Speaker

Chris Shinkle

Chris Shinkle

SEP, Director of Innovation

Indianapolis, Indiana, United States

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Chris Shinkle is a practitioner and maker. He is a thought leader and continually initiates new ideas and continuous improvement at SEP. His experience comes from building products with many large clients in a variety of industries: aerospace, medical, healthcare, finance, etc. He introduced and guided SEPʼs adoption of Agile software development practices in 2004 followed by Lean and Kanban in 2007. As SEPʼs Director of Innovation, Chris leverages many community ideas helping SEP engineers and clients delivery better products. Chris speaks at conferences across the United States promoting Agile, Lean/Kanban, Product Management, and Design Thinking. Chris was an inaugural members of Indiana’s Techpoint Tech 25.

Area of Expertise

  • Information & Communications Technology

Topics

  • Agile Methodologies
  • Agile software development
  • Agile Coaching
  • Lean thinking
  • Lean / Agile Leadership
  • Lean Software Development
  • Lean Management
  • Design Thinking
  • Forecasting Metrics
  • Risk Management
  • product strategy
  • Product Discovery
  • Product Management
  • Product Development
  • Product Innovation
  • Building Digital Products
  • Digital Health
  • Digital Transformation
  • Digital Strategy
  • Smart Agriculture using Internet of Things
  • Aerospace
  • Technology Product Management
  • FinTech Product Innovation
  • Digital strategy and Transformation
  • Design Sprints
  • Continuous Discovery
  • Domain Driven Design
  • Agriculture
  • Consumer products
  • Medical Internet of Things
  • medical devices

Navigating Uncertainty: Embracing Probabilistic Forecasting for Better Planning

"Are we gonna finish on time?" How often have you heard that? That question strikes frustration or fear in most people. It often results in throwing up your hands or tossing out a wild guess. Surely there's a better way?

Forget story points, t-shirt sizing, historical averages. Have you considered building a simple forecasting model—one that provides a range of possible outcomes with confidence levels?

Whether you're a developer, project manager, or scrum master, it's important you answer this question confidently in a way that provides clarity and predictability.

In this talk, we'll explore forecasts and discuss how you leverage them no matter your role. You'll leave with practical tools you can start using tomorrow!

Answering this question will no longer create frustration or fear like it once did.

Product Roadmaps: Paving the Way from Strategy to Execution

Does your roadmap help your organization stay aligned and respond to changing targets? Does it promote agility? Today's business environment is easily one of the most complex and volatile we've ever seen. Companies that successfully adapt their product strategy and execution plans are positioned to win.

Successful roadmapping links strategic planning with product execution. Roadmaps provide clarity into planning and enables trade-off decision making. An effective roadmap is a prototype of your strategy. It helps everyone understand where the product is going and why.

During this talk, we’ll look at a recent project from a large, complex organization in the energy industry. I’ll show how the roadmap created alignment across the AI, data science, engineering, and ops teams. We’ll talk about what worked and what didn’t.

Come learn how to use these ideas in your organization. You’ll leave with a new perspective on roadmapping and tactical advice that can be applied today.

Why aren't they getting anything done?!? Strategies for Managing Dependencies

In today's Agile product development organizations, the ability to collaborate effectively is paramount. Yet, many teams find themselves stymied, struggling to hit their milestones. "Why aren't they getting anything done?!?" is a question frequently asked by managers, project leaders, and even team members. The answer often lies in vast number dependencies that silently influence team productivity.

Dependencies—whether in the form of task dependencies, resource constraints, or knowledge bottlenecks—are a significant hindrance to progress. Oftentimes an individual team lacks the ability to break the dependencies on their own. They don’t have the ability to restructure large parts of the org. If you can’t break dependencies, the alternative is to manage them.

This talk delves into the world of dependencies, offering guidance on how to identify, visualize, and better manage them. Using real-world examples, we will cover:

- How dependencies surface within teams and projects.
- The repercussions of unmanaged dependencies, including project delays, team frustration, and decreased productivity.
- Strategies and best practices for identifying, assessing, and mitigating dependencies.

By the end of this presentation, you will not only better understand the reasons behind your team's struggles but also discover insights to help them overcome dependency-related challenges. Join us as we unravel the often-misunderstood and misidentified impact on team performance.

Introducing the Roadmap Wall: Building Alignment and Buy-In at All Levels of Your Organization

Implementing a product roadmap in an Agile way can be tough. Roadmaps are often written as a document that isn’t easily accessible. This leads to several issues. A good agile roadmap should allow for agile practices such as daily standups and planning. They should create high visibility and transparency, operate with low overhead, and provide the right information to the right people at the right time.

In this talk, Chris will share how he’s implemented a Roadmap Wall. He’ll show how to incorporate the roadmap components into a highly visible and actionable format. The roadmap wall has multiple benefits and will:
- give leadership and executives visibility into how their business objectives influence features, story backlogs, and priorities
- leverage delivery teams to understand technical feasibility tradeoffs
- show the options available to satisfy competing customer needs
- demonstrate a clear picture of how business objectives link to customer needs

To realize these benefits, we’ll leverage a variety of familiar tools. Chris will show you how to use a kanban system to manage business objectives and OKRs. You’ll learn how using an opportunity solution tree clarifies the customer’s need when roadmapping. He’ll show you a new way to use story maps when detailing features, improving communication and planning.

In the end, you’ll walk away with a new method for visualizing your product roadmap, giving your team better decision-making information.

Agile2024 Sessionize Event

July 2024 Dallas, Texas, United States

Agile & Beyond 2024 Sessionize Event

May 2024 Detroit, Michigan, United States

CodeMash 2024 Sessionize Event

January 2024 Sandusky, Ohio, United States

Lean Agile KC 2019 Sessionize Event

November 2019 Overland Park, Kansas, United States

Chris Shinkle

SEP, Director of Innovation

Indianapolis, Indiana, United States

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