

Scrum Alliance Meet & Greet

When: Daily from Monday - Wednesday

Where: The Loft

Want to know what Scrum Alliance have been up to and what it has in store for the community and future Scrum Gatherings? Drop by to chat with Managing Director, Carol McEwan, Scrum Alliance Board and staff members throughout the week.

« back to top

Scrum Coaches Clinic

When: Daily from Monday - Wednesday

Where: The Loft

Want some help with specific challenges you have encountered on your way to a more Agile way of working? Come to the Coaches Clinic where you can speak one-on-one with an experienced Agile Coach. We can help you find the right coach to discuss technical practices, organizational change, Scrum, Kanban, Agile Coaching as a career and many other topics.

The Coaches Clinic will be open each morning before the first session, during breaks and for an hour after conference sessions. You can make an appointment or just walk in. Look for the schedule board in the Clinic area. The Coaches Clinic is a service of the Certified Scrum Coach community.

Facilitator: Roger Brown

Roger Brown is an independent Agile Coach located in San Jose, CA, USA. He provides training, consulting and coaching services in Scrum, Kanban, and Enterprise Agile Adoption. His company website is www.AgileCrossing.com.

Roger is a member of the Scrum Alliance, the Agile Alliance, and the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN). He's also a founding member of the Certified Scrum Coach program. He has organized Coaching Clinics at prior Scrum Gatherings and Agile2012.

A veteran software engineer, Roger has additional experience as technical project manager and people manager. He has worked with both large and small companies in many industries. His work experience includes Dartmouth College, Vicinity Corporation, Microsoft and TeleAtlas. His coaching experience includes many companies since 2004. Roger is focused on helping companies and individuals find their own best approaches to the use of Agile methods.

« back to top

Program

Keynotes

Opening Keynote, Jeff Sutherland

Jeff Sutherland is the co-creator of Scrum and a leading expert on how the framework has evolved to meet the needs of today’s business. The methodology he developed in 1993 and formalized in 1995 with Ken Schwaber has been adopted by the vast majority of software development companies around the world. But Jeff realized that the benefits of Scrum are not limited to software and product development. He has adapted this successful methodology to many other industries including: Finance, health care, government, higher education and communications.

Scrum: The Future of Work Scrum has been around for almost two decades, and has evolved, changed, and grown in those years, but its core insights and ideas have remained the same. We will take a look back at the origins of Scrum, explore how those early ideas continue to drive Scrum, describe the current tipping point as Scrum enters the mainstream, and look at Scrum’s future impact on the nature of work and the structure of organizations.

Tuesday Keynote, Bill Joiner

With the publication of the award-winning book, Leadership Agility, Bill Joiner has become an international thought leader on the subject of agile leadership.

Bill is a seasoned leadership and organization development consultant with over 30 years of experience working with companies based in the US, Canada, and Europe. He is President of ChangeWise, a Boston-area firm that partners with senior leaders to create high performing teams and transform leadership cultures. ChangeWise also provides workshops and action learning programs that enhance leadership agility.

Bill’s most recent articles are “How to Build an Agile Leader” and “Creating a Culture of Agile Leaders.” Bill earned his Doctorate in Organization Development at Harvard University. Some of his clients include Aetna, Bell Canada, Corning, EMC, Fidelity, Harvard Business School, IBM, McKinsey, MIT, Partners Health Care, Pfizer, Polaroid, Royal Canadian Mint, State Street, Travelers, and various federal agencies.

Leadership Agility

Scrum can transform software development teams in amazing ways. As Scrum takes hold and proves it worth, Agile practitioners see the opportunity for more. We need to develop agile organizations. To do this, we need a new kind of “leadership culture” at the senior and middle management levels. This is the innovation we need so our organizations can sustain continually renewed entrepreneurship and adaptability over the long term. But what does this kind of leadership look like in practical terms?

In this keynote, Bill Joiner will introduce us to three “levels” of leadership Agility that emerged from in-depth research on the leadership needed in today’s highly complex, rapidly changing business environment. Going beyond previous conceptions of agile leadership, he will introduce us to the rarely practiced “Catalyst” level of leadership agility and how it can be applied to the larger challenges posed by today’s Agile initiatives.

Closing Keynote, Alistair Cockburn

Dr. Alistair Cockburn was one of the original authors of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. He also co-authored the Declaration of Inter-Dependence, organized the first Agile Development conference, served on the board of the Agile Alliance, co-created the Agile Project Leadership Network and the International Consortium for Agile.

Alistair is widely known for his work on object-oriented design and development, on use cases, for his invention of the Crystal family of methodologies, and his mastery of agile software development. He was voted one of the "The All-Time Top 150 i-Technology Heroes" in 2007.

Less widely known is that Alistair won his first award for poetry at age 40, got his PhD at age 50, broke a world record for master's swimming at the age of 55, holds five international patents on the design of flip-flops, speaks six languages, and created the Initial Response Technique massage and meditation form.

Pay to Learn, and Related Advanced Agile Strategies

The best agile developers use techniques and strategies not in the literature, even seeming sometimes to fly in the face of all things agile. This talk describes why those are great strategies, how to think about them, how to look for them. In terms of the Shu-Ha-Ri progression, this a reduction of Ri-level practice for Ha-level practitioners wanting to one-up their game, and points the way for Shu-level practitioners to get out of their Shu-box.

