Agile isn't a silver bullet, and it’s not a one size fits all approach. Continuous improvement is what makes it work, it’s at the heart of agile. Ben will show why continuous improvement matters in agile and what you can do to help your teams and organization to be more agile.
Dealing effectively with impediments - Agile Management Congress 2019 - Ben L...Ben Linders
If your organization wants to become agile and lean, teams need to be able to handle impediments quickly and effectively.
Playing the Impediment Board Game, you will practice how to recognize and analyze impediments, understand how they hinder teams, and decide what to do by deploying agile and lean principles and good practices. You’ll learn to become more effective by recognizing impediments early and get rid of them before they become a major issue.
The impediment game teaches you the five steps for handling impediments effectively:
– recognize and analyze impediments
– find out how they hinder the team
– find effective solutions to deal with them
– decide what to do and who can do it
– learn how to become more effective in dealing with impediments
Agile coaches use the Impediment Board Game in agile transformations to coach teams and help them to become self-organized and empowered to solve any impediments that they might face on their agile journey.
Come play the impediment board game!
Webinar enhancing quality and testing in agile teams - PractiTest - Ben LindersBen Linders
It can be hard for agile teams to deal with quality and testing challenges and decide what to do to deliver high-quality products. There are many different approaches and solutions, which, depending on the context, the problem at hand, and how they are applied, can be more or less effective.
In this webinar, Ben Linders will show you how can use gamification to self-assess your current way of working and enhance quality and testing in agile teams. Playing games with the Agile Testing Coaching Cards and Agile Quality Coaching Cards make it possible to explore your current quality and testing practice and reach a consensus on what could be improved.
Players can use the coaching cards to discuss quality and testing values, principles, and practices. In teams, people can use the cards to share their experiences and learnings.
During the webinar, we’ll pick out cards from the coaching decks to go into detail on specific principles and practices and explore how they can be applied effectively.
Mini workshop retrospecting your retrospectives - Experience Agile 2020 - Be...Ben Linders
The mini-workshop Retrospecting your Retrospectives at eXperience Agile 2020 provides you with ideas to debug your agile retrospectives, find out why they aren’t working and learn how to spice them up and bring the energy back in the team.
Are your retrospective meetings not helping teams to improve? Same actions coming up every retro? People skip the retro, or find them boring? A lack of energy in the room? Chit-chatting instead of discussing real issues? No need for that, let’s retrospect your retrospectives!
In this mini-workshop, you will experience how to use retrospective exercises to debug your retrospective meetings. People will work in teams to reflect on how their retrospectives are going and will learn what they can do to make them valuable again.
It’s a highly interactive session, learning by doing. I’ll bring in my experience from 20 years of doing agile retrospectives, and will set a culture where people will share their ideas and learn.
Agile retrospectives should help teams to reflect at the end of each iteration to learn and decide what to improve and take action in the next iteration. Valuable Agile Retrospectives provide the solution for a successful agile adoption at all levels in the organization. They help teams to reflect and learn how to apply agile practices effectively, and support managers with ideas to set conditions for their teams to grow and deliver more value.
But sometimes retrospectives don’t live up their expectation. Problems that can happen are:
The same questions (what went well, what to improve) are being asked
Similar actions keep coming up in every retrospective
Nothing happens after the meeting, actions are not done
People are postponing or skipping the retrospective meeting
Team members complain that retrospectives are boring and a waste of time
There’s a lack of energy in the room during the meeting, people are not engaged
People don’t feel safe to speak up and share their view
Discussions in the retrospective are not about the real problems (elephant in the room)
The retrospective facilitator is leading people towards a pre-defined answer/solution
In this session, teams will be doing 5 different exercises. In a time slot of two hours, teams rotate to do 2-3 of them.
Intended audience: Scrum masters, agile coaches, tech leads, developers, testers, operations, and anyone who facilitates retrospectives.
This session includes ideas published in my book Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives, practices from the Retrospective Exercises Toolbox, and agile coaching tools available in my webshop. It’s partly based on things that I teach in one of my workshops: Increasing Organizational Agility with Retrospectives.
Learning Objectives:
Learn to use exercises to reflect on your current practice of retrospectives
See how to create a safe and productive environment to run retrospectives
Practice effective skills for facilitating retrospectives and getting people engaged
Making Team Working Work - Agile by Example 2017 - Ben LindersBen Linders
People like working in teams. That is, if there’s a good environment and culture where people can actually work together and feel valued. Then you can have great teams.
Creating the right conditions and environment that enables people to work together in teams can be hard work. But it’s important, as collaboration and teamwork are essential to make agile work to deliver value.
This talk shows how you can self-assess how your team is performing and provide you with ideas to improve collaboration and teamwork to increase the agility of your team.
Teams what is in it for me - Agile Portugal 2019 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Agile talks a lot about self-organized teams, where developers and testers work together to deliver software. But what can you do to make teams succeed? This talk explores why people would like to work in teams, what managers can do to enable a team structure and culture, and how to (not) manage agile teams.
How agile are you - Agile Tour London 2020 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Let’s Play a Game to Self-assess Your Agility
Every team, every organization is less or more agile. But how agile are you, and how can you increase your agility? Methods or frameworks don’t tell you how to become agile or increase your agility.
The Agile Self-Assessment Game is an “agile map” with coaching cards for Scrum, DevOps, Kanban, and Business Agility.
Playing the game inspires you with ideas and suggestions on where to go next on your agile journey. Join this session to experience different playing formats in teams, learn how you can discover how agile you are, and get fresh ideas to increase your agility.
How to Become a Better Scrum Master - Agile Tour Beirut 2016 - Ben LindersBen Linders
During this interactive presentation you will explore the Scrum master role and provide examples of how to do it in an effective way. Humor combined with valuable insights and ideas.
Agile Retrospectives can be used to investigate quality issues or to agree upon actions that can improve the quality of the software that is delivered. They complement testing and provide solutions to learn and build quality in from the start. An agile retrospective is a practice for teams to reflect, learn, and to continuously become better in what they do. They focus on the process to help teams to improve products and deliver more value.
Dealing effectively with impediments - Agile Management Congress 2019 - Ben L...Ben Linders
If your organization wants to become agile and lean, teams need to be able to handle impediments quickly and effectively.
Playing the Impediment Board Game, you will practice how to recognize and analyze impediments, understand how they hinder teams, and decide what to do by deploying agile and lean principles and good practices. You’ll learn to become more effective by recognizing impediments early and get rid of them before they become a major issue.
The impediment game teaches you the five steps for handling impediments effectively:
– recognize and analyze impediments
– find out how they hinder the team
– find effective solutions to deal with them
– decide what to do and who can do it
– learn how to become more effective in dealing with impediments
Agile coaches use the Impediment Board Game in agile transformations to coach teams and help them to become self-organized and empowered to solve any impediments that they might face on their agile journey.
Come play the impediment board game!
Webinar enhancing quality and testing in agile teams - PractiTest - Ben LindersBen Linders
It can be hard for agile teams to deal with quality and testing challenges and decide what to do to deliver high-quality products. There are many different approaches and solutions, which, depending on the context, the problem at hand, and how they are applied, can be more or less effective.
In this webinar, Ben Linders will show you how can use gamification to self-assess your current way of working and enhance quality and testing in agile teams. Playing games with the Agile Testing Coaching Cards and Agile Quality Coaching Cards make it possible to explore your current quality and testing practice and reach a consensus on what could be improved.
Players can use the coaching cards to discuss quality and testing values, principles, and practices. In teams, people can use the cards to share their experiences and learnings.
During the webinar, we’ll pick out cards from the coaching decks to go into detail on specific principles and practices and explore how they can be applied effectively.
Mini workshop retrospecting your retrospectives - Experience Agile 2020 - Be...Ben Linders
The mini-workshop Retrospecting your Retrospectives at eXperience Agile 2020 provides you with ideas to debug your agile retrospectives, find out why they aren’t working and learn how to spice them up and bring the energy back in the team.
Are your retrospective meetings not helping teams to improve? Same actions coming up every retro? People skip the retro, or find them boring? A lack of energy in the room? Chit-chatting instead of discussing real issues? No need for that, let’s retrospect your retrospectives!
In this mini-workshop, you will experience how to use retrospective exercises to debug your retrospective meetings. People will work in teams to reflect on how their retrospectives are going and will learn what they can do to make them valuable again.
