AgileIndy 2015

Wouldn't you like to know if the person you're interviewing about requirements is telling the truth, exaggerating, uncomfortable, or uncertain? Sending and receiving body language signals happens on conscious and unconscious levels all the time. You can tell when people are being honest, are uncomfortable, or have a good connection with you by reading their unconscious signals - the subtle body language and microexpressions. This presentation is about how to read what people are thinking. By the end of this presentation, you may not be a human lie detector - it takes a lot of practice - but you will understand the tools to read subtle body language, and you will know how to practice these techniques.

The change in mindset necessary to become a servant leader is incredibly hard for a scrum master who comes from command and control background. As a newly minted Professional Scrum Master (PSM I), I returned to my team excited and ready to get underway with a scrum adoption. Unfortunately, I had not fully grasped the concept of servant leadership. Instead of being a change agent, I was an impediment.

My own cautionary tale is unfortunately a common one. Well meaning people with 2 day certifications can do a lot of damage to a new scrum team. Attendees will learn about the difficulties of becoming a scrum master, how scrum team members need to embrace the scrum values to promote healthy team practices, and that even certified scrum masters can lose their way.

We will tackle questions such as:
•What makes the transition from project manager to scrum master so difficult?
•How should a scrum master approach a transition from project manager to scrum master?
•How can I help my scrum master embrace a servant leadership mindset?
•What are the scrum values and how do they guide resolving this type of impediment?
•What steps can a team take to resolve the scrum master impediment?

Attendees will walk away with practical ways they can inspect their own scrum practices to ensure they do not become impediments to their team's success.

Many software teams—even those strong in agile engineering practices—run into trouble when adopting infrastructure automation, a.k.a. “DevOps tools.” In some cases I have even seen teams ask for someone else do that work, effectively requesting a new silo separate from themselves! Why is this? What can those teams (or their coaches and mentors) do to overcome their issues?

In this interactive talk, I will share my own experiences, observations, and insights as well as inviting audience members to share theirs. Attendees should walk away with a stronger understanding of some of the particular challenges of developing infrastructure, and with an assortment on tips for how to deal with those challenges—both in tooling and in technique.

Are you ready to begin your journey as an agile coach? Are you already a coach who is looking to grow your mindset and skillset? Are you in an organization and want to see its agility go to the next level? If so, join us in this session about growing coaching within an organization.

Building coaching skills isn't the exclusive domain of a multi-day training session. In fact, the best way to build a new skills is to gradually introduce them over time and use intentional practice to build those new skills into a habit. This session is based on running coach mentorship programs that spread the learning and practice over a period of months.

Questions we will answer in this session include:

• Why is a coach mentorship program integral to growing an organziation's agility? 
• What are some mistakes to avoid when creating a coach mentorship program? 
• How can intentional practice be integrated into a coach mentorship program? 
• What can be done to have an effective program where participants are in different time zones? 
• How do you build support for investing time and money into a coach mentorship program? 
• You will leave this session with a set of practical tips for setting up your own coach mentorship program.