« back to top

Session Timetables

Monday, May 6th – AM Sessions

BREAKFAST – 8:00 – 9:00
WELCOME & OPENING KEYNOTE – 9:00 – 11:00
Welcome Remarks Daniel Gullo & Carol McEwan Opening Keynote Scrum: The Future of Work Scrum Jeff Sutherland		ROOM
		Acacia Ballroom
AM BREAK – 11:00 – 11:30
60 MINUTE SESSIONS – 11:30 – 12:30
SESSION & SPEAKER	TRACK	ROOM
Advanced Discussion of StoryPoints for Project Management Dan Rawsthorne	See The Future	Acacia A
Breaking Analysts: A Real-World Tale of Converting a Traditional Business Analyst into a Lover of Scrum Leslie J. Morse	Build The Future	Acacia B
Removing Impediments with Drawings Carlton Nettleton	Build The Future	Acacia C
Technical Practices: What Product Owners, ScrumMasters, and Managers Need To Know Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jeffries	Build The Future	Acacia D
Fixes that fail Dhaval Panchal, Valerie Morris	Build The Future	Paloverde A
Helping Dispersed Teams Bridge Time, Distance, and Culture Michael Tardiff	Build The Future	Paloverde B
Agile Metrics: Velocity is NOT the Goal Michael Norton	Build The Future	Mesquite 1-3
Mob Programming: A Whole Team Approach Woody Zuill	Build The Future	Mesquite 4/5

Monday, May 6th – PM Sessions

LUNCH – 12:30 – 13:30
90 MINUTE SESSIONS – 13:30 – 15:00
SESSION & SPEAKER	TRACK	ROOM
Not Your Mother's Agile Transformation Katrina Bales, Keely Killpack	See The Future	Acacia A
The Power of Observation Jukka Lindström	Build The Future	Acacia B
Windows on Transformation: Four Pathways to Grow a More Agile Enterprise Michael Spayd, Lyssa Adkins	See The Future	Acacia C
Integrating Systems Thinking into Enterprise Agile with the Lessons of Lean Al Shalloway	Build The Future	Acacia D
Coach the hand your are dealt. A True Agile Approach to Coaching John Miller	See The Future	Paloverde A
From 'Doing Scrum' to 'Being Agile': Transforming a Culture Brad Swanson	See The Future	Paloverde A
Deliberate practices for Agile coaching Yi LV	Build The Future	Mesquite 1-3
Metrics: How will you know if you're Gambling with Scrum? Lonnie Weaver-Johnson, Kate Megaw	See The Future	Mesquite 4/5
PM BREAK – 15:00 – 15:30
90 MINUTE SESSIONS – 15:30 – 17:00
Fast Conversations Jeff Lopez-Stuit	Build The Future	Acacia A
Managing Technical Debt Fadi Stephan	Tools of the Future	Acacia B
Blueprint for the Future Ron Jeffries	Build The Future	Acacia D
Agile Antipatterns: The Scrum Master's Guide to Traps, Tripwires, and Treachery Adam Weisbart	Build The Future	Paloverde A
Giving Agile Teams the Roots to Grow and Wings to Fly Dave Sharrock	See The Future	Paloverde B
Paging Dr. Scrum: Diagnosing Problems in the Agile Organization Angela Druckman	See The Future	Mesquite 1-3
Agile Kaizen – Improvement Beyond Retrospectives Angel Medinilla	Build The Future	Mesquite 4/5

« back to top

Tuesday, May 7th – AM Sessions

BREAKFAST – 8:00 – 9:00
90 MINUTE SESSIONS – 9:00 – 10:30
SESSION & SPEAKER	TRACK	ROOM
Wetware Craftsmanship – Improved Coaching Through Understanding the Mind Brian Bozzuto, Hedge Devin	See The Future	Acacia A
Effective Scrum and High Quality Code – It Is a Chicken and Egg Relationship Rod Claar	Tools of the Future	Acacia B
Facilitation & Communication in Scrum Teams Michele Sliger	Build The Future	Acacia C
The Agile CEO: Patterns, Principles and Practices Charlie Rudd	See The Future	Acacia D
Practices of Great Product Owners Bob Galen	Build The Future	Paloverde B
Using Organizational Design to go from Good to Great Rachel Weston Rowell, Jenif Kochanowski	See The Future	Paloverde B
The Challenge of the next decade... Transforming Corporate Managers... into Agile Leaders Dave Sharrock	See The Future	Mesquite 1-3
The ScrumMaster Maturity Model: How to Assess Your Effectiveness at Enabling Hyper-Productive Teams Brian Rabon	See The Future	Mesquite 4/5
AM BREAK – 10:30 – 11:00
60 MINUTE SESSIONS – 11:00 – 12:00
Scrum + Program Management = LIKE Stacy Gordon	See The Future	Acacia A
Global Attitudes towards Scrum implementation: The view from 3 Continents Matt Sharpe	See The Future	Acacia B
Nonviolent Communication Role-play for Pacifying Scrum Retrospectives Juan Banda	Build The Future	Acacia C
Designing Your Organization For Innovation Jim Elvidge	See The Future	Acacia D
Don't gamble on user stories alone, specify by example! David Bulkin, Mark Levison	Build The Future	Paloverde A
Get all players involved! Behaviour-Driven Development made easy Alan Ettlin	Tools of the Future	Paloverde B
Plan to Re-Plan – Release Planning and Reforecasting Jason Tanner	See The Future	Mesquite 1-3
Stop Gambling, Embrace Your Agile Superpowers Jake Calabrese, Stephen Starkey	See The Future	Mesquite 4/5

