"A 'Quality' Debate"

Every team is focused towards delivering quality, no one wakes up in the morning with an idea to introduce defects, we naturally ideate to solve problems. Unknowingly though, dysfunctions always creep in and identifying a dysfunction is extremely difficult especially when you are a part of the dysfunction. The context of defect severity and how these may create an illusion of quality; how accountability of a single person (e.g.: Product Owner) may result in a "Lack of Commitment" dysfunction; and how cost is not proportional to quality especially when it comes to delivering virtual products and services related to it.

“3 Aspirations of Agility”

We all aspire to become Agile, some achieve it, some don’t. There are daily life practices which can help both – individuals and organizations – achieve the Agility they aspire. The 3 aspirations of Agility are:

"Good recipes to fail in Agile"

In today’s VUCA world, many or I should say most of the organizations are either doing agile or adopting agile. Due to the volatile and unpredictable market the organizations are rushing to deliver to the customers without a wink. And in this haste to deliver the solutions the main essence of Agile is being debilitated. A good paradigm of it could be like cooking good food (which is an art more than science), it all comes through experience but following the best practices will optimize the result and ultimately a satisfied customer. Through PAUC18 I will be sharing my experiences on how and why teams fail to achieve the desired results via Agile.

"Measuring Consumer Quality – The Missing Feedback Loop"

Building a quality product is not a new topic. Proper usage of methodologies, processes, practices, collaboration techniques can yield amazing results for the team, the organisation, and for the end-users of your product.
While there is a lot of emphasis on the processes and practices, one aspect that is still spoken about “loosely”, is the feedback loop from your end-users to make better decisions.
So, what is this feedback loop? Is it a myth? How do you measure it? Is there a “magic” formula to understand this data received? How to you add value to your product using this data? In this interactive session, we will use a case study of a B2C entertainment-domain product.

"Building a True Agile Organization"

The most prolific organization that delivers true business agility in India is the Indian Armed Forces. Any challenge thrown to them is received and delivered with true spirit. What are some of the principles that they apply which can be applied in corporates in the Agile transformation. What can Leaders learn and how can we start building a "True Agile Organization"

"Being Agile in Services Industry"

As Agile practitioners, have you ever encountered “Dilbert” like situations with your “Pointy Haired Boss & co-workers” on implementing Agile in a typical IT services organization.
Typical statements from Pointy Haired Boss to Dilbert: “Let me just bake some iteration in the proposal and call it hybrid agile. Client anyways only wants to see some output regularly. Agile is only the process part. DevOps is only the tools part. Agile is only for teams. Let my developers, testers, BA be trained in Agile. As management I don’t need to change”
This talk will look at what tips and tricks Dilbert uses to manage such situations when being on a transformation journey from “Knowing-Doing-Being Agile” in a typical IT services industry.

"Agile Transformation: Revolutionary or Evolutionary?"

I plan to cover this topic in my Talk at PAUC18 by means of initially probing the audience around this dilemma and thereby infusing curiosity in the subject and getting them engaged. Citing examples of both approaches in real life transformations and the key changes expected in future state of Agile Transformation. Highlight specific Agile Practices some of them which really require radical change where team just can’t evolve to future state unless they completely let go of the previous way of doing things hence some approaches and techniques themselves are quite radical hence revolutionary to adopt.

"Agile beyond Scrum"

Nearly 20 years after Kent Beck's famous book, Extreme Programming, it still has a lot to teach. Did Extreme Programming succeed or fail? How does it compare with Scrum, Kanban, and Lean? How do process excellence and technical excellence interact with each other? What can we do against the betrayal of the Agile Manifesto by ScrumButt and Pseudo Scrum Masters? How do DevOps and Software Craft play with all this? How can we get rid of Scrum Masters, Project Managers, and Testers, and to what extent is that controversial? What about estimates? TLA ADE: DDD, TDD, BDD, TPP? Let's be explicit: Whether you know it or not, if you want to succeed, you are trying to do Extreme Programming, and you should probably do more of it! Have your mind blown against cargo cult and bad practices!

"Daily Habits of Highly Effective Agile Developer"

One of the key Agile principle is frequent deliveries (in manufacturing parlance, smaller batch sizes). In the same spirit, let’s talk what you (i.e. the developer) can do every day so that he/she is 'more agile'. Simple daily habits like fixing warning, committing frequently, writing short functions, refactoring continuously, failing fast in every possible way has a huge impact of quality (and hence productivity) of the developer.

"Agile leadership during crisis"

Leaders of any organization are strong, they have strong opinions and they like to stick to their principles, unlearn and relearn in normally not what the old school leaders like to do. When a leader of an organisation finally accepts an agile mindset and then the organisation hits a financial crisis then the command and control approach of the leaders kicks in automatically. So, how should leaders still be agile in a financial crisis situation?

"Building the Agile house brick by brick"

“Self organizing organizations”

Much before the birth of “Agile”, there existed organizations which worked on principles of self-organizing. These are all-scale organizations from small to extra-large, local to geographically distributed, from manufacturing to consultancy to any kind of business. But how are people working in these organizations? Are those people from a different planet? They are not, but they live a different philosophy, philosophy of taking ownership, voicing their opinion, taking decisions, leading when it’s needed and most importantly, listening to other people. This session is inspired by research done by Frederic Laloux and walk you through the fascinating journey of these “Self-organizing” organization, an inside peek.