Agile + DevOps East

We’ve all heard culture is vital to creating and sustaining a healthy organization. It was even Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year in 2014! We also know culture is notoriously hard to describe in a meaningful way. Even harder than describing culture is demonstrating its contribution to organizational performance. We know culture is important. But for all its importance, we’ve had few tools and limited research to describe or quantify culture. Join Jeff Gallimore as he explores the critical aspects of culture and discusses how a strong culture can improve corporate performance while keeping staff happy and engaged. Learn how W. Edwards Deming, Sydney Dekker, Ron Westrum, and others have all contributed to our understanding of culture and how it impacts the performance of an organization and its people. Take home tips and tricks for how you can change your culture for the better while increasing agility.

Have you tidied up your personal life with Marie Kondo and are now wondering how to achieve the same effect in your work life? Do you have the feeling that the most valuable product backlog items (PBIs) are getting lost under a mountain of old stories, bugs, and tasks? If so, join Julie Wyman to learn how to adapt the KonMari method to tidy up your product backlog. Julie will share a short quiz you can use to gauge the current state of your own backlog and walk through five easy steps you can take to get started in your tidying process. She'll also share real-life examples, call out potential pitfalls to avoid (don’t become a storage expert!), and illustrate how story mapping may be the magical backlog equivalent to Kondo’s “vertical folding” technique. By the end of the session, you’ll know the specific next steps to take so that you too can realize the many benefits of a tidied-up product backlog: improved visibility, increased self-organization, and easier decision-making.