Tuesday, May 7th – PM Sessions

LUNCH – 12:00 – 13:00
KEYNOTE – 13:00 – 14:30
Keynote Leadership Agility Bill Joiner		ROOM
Keynote Leadership Agility Bill Joiner		Acacia Ballroom
PM BREAK – 14:30 – 15:00
30 MINUTE SESSIONS – 15:00 – 15:30
SESSION & SPEAKER	TRACK	ROOM
Looking at Agile-Scrum Metrics from a Human Perspective in a Balanced Scorecard Sarvesh Shroff	Build The Future	Acacia A
It is all about system: How Scrum helps in the bigger picture Sami Lilja	See The Future	Acacia B
Business Environment Coding Dojos Fredrik Wendt	Tools of the Future	Acacia C
Process Increments – Towards better process improvement Mohamed Amr, Amr Noaman	See The Future	Acacia D
The controversy of disempowering your bosses Challenges to gain management buy-in for implementation of agile development methods and how to overcome them Ebba Kraemer	Build The Future	Paloverde A
Confessions of a New ScrumMaster Natalie Warnert	Build The Future	Paloverde B
Scrum for Experimental Biologists at Bio-Rad Laboratories Victoria Hall, Jonathan Kohn, Michael Urban, Kenneth Oh	Build The Future	Mesquite 1-3
Agile Project Management for Government: Agile adoption in the US and UK governments a comparative review Brian Wernham	See The Future	Mesquite 4/5
90 MINUTE SESSIONS – 15:30 – 17:00
Break Down the Silos – Collaboration Techniques for Teams Maria Matarelli, Dan Neumann	Build The Future	Acacia A
Optimus Prime is Cool: Organisational Transformation and Transformer Nigel Baker	See The Future	Acacia B
Large-scale Agile Program and Portfolio Management Using Scrum Mike Cottmeyer	See The Future	Acacia C
Beyond the Flat Backlog: Story Mapping in Scrum Jeff Patton	Tools of the Future	Acacia D
Making Scrum Stick in Regulated Industries Laszlo Szalvay	See The Future	Paloverde A
My Team's a Train Wreck! Overcoming Real-life Team Dysfunctions Jan Beaver	Build The Future	Paloverde B
Business Value Estimation Chris Sims	See The Future	Mesquite 1-3
Growing ScrumMasters for the Future Mark Summers, Helen Meek	Build The Future	Mesquite 4/5

« back to top

Wednesday, May 8th – Open Space

Title: The Magic of Collaboration

When: Wednesday, May 8th

Where: Acacia Ballroom & Breakouts

What most challenges you and your organization? Through the Magic of Collaboration, we’ll spend the third day of the conference helping each other remove impediments and discover new tools and approaches to solve our real-world problems together.

Days one and two of the Scrum Gathering are all about great sessions. They’re about learning new things. On the third day of the Gathering, you’re invited to help our community realize untapped potential. In what ways can we up the ante on our use of Scrum? Perhaps you need help with a specific challenge you’re facing using Scrum at work to develop software with your team, or you have a fantastic idea for improving user stories. Maybe you have an idea you want to bounce off like-minded folks for using Scrum to help public schools or nonprofits in your community. Since you care about Scrum, you have the skills, insight, and experience that are essential to make it better. And if we up the ante, we might even be able to help the world outside of software. Regardless, we’ll help each other move Scrum forward.

Bring your ideas, concerns, and challenges.

Find your friends, mentors, and collaborators.

Leave with a plan, purpose, and even more passion for Scrum.

Facilitator: Adam Weisbart

Adam is a Certified Scrum Trainer and Agile Coach based in San Francisco, who is passionate about helping groups create spaces in which they can thrive together. He has created several training modules including Build Your Own Scrum, which is used by trainers around the world to teach Scrum from the back of the room. He's the creator of the viral video "Sh*t Bad Scrum Masters Say," the baker of Retrospective Cookies, and author of the upcoming book Agile Antipatterns: The Scrum Master's Guide to Traps, Tripwires, & Treachery. When he's not teaching, he's likely blogging at http://weisbart.com (where you can find out more about his projects), cycling some ridiculous distance on a hilly California road, or writing about himself in the third person.

