7 April 2014
This event was held at Barclays Bank Headquarters, Canary Wharf in London, and sponsored by Certeco. We were expecting a huge demand to hear our two world-renowned speakers Ellen Gottesdiener and Chris Matts, who were both key contributors to IIBA's "Agile Extension to the BABOK Guide", and we were proved right as the event sold out within 24 hours.
Ellen Gottesdiener spoke to us on "It's the Goal, Not the Role: The Work of Agile Project Management, Product Management, and Business Analysis". The goal of Agile teams is to continuously deliver high-value outcomes - as quickly as possible. To achieve this, these teams focus on skills, not titles or traditional role delineations. So what does that mean for the experienced project manager, product manager, or business analyst? Where do their planning and analysis skills fit into Agile's fierce focus on frequent delivery? Drawing on her insights from coaching Agile teams, Ellen addressed these questions and outlined the dynamic relationships between agile work, disciplines, and skills.
Ellen is an extremely accomplished speaker. She presented some powerful ideas, all of which are discussed in more detail in her book "Discover to Deliver", some of whose illustrations are reproduced here.
In the second part of the evening, Chris Matts — pioneer of Real Options and author of the book "Commitment" — joined Ellen to run a highly interactive session where each participants used their own physical presence to lay down a marker representing an aspect of their current and future adoption of Agile concepts. It was an enjoyable and engaging way of getting people to internalise the ideas.