It’s a highly interactive session, learning by doing. I’ll bring in my experience from 20 years of doing agile retrospectives, and will set a culture where people will share their ideas and learn.
Agile retrospectives should help teams to reflect at the end of each iteration to learn and decide what to improve and take action in the next iteration. Valuable Agile Retrospectives provide the solution for a successful agile adoption at all levels in the organization. They help teams to reflect and learn how to apply agile practices effectively, and support managers with ideas to set conditions for their teams to grow and deliver more value.
But sometimes retrospectives don’t live up their expectation. Problems that can happen are:
The same questions (what went well, what to improve) are being asked
Similar actions keep coming up in every retrospective
Nothing happens after the meeting, actions are not done
People are postponing or skipping the retrospective meeting
Team members complain that retrospectives are boring and a waste of time
There’s a lack of energy in the room during the meeting, people are not engaged
People don’t feel safe to speak up and share their view
Discussions in the retrospective are not about the real problems (elephant in the room)
The retrospective facilitator is leading people towards a pre-defined answer/solution
In this session, teams will be doing 5 different exercises. In a time slot of two hours, teams rotate to do 2-3 of them.
Intended audience: Scrum masters, agile coaches, tech leads, developers, testers, operations, and anyone who facilitates retrospectives.
This session includes ideas published in my book Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives, practices from the Retrospective Exercises Toolbox, and agile coaching tools available in my webshop. It’s partly based on things that I teach in one of my workshops: Increasing Organizational Agility with Retrospectives.
Learning Objectives:
Learn to use exercises to reflect on your current practice of retrospectives
See how to create a safe and productive environment to run retrospectives
Practice effective skills for facilitating retrospectives and getting people engaged
Making Team Working Work - Agile by Example 2017 - Ben LindersBen Linders
People like working in teams. That is, if there’s a good environment and culture where people can actually work together and feel valued. Then you can have great teams.
Creating the right conditions and environment that enables people to work together in teams can be hard work. But it’s important, as collaboration and teamwork are essential to make agile work to deliver value.
This talk shows how you can self-assess how your team is performing and provide you with ideas to improve collaboration and teamwork to increase the agility of your team.
Teams what is in it for me - Agile Portugal 2019 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Agile talks a lot about self-organized teams, where developers and testers work together to deliver software. But what can you do to make teams succeed? This talk explores why people would like to work in teams, what managers can do to enable a team structure and culture, and how to (not) manage agile teams.
How agile are you - Agile Tour London 2020 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Let’s Play a Game to Self-assess Your Agility
Every team, every organization is less or more agile. But how agile are you, and how can you increase your agility? Methods or frameworks don’t tell you how to become agile or increase your agility.
The Agile Self-Assessment Game is an “agile map” with coaching cards for Scrum, DevOps, Kanban, and Business Agility.
Playing the game inspires you with ideas and suggestions on where to go next on your agile journey. Join this session to experience different playing formats in teams, learn how you can discover how agile you are, and get fresh ideas to increase your agility.
How to Become a Better Scrum Master - Agile Tour Beirut 2016 - Ben LindersBen Linders
During this interactive presentation you will explore the Scrum master role and provide examples of how to do it in an effective way. Humor combined with valuable insights and ideas.
Agile Retrospectives can be used to investigate quality issues or to agree upon actions that can improve the quality of the software that is delivered. They complement testing and provide solutions to learn and build quality in from the start. An agile retrospective is a practice for teams to reflect, learn, and to continuously become better in what they do. They focus on the process to help teams to improve products and deliver more value.
Mini workshop Retrospecting your Retrospectives - Agilenext 2019 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Are your retrospective meetings not helping teams to improve? Same actions every time, people skip them, find them boring, lack of energy in the room?
This session provides ideas to recognize retrospective smells, debug your agile retrospectives, and find out when and why they aren’t working.
Let’s practice how to make retrospectives valuable again!
Lean Impediment Game - Lean Kanban France 2017 - Ben LindersBen Linders
The game consists of a deck of impediment cards, a list of agile and lean good practices, and an impediment board. This game has Lean/Kanban cards and supports Lean/Kanban thinking to solve problems.
Teams what is in it for me - GrowIT 2018 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Agile talks a lot about self-organized teams, where developers and testers work together to deliver software. But what can you do to make teams succeed?
Ben Linders will explore why you want to work in a team, the benefits that teams bring, and how to (not) manage teams.
What is an agile team (and what not)
Why would you as a developer want to work in a team, what’s in it for me
Which benefits do teams have for organizations, stakeholders, customers, etc
How to manage teams, the do’s and don’ts
How developers, managers, and business people, can effectively communicate and collaborate
The road to agility - AgileEE conference 2016 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Adopting agile often doesn’t go as smoothly as expected in an organization. The road to agility can be hard to travel: You can’t plan your journey up front and there will be surprises along the way. Becoming agile is a learning process which requires that you reflect regularly and adopt your way of working, finding better ways to travel.
Ben Linders will explore what teams, agile coaches, Scrum masters, and managers can do to be prepared for a journey to agility, what to pack and how to decide which road to follow along the way. This talk will help you to successfully deploy ideas and practices that you’ve learned at the conference.
Doing Valuable Agile Retrospectives -ATBru 2014 - Ben LindersBen Linders
The agile manifesto proposes that a “team reflects on how to become more effective”. Agile retrospectives can be used to inspect and adapt the way of working. They help teams to deploy agile practices in an effective way and to continuously learn and improve themselves.But sometimes teams struggle to figure out what an agile retrospective is? And they wonder how they should do them? This presentation explains the “what” and “why” of retrospectives and the business value and benefits that they can bring. It shows several exercises from the book "Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives" to help you to facilitate retrospectives, supported with advice for introducing and improving retrospectives. Retrospectives are a great way for teams to improve their way of working, to become more agile and lean. Getting actions out of a retrospective that are doable, and getting them done helps teams to learn and improve continuously.
Playing the Agile Self-assessment Game at Agile Tour Lille 2017 - Ben LindersBen Linders
There isn’t a standard route to become agile, you have to find your own way. Methods and frameworks don’t tell you how to increase your agility. The Agile Self-Assessment Game is an ‘agile map’ that inspires you with ideas and suggestions on where to go next on your agile journey. I played the Agile Self-Assessment Game in teams to help them discover how agile they are and what they can do to increase their agility.
Mini workshop Retrospecting your Retrospectives - Agile in the City Bristol 2...Ben Linders
In this mini-workshop, you will experience how to use retrospective exercises to debug your retrospective meetings. People will work in teams to reflect how their retrospectives are going and will learn what they can do to make them valuable again.
It’s a highly interactive session, learning by doing. I’ll bring in my experience from 18 years of doing agile retrospectives, and will set a culture where people will share their ideas and learn.
Leading for Self-organization - Stretch 2020 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Agile is something for teams, right? True, but teams don’t function in a vacuum. As a manager, you can set the stage and support teams who want to increase their agility. This presentation explores three topics that managers can work on to make teams succeed and increase the company’s agility: Leadership, Collaboration, and Culture.
How agile are you? - Agile New England 2021 - Ben LindersBen Linders
On April 1, 2021, (no joke) I did an Agile 101 for Agile New England where we played the Agile Self-assessment Game online.
The Agile Self-assessment Game: How Agile Are You? by Ben Linders
The Agile Self-assessment Game is an Agile ” compass & map” to find out where you are and inspire you with ideas and suggestions on where to go next on your agile journey. It’s a cooperative card game to discover how agile you are and what you can do to increase your agility to deliver more value to their customers and stakeholders.
In this session, Ben Linders explored how a game can enable people to pull in ideas for change and apply those in a way that best suits their collective needs. And we have played with the Agile self-assessment cards online.
Ben Linders is an Independent Consultant in Agile, Lean, Quality, and Continuous Improvement. As an adviser, trainer, and coach, he helps organizations with effectively deploying software development and management practices. He focuses on continuous improvement, collaboration and communication, and professional development, to deliver business value to customers. Ben is an active member of networks on Agile, Lean, and Quality, and a well-known speaker and author. Creator of many Agile Coaching Tools, for example, the Agile Self-assessment Game.
Workshop: Problem? What problem? by Ben LindersAgile ME
If your organization wants to become agile and lean, teams need to be able to handle impediments quickly and effectively.