Session Descriptions

Monday, May 6th – AM Sessions – 60 MINUTE SESSIONS – 11:30 - 12:30

« back to top

Advanced Discussion of StoryPoints for Project Management
Dan Rawsthorne Track: See The Future Room: Acacia A	We know that StoryPoints are "a relative measure of size that can be applied to Stories and Epics." Beyond this simple statement there is not much about StoryPoints that we can all agree on - teams and organizations are free to estimate and use StoryPoints as they see fit. Well, I want to use them to aid in Project (not Sprint) Management, and in this talk I present a way to define StoryPoints for this purpose. Come and hear words like "Ideal Effort", "Intrinsic Difficulty", "Function Points", and "Earned Value", and how StoryPoints become the basic currency for Release budgeting and metrics.
Breaking Analysts: A Real-World Tale of Converting a Traditional Business Analyst into a Lover of Scrum
Leslie J. Morse Track: Build The Future Room: Acacia B	Team members that can perform proper Business Analysis are key to Scrum teams building valuable products that truly meet customer needs. "Breaking Analysts" will lead you through what your BAs are thinking when they first learn about Scrum and equip you with tactics & strategies for getting the light-bulb to come on and ultimately build a team of analysts that are willing and ready to go all-in.
Removing Impediments with Drawings
Carlton Nettleton Track: Build The Future Room: Acacia C	Pictures convey ideas more clearly and have a greater impact than a simple conversation. The ability to communicate, and perhaps sell, your ideas at a whiteboard is an essential skill for anyone on an Scrum team. In this hands-on session based on Dan Roam’s book, “The Back of the Napkin”, we will learn the six types of diagrams used in business and how to select the right picture for your problem. All you need for this session is an issue, your imagination and the ability to draw a circle, square, arrow and a stick figure. Come on - give this a try. It will be fun.
Technical Practices: What Product Owners, ScrumMasters, and Managers Need To Know
Chet Hendrickson, Ron Jeffries Track: Build The Future Room: Acacia D	Successful iterative software development requires some well-known technical practices. Scrum traditionally leaves the discovery and implementation of the practices to the Development Team. However, we continue to see projects struggle due to the lack of good technical practices. In this session, we will give ScrumMasters, Product Owners, and other project Stakeholders the tools they need to understand whether their Development Teams are using the right technical practices, and how - and why - to influence them to improve.
Fixes that fail
Dhaval Panchal, Valerie Morris Track: Build The Future Room: Paloverde A	Does your management use velocity as a weapon? Are you concerned about your product’s quality? How have you approached these systemic problems? This session is for those who recognize that symptomatic fixes will not address their core issues. For those interested in learning how to change the conversation with their management, this session will introduce basic systems thinking tools and walk through a case study of an agile organization that is beginning to appreciate the interconnectedness of velocity, quality, morale, revenue etc., in their ecosystem.
Helping Dispersed Teams Bridge Time, Distance, and Culture
Michael Tardiff Track: Build The Future Room: Paloverde B	"Our teams are distributed--that's just the way it is today." That's the refrain heard across widely dispersed organizations that seek to gain the benefits that Scrum offers. And sure enough, there are myriad situations where people who want to and need to work together have trouble being together physically. This talk is an interactive exploration of the real-world ways teams that are separated can and do work together, with an emphasis on practical ways to bring teams and individuals closer, physically or virtually. Attendees will leave with real xamples and specific recommendations.
Agile Metrics: Velocity is NOT the Goal
Michael Norton Track: Build The Future Room: Mesquite 1-3	Velocity is one of the most commonly misused metrics on agile projects. We often focus on improving velocity without proper consideration for root causes. Learn about The Hawthorne Effect, Goodhart’s Law, and why setting goals for velocity can actually hurt a project’s chances of success. Take a look at what can negatively impact velocity, ways to stabilize fluctuating velocity, and methods to improve velocity without the risks. Leave with a toolkit of additional metrics that, coupled with velocity, give a better view of the project’s overall health.
Mob Programming: A Whole Team Approach
Woody Zuill Track: See The Future Room: Mesquite 4/5	Mob Programming is a Whole Team Approach to developing and coding software: The whole team works on the same thing, at the same time, in the same space, and at the same computer. We've expanded on the idea of Pair Programming by including all team members, including QA and Product Owner, working together at the same time on all the work we do. We have developed practices that allow all team members to contribute (or receive) value througout the day. This has been very productive for us, and has resulted in higher quality and more useful software.

