Scaling Agile Projects With Bricks

Ever got stuck in a project that grew so large it collapsed under its own weight? Are teams with 20+ members common? Don’t know everyone on your team? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you are likely struggling with appropriately scaling your projects.
As projects and programs become larger, we are often faced with the prospect of figuring out how to balance the user demand with the supply of resources. Using the metaphor of bricks and creating a house, we will discuss how to scale a project and avoid some common pitfalls. - Real constraints (resources) - Bottlenecks - Artificial constraints (standards, processes, Work In Process) - Making small mistakes big mistakes - More approvals - Orchestration/Coordination - Structure/Freedom Balance - Efficiency - Communication Network

Story Mapping - the way you wished you gathered requirements

Gathering requirements and drafting Product Specification Documents are often time consuming and fail to provide the expected benefit. For Agile projects we need a better method for figuring out what it is we need to build and so we normally have user stories. Unfortunately, a long list of user stories in a product backlog can be difficult to understand because a flat backlog makes the context of a story difficult to grasp. Story Mapping, a method pioneered by Jeff Patton, is an excellent way to gather requirements into stories as well as provide the appropriate context for those stories to be understood.

In this workshop, you will learn about story mapping as well as apply your learnings to creating a story map of your own. You will also be equipped to return to your team and facilitate your own story mapping session.

No-Code, No Limits: How Rapid Prototyping Can Supercharge Your Innovation Process

You don’t need a development team—or even a single line of code—to test and validate game-changing ideas. The best innovators don’t wait for a perfect product before gathering feedback; they build quick, tangible prototypes that bring ideas to life in minutes or hours, not weeks.

This session will explore how teams can use low-fidelity, hands-on prototyping techniques to experiment, iterate, and refine ideas before investing in full-scale development. You’ll learn how to create physical models, sketches, paper wireframes, role-playing exercises, and other no-code approaches to quickly validate assumptions and spark creativity.

If you want to accelerate innovation, reduce risk, and ensure you’re solving the right problems, this session will equip you with practical strategies for turning concepts into reality—fast.

Key Topics:
🔹 Why Rapid Prototyping Works – The science behind quick iteration and early feedback
🔹 No-Code Prototyping Methods – Exploring physical models, paper sketches, storyboarding, and role-playing
🔹 Bringing Ideas to Life Quickly – How to create prototypes in minutes using everyday materials
🔹 Testing Assumptions Without Technology – Getting meaningful user feedback before investing in digital solutions
🔹 Failing Fast & Learning Faster – Using rough prototypes to avoid costly mistakes later
🔹 When to Move from Prototype to Production – Knowing when an idea is ready for further investment
🔹 Real-World Success Stories – How top innovators use no-code prototyping to drive breakthroughs

Key Takeaways:
✅ A Playbook for Low-Fidelity Prototyping – Learn simple, effective ways to test ideas without software or code
✅ Faster Innovation Cycles – Discover how to quickly validate concepts and refine solutions before making big investments
✅ Practical, Hands-On Techniques – Walk away with methods you can use immediately to bring ideas to life
✅ Confidence in Prototyping Without Tech – Gain the skills to test and iterate on ideas—no coding required!

Principles of Leading Agile Teams

Transforming the way things are done is tough, and prone to failure. With most transformations failing, leaders need to have clear principles that guide their efforts. This session provides principles using Agile to solve problems and principles for overcoming obstacles in your implementation.

Bridging the Think Make Gap

In the product development world it is horribly common to see a chasm between thinkers and makers.

Thinkers come up with wonderful, paradigm changing ideas and then load them in to a catapult to lob them over said chasm to the makers all the while hoping desperately that those genius makers are some how able to make the impossible, possible. On the other side of the chasm, makers can be seen shaking their heads in confusion or their fists in anger as they try to make sense of the thinkers work. In the end when what is made does not match what was designed there is a usual round of finger pointing, things are delayed, and people are generally miserable.

Does this sound all too familiar?

