Wow, I can’t believe that our Summit 2012: Executive Education+ is less than 3 months away! A while ago, I blogged a little about Prof. Amy Edmondson’s keynote on Teaming, which will be preceded by two teaming exercises run by Prof. Alan MacCormack. At the time, we hadn’t yet firmed up the case study portion of our program. But we have since then. We’ve chosen a case that bridges the topic of leadership (which is the focus of Prof. Richard Nolan’s keynote on Monday morning and the debate that follows it) and teaming. As with Alan’s exercises, we’re keeping the title of the case under wraps so there are no preconceived notions of the outcomes! I will tell you, though, that the case will be taught by its author, Prof. Michael Roberto.

Michael Roberto is the Read more …

This past summer, William Ulrich led a Q&A for Cutter clients on Business Capability Mapping. It was so popular he did it twice! So what’s next? He’s going to build on the topic at Summit 2012: Executive Education+, April 2-4.  In the interactive work session, you’ll get to try your hand at identifying capabilities, completing a value stream and designing actionable solutions through the lens of business architecture. Practicing these skills with Bill’s guidance at the Summit will clarify why and how your organization can leverage business architecture to streamline mergers, shift to customer centric business models, deploy horizontal business solutions and pursue a growing range of transformational opportunities.

We’re really exciting about “teaming day” at Summit 2012: Executive Education+ (April 2-4). The line-up is amazing. It starts with Alan MacCormack, of Harvard Business School, conducting two exercises (experiments?) on teaming to demonstrate how to make teams more effective and innovative. Yes, he’ll be breaking the group up into teams. But we’re not revealing any more — you’ll have to come and experience it yourself!

Afterwards, Alan’s colleague at HBS, Amy Edmondson will keynote on teaming. Amy was recently named to the 2011 Thinkers50 list. Her presentation will divulge what prevents organizations from learning. Her case study research shows barrier that include interpersonal fear, irrational beliefs about failure, groupthink, problematic power dynamics and information hoarding. Here’s a clip of Amy talking about teams vs. teaming:

During the Cutter Summit, Amy will offer insight into how you as Read more …

The annual Cutter Summit has been evolving over the last few years. It’s never been “conference-as-usual”. It’s always been focused on delivering great ideas from inspiring experts, with the expectation of provoking debate. Candor and sharing have been the hallmark of the Summit. It’s always been a two-way street. We just don’t do talking heads. And we don’t do the product stuff: no vendors giving keynotes or serving on panels, no product showcases or sponsored breaks. The Summit is just true experts and practitioners sharing both the strategies that are working best now and those they see will be important down the road.

About 5 years ago we began incorporating a Harvard Business School case study into our annual North American Summit program. To say “the crowd went wild” isn’t an overstatement. The fast-paced, high energy style of the HBS-trained Read more …

Check out Cutter’s Patrick Debois (@patrickdebois) and Julian Simpson on Thursday morning at Agile2011 (9:30 – 10:30). They believe that organizations can greatly benefit from agile infrastructure and have built a demo just for this conference to prove that the concept of ‘”infrastructure as code” can help. This session is part of the New Horizons stage, so you can be certain you’ll be discovering something you hadn’t really thought about in this way before!

At the same time (unfortunately!) Cutter’s Mark Levison and Roger Brown are presenting a refinement of their Agile2009 presentation, Creativity for Agile Teams. They focus on how to support, enable and enhance the creative abilities of Agile teams.

Next, Scott Ambler, another one of the Cutter team, goes on at 11:00 with The Agile Scaling Model (ASM): Be as Agile Read more …

Gil Broza is an amazing coach. He’s also a really terrific trainer, focused on agile engineering practices. His specialties include techniques for increasing quality and reducing time-to-market, how to be a good Agile Customer, and Pragmatic Scrum. Tomorrow at 1:30 at Agile2011, he’s turning to Refactoring Conversation Smells. In his back pocket, he’s holding a simple set of patterns and questions that will help you tackle and get your conversations unstuck.

Also in that pocket are a couple of decks of Cutter Planning Poker cards. Ask him for one!

Are you going to Cutter Senior Consultant Christopher Avery’s Coaching Success: Getting People to Take Responsibility & Demonstrate Ownership session this afternoon (1:30-5:00) at Agile2011? Christopher, along with Ashley Johnson, is going to demonstrate how to apply and teach the Responsibility Process, how to handle objections, and how to know just what to do when another believes they’re owning it and you believe they aren’t. The Responsibility Process really does work! Here’s how they implemented it at DTE Energy.

More than 200 sessions will be held during the coming week in Agile 2011. This creates a problem of choosing, not choice, for every participant. While this is a wonderful problem to have, it can sometimes be a little overwhelming.

The Cutter team at Agile 2011 will hold a daily retrospective to help all of us navigate through the many parallel session in the conference. By so doing we expect to accomplish the following:

Seeing the conference as a whole instead of ‘this presentation, that workshop.’ You can think about it as kind of ‘see the forest for the trees’. Connecting the dots by identifying linkages between a presentation one person attended and another one which someone else took part in. Capturing implications for post conference work as practitioners, consultants, executives, etc. Pointing out every day intriguing sessions Read more …

If you’re going to Agile2011, be sure to check out the Testing and Quality Assurance stage. Cutter’s Ken Collier is co-producer, with Lisa Shoop from Sabre, of this stage. They’ve pulled together a powerhouse lineup of thought leaders in the Agile testing and QA space. The sessions on this stage will be highly interactive; they’re designed for sharing and learning from others. A few of the questions that will be addressed on Ken and Lisa’s Testing and QA stage include:

How do quality metrics improve testing practices? How do you effectively manage technical debt in test suites? (This one will be answered by our own Israel Gat!) How do you ensure that testing “keeps up” with the fast pace of agile development? What skills should agile teams have to ensure high quality? What is the role of a QA Read more …

Below is the detailed outline for my August 10, 9:00AM Agile 2011 presentation. I look forward to meeting you and interacting with you in the conference before, during and after this presentation!

Best,

Israel

Super-Fresh Code Part I: The Changing Nature of Change Traditional View of Agile as a Software Method A New Context for Agile Hyper-Segmented Global Markets A Modern Testing Value Chain Prosumption All the Way to the Brand Part II: Agile –> Agility Agility as an End-to-End Challenge The Value Delivery Journey Confluence of Agile, Cloud, Mobile and Social Everything as a Service Multiple Forms of Agile Part III: Your Agile Process has been Obsoleted A Passage in Time with Profound Implications Multi-Level Inspect and Adapt The New Product Backlog The New Nature of Dependency Management New Story Format “Not Reaching the Mainstream” Patterns More Than Read more …