Playing the impediment game, you will practice how to recognize and analyze impediments, understand how they hinder teams, and decide what to do by deploying agile and lean principles and good practices. You'll learn to become more effective by recognizing impediments early and get rid of them before they become a major issue.
The impediment game teaches you the five steps for handling impediments effectively:
* recognize and analyze impediments
* find out how they hinder the team
* find effective solutions to deal with them
* decide what to do and who can do it
* learn how to become more effective in dealing with impediments
Benefits for attendees:
* recognize impediments and understand how they hinder teams
* deploy agile and lean practices to deal with them
* learn how to become more effective in dealing with impediments
Come play the impediment game!
Spicing up Agile Retrospectives - Agile Tour London 2015 - Ben LindersBen Linders
The agile manifesto proposes that a “team reflects on how to become more effective”. Agile retrospectives can be used to inspect and adapt the way of working. Retrospectives help teams to deploy agile practices in an effective way and to continuously learn and improve themselves. Ben Linders, co-author of Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives, will talk about the why and how of agile retrospectives, with much practical tips, stories, and examples. Ben will also give a workshop on Valuable Agile Retrospectives on October 22.
Spicing up agile retrospectives - TopConf Linz 2017 - Ben LindersBen Linders
The agile manifesto proposes a “team reflects on how to become more effective”. Agile retrospectives can be used to inspect and adapt the way of working. Ben Linders, co-author of Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives, will talk about the why, what and how of agile retrospectives, with many practical tips, stories, and examples.The agile manifesto proposes that a “team reflects on how to become more effective”. Agile retrospectives can be used to inspect and adapt the way of working. Ben Linders, co-author of Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives, will talk about the why, what and how of agile retrospectives, with many practical tips, stories, and examples.
Retrospectives help teams to deploy agile practices in an effective way. The retrospective facilitator (often the Scrum master) should have a toolbox of retrospective exercises, and be able to pick the most effective ones. Retrospectives are a great way for teams to improve their way of working, to become more agile and lean. Getting actions out of a retrospective that are doable, and getting them done helps teams to learn and improve continuously.
Spicing up Agile Retrospectives - Agile Practitioners 2016 - Ben LindersBen Linders
The agile manifesto proposes that a “team reflects on how to become more effective”. Agile retrospectives can be used to inspect and adapt the way of working. Retrospectives help teams to deploy agile practices in an effective way and to continuously learn and improve themselves. Ben Linders, co-author of Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives, will talk about the why and how of agile retrospectives, with much practical tips, stories, and examples. Ben also gives full-day workshops on Valuable Agile Retrospectives.
Improving your quality and testing skills with gamification - Spring 2021 Onl...Ben Linders
For the first time, I’m doing a session at the Online Testing Conference. I’ll be playing games with the Agile Testing Coaching Cards and Agile Quality Coaching Cards to help people explore how things are going and to improve their way of working.
Improving Your Quality and Testing Skills with Gamification
So many challenges, so little time. As testers we need to sharpen the saw, but how? Gamification can be a way to look at how you’re doing and find out where to improve. It’s a great way to have everyone involved and get the best out of people.
In this presentation, Ben Linders will play games with the Agile Testing Coaching Cards and Agile Quality Coaching Cards to show how you can explore your current quality and testing practice and decide in your team on what to improve or experiment with.
Players can use the coaching cards to discuss quality and testing values, principles, and practices. In teams, people can use the cards to share their experiences and learnings.
Different game formats can be used to share experiences on testing and quality principles and practices and explore how they can be applied effectively.
Takeaways
Show how to use gamification to self-assess your current way of working.
Play games with the Agile Testing Coaching Cards and Agile Quality Coaching Cards.
Explore how to facilitate games to enhance quality and testing in agile teams.
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Online Testing Conference
OnlineTestConf was the first 100% online conference to provide all the advantages of attending professional QA related conferences: personal learning, networking etc. without the shortcomings of scheduling, expenses and travel. The conference has been running for the past 5 years on a semi-annual basis, long before COVID-19 forced all live events online.
Our next event will be our 10th OnlineTestConf! Conference attendees are from all parts of the world, we host well known speakers as well as young presenters, and discuss everything that relates to Testing and QA. Attendance is and will remain free of charge and we invite anyone who sees themselves involved in testing and the testing community to join.
Problem, what problem? Agile Impediment Board Game - ACE conference 2019 - B...Ben Linders
If your organization wants to become agile and lean, your teams need to be able to handle impediments quickly and effectively. In this game, you will practice how to recognize and analyze impediments, understand how they can hinder your team, and decide what can be done and who can take appropriate action by deploying agile and lean principles and good practices.
The impediment game played in this session teaches the five steps for handling impediments effectively.
This talk explains the “what” and “why” of retrospectives and the business value and benefits that they can bring. Examples will be given of exercises that you can use to facilitate retrospectives, supported with advice for introducing and improving retrospectives. It is based on the successful book Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives.
Valuable Agile Retrospectives: The Making of - XP Days 2014 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Writing a book by two people who never met each other face 2 face when they wrote, published and promoted the book is an amazing experience! Having it translated by self organized agile teams all around the world makes it awesome!!! Come and hear how we did this and what made it work, and learn how you can effectively work with people all around the world.
In 2013 Luis Gonçalves and I wrote the book Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives. We did this by working together fully remote. We self-published it in December 2013 and gained many readers worldwide. We never met each other in person until April 2014, and are still collaborating to promote the book and helping teams worldwide to get more value out of doing agile retrospectives.
In 2014 we started with teams of volunteers all around the world to translate our book. Working remotely with people that you don't know, from different cultures, with their own ways of working, and on different continents is certainly challenging, but it turned out to be an effective and fun way to do it!
Join this session to learn:
- how you can get to know people and work together remote, i.e. without meeting face 2 face;
- which tools you can use to collaborate and communicate when working remote together;
- how you can translate a book with self organized distributed agile teams of volunteers;
- and how value, trust and respect can make it all possible.
Agile Self-assessment Game - XP Days Benelux 2016 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Becoming agile is a journey, which can be difficult to travel. Assuming that you know why you want to become agile (a first but crucial step) you start looking for ways how to get there. Questions like "what do you want to keep from your current way of working" and "what would you like to change" will come up. Then the next question is "what are ways to do this".
There isn't a silver bullet or standard route to become agile, you have to find your own way. A fixed route description won't help you. You need an "agile map" that inspires you with ideas and suggestions on where to go on your journey. The Agile Self-Assessment game is here for you to travel your agile journey.
Come play the Agile Self-Assessment game in teams to discover how agile you are and what you can do to increase your agility.
Players will receive a link to download the card game so that they can play it in their own organization (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 License).
Keynote Need for Continuous Improvement - Agile Tour Kaunas 2016 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Agile isn’t a silver bullet, and it’s not a one size fits all approach. Continuous improvement is what makes it work, it’s at the heart of agile. Ben will show why continuous improvement matters in agile and what you can do to help your teams and organization to be more agile.
Futurespective on Software Development in 2040 - Agile Tour Brussels 2020 - B...Ben Linders
Back to the Future – A Futurespective on Software Development in 2040
We start the futurespective by sketching the future. How is software developed in 2040? Is it people, AI, or a combination? Teams, large groups, or individual work? Programming and testing, or other approaches? Continuous delivery, chunks, iterations, push or pull? Distributed, dispersed, localized teams? There are no limits, let your imagination flow to visualize ideas about developing software products in 2040.
Next, we’ll discuss what got us there. How did these new ways of developing software come into existence? How did we discover them? What experiments led to this? What drove us or influenced us along the way?
Finally, we think about the steps that we can take in 2020 to reach the castle in the sky of software development. What can we do now to become better? What should we stop as it won’t exist in the future anymore?
Let’s find out how the future of software development looks, by doing a futurespective exercise in groups!
Why, what, an How of Agile Retrospectives - Lean Kanban Benelux 2015 - Ben Li...Ben Linders
Retrospectives help teams to deploy agile practices in an effective way and to continuously learn and improve themselves.The retrospective facilitator (often the scrum master) should have a toolbox of retrospective exercises, and be able to pick the most effective one.
Sustainable Improvement through Agile Retrospectives - AgileEE 2015 - Ben Li...Ben Linders
Buy-in from professionals is crucial to make changes succeed in organizations. Many improvement programs fail when professionals are insufficiently involved during the changes. Agile retrospectives can be used to do continuous and lasting improvements in organizations. They are owned and done by the teams, who decide when, where, and how they will change their way of working. This is why agile retrospectives are a sustainable approach for improvement.