Monday, May 6th – PM Sessions – 90 MINUTE SESSIONS – 13:30 - 15:00

« back to top

Not Your Mother's Agile Transformation
Katrina Bales, Keely Killpack Track: See The Future Room: Acacia A	Join our fun, interactive learning session & leave with a whole new perspective on bringing agility to life in your teams. Leveraging a real world partnership between an Agile Coach & a Change Practitioner, we share via hands on exercises the power of change tools such as Unlearning as well as introduce a twist to the application of a well know product development model to gain human behavior insights necessary to realize true agile transformation. You can also expect opportunities to provide your insights, feedback & experiences. Leave with new ideas & techniques to help you See The Future!
The Power of Observation
Jukka Lindström Track: Build The Future Room: Acacia B	“To observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.” Jiddu Krishnamurti Ability to observe and share observations is one of the most fundamental skills for coaches. Sharing observations increases awareness and empowerment in others to make their own decisions and take responsibility of the situation, where as sharing interpretations has potential for conflict or disempowerment. How are your powers of observation? The workshop is for both new and experienced coaches. Participants will learn self-awareness and observation techniques to help themselves and others.
Windows on Transformation: Four Pathways to Grow a More Agile Enterprise
Michael Spayd, Lyssa Adkins Track: See The Future Room: Acacia C	It is easy to envision a more Agile enterprise, yet we have found as a community it is quite difficult to accomplish. The transformation process goes on in many dimensions, and unless we have a framework that helps us see from each of those perspectives, our efforts are much more likely to fall short. Based on Michael Spayd's upcoming book, Coaching the Agile Enterprise, this session will (literally) walk you through each of the four fundamental perspectives and the power and limitation of each. We will explore together approaches that are suitable to each perspective and how to activate them in your team, division or organization.
Integrating Systems Thinking into Enterprise Agile With the Lessons of Lean
Al Shalloway Track: Build The Future Room: Acacia D	While Scrum and XP have become very popular in agile development shops, most companies adopting them run into challenges when they expand beyond a few teams. These challenges often fall into a common set of patterns. We believe these patterns of challenge are due to a lack of systems thinking—the process of understanding how things influence one another within a larger whole. Al Shalloway shares his ideas on how the agile community can move beyond its team-centric approach to adopt a more holistic, systems-based approach. Systems thinking creates new opportunities to create substantially larger development teams that comprise hubs of development. These teams work interdependently with a common vision and context. Hubs create the structure and motivations for the teams and individuals to collaborate as a normal part of their daily work. This can reduce the amount of collaboration that the teams need to manage on their own. Lean-thinking is also introduced since its paradigm shift to the timing of the workflow provides insights into how to use systems thinking in software development. Although not a panacea, systems thinking provides a better platform to solve enterprise-wide challenges because your organization learns to approach problem-solving holistically and avoid the trap of unintended consequences.
Coach the hand your are dealt. A True Agile Approach to Coaching
John Miller Track: See The Future Room: Paloverde A	Are you taking an waterfall and linear approach to Agile adoption? Do we still think that approaches like "shock therapy" techniques truly empowers the Agile mindset? Share how to take a true Agile approach to your coaching and Agile transition? Does your coaching embody the Scrum values? Share an Agile coaching and adoption ideas that are are truly Agile. Explore ideas such as minimal viable change, pattern based coaching, coaching Sprints, and online coaching dashboards for customer transparency and collaboration. Coach the hand you by differentiating your coaching to where you teams are.
From 'Doing Scrum' to 'Being Agile': Transforming a Culture
Brad Swanson Track: See The Future Room: Paloverde A	For many organizations, truly being agile (not just doing Scrum) requires a cultural transformation - much more than a Scrum 'adoption' or Agile 'transition'. We will describe John Kotter's 8-step model for leading change as a framework for Agile transformation. We will also share concrete techniques and lessons learned applying the model for a highly successful agile transformation within a large enterprise.
Deliberate practices for Agile coaching
Yi LV Track: Build The Future Room: Mesquite 1-3	Scrum Masters, Agile coaches and Agile managers at all times coach individuals, teams, and organizations. Sometimes, the coaching is effective, while other times it is not. It feels like largely dependent on luck or external environment, but this is too important to leave it this way. Deliberate practices come into place to increase the coaching effectiveness. In this workshop, we shall learn what deliberate practice is, discover what coaching skills need deliberate practices, and co-create deliberate practices for some of those skills.
Metrics: How will you know if you're Gambling with Scrum?
Lonnie Weaver-Johnson, Kate Megaw Track: See The Future Room: Mesquite 4/5	Many people wonder if their Scrum adoption is working the way they intended. After all, if we are changing our method how will we know if it is better than the previous method? How do we know if it is working? What are the measurements we can use? In this session we will look at the good ideas, the bad ideas, and new ideas. This will be an interactive session where we will explore those questions, share answers, and discover some new ideas. In addition, gain some insights into how to explain this complicated topic to metrics hungry leaders.

