Fred Deichler
Senior Agile Coach
Grants Pass, Oregon, United States
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Fred is a technology leader with over 20 years of experience helping teams navigate change, improve collaboration, and deliver value. He believes growth is an ongoing journey, both for teams and individuals, and has always championed learning, iteration, and adaptability. Whether leading teams through transformation or refining his own approach, Fred is passionate about helping others discover the small, intentional actions that lead to lasting success.
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Dev Manager to Agile Coach: Through the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel
In this interactive session, join me on my transformative journey from being a Development Manager to an Agile Coach, using the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel as our compass.
Together, we'll unpack the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel's 9 Competency Groups and their 21 encompassed Competencies, reshaping them into 6 relatable categories. Through this lens, you can directly apply the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel to your journey. From Self-Mastery to Agile Mindset, from Leading to Transforming, this will resonate with you and give you the tools for continuous improvement.
Come ready to dive deep, reflect, and equip yourself with knowledge and tools that will shape your Agile coaching path. Whether you're in your first Scrum Master role, have been practicing for years, or are currently an Agile Coach, this session promises valuable insights for everyone.
Amplifying Your Leadership Impact: Coaching with Triggers and Hooks
- Short Summary
Great leaders don’t just provide answers—they unlock potential by asking the right questions. In this hands-on session, you'll learn how to spot hidden coaching moments using triggers and hooks, powerful tools for fostering psychological safety, curiosity, and accountability. Through the lens of CAMS (Culture, Automation, Measurement, and Sharing), you’ll practice identifying subtle team behaviors that signal deeper issues and craft impactful questions that drive change. Walk away with practical techniques to influence, challenge assumptions, and create lasting team growth—whether you're a Tech Lead, Manager, or Agile Coach.
- Full Session Description / Abstract
Technical skills may build products, but human skills build high-performing teams. As a leader, manager, or coach, your ability to ask the right questions at the right time can unlock innovation, improve collaboration, and drive meaningful change.
This session introduces Triggers & Hooks, a practical coaching framework designed to help leaders spot opportunities for improvement and guide teams toward deeper problem-solving:
* Triggers are subtle cues in conversations and behaviors that indicate underlying team challenges—resistance to change, recurring blockers, or missed learning moments.
* Hooks are powerful questions that spark curiosity, challenge assumptions, and open the door for reflection and growth.
By applying these tools through the CAMS (Culture, Automation, Measurement, and Sharing) model, you’ll expand your leadership toolbox and learn how to cultivate a coaching mindset that drives continuous improvement.
What You’ll Experience in This Interactive Session
* Decode Triggers – Identify overlooked team patterns that present coaching opportunities.
* Master Hooks – Craft insightful questions that shift perspectives and encourage team ownership.
* CAMS in Action – Explore Culture, Automation, Measurement, and Sharing as coaching tools for influencing team dynamics.
* Breakout Exercise – Work in small groups to analyze real-world scenarios, identifying triggers and crafting effective hooks.
* Collaborative Debrief – Share discoveries, gain peer insights, and leave with actionable coaching techniques to apply immediately.
Key Takeaways
1. Sharpen your coaching lens – Learn to recognize hidden coaching moments in everyday team interactions.
2. Elevate team accountability – Use hooks to encourage ownership and foster a culture of problem-solving.
3. Lead with influence, not authority – Shift from directive leadership to facilitative leadership.
4. Make DevOps principles work for your team – Apply CAMS as a coaching tool for continuous improvement.
5. Build confidence in handling complex conversations – Develop emotional intelligence and coaching agility to navigate team challenges.
Why This Session Matters
Successful technical leadership isn’t about having all the answers—it’s about asking the right questions at the right time. This session will help Tech Leads, Managers, and Agile Coaches develop the advanced interpersonal skills needed to amplify their impact, foster innovation, and drive real team transformation.
Achieving Predictable Delivery: Unlocking the Power of EBM, Monte Carlo, and Flow Metrics
- Short Summary
Achieving predictable Agile delivery is a challenge—traditional planning methods relying on velocity and gut-feel estimates often fall short.
This hands-on, interactive workshop introduces three powerful, data-driven forecasting techniques:
* Evidence-Based Management (EBM) – Aligning Agile delivery with business outcomes.
* Monte Carlo Forecasting – Replacing unreliable estimates with probabilistic forecasting that stakeholders can trust.