We need to uncover better ways to do improvements in organizations. Use an iterative approach for change with short-cycled improvements and frequent feedback to learn how to improve and get better in doing it. Agile retrospectives are a better way to do continuous improvement. Teams decide when, where, and how they will change their way of working, in stead of having the changes dictated by managers or quality/process people. Retrospectives give power to the teams and help them to become self-organized.
My first book Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives – A Toolbox of Retrospective Exercises contains many exercises that you can use to do retrospectives, supported with the “what” and “why” of retrospectives, the business value and benefits that they can bring you, and advice for introducing and improving retrospectives.
Mini workshop Retrospecting your Retrospectives - Agilenext 2019 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Are your retrospective meetings not helping teams to improve? Same actions every time, people skip them, find them boring, lack of energy in the room?
This session provides ideas to recognize retrospective smells, debug your agile retrospectives, and find out when and why they aren’t working.
Let’s practice how to make retrospectives valuable again!
Lean Impediment Game - Lean Kanban France 2017 - Ben LindersBen Linders
The game consists of a deck of impediment cards, a list of agile and lean good practices, and an impediment board. This game has Lean/Kanban cards and supports Lean/Kanban thinking to solve problems.
Teams what is in it for me - GrowIT 2018 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Agile talks a lot about self-organized teams, where developers and testers work together to deliver software. But what can you do to make teams succeed?
Ben Linders will explore why you want to work in a team, the benefits that teams bring, and how to (not) manage teams.
What is an agile team (and what not)
Why would you as a developer want to work in a team, what’s in it for me
Which benefits do teams have for organizations, stakeholders, customers, etc
How to manage teams, the do’s and don’ts
How developers, managers, and business people, can effectively communicate and collaborate
The road to agility - AgileEE conference 2016 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Adopting agile often doesn’t go as smoothly as expected in an organization. The road to agility can be hard to travel: You can’t plan your journey up front and there will be surprises along the way. Becoming agile is a learning process which requires that you reflect regularly and adopt your way of working, finding better ways to travel.
Ben Linders will explore what teams, agile coaches, Scrum masters, and managers can do to be prepared for a journey to agility, what to pack and how to decide which road to follow along the way. This talk will help you to successfully deploy ideas and practices that you’ve learned at the conference.
Doing Valuable Agile Retrospectives -ATBru 2014 - Ben LindersBen Linders
The agile manifesto proposes that a “team reflects on how to become more effective”. Agile retrospectives can be used to inspect and adapt the way of working. They help teams to deploy agile practices in an effective way and to continuously learn and improve themselves.But sometimes teams struggle to figure out what an agile retrospective is? And they wonder how they should do them? This presentation explains the “what” and “why” of retrospectives and the business value and benefits that they can bring. It shows several exercises from the book "Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives" to help you to facilitate retrospectives, supported with advice for introducing and improving retrospectives. Retrospectives are a great way for teams to improve their way of working, to become more agile and lean. Getting actions out of a retrospective that are doable, and getting them done helps teams to learn and improve continuously.
Playing the Agile Self-assessment Game at Agile Tour Lille 2017 - Ben LindersBen Linders
There isn’t a standard route to become agile, you have to find your own way. Methods and frameworks don’t tell you how to increase your agility. The Agile Self-Assessment Game is an ‘agile map’ that inspires you with ideas and suggestions on where to go next on your agile journey. I played the Agile Self-Assessment Game in teams to help them discover how agile they are and what they can do to increase their agility.
Mini workshop Retrospecting your Retrospectives - Agile in the City Bristol 2...Ben Linders
In this mini-workshop, you will experience how to use retrospective exercises to debug your retrospective meetings. People will work in teams to reflect how their retrospectives are going and will learn what they can do to make them valuable again.
It’s a highly interactive session, learning by doing. I’ll bring in my experience from 18 years of doing agile retrospectives, and will set a culture where people will share their ideas and learn.
Leading for Self-organization - Stretch 2020 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Agile is something for teams, right? True, but teams don’t function in a vacuum. As a manager, you can set the stage and support teams who want to increase their agility. This presentation explores three topics that managers can work on to make teams succeed and increase the company’s agility: Leadership, Collaboration, and Culture.
How agile are you? - Agile New England 2021 - Ben LindersBen Linders
On April 1, 2021, (no joke) I did an Agile 101 for Agile New England where we played the Agile Self-assessment Game online.
The Agile Self-assessment Game: How Agile Are You? by Ben Linders
The Agile Self-assessment Game is an Agile ” compass & map” to find out where you are and inspire you with ideas and suggestions on where to go next on your agile journey. It’s a cooperative card game to discover how agile you are and what you can do to increase your agility to deliver more value to their customers and stakeholders.
In this session, Ben Linders explored how a game can enable people to pull in ideas for change and apply those in a way that best suits their collective needs. And we have played with the Agile self-assessment cards online.
Ben Linders is an Independent Consultant in Agile, Lean, Quality, and Continuous Improvement. As an adviser, trainer, and coach, he helps organizations with effectively deploying software development and management practices. He focuses on continuous improvement, collaboration and communication, and professional development, to deliver business value to customers. Ben is an active member of networks on Agile, Lean, and Quality, and a well-known speaker and author. Creator of many Agile Coaching Tools, for example, the Agile Self-assessment Game.
Workshop: Problem? What problem? by Ben LindersAgile ME
If your organization wants to become agile and lean, teams need to be able to handle impediments quickly and effectively.
Playing the impediment game, you will practice how to recognize and analyze impediments, understand how they hinder teams, and decide what to do by deploying agile and lean principles and good practices. You'll learn to become more effective by recognizing impediments early and get rid of them before they become a major issue.
The impediment game teaches you the five steps for handling impediments effectively:
* recognize and analyze impediments
* find out how they hinder the team
* find effective solutions to deal with them
* decide what to do and who can do it
* learn how to become more effective in dealing with impediments
Benefits for attendees:
* recognize impediments and understand how they hinder teams
* deploy agile and lean practices to deal with them
* learn how to become more effective in dealing with impediments
Come play the impediment game!
Spicing up Agile Retrospectives - Agile Tour London 2015 - Ben LindersBen Linders
The agile manifesto proposes that a “team reflects on how to become more effective”. Agile retrospectives can be used to inspect and adapt the way of working. Retrospectives help teams to deploy agile practices in an effective way and to continuously learn and improve themselves. Ben Linders, co-author of Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives, will talk about the why and how of agile retrospectives, with much practical tips, stories, and examples. Ben will also give a workshop on Valuable Agile Retrospectives on October 22.
Spicing up agile retrospectives - TopConf Linz 2017 - Ben LindersBen Linders
The agile manifesto proposes a “team reflects on how to become more effective”. Agile retrospectives can be used to inspect and adapt the way of working. Ben Linders, co-author of Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives, will talk about the why, what and how of agile retrospectives, with many practical tips, stories, and examples.The agile manifesto proposes that a “team reflects on how to become more effective”. Agile retrospectives can be used to inspect and adapt the way of working. Ben Linders, co-author of Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives, will talk about the why, what and how of agile retrospectives, with many practical tips, stories, and examples.
Retrospectives help teams to deploy agile practices in an effective way. The retrospective facilitator (often the Scrum master) should have a toolbox of retrospective exercises, and be able to pick the most effective ones. Retrospectives are a great way for teams to improve their way of working, to become more agile and lean. Getting actions out of a retrospective that are doable, and getting them done helps teams to learn and improve continuously.
Spicing up Agile Retrospectives - Agile Practitioners 2016 - Ben LindersBen Linders
The agile manifesto proposes that a “team reflects on how to become more effective”. Agile retrospectives can be used to inspect and adapt the way of working. Retrospectives help teams to deploy agile practices in an effective way and to continuously learn and improve themselves. Ben Linders, co-author of Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives, will talk about the why and how of agile retrospectives, with much practical tips, stories, and examples. Ben also gives full-day workshops on Valuable Agile Retrospectives.
Improving your quality and testing skills with gamification - Spring 2021 Onl...Ben Linders
For the first time, I’m doing a session at the Online Testing Conference. I’ll be playing games with the Agile Testing Coaching Cards and Agile Quality Coaching Cards to help people explore how things are going and to improve their way of working.