Monday, May 6th – PM Sessions – 90 MINUTE SESSIONS – 15:30 - 17:00

« back to top

Fast Conversations
Jeff Lopez-Stuit Track: Build The Future Room: Acacia A	When a team is figuring out how to approach a piece of work, it should obtain just enough understanding to commit to getting the work done along a path that everyone can stand behind. A fast conversation can help a team maintain enough understanding to work, and avoid wasting time and energy on details that may not be important for work to proceed. It also gives a team tools to check that everyone is on board with the approach, so that conversations don’t happen too fast for anyone.
Managing Technical Debt
Fadi Stephan Track: Tools of the Future Room: Acacia B	Is your team constantly missing delivery dates? Is the velocity decreasing from sprint to sprint while the development costs are rising? These are all signs that you are mired in technical debt and probably on your way to bankruptcy or a complete system rewrite. Come learn how to measure the quality of your code base and determine the amount of your debt. Learn how to engage executives and get buy-in on a technical debt repayment plan that enables you to pay down your debt, refinance it to a low interest rate, increase the quality of your code and return to high productivity.
Blueprint for the Future
Ron Jeffries Track: Build The Future Room: Acacia D	Scrum is doing well but not well enough. There are important challenges to Scrum, to Alliance, to Scrum practitioners. We'll review the current status of Scrum, then discuss challenges facing Scrum, facing the Scrum Alliance, and facing Scrum practitioners. We'll look at some key challenges in detail: we'll consider technical practices, product ownership, and estimation. We'll talk about continuous flow: is it a threat or an opportunity? We'll look at how to see these issues in our work, and what needs to be done about them.
Agile Antipatterns: The Scrum Master's Guide to Traps, Tripwires, and Treachery
Adam Weisbart Track: Build The Future Room: Paloverde A	Knowing the basics of Scrum is essential for any team member, but out in the trenches, a good ScrumMaster must be ready to identify and deal with Agile Antipatterns quickly to help his team and organization move forward. What’s an Agile Antipattern? Something that at first blush may seem useful, but in practice is usually harmful to an agile initiative. It’s important to be able to sniff these out since they can damage your organization, and are often slippery to catch. You’ll leave this workshop with a set of powerful tools to help you defuse antipatterns in the field.
Giving Agile Teams the Roots to Grow and Wings to Fly
Dave Sharrock Track: See The Future Room: Paloverde B	A strong, self-organizing agile team does not emerge by accident. Just as with the creation of a great product, a great team takes vision and leadership, and ultimately of course, ownership of that vision from within the team. This workshop is a step in handing over ownership of the vision to the team, helping set expectations, define what a great agile team looks like, and enabling the team to steer their way forwards, while recognizing when they veer from their plan. Come and find out how a team can avoid stagnating, and continue to grow together as a team.
Paging Dr. Scrum: Diagnosing Problems in the Agile Organization
Angela Druckman Track: See The Future Room: Mesquite 1-3	“Our main problem doing Scrum is…” Agile coaches know that those new to Scrum often complete this sentence by describing symptoms rather than the root causes of their issues. It's hard to solve a thorny problem when you are stuck in the middle of it. Enter the agile coach. Much like a physician, we are often called in to diagnose “disease” and create a “treatment plan”. In this session, for both internal agile coaches and those who work with external clients, we’ll learn techniques to get to the root causes of common problems with Scrum and help our clients see a way forward.
Agile Kaizen - Improvement Beyond Retrospectives
Angel Medinilla Track: Build The Future Room: Mesquite 4/5	Let's face it: many companies are stuck at Continuous Improvement. Retrospectives are probably the only sign of a Kaizen culture, and frequently they end up with the same list of impediments that we had a year ago. And then what? Maybe we try some games and creativity exercises, but when it comes to actual improvement...Well, how was that saying about an old dog and new tricks? This talk will show you new ways to look at the continuous improvement process at your company, starting with -yes- retrospectives, but going far beyond that: Change Management, Corporate Culture, Innovation...

Tuesday, May 7th – AM Sessions – 90 MINUTE SESSIONS – 9:00 - 10:30

« back to top

Wetware Craftsmanship - Improved Coaching Through Understanding the Mind
Brian Bozzuto, Hedge Devin Track: See The Future Room: Acacia A	Organizations have developed an excessive focus on human beings as logical and emotionless beings - seeing us no differently than the computers on our desks - to the detriment of understanding and improving the way that people actually think. It’s time to commit ourselves to the craft of using our brain. Learn how developments in neuroscience have given us insights into the inner workings of the mind, some reinforce coaching concepts that have been around for over a century, while others have novel implications on how to best utilize your most important, and very finite, resource: your mind.
Effective Scrum and High Quality Code - It Is a Chicken and Egg Relationship
Rod Claar Track: Tools of the Future Room: Acacia B	Scrum is simple, but Scrum is Hard. Scrum is so simple that it can be explained in 20 minutes, but so hard that some teams are never effective. Other teams produce 3-10 times more business value than they did before. This talk will go into one of the main differences between under performing teams and very successful teams, the impact of Code Quality on the effectiveness of a Scrum team. You will learn about the business case for high quality code, establishing the business commitment to high quality code and the process and organization should use to deliver more business value faster.
Facilitation & Communication in Scrum Teams
Michele Sliger Track: Build The Future Room: Acacia C	While traditional projects expect most communication to take the forms of email and manager-led meetings, Scrum projects expect teams to self-organize, collaborate and participate in decision-making. But what is self-organization? How does it work? This 90-minute workshop will focus on what it means to self-organize, how it occurs and how to help it along, and the hurdles that must be cleared in the process. See how the proper use of facilitation in Scrum meetings can be a key driver in the development of high-performing self-organizing teams.
The Agile CEO: Patterns, Principles and Practices
Charlie Rudd Track: See The Future Room: Acacia D	There are plenty of questions about executive leadership that emerge as organizations go Agile but precious few answers to help guide the executives that sponsor, lead, and are responsible for the performance of these organizations. In addition, although these days it’s pretty clear what it means to be an Agile team, what it means to be an Agile organization is still quite murky. In this session, Charlie will open up a discussion about what an Agile organization might be and describe strategies for leading one—all from a business executive perspective.
Practices of Great Product Owners
Bob Galen Track: Build The Future Room: Paloverde B	Arguably the most important role in a Scrum team is that of Product Owner. It’s also one of the most challenging of the Scrum roles. Part of that challenge is because many Product Owners are simply thrown into a Scrum team with little guidance, insufficient skill and time. In this session, Bob Galen will explore the practices and techniques, focus points, and patterns of great Product Owners. We’ll explore the dynamics of well-balanced Product Backlogs, ways to focus towards quality & customer value, how to conduct powerful Sprint Reviews; while "leading with" vision and goal-setting.
Using Organizational Design to Go from Good to Great
Rachel Weston Rowell, Jenif Kochanowski Track: See The Future Room: Paloverde B	Scrum adoption has transitioned from just transforming teams to transforming whole organizations. But how do we go about this transformation in a focused and valuable way? Based on our experience implementing transformations in multiple organizations, we will guide you through best practices for organizational design work. Learn how to leverage Jay Galbraith’s Star Model to design a great organization, and how to pair that with classic Scrum practices including clear definition of roles, ceremonies and artifacts within Sprints to execute flawlessly and keep learning.
The Challenge of the next decade... Transforming Corporate Managers... into Agile Leaders
Dave Sharrock Track: See The Future Room: Mesquite 1-3	It seems that even if more than a century passed by since the invention of the Corporate structure and the hierarchical management, they are still the most adopted form of structure used today. How can this be? Are Corporate and Management outlasting any other technology and organisational evolution happened over the last 100 years? Or are we just having to deal with very resilient structures, which are hard to dismantle? Or did we ever even thought about challenging them? We think we have found some suitable answers, come and join us in experimenting with some new tools for leaders.
The ScrumMaster Maturity Model: How to Assess Your Effectiveness at Enabling Hyper-Productive Teams
Brian Rabon Track: See The Future Room: Mesquite 4/5	This workshop will allow you to assess your effectiveness at enabling hyper-productive teams. Braintrust has developed a five-level maturity model for ScrumMasters to provide an assessment on where they are and, more importantly, identify steps to move further along the path. Come to this session and learn about this model and pick up some tips on how to enable the productivity that Agile and Scrum is designed to unleash. This session is for the following individuals: • ScrumMasters • Agile Coaches (who will be coaching ScrumMasters) • Leaders (who will be leading ScrumMasters)

