The Scrum Roles Game Show

Dogs Playing PokerWhose job is it anyway? Some things only the product owner should do. Other areas are in the scrum master’s wheelhouse. The developers have much more responsibility than in a traditional approach. In this game show inspired activity, you will learn the roles and responsibilities of each person on a scrum team. You will also learn what scrum doesn’t cover, and how things go wrong when a role isn’t properly fulfilled. It will be fun, fast-paced, and you might win a fabulous prize!

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Rapid Project Sim

You will receive requirements from your customer, create your project plan, and go! You’ll execute the project and deliver an amazing product on time and within budget! Just like in real life! Or maybe, just like in real life, you won’t succeed. We’ll harvest the learning, relate it to your real world experiences, and then try again. Perhaps this time we’ll focus more on the product, and less on the project. Or perhaps we’ll try another variation. With each iteration taking five minutes, we can afford to experiment.

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Output Vs. Outcome

All too often organizations focus on how many stories are getting done, or worse yet, on velocity. Completing a lot of stories shouldn’t be a scrum team’s goal; instead the goal should be to create value. The former is output, the later is outcome. In this workshop we’ll explore metrics for both, and identify ways to increase focus on value creation.

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Connecting With Customers

Become a product discovery detective and uncover the truth about what your customers really need. Building a product based on our assumptions about customer needs is expensive and risky. A better way is to connect with stakeholders and test assumptions before building the product. In this hands-on session, you will learn techniques for testing assumptions quickly. These product discovery tools will accelerate your progress towards a product that is more useful, usable, and valuable.

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Testing Product Hypotheses

Have your teams ever wasted time and effort building the wrong thing? The culprit is often incorrect assumptions about what users really need or what the market really values. In this hands-on session you will practice lean product development techniques to test assumptions before investing in building the wrong thing. This allows you to focus the valuable development effort on building products that will delight users and deliver greater value.

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Product Strategy

From Order Taker to Product Visionary!

Product owners do not simply take orders from customers and deliver them to developers. Great product owners synthesize customer needs with the company’s goals and the team’s capabilities. The result is a compelling product vision and a strategy to fulfill that vision. In this session you will practice the skills needed to make the leap from order-taker to product visionary!

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The Great Requirements Showdown!

Understanding and communicating stakeholder needs is hard! In a traditional approach, we create and share extensive documentation in the hopes that this will lead to the right product being built by the development team. Historically, the results have been less than satisfying. In this simulation, we explore the challenges of effectively sharing a product vision, and we discover better ways to guide the development team toward building the right product.

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Story Splitting

Text: Your stories are too big!Product owners often struggle to translate their big ideas into small user stories that the team can deliver in a sprint. When a user story is too big, it is harder to understand, estimate, and implement successfully. Some teams break the ‘business story’ into ‘technical stories’ but this doesn’t solve the problem because most or all of the technical stories need to be completed before there is anything meaningful for the stakeholders. This experiential session will give you hands-on experience with 4 simple, yet powerful techniques to break big stories into smaller stories that are meaningful to stakeholders and deliver business value. Participants write and split stories in small groups throughout this session. In his years of agile coaching, Chris has never found a story that could not be split using at least one of these techniques.

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Facilitation In Action

Improve your facilitation skills through hands-on practice. We offer a safe space to try out skills that will enable you to confidently facilitate any meeting, putting your participants – and yourself – at ease. We cover techniques to ensure attendees feel heard and respected while helping you effectively achieve the goals of your meeting. You’ll leave this session being able to have better meetings right away.

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Business Value Estimation

Pot of gold with rainbowDoes your team have an estimate for the business value of each story? Business value estimates enable a more rational ordering of the product backlog, which results in the team delivering more value. Participants will gain an understanding of the essence of business value; it’s more complex than just revenue. They will also learn a surprisingly simple technique to estimate business value. This is a hands-on learn-by-doing session.

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