Improving Your Quality and Testing Skills with Gamification
So many challenges, so little time. As testers we need to sharpen the saw, but how? Gamification can be a way to look at how you’re doing and find out where to improve. It’s a great way to have everyone involved and get the best out of people.
In this presentation, Ben Linders will play games with the Agile Testing Coaching Cards and Agile Quality Coaching Cards to show how you can explore your current quality and testing practice and decide in your team on what to improve or experiment with.
Players can use the coaching cards to discuss quality and testing values, principles, and practices. In teams, people can use the cards to share their experiences and learnings.
Different game formats can be used to share experiences on testing and quality principles and practices and explore how they can be applied effectively.
Takeaways
Show how to use gamification to self-assess your current way of working.
Play games with the Agile Testing Coaching Cards and Agile Quality Coaching Cards.
Explore how to facilitate games to enhance quality and testing in agile teams.
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Online Testing Conference
OnlineTestConf was the first 100% online conference to provide all the advantages of attending professional QA related conferences: personal learning, networking etc. without the shortcomings of scheduling, expenses and travel. The conference has been running for the past 5 years on a semi-annual basis, long before COVID-19 forced all live events online.
Our next event will be our 10th OnlineTestConf! Conference attendees are from all parts of the world, we host well known speakers as well as young presenters, and discuss everything that relates to Testing and QA. Attendance is and will remain free of charge and we invite anyone who sees themselves involved in testing and the testing community to join.
Problem, what problem? Agile Impediment Board Game - ACE conference 2019 - B...Ben Linders
If your organization wants to become agile and lean, your teams need to be able to handle impediments quickly and effectively. In this game, you will practice how to recognize and analyze impediments, understand how they can hinder your team, and decide what can be done and who can take appropriate action by deploying agile and lean principles and good practices.
The impediment game played in this session teaches the five steps for handling impediments effectively.
This talk explains the “what” and “why” of retrospectives and the business value and benefits that they can bring. Examples will be given of exercises that you can use to facilitate retrospectives, supported with advice for introducing and improving retrospectives. It is based on the successful book Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives.
Valuable Agile Retrospectives: The Making of - XP Days 2014 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Writing a book by two people who never met each other face 2 face when they wrote, published and promoted the book is an amazing experience! Having it translated by self organized agile teams all around the world makes it awesome!!! Come and hear how we did this and what made it work, and learn how you can effectively work with people all around the world.
In 2013 Luis Gonçalves and I wrote the book Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives. We did this by working together fully remote. We self-published it in December 2013 and gained many readers worldwide. We never met each other in person until April 2014, and are still collaborating to promote the book and helping teams worldwide to get more value out of doing agile retrospectives.
In 2014 we started with teams of volunteers all around the world to translate our book. Working remotely with people that you don't know, from different cultures, with their own ways of working, and on different continents is certainly challenging, but it turned out to be an effective and fun way to do it!
Join this session to learn:
- how you can get to know people and work together remote, i.e. without meeting face 2 face;
- which tools you can use to collaborate and communicate when working remote together;
- how you can translate a book with self organized distributed agile teams of volunteers;
- and how value, trust and respect can make it all possible.
Agile Self-assessment Game - XP Days Benelux 2016 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Becoming agile is a journey, which can be difficult to travel. Assuming that you know why you want to become agile (a first but crucial step) you start looking for ways how to get there. Questions like "what do you want to keep from your current way of working" and "what would you like to change" will come up. Then the next question is "what are ways to do this".
There isn't a silver bullet or standard route to become agile, you have to find your own way. A fixed route description won't help you. You need an "agile map" that inspires you with ideas and suggestions on where to go on your journey. The Agile Self-Assessment game is here for you to travel your agile journey.
Come play the Agile Self-Assessment game in teams to discover how agile you are and what you can do to increase your agility.
Players will receive a link to download the card game so that they can play it in their own organization (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 License).
Keynote Need for Continuous Improvement - Agile Tour Kaunas 2016 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Agile isn’t a silver bullet, and it’s not a one size fits all approach. Continuous improvement is what makes it work, it’s at the heart of agile. Ben will show why continuous improvement matters in agile and what you can do to help your teams and organization to be more agile.
Futurespective on Software Development in 2040 - Agile Tour Brussels 2020 - B...Ben Linders
Back to the Future – A Futurespective on Software Development in 2040
We start the futurespective by sketching the future. How is software developed in 2040? Is it people, AI, or a combination? Teams, large groups, or individual work? Programming and testing, or other approaches? Continuous delivery, chunks, iterations, push or pull? Distributed, dispersed, localized teams? There are no limits, let your imagination flow to visualize ideas about developing software products in 2040.
Next, we’ll discuss what got us there. How did these new ways of developing software come into existence? How did we discover them? What experiments led to this? What drove us or influenced us along the way?
Finally, we think about the steps that we can take in 2020 to reach the castle in the sky of software development. What can we do now to become better? What should we stop as it won’t exist in the future anymore?
Let’s find out how the future of software development looks, by doing a futurespective exercise in groups!
Why, what, an How of Agile Retrospectives - Lean Kanban Benelux 2015 - Ben Li...Ben Linders
Retrospectives help teams to deploy agile practices in an effective way and to continuously learn and improve themselves.The retrospective facilitator (often the scrum master) should have a toolbox of retrospective exercises, and be able to pick the most effective one.
Sustainable Improvement through Agile Retrospectives - AgileEE 2015 - Ben Li...Ben Linders
Buy-in from professionals is crucial to make changes succeed in organizations. Many improvement programs fail when professionals are insufficiently involved during the changes. Agile retrospectives can be used to do continuous and lasting improvements in organizations. They are owned and done by the teams, who decide when, where, and how they will change their way of working. This is why agile retrospectives are a sustainable approach for improvement.
We need to uncover better ways to do improvements in organizations. Use an iterative approach for change with short-cycled improvements and frequent feedback to learn how to improve and get better in doing it. Agile retrospectives are a better way to do continuous improvement. Teams decide when, where, and how they will change their way of working, in stead of having the changes dictated by managers or quality/process people. Retrospectives give power to the teams and help them to become self-organized.
My first book Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives – A Toolbox of Retrospective Exercises contains many exercises that you can use to do retrospectives, supported with the “what” and “why” of retrospectives, the business value and benefits that they can bring you, and advice for introducing and improving retrospectives.
Learning to Become Agile, with Retrospectives - QCon London 2015 - Ben LindersBen Linders
The agile manifesto proposes that a “team reflects on how to become more effective”. Agile retrospectives can be used to inspect and adapt the way of working. They help teams to become agile by deploying agile practices in an effective way and continuously learning and improve themselves.
This talk explains the “what” and “why” of retrospectives and the business value and benefits that they can bring. Examples will be given of exercises that you can use to facilitate retrospectives, supported with advice for introducing and improving retrospectives. It is based on the successful book Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives which is published on InfoQ, Amazon, Leanpub.
Retrospectives are a great way for teams to improve their way of working, to become more agile and lean. Getting actions out of a retrospective that are doable, and getting them done helps teams to improve continuously and deliver more value to their customers.
Retrospectives helpen je om agile effectief toe te passen continu te verbeteren. Je pakt ermee problemen aan en zorgt voor een goede werksfeer in je teams. Scrum masters en Agile coaches halen meer uit teams met behulp van een toolbox met retrospective oefeningen.
In deze mini-workshop geeft Ben Linders, auteur van het succesvolle boek Waardevolle Agile Retrospectives, een introductie van de “waarom” en “wat” van retrospectives. Je oefent verschillende manieren om retrospectives te doen en krijgt tips en adviezen voor het introduceren en verbeteren van retrospectives.
Scene setting: Recent trends in Process ImprovementBen Linders
Recently I was the host of the Unicom Conference “Recent Trends in Process Improvement” in Amsterdam. My scene setting talk explained to the audience why we need to uncover better ways to do process improvement. This blog post takes a deeper look at the needs of the business and customers for process improvement, and discusses some solutions to find better ways to do it.