Tuesday, May 7th – AM Sessions – 60 MINUTE SESSIONS – 11:00 - 12:00

« back to top

Scrum + Program Management = LIKE
Stacy Gordon Track: See The Future Room: Acacia A	Salesforce.com program management leverages a social approach and social tools to enhance Scrum elements and artifacts. Join us to discuss: - A new approach to program management and how it fits into an agile, social work culture - Program management’s value add within an agile methodology - Social approach principles and best practices: Optimize information flow, leverage the value of crowd wisdom, provide real-time visibility, optimize decision making, connect and accelerate to get work done, create an environment with ‘just enough’ structure.
Global Attitudes towards Scrum implementation: The view from 3 Continents
Matt Sharpe Track: See The Future Room: Acacia B	Agile methods are well established and accepted in the software development industry here in the US, but this is not universally the case across the world. Using personal experience, anecdotes and learnings, I will outline some of the attitudes, perceptions and challenges of rolling out Scrum to digital development teams in organizations across 3 continents – in London, Dubai and Sydney. I will additionally discuss some of the strategies you can deploy to help bring stakeholders on board whilst being sensitive to any cultural nuances and differences.
Nonviolent Communication Role-play for Pacifying Scrum Retrospectives
Juan Banda Track: Build The Future Room: Acacia C	Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is not only about not expressing physical and verbal violence but about being compassionate and feel empathy for others; this is a mindset that prepares the spirit for communicating with others respecting their feelings. Often times in retrospectives we see accusatory and aggressive behaviors that inhibit effective communication. Even more often violence is not evident but subtle, is not in what you say but in how you say it. This workshop will use a role-play for putting you in the position to experiment with NVC and learn how to run empathic retrospectives.
Designing Your Organization For Innovation
Jim Elvidge Track: See The Future Room: Acacia D	If innovation is not part of your organizational DNA, you risk falling behind your competitors and demoralizing your best talent. Yet one can not create an innovative organization by declaring “Be Innovative!” Rather, it requires an environment of rich, challenging choices, free from common constraints. So how to get there? In this interactive session, Jim Elvidge outlines a path to innovation for your organization, from a deep examination of structures, culture, and leadership styles that may be barriers to free thinking, followed by an environment design approach and catalytic leadership.
Don't gamble on user stories alone, specify by example!
David Bulkin, Mark Levison Track: Build The Future Room: Paloverde A	Traditional requirements approaches don’t work, but user stories and acceptance criteria are not enough. So, what is the answer? Testable examples (i.e. ATDD and BDD)! Testable examples, sometimes called executable specifications, provide a lightweight, objective description of a need. They serve as a common language across roles, from business to the development team, allowing us to understand and improve our business rules. As an added benefit they can even be used to automate acceptance level testing. So, don’t gamble on your requirements, come to this session!
Get all players involved! Behaviour-Driven Development made easy
Alan Ettlin Track: Tools of the Future Room: Paloverde B	BDD is a technique which has the potential to significantly promote the integration of project teams across disciplines and backgrounds. Sadly, the tool-chains available today are highly development-centric and primarily usable by tech-savvy project participants. To realise the full potential of BDD a new interaction paradigm is required which truly involves business stakeholders (e.g. many typical Product Owners). In the session a prototype of a BDD IDE is presented and discussed with the audience which strives to remove the gap and has the potential to change the way we interact in projects.
Plan to Re-Plan - Release Planning and Reforecasting
Jason Tanner Track: See The Future Room: Mesquite 1-3	"Are you done yet?" "When will you be done?" "What are you shipping in the next release?" Product owners and Scrum teams frequently need to answer these questions. In this hands-on workshop, attendees will learn fundamental release planning techniques to answer all of these questions and more. Through a fun, easy simulation, you will have an opportunity to determine a minimum viable product, plan a release, and reforecast the release based on the team’s results and changing business conditions.
Stop Gambling, Embrace Your Agile Superpowers
Jake Calabrese, Stephen Starkey Track: See The Future Room: Mesquite 4/5	The most important part of agile is people. Being agile often seems elusive, like a jackpot in Vegas or a Bigfoot. What can you do to be more agile? Agile coaching, managing, and leading require more than just agile tools and practices. What are agile superpowers? How can powers like Deep Democracy, Curiosity, and others help you and the teams you work with? How can you activate your powers? We dig into these questions in a live, interactive workshop where you can learn (verbal and non-verbal) and apply agile superpowers to agile challenges.

