Topic:

Some books make adopting Agile seem simple and straightforward. Unfortunately, it is not—especially when organizational policies and procedures hinder organizational change. Ahmed Sidky (aka Dr. Agile) shares a step-by-step process for designing a tailored road map to becoming Agile, despite the constraints surrounding you. This road map includes the three main phases of most adoption initiatives—Getting Ready, Piloting, and Spreading Agile. The getting ready phase includes evaluating your Agile readiness and educating your organization on adopting Agile principles and values rather than just Agile practices. The piloting phase describes the different criteria to remember when choosing your pilot project(s) and the value of creating a core team to assist the adoption efforts. For the spreading Agile phase, Ahmed uses the metaphor of creating Strawberry Jam to explain how Agile should be spread across the organization. He presents five steps that will help you adopt Agile values in an iterative manner. If you’re just starting out your large scale Agile transition, this talk will equip you with practical techniques and strategies to move from your existing process to an Agile process without starting from scratch.

About Ahmed Sidkey:

In addition to being the Executive Vice President at Santeon Group, Ahmed Sidkey is a frequent speaker at Agile conferences and the co-author of a top-rated Agile adoption book titled: “Becoming Agile in an Imperfect World.” Along with many years of experience in software development, Ahmed has a Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in value-based Agile Transformation. He has gained popularity and respect in the Agile community as a proponent of pragmatic approaches for organizations attempting to adopt Agile. Ahmed is often called Dr. Agile because of his free online Agile readiness assessment tool, Doctor Agile. Ahmed was the program chair for the Agile 2009 conference. Motivated by the desire to educate people about Agile, Dr. Sidky co-founded the International Consortium for Agile and sits on the steering committee for the new PMI-Agile certification. Ahmed enjoys the reaction on people’s faces when they learn the insights behind creating high-performing Agile teams and lean organizations. Ahmed has guided Enterprise Agile transformations in Fortune 100 companies as well as educating people starting from CEOs to Jr. Developers in companies around the world such as: Microsoft, Yahoo, IBM, Siemens, Verizon Wireless, Caterpillar, Raytheon, Booz Allen Hamilton, Vodafone and Raya. Ahmed can be reach at asidky@santeon.com.

About Alistair Cockburn:

Dr. Alistair Cockburn was voted one of the “The All-Time Top 150 i-Technology Heroes” in 2007 for his pioneering work in understanding use cases and for co-creating the agile software development movement. He is an internationally renowned IT strategist, expert on agile development, use cases, process design, project management, and object-oriented design, author of the Crystal agile methodologies, three Jolt-awarded books on software development, the co-author of the Agile Manifesto and the project management Declaration of Interdependence. He is known for his lively presentations and interactive workshops. His articles, talks, poems and blog are online at http://alistair.cockburn.us.