Becoming Agile and Lean in Process Improvement - UNICOM - Ben LindersBen Linders
What are the needs of the business and customers for process improvement? With solutions to find better ways to do process improvement!
http://www.benlinders.com/2012/uncovering-better-ways-to-do-process-improvement/
Scrum Round Table met als thema ‘Effective Retrospectives'. Onder leiding van twee senior ALM Consultants van Delta-N is er gediscussieerd over de uitdagingen die je in de praktijk tegen komt tijdens een retrospective. Voor deze Round Table was met Ben Linders een specialist op het gebied van Retrospectives uitgenodigd. Tijdens het eerste deel van het programma is Retrospective oefening Car Brand gedaan. Vervolgens is er uitgebreid gediscusseerd over situaties uit de praktijk en is afgesloten met een retrospective.
Continuous Improvement, make it visible - ICSPI 2006 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Communication is an important factor in improvement programs. Communication pictures the goals and approach of an improvement program. It can motivate people to commit to change, by showing expected benefits and early results. But wrong or too much communication can also frustrate people, getting them to resist changing.
Many improvement programs are run by technical persons, in a technical environment. Often communication is undervalued and underestimated, and perceived as difficult. It is something that people are inexperienced in, which makes them feel uncomfortable. But if they get started, and take some hurdles, they can get better in it. This presentation provides hands-on information, and hint & tips.
This presentation will show how vital communication is for improvement programs. It supplies a set of tools and techniques to improve the visibility of targets and results, and will explain how this has been used to monitor and steer continuous improvement in an R&D organization. Views on continuous improvement from different stakeholders are included, to show their needs on communication.
Experiences with Data Feedback - Better Software 2004 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Good data feedback of software measurements is critical when analyzing measurement data, for drawing conclusions, and as the basis for taking action. Feedback to those involved in the activities being measured helps validate the data as well. In this presentation Ben Linders shows examples of how Ericsson Telecommunications delivers feedback at two levels: projects and the total development center. Although the basics are similar, the application differs, and the key success factors depend on the level and the audience. At the project level, you will see how the team reviews defect data, including defect classifications and test matrices. For development center feedback, you will see how line management and technical engineers review data and analyze information based on a balanced score card approach with measurable goals. Finally, Ben Linders shows examples, data summaries, and suggested action items that management teams from the project and development center levels review.
• Techniques used in data feedback reporting and key success factors
• Close the feedback loop with different levels in the organization
• Human factors that play a role in feedback sessions
Kr8tige software met Lean - RWS - Ben LindersBen Linders
Wat is Lean, en hoe kun je daarmee sneller software ontwikkelen, met hogere kwaliteit tegen lagere kosten? Een overzicht van de principes van Lean, en hoe je het toe kunt passen om verspilling te verminderen, kwaliteit te integreren en medewerkersbetrokkenheid te verbeteren.
Valuable Agile Retrospectives - QA&Test 2014 - Ben LindersBen Linders
The agile manifesto proposes that a “team reflects on how to become more effective”. Agile retrospectives can be used to inspect and adapt the way of working. But sometimes teams struggle to figure out what an agile retrospective is? And they wonder how they should do them?
Retrospectives help teams to deploy agile practices in an effective way and to continuously learn and improve themselves.
The retrospective facilitator (often the scrum master) should have a toolbox of retrospective techniques, and be able to pick the most effective one.
This presentation explains the “what” and “why” of retrospectives and the business value and benefits that they can bring. You will experience several exercises that you can use to facilitate retrospectives, supported with advice for introducing and improving retrospectives.
Retrospectives are a great way for teams to improve their way of working, to become more agile and lean. Getting actions out of a retrospective that are doable, and getting them done helps teams to learn and improve continuously.
Ben Linders is a Senior Consultant in Agile, Lean, Quality and Process Improvement, based in The Netherlands. Co-author of Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives.
Why What and How of Agile Retrospectives - Agile Tour Lille 2015 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Becoming agile is a learning process which requires that you reflect regularly and adopt your way of working. Valuable Agile Retrospectives provide the solution for a successful agile adoption at all levels in the organization. They help you to apply agile practices effectively.
Workshop Exercises to spice up your Agile Retrospective Agile Cambridge 201...Ben Linders
Valuable agile retrospectives provide the solution for a successful agile adoption at all levels in an organization. They help teams to reflect and learn how to apply agile practices effectively, and support managers with ideas to set conditions for their teams to grow and deliver more value.
In this mini-workshop you will experience how using different exercises can help you to spice up your agile retrospectives and get more value out of them. I will also explain the why and how of retrospectives, the business value and benefits that they can bring you, and provide tips for improving retrospectives in your teams.
In teams, you will practice exercises from the Retrospective Exercises Toolbox to experience how to effectively facilitate retrospectives.
Sustainable Improvement Through Retrospectives - SEPG Europe 2013 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Buy-in from professional is crucial to make changes succeed in organizations. Many improvement programs fail when professionals are insufficiently involved during the changes. Agile retrospectives can be used to do continuous and lasting improvements in organizations. They are owned and done by the teams, who decide when, where, and how they will change their way of working. This is why agile retrospectives are a sustainable approach for improvement.
For a summary of this presentation, see http://www.benlinders.com/2013/sustainable-improvement-through-agile-retrospectives/.
This talk explains the “what” and “why” of retrospectives, as well as the business value and benefits that they can bring. Examples will be given of exercises that you can use to facilitate retrospectives, supported with advice for introducing and improving them. These are based on the successful book Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives.
During this interactive presentation, you will explore the Scrum master’s role and you will see examples of how to do it in an effective way. Humor combined with valuable insights and ideas.
Driving improvements with Agile Retrospectives - Project and Product Manageme...Ben Linders
Agile retrospectives have become a practice that is used by many teams to inspect and adapt their way of working. They provide insight into the activities performed and show how people are working together to deliver products
Did you know that you can also use agile retrospectives to drive improvements in projects and for products?
In his keynote, Ben Linders will explain what agile retrospectives are, how you can do them, and how they compare to project evaluations, post-mortems, and lessons-learned sessions. He will explore how you can join agile retrospectives as a project manager or product manager and the business benefits that agile retrospectives can bring.
Spice up your agile retrospectives - LKFR14 - Ben LindersBen Linders
The agile manifesto proposes that a “team reflects on how to become more effective”. Agile retrospectives can be used to inspect and adapt the way of working. But sometimes teams struggle to figure out what an agile retrospective is? And they wonder how they should do them?
Retrospectives help teams to deploy agile practices in an effective way and to continuously learn and improve themselves.
The retrospective facilitator (often the scrum master) should have a toolbox of retrospective exercises, and be able to pick the most effective one.
This presentation explains the “what” and “why” of retrospectives and the business value and benefits that they can bring. You will experience several exercises that you can use to facilitate retrospectives, supported with advice for introducing and improving retrospectives.
Retrospectives are a great way for teams to improve their way of working, to become more agile and lean. Getting actions out of a retrospective that are doable, and getting them done helps teams to learn and improve continuously.
Learning at Scale - FlowCon France 2019 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Where we are seeing more and more individual and team level learning and continuous improvement in organizations, improvements at the higher levels still tend to pose significant challenges. We learn as a team and learn how to be a team, but when we reach the borders of our team and have to deal with more complex systems involving people from our ecosystem and even sometimes from people outside our ecosystem, many improvement practices break down and don’t lead to sustainable results. At the same time, the bigger and more complex our solutions become, the more we need to be able to secure improvement at all levels in the organization.
In this talk, Ben Linders will explore what we can do to increase our understanding of systematic problems at higher levels in organizations, and how to use that to improve the performance and agility of organizations. He will show how we can apply techniques like system/multi-team retrospectives and systems thinking to get improvement going at a level of two higher than the team, and present the benefits that this can bring to teams and organizations as a whole.
Valuable Agile Retrospectives - Book Launch for SPIder - Ben LindersBen Linders
Presentation given at the SPIder Book Event to announce the Dutch edition Waardevolle Agile Retrospectives (translation from Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives).
With plenty of exercises for your personal retrospective toolbox, Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives will help you to become more proficient in doing retrospectives and to get more out of them.
Agile Retrospectives to the Next Level - Organizational Agility - OOP 2020 - ...Ben Linders
Agile Retrospectives can be used to deal with problems in teams, at a project or product level, or those related to the collaboration between the team and stakeholders. But you need a different approach compared to team level retrospectives to do organizational-wide improvement.
This session shows how to use agile retrospectives to reveal and solve systemic organizational problems and to increase the company’s agility It explores different approaches, formats, and techniques for agile retrospectives that are done beyond the development team.