If so, come find out how leaders, thinkers, and makers can bridge or even better, close the think-make gap and find better ways to collaborate in delivering value faster.

GetKanban Simulation

Let’s face it, Kanban can be really difficult for people to grasp when you are trying to explain it with just words. The GetKanban simulation takes the abstract principles of Kanban and walks a team through several days of a project. Participants are able to make many of the typical mistakes and pitfalls and see the effect of their decisions as the game/project continues. This session is a great introduction to Kanban, or can serve as a deeper dive for those who are already familiar.

Learning Objectives:

Attendees will learn their actions during a project can have long-term impacts. They will see first hand what happens to a system when there is too much WIP and how that makes it difficult to respond to a change.

Principles, Systems and Tools (AKA Why Hammers Don't Fix Every Problem)

Understanding the differences between Principles, Systems and Tools is critical to successful Lean and Agile transformations. Without the proper understanding practitioners are likely to use a hammer on a screw.

Principle - a statement of value or fact that can be applied to virtually every situation and is usually generic in nature Tool - a specific application of one or more principles in a way that produces a desired outcome. System - a complex application of multiple tools that all work together to provide a desired outcome. Changing or removing one of the tools may not cause the system to fail, but it may cause the system to not be as productive or effective.

Participants will gain a greater respect for the underlying principles behind Lean and Agile along with appropriate ways to use Systems and Tools to their best advantage.

I Am An Enoughionist

“Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential”.

This is perhaps the most difficult Agile principle to follow. My take on this principle is a new word… Enoughionism. It’s not really at the other end of the spectrum from perfectionism, but somewhere between it and disorder/insufficient. If you could find a definition in the Dictionary, it might be something like this:

Enoughionism (ee-NUF-uhn-ism) – The theory that for any given desired outcome there is a level of sufficient completion that satisfies the need without providing a perfect solution. Any effort past the sufficient level will result in diminished returns, wasted effort or features that aren’t needed. Great care must be taken to ensure that simple solutions are pursued.

This session will lead participants through a few simple steps to apply the principle of simplicity in both their personal lives as well as the work environment. We will learn how to determine desired outcomes, identify when enough has been done, and then focus on moving on.

Designing AI-Ready Teams: A Hands-On Organizational Readiness Lab Track: AI Workflows and Tooling (

Most teams are experimenting with AI tools. Few are structurally ready to integrate AI into production workflows.

This interactive workshop helps leaders and senior engineers assess and redesign their teams for effective AI integration. Participants will evaluate collaboration patterns, decision flows, workflow design, and governance structures that determine whether AI accelerates innovation or amplifies dysfunction.

Participants Will:
- Complete an AI-readiness diagnostic
- Map current workflow bottlenecks
- Identify human failure points in AI-assisted pipelines
- Design structural adjustments to support agentic workflows
- Create a practical AI-readiness action plan

Systems Thinking for Engineering Leaders: Fixing the Problems That Keep Coming Back

Some problems don’t disappear. They cycle.

This workshop introduces systems thinking tools (causal loop diagrams, reinforcing vs balancing loops, structural root cause analysis) to help senior practitioners diagnose persistent delivery issues.

Participants bring a real problem from their organization and work through a structured systems-mapping process.

Participants Will:
- Learn to identify reinforcing dysfunction loops
- Map systemic constraints
- Diagnose metric-driven behavior distortions
- Design targeted structural interventions
- Convert insights into measurable experiments

Building an Innovation Engine Inside Your Engineering Organization

Innovation doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by design.

This immersive workshop guides participants through designing a repeatable innovation system inside their organization — from experimentation structures to decision architecture to metrics alignment.

Participants Will:
- Diagnose innovation bottlenecks
- Map current decision flows
- Identify structural inhibitors
- Design experimentation loops
- Create a scalable innovation operating model

Scaling Without Slowing Down: Designing for Multi-Team Environments

As teams scale, coordination costs explode. Innovation slows. Technical debt rises.

This workshop explores structural scaling mechanisms for 5–50 team environments, including decision architecture, coupling reduction, and feedback acceleration.