Tuesday, May 7th – PM Sessions – 30 MINUTE SESSIONS – 15:00 - 15:30

« back to top

Looking at Agile-Scrum Metrics from a Human Perspective in a Balanced Scorecard
Sarvesh Shroff Track: Build The Future Room: Acacia A	Tracking any one aspect of Return over Investment, may favor short term gains over long term value creation. The Scrum primer says, “Waterfall methodology has one great weakness: Humans are involved”. As Scrum embraces this human perspective, it is important to capture the “human” metrics and present them along with traditional ones in a Balanced scorecard to display their inter dependencies to give a holistic picture of the ROI. The paper also attempts to refute that existing Agile metrics are just age-old CMMI/ISO metrics in a new Agile bottle, by modifying their usage to suit Agile needs
It is all about system: How Scrum helps in the bigger picture
Sami Lilja Track: See The Future Room: Acacia B	Scrum creates transparency, makes continuous improvement and delivers value to customer. These noble goals are often difficult to reach, causing frustration to teams, Scrum Masters and anyone in the organization. Most often the reason is that surrounding organization, the system, does not allow effective use of Scrum. As W. Edwards Deming said: "A bad system will defeat a good person every time". Similarly, a bad system will defeat a good process framework. This session shows how the surrounding system impacts Scrum teams an how Scrum can be used to change the entire system for better
Business Environment Coding Dojos
Fredrik Wendt Track: Tools of the Future Room: Acacia C	This talk is about what works in a corporate environment Coding Dojo - it's not experiences from your typical Meetup or user group where most attendees already share some of the craftsmanship passion and practice katas on their own, off work hours. Fredrik has facilitated over 50 sessions the past two years with 11 clients in different industries, and will share not only his experiences, do's and don'ts (and why) but also participants' experiences and subjective results.
Process Increments - Towards better process improvement
Mohamed Amr, Amr Noaman Track: See The Future Room: Acacia D	Process Increments, is an iterative approach to manage process improvement projects. This approach builds upon Agile values and principles, and reuses well known Agile techniques. This approach partitions the scope into user-story-like increments, and manages the project using agile project management techniques. This session will introduce the concept of Process Increments and provide different contexts and factors where Process Increments can be applied successfully.
The controversy of disempowering your bosses Challenges to gain management buy-in for implementation of agile development methods and how to overcome them
Ebba Kraemer Track: Build The Future Room: Paloverde A	A former management consultant from the Boston Consulting Group with experience from advising (and receiving push-back from) senior management within development organizations points out likely reasons for why the world wide roll-out of agile development methods is hampered by resistance from senior management in many organizations. The underlying reasons for the management’s skepticism are explored and ideas of how to address these concerns are presented.
Confessions of a New ScrumMaster
Natalie Warnert Track: Build The Future Room: Paloverde B	You just finished your CSM class, overflowing with your newfound Scrum knowledge and renewed faith in software development practices. You're ecstatic to share your new view of the world and to show how Scrum can benefit your organization. But, upon your first Scrum project you meet resistance, opposition, and worst of all, modified Scrum practices. What's a ScrumMaster to do? Don't lose hope! You're definitely not the first ScrumMaster to meet these barriers and you're not alone. Attend this session for some simple tips to make the transition easier on you and the Scrum team.
Scrum for Experimental Biologists at Bio-Rad Laboratories
Victoria Hall, Jonathan Kohn, Michael Urban, Kenneth Oh Track: Build The Future Room: Mesquite 1-3	This talk will present a case study of a current non-software implementation of Scrum at Bio-Rad Laboratories by the Protein Technologies Applications Development Group. The work facilitated is common to almost all research and medical laboratories. This will be an examination of the importance of maintaining Scrum values while modifying its practices to facilitate and organize hypothesis driven life science experimental work and its products.
Agile Project Management for Government: Agile adoption in the US and UK governments a comparative review
Brian Wernham Track: See The Future Room: Mesquite 4/5	Governments on both sides of the Atlantic have committed to introducing agile change management for faster results with cheaper implementation at lower risk. * A review of the latest national and international empirical research studies on agile adoption in government * Case studies of government attempts to be agile in the US and UK * Comparison of US and UK government rules, regulations and strategies that have affected the take-up and success of agile