Extended Abstract
Nowadays many agile teams are doing retrospectives regularly. They are investing their time to reflect, learn, and take action to improve their way of working and deal with problems that they are facing in a structural way.
Organizations are seeing the benefits from this: teams that are becoming empowered, being able to deliver more value to customers and stakeholders, happy employees, and fewer people leaving the organization. It’s time to take retrospectives to a higher level, and use them to reveal and solve systemic organizational problems. Agile Retrospectives can be used to do that, but you need a different approach.
In this session, I will show how we can use retrospectives to improve the agility of organizations.
Note: Some might call the above approach scaling retrospectives. If that goes towards imposing how teams do retrospectives with some kind of framework, then I believe it doesn’t work. Increasing agility with retrospectives is about creating an environment where teams not only focus on their own improvement needs but also on the company as a whole, and get support from management when improvements go over their team borders or outside their autonomy.
Why people hate working in Agile teams - QA Challenge Accepted 2023 - Ben Lin...Ben Linders
By now, many of us have been through one or more "agile transformations". We've been surrounded by agile coaches and Scrum masters who tried to help us adapt to agile, with managers who became servant leaders. Hopefully they weren't telling you what to do or how to do your work! A lot of people simply hate working in agile teams - Ben hears that all the time. And that is why he's here! In this talk, Ben will explore the difficulties of collaborating in teams and what we can do to make it beneficial and worthwhile for people to work in teams. Ben will delve into what teams really need, and what leaders should do and should not do to support them, including providing an environment and culture where teams can flourish and supporting teams in removing barriers. Through this talk, attendees will gain a better understanding of the reasons why people struggle to work in agile teams, and what leaders can do to create a positive and supportive environment for teams. The talk is intended for anyone working in a team or working with teams, from agile coaches and Scrum masters to managers and team members who are looking to improve their collaboration skills and create a more positive and productive work environment.
Agile quality: Maximize results with a small quality team - PSQT 2005 - Ben L...Ben Linders
How could you maintain quality and organizational efficiency, when the quality staff is reduced? What can you do to optimize improvement effort, and contribute to organizational results? How do you keep up morale in difficult times?
This presentation will show a continuous process of keeping focus, involving people from line and projects, collaboration, and communication. The approach was driven by strong needs from management, and implemented based on values and key success factors of the company. The results are better control, increased performance, and meeting organizational targets.
Mini workshop collaborative problem solving - OOP 2021 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Problem? What Problem? Practice Collaborative Problem-solving
Working in teams we face problems in our daily work. As a team, we should be able to solve problems collaboratively. Agile calls these problems impediments.
Impediments can be something in the way of working, processes, tools, or organizational rules or structures. They can also be something cultural or structural.
In this mini-workshop, we’ll practice solving an impediment as a team. Next, we’ll explore how we solved it, how we worked together. What hindered and helped us. We’ll learn what we can do to collaborate better.
Psychological Safety in Teams - FlowCon France 2024 - Ben LindersBen Linders
Psychological safety in teams is important; team members must feel safe and able to communicate and collaborate effectively to deliver value. It’s also necessary to build long-lasting teams since things will happen and relationships will be strained.
But, how safe is a team? How can we determine if there are any factors that make the team unsafe or have an impact on the team’s culture?
In this mini-workshop, we’ll play games for psychological safety and team culture utilizing a deck of coaching cards, The Psychological Safety Cards. We will learn how to use gamification to gain a better understanding of what’s going on in teams. Individuals share what they have learned from working in teams, what has impacted the team’s safety and culture, and what has led to positive change.
Different game formats will be played in groups in parallel. Examples are an ice-breaker to get people talking about psychological safety, a constellation where people take positions about aspects of psychological safety in their team or organization, and collaborative card games where people work together to create an environment that fosters psychological safety.
Improving Your Testing Skills and Practices with Gamification - Testing Unite...Ben Linders
So many challenges, so little time. As testers or quality engineers, we need to sharpen the saw, but how? Gamification can be a way to look at how you’re doing and find out where to improve. It’s a great way to have everyone engaged and get the best out of people.
In this presentation, Ben Linders will show how playing games (onsite or online) with the Agile Testing Coaching Cards and Agile Quality Coaching Cards help to explore your current quality and testing practice and decide as a team on what to improve or experiment with.
Start up distributed teams online - Mini XP days 2022 - Ben LindersBen Linders
How to start up a distributed team online with gamification
Remote first is becoming the norm, and this is also true for new teams. Where you would previously organize one or more onsite kick-off sessions to start a new team, a new distributed team would have to be working online together from day 1.
Techniques used for team chartering might still be useful, but they would need a different approach for online working. Gamification, incentifying people’s engagement by using game-style principles and practices, can help you to build strong teams.
In this session, we’ll look at several tools and playing formats that can be used to start up distributed teams and foster further development.
We’ll do the exercises in teams, and as we will be experimenting with both in-person and online exercises it’s good to bring your laptop or tablet too.
Mini XP Days
Instead of scaling up further, XP Days decided to “scale-out”: they rerun some of the favourite sessions of the previous year’s XP Days at the “Mini XP Day”, a one day conference with three tracks. Mini XP Day is ideal if you’ve missed XP Days or if you want to get a “taste” of what XP Days is.
Mini XP Days 2022 will be held on May 17 at the Van der Valk Hotel Beveren.
Increasing psychological safety in agile teams - Agile humans lean coffee 202...Ben Linders
Psychological safety in teams is important; it is necessary for the team to be able to communicate and collaborate effectively in order to deliver value. It's also necessary to build long-lasting teams since things will happen and relationships will be strained; team members must be informed of what's going on in the team and feel comfortable dealing with it. But, how safe is a team? How can we determine if there are any factors that make the team unsafe or have an impact on the team's culture?
In this mini-workshop, we'll play a game for psychological safety and team culture utilizing a deck of coaching cards. We will learn how to use gamification to gain a better understanding of what's going on in teams. Individuals can share what they have learned from working in teams, how it impacted the team's safety and culture, and what led to positive change.
We'll use a Jamboard for the game, so you will need a Google account to join the Jamboard. All participants will receive a code along with a discount for buying the cards.
Futurespective on software development in 2040 - Aginext - Ben LindersBen Linders
I just came back from 2040 to find out that we are still making software. But it’s not as we know it, Jim! Software development is done completely differently compared to the agile wave that we had at the start of the century. How different? Well, let’s futuresplore it together.
Pecha Kucha How to screw up your agile retrospective big time - Ben Linders -...Ben Linders
Retrospectives are great, except when they are not. This tongue-in-cheek presentation explores how you can make agile retrospectives unsuccessful by screwing them, up. I gave this Pecha Kucha at OOP 2020.
Organizational agility: Taking retrospectives to the next level - DevOpsCon M...Ben Linders
Nowadays, many agile teams are doing retrospectives regularly. They are investing time to reflect, learn, and take action to improve their way of working and deal with problems that they are facing in a structural way. Organizations are seeing the benefits from this: teams that are becoming empowered, being able to deliver more value, happy employees, and fewer people leaving the organization. It’s time to take retrospectives to a higher level, and use them to reveal and solve systematic organizational problems. Problems that exist at a project or product level are related to the collaboration between teams and their stakeholders. Agile retrospectives can be used to do that, but you need a different approach. In this session, Ben Linders will show how we can use retrospectives to improve the agility of organizations.
Agile Lean ME 2019 - Workshop Problem? What Problem? - Ben LindersBen Linders
If your organization wants to become agile and lean, teams need to be able to handle impediments quickly and effectively.
Playing the impediment game, you will practice how to recognize and analyze impediments, understand how they hinder teams, and decide what to do by deploying agile and lean principles and good practices. You'll learn to become more effective by recognizing impediments early and get rid of them before they become a major issue.
Acorn Recovery: Restore IT infra within minutesIP ServerOne
Introducing Acorn Recovery as a Service, a simple, fast, and secure managed disaster recovery (DRaaS) by IP ServerOne. A DR solution that helps restore your IT infra within minutes.
Sharpen existing tools or get a new toolbox? Contemporary cluster initiatives...Orkestra
UIIN Conference, Madrid, 27-29 May 2024
James Wilson, Orkestra and Deusto Business School
Emily Wise, Lund University
Madeline Smith, The Glasgow School of Art
This presentation by Morris Kleiner (University of Minnesota), was made during the discussion “Competition and Regulation in Professions and Occupations” held at the Working Party No. 2 on Competition and Regulation on 10 June 2024. More papers and presentations on the topic can be found out at oe.cd/crps.