Participants Will:
- Identify scaling bottlenecks
- Map architectural and organizational coupling
- Redesign coordination models
- Align decision authority with information flow
- Create a scaling playbook

Outcomes over Outputs

Have you ever sat there wondering why you were doing some bit of work? What value it actually produced? That may be because one of the least understood Agile values is "Working software over comprehensive documentation".

Both teams and leaders are constantly distracted by the tangible, yet limited value, outputs because they are easier to measure, provide a false sense of progress, and are more fully within their control. Come find out why outputs suck people in, how to shift focus to outcomes, and many of the small obstacles that get in the way. Outcomes refer to the impact or result of a particular action or effort, whereas outputs refer to the tangible products or services that are produced as a result of that action or effort. Outcomes are considered to be more important because they measure the effectiveness of the action or effort in achieving the desired result, whereas outputs simply measure the quantity or quality of the products or services produced. In other words, outcomes are a measure of success, while outputs are a measure of activity.

Over the last 17 years, I've been striving to guide teams and organizations in mindsets and behaviors. I've had the opportunity to work with both front-line workers as well as senior executives across small startups and multi-national organizations. My specific passion is creating human-centered organizations, leveraging my experience in both Lean and Agile. ​As part of the transformation initiatives that I lead, I regularly provide training, coaching and workshop facilitation on topics like: vision/mission definition, organizational design, teamwork, product design workshops, Lean/Agile training, team and leadership coaching. This talk will leverage my experience to help attendees better prioritize outcomes over outputs.

The Leadership Road to Hell

... is paved with good intentions, and most leaders have good intentions...

We all know of a well-meaning leader who competely destroys empowerment despite their best efforts. You can tell how much they want to empower, but then they end up micromanaging, not actually providing autonomy, or not communicating. Other leaders feel like they can't trust their people to get the work done... reminding me of a quote from the movie Ever After: "did you not first create the thief and then punish them.

Both current and aspiring leaders need to understand what empowerment really means as well as the signs that indicate epowerment isn't really happening. Join this session to learn signs to toll for and what you can do about it.

Over the last 17 years, I've been striving to guide teams and organizations in mindsets and behaviors. I've had the opportunity to work with both front-line workers as well as senior executives across small startups and multi-national organizations. My specific passion is creating human-centered organizations, leveraging my experience in both Lean and Agile. ​As part of the transformation initiatives that I lead, I regularly provide training, coaching and workshop facilitation on topics like: vision/mission definition, organizational design, teamwork, product design workshops, Lean/Agile training, team and leadership coaching. This talk will leverage my experience to help attendees identify and address well-meaning failures in themselves and others.

Is your transformation focused on the right things?

More than 70% of transformations outright fail to provid the desired change and another 22% are only moderately successful. With so much effort to change not providing tangible results, it's no wonder why most people greet change with a pessimistic and even fearful perspective. Surprisingly we find that the top 8% of transformations approach change from a very different perspective and are wildely successful. They find 30x the return on investment of the average transformation.

In this session we will explore the priority of change, factors that are related to successful change, and clear actions that you can take to make your own transformation more successful.

Over the last 17 years, I've been striving to guide teams and organizations in mindsets and behaviors. I've had the opportunity to work with both front-line workers as well as senior executives across small startups and multi-national organizations. My specific passion is creating human-centered organizations, leveraging my experience in both Lean and Agile. ​As part of the transformation initiatives that I lead, I regularly provide training, coaching and workshop facilitation on topics like: vision/mission definition, organizational design, teamwork, product design workshops, Lean/Agile training, team and leadership coaching. This talk will leverage my experience to help attendees be more successful in their transformations by focusing on the right things.

Everyone is creative... even you

We work in an industry where some people have been labeled as "creative". You may even think that you are not creative by nature.

The truth is that humans are creative creatures. Creativity is one of the key aspects that differentiates us from computers and artificial intelligence. Not only is every human being creative, we can also learn to be more creative. It's a skill or muscle to exercise just like writing code, managing projects, communication and documenting requirements.