* Flow Metrics – Using Work In Progress (WIP), Cycle Time, and Throughput to optimize team efficiency and eliminate bottlenecks.
Through custom dice-based simulations and real-world scenarios, participants will shift from deterministic deadlines to probabilistic decision-making, gaining practical techniques to improve forecasting, stakeholder alignment, and delivery confidence.
- Full Session Description / Abstract
Why do so many Agile teams struggle with predictability?
Because they rely on outdated planning techniques that don’t reflect real-world variability. Velocity-based forecasts fail under uncertainty, leading to missed expectations, reactive decision-making, and frustrated stakeholders.
In this workshop, participants will learn and apply modern forecasting and flow techniques that turn uncertainty into actionable, data-driven insights. Through interactive simulations and hands-on exercises, attendees will discover how to use Monte Carlo Forecasting, EBM, and Flow Metrics to improve delivery planning and optimize team performance.
What You’ll Experience
Introduction – Why Traditional Agile Planning Fails
* Common challenges in Agile forecasting and planning.
* The Triforce of Predictable Delivery: Monte Carlo Forecasting, EBM, and Flow Metrics.
Monte Carlo Forecasting: Simulating Reality for Smarter Decisions
* Hands-on Dice-Based Forecasting Exercise – Participants simulate delivery variability using digital dice tools (or physical dice at home), recording results in a shared worksheet.
* Shifting Mindsets – Moving from deterministic deadlines to probabilistic, confidence-based delivery conversations.
* Visualizing Forecasts – Using sticky notes, participants compare deterministic vs. probabilistic predictions.
Evidence-Based Management (EBM) & The Hidden Impact of Defects
* Defect Simulation – Participants use digital dice to model how emergent work and production incidents disrupt delivery.
* Key Value Areas (KVAs) – Understanding Technical Debt, Production Incidents, and Innovation Rate to drive better decisions.
Flow Metrics & Aging WIP: Improving Team Efficiency
* Understanding Work In Progress (WIP), Cycle Time, and Throughput – and how they impact flow.
* Interactive Bottleneck Mapping – Participants visualize aging WIP and simulate queueing theory principles.
* “Stop Starting, Start Finishing” – How to apply WIP limits and optimize flow for faster, more predictable delivery.
Wrap-Up & Action Planning
* Creating Personalized Action Plans – How to apply these techniques with real stakeholders and teams.
* Live Group Discussion & Q&A – Ensuring participants leave with confidence and actionable insights.
Key Takeaways
* Replace unreliable velocity-based planning with probabilistic forecasting that stakeholders can trust.
* Simulate real-world unpredictability using Monte Carlo techniques—developing confidence intervals for delivery.
* Understand how escape defects and emergent work disrupt delivery—and how to mitigate their impact.
* Use Flow Metrics to identify bottlenecks and optimize efficiency, reducing time spent on in-progress work.
* Shift the conversation with leadership—move from gut-feel estimates to data-driven decision-making.
6 Ways You're Using ChatGPT Wrong (and How to Fix It)
Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches often use ChatGPT and similar AI models poorly. This talk reveals six common prompt failures and practical, demo-driven techniques to fix them. Leave inspired, practical, and ready to prompt like a pro.
AI isn't replacing us, but someone who is effectively using AI will replace you.
As Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters experiment with tools like ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs), many are left underwhelmed by vague answers or generic advice. The issue isn't the AI model, it's how we're prompting it.
This session uncovers six common mistakes Agile practitioners make when prompting AI chat models: asking vague questions, omitting context, failing to iterate, treating AI as a search engine, not assigning clear roles, and overwhelming the AI with overly broad tasks.
Through engaging stories, live demos, and evidence-backed prompt engineering insights, you'll learn how to transform AI tools into genuine collaborators for Agile ceremonies and coaching activities. Whether you're creating retrospective themes, refining backlog items, or crafting coaching plans, you’ll walk away with concrete, easy-to-apply techniques.
This talk is relevant not just for ChatGPT, but any conversational AI model you’re using. Leave ready to leverage AI more effectively, turning generic outputs into high-impact Agile solutions.
👣 Key Takeaways:
Discover the six most common mistakes Agile Coaches make when prompting AI.
Learn prompt engineering best practices to produce clear, actionable results.
See live, practical demos focused on Agile ceremonies like retrospectives, standups, and backlog refinement.
Understand how role-based prompting significantly improves AI's responses.
Shift your approach: use AI as a collaborative partner in your Agile practice, not just a passive tool.
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