This presentation was uploaded with the author’s consent.
0x01 - Newton's Third Law: Static vs. Dynamic AbusersOWASP Beja
f you offer a service on the web, odds are that someone will abuse it. Be it an API, a SaaS, a PaaS, or even a static website, someone somewhere will try to figure out a way to use it to their own needs. In this talk we'll compare measures that are effective against static attackers and how to battle a dynamic attacker who adapts to your counter-measures.
About the Speaker
===============
Diogo Sousa, Engineering Manager @ Canonical
An opinionated individual with an interest in cryptography and its intersection with secure software development.
Have you ever wondered how search works while visiting an e-commerce site, internal website, or searching through other types of online resources? Look no further than this informative session on the ways that taxonomies help end-users navigate the internet! Hear from taxonomists and other information professionals who have first-hand experience creating and working with taxonomies that aid in navigation, search, and discovery across a range of disciplines.
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Ben Linders Consulting
The Need for Continuous
Improvement in Agile
Keynote 1stConf Melbourne
February 15, 2016
Ben Linders
3. @BenLinders - benlinders.com 3
Ben Linders Consulting
Agile, Lean, Quality & Continuous Improvement
Retrospectives Facilitator
Agile Coach/Mentor/Trainer
CMMI & People-CMM Assessor
Freelance Editor for InfoQ.com
Ben Linders
Co-Author Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives
English Dutch French Japanese Spanish Italian Chinese
Russian Polish German Greek Turkish
Author: What Drives Quality & Continuous Improvement
eBook: Download from Amazon, InfoQ or Leanpub
Print: Buy on Amazon or Lulu
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Ben Linders Consulting
Continuous Improvement
Continuous Improvement is the
act of continuously doing
whatever helps to become better
and thus more valuable.
Ben Linders
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Ben Linders Consulting
Agile Manifesto
“We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it”
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Ben Linders Consulting
Agile Principle
“At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to
become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its
behavior accordingly”
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Ben Linders Consulting
Why improve?
• No “one best way”
• No “first time right”
• Things will change
• Self organization,
empower your teams
Mindset: Continuously look for improvements
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Ben Linders Consulting
You need to improve!
Continuous Improvement is essential
if you want to really become agile!
The Impact and Value o
Agile Value Creation
Business Value of Agile
10. @BenLinders - benlinders.com 10
Ben Linders Consulting
Embedded Improvement
Agile values, principles, practices, and methods
support continuous improvement
• Frequently Inspect and Adapt
• Scrum master, focus on process
• Stand-up, focus on impediments
• Agile Retrospectives, learn and improve
• Coaching to support your agile journey
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Ben Linders Consulting
Unfinished User Story
1 hr of work left, not finished
• Problem clearly visible
• Address in Stand-up, Review,
Retrospective or by Coaching?
Best thing coach can do
Agile has built-in improvement opportunities
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Ben Linders Consulting
How to Improve Continuously
You need:
• skilled people
• methods and tools
to do sustainable improvement
Soft Skills Matter
Listening to deal with resistance
Teamwork: Feelings matter
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Ben Linders Consulting
Agile Coaching
Help people to find and do improvements
Give Feedback
Provide Ideas
Inspire People
Establish Safety
Agile Needs Coaching
Develop Coaching Skills
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Ben Linders Consulting
Process Improvement
CMMI Roadmaps
Business Focused CMMI
Agile SPI
SPI, the Agile way
ITMPI Webinar
Better Improvement
Agile/Lean Improvement
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Ben Linders Consulting
People over Processes
People CMM Roadmap
Work Environment
Compensation
Staffing
Competency
Development
Communication & Coord.
Participatory Culture
Agile People (AC 2011)
Implementing Agile
SQP Paper Agile-PCMM
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Ben Linders Consulting
Golden Rules for Improvement
• Dare to share, early and frequently
• Result depends on team, not individuals
• The one who checks out a task is not necessarily
the one who has to finish it
• The one’s working on a task are the right people
• You may critique anything,
but never criticize anyone
BenLinders.com/GoldenRules
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Ben Linders Consulting
Measuring Improvement
Assessments Done SD Trend 12 months
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mrt
-15
-10
-5
0
5
10
15
Dep8
Dep7
Dep6
Dep5
Dep4
Dep3
Dep2
Dep1
Unit
SDfinished
Robust
Stretch
Commit
SDOpen
Improvements Done SD Trend
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mrt
-40
-30
-20
-10
0
10
20
30
40
Dep8
Dep7
Dep6
Dep5
Dep4
Dep3
Dep2
Dep1
Unit
Closed6Months
Robust
Stretch
Commit
OpenSD
Making Improvement Visible – ICSPI 2006
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Ben Linders Consulting
Root Cause Analysis
Analyze major and repeating problems
Find Root Causes
Preventive Actions
Problem Selection
Knowledge & Skills
Action Visibility
Keynote QA&Test 2011
Key Success Factors
Business Value RCA
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Ben Linders Consulting
Kanban
Start where you are
Pull based change
Experiment
Short Cycled Improvement
Learning from Mistakes
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Ben Linders Consulting
Agile & Improvement
Continuous Improvement is essential if you want
to increase your agility
Agile values, principles, practices, and methods
support continuous improvement
You need skilled people with methods and tools
to get sustainable effective improvement done
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Ben Linders Consulting
Start Today
Keep your eyes and ears open,
pick one improvement idea,
think of a practical way to do it,
start doing it!
Continuous improvement journey starts today!
23. @BenLinders - benlinders.com 23
Ben Linders Consulting
Continuous Improvement
Become aware of importance of
continuous improvement,
Explore how it’s engrained in agile
software development
Suggestions that you can use in your
daily work to improve continuously
Increase your organization's agility!
Leanpub.com/continuousimprovement
“Continuous Improvement is the act of continuously doing
whatever helps to become better and thus more valuable”
26. @BenLinders - benlinders.com 26
Ben Linders Consulting
Retrospectives Book
Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives
By Luis Gonçalves & Ben Linders
Download from InfoQ or Leanpub
Buy on Amazon or Lulu
amazon.com/dp/B00SWJO1DI
leanpub.com/gettingvalueoutofagileretrospectives
Mailinglist: eepurl.com/Mem7H
27. @BenLinders - benlinders.com 27
Ben Linders Consulting
Retrospectives Book Bundle
Six successful retrospectives books
• Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives
• Fun Retrospectives
• Fifty Quick Ideas to Improve Your Retrospectives
• The Retrospective Handbook
• Retrospectives for Organizational Change
• The Retrospectives Kickstarter
These books will make your agile retrospectives rock!
Teams will love to do them :-).
leanpub.com/b/agileretrospectives
Discounted price: $30,48 (excl. VAT)
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Ben Linders Consulting
Getting More out of Agile & Lean
Practices for teams and stakeholders to develop the right
products, deliver faster, increase quality, and create
happy high performing teams.
Full Day Workshop:
Deploying practices effectively
Improve Collaboration
Tips & Trick for Agile & Lean
Improve Continuously
Increase your organization's agility!
BenLinders.com/agilelean
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Ben Linders Consulting
Assessing your Agility
Over 40 tools:
• Self-Assessment checklists
• Readyness checks
• Maturity assessments
• Agile health checks
• Measurements
• And much more!
Agile Self-Assessments
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Ben Linders Consulting
Measure & Control Quality
Project Defect Model:
• Inserted & detected defects
• Improve reviews,
inspections & testing
• Prevent defects
Design & Test Collaborate
Visible Improvement
Business case support
PDM (SEPG Europe 2003)
Project Performance (PQS
Monte Carlo (SEPG 2009)
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Ben Linders Consulting
Articles on Effective Agile
• Self-assessing how Agile you are
• Sustainable Improvement through Agile Retrospectives
• Working in a Sustainable Pace
• Becoming Agile and Lean
• Succes Factors for Using Scrum and Getting Benefits
• Process Improvement: The Agile Way
• Golden Rules for Agile Process Improvement
• How to deal with Resistance when Implementing Agile
• Managing Projects with Agile Teams
• Agile Project Management
• Establishing and Maintaining Stable Teams
• Getting Business Value out of Agile Retrospectives
• Sharing Knowledge is Power
• Are your Professionals Empowered?