Join this session to learn more about creativity, participate in some fun exercises to strengthen your creativity, and take away practical methods to inject creativity into your life.

Over the last 17 years, I've been striving to guide teams and organizations in mindsets and behaviors. I've had the opportunity to work with both front-line workers as well as senior executives across small startups and multi-national organizations. My specific passion is creating human-centered organizations, leveraging my experience in both Lean and Agile. ​As part of the transformation initiatives that I lead, I regularly provide training, coaching and workshop facilitation on topics like: vision/mission definition, organizational design, teamwork, product design workshops, Lean/Agile training, team and leadership coaching. This talk will leverage my experience to help each attendee bring out their innate creativity.

The myth of multi-tasking

Yep. It's a myth. Multi-tasking doesn't actually work for humans. Our brains can't do more than one novel or creative thing at the same time. So why to we persist in trying to do the impossible. Why do we continue to have multiple projects at the same time? Have multiple stories worked on by the same person at once? Bounce from meeting to meeting? Maybe people just don't understand the full cost of context switching. Through activities and discussions I'll work to convince any doubters that multi-tasking is evil, but also explore tangible approaches to avoid it.

Over the last 17 years, I've been striving to guide teams and organizations in mindsets and behaviors. I've had the opportunity to work with both front-line workers as well as senior executives across small startups and multi-national organizations. My specific passion is creating human-centered organizations, leveraging my experience in both Lean and Agile. ​As part of the transformation initiatives that I lead, I regularly provide training, coaching and workshop facilitation on topics like: vision/mission definition, organizational design, teamwork, product design workshops, Lean/Agile training, team and leadership coaching. This talk will leverage my experience to help attendees recognize the dangers of multi-tasking and choose a better way.

"Team" You keep using that word...

I don't think that it means what you think it means. There are many different types of teams, and many more things that are called teams. What is a team? What are the best types of teams? What does it take for one team to be twice as good as another? If you are struggling to get work out the door, hobbled by handoffs, or paralyzed by specialization, then chances are you have a problem that a high-performing team would solve.

Join this session to dive into the nature of teams and find out the difference between project teams, product teams and Agile teams.

Over the last 17 years, I've been striving to guide teams and organizations in mindsets and behaviors. I've had the opportunity to work with both front-line workers as well as senior executives across small startups and multi-national organizations. My specific passion is creating human-centered organizations, leveraging my experience in both Lean and Agile. ​As part of the transformation initiatives that I lead, I regularly provide training, coaching and workshop facilitation on topics like: vision/mission definition, organizational design, teamwork, product design workshops, Lean/Agile training, team and leadership coaching. This talk will leverage my experience to help attendees better understand the nature of teams and what it takes to be high-performing.

Optimizing Feedback Loops: The Hidden Architecture of High-Performance Teams

Most teams measure activity. High-performing teams design feedback.

This session explores feedback loops as an architectural system inside your delivery process — not just retrospectives or dashboards, but the reinforcing and balancing loops that drive speed, quality, morale, and innovation.

We’ll go beyond Agile basics and into systems-level thinking:
- Identifying hidden reinforcing loops that amplify dysfunction
- Designing feedback loops that reduce cycle time and increase learning velocity
- Aligning technical metrics with product and business outcomes
- Avoiding the trap of optimizing local efficiency at the expense of system health

This is not a retrospective workshop. It’s a deep dive into how to intentionally design feedback structures that make complex software systems — and the humans building them — perform at a higher level.

Key Takeaways
- How to map delivery feedback loops
- How to spot reinforcing vs balancing dynamics
- How to redesign metrics for learning instead of compliance
- How to increase innovation throughput without burning out teams

AI-Ready Teams: Why Most AI Transformations Fail (And What High-Performing Teams Do Differently)

Most organizations are experimenting with AI tooling. Few are structurally ready for it.

Adding AI to a siloed, low-trust, poorly aligned team does not increase innovation — it accelerates dysfunction.

This session focuses on team readiness, not tooling. We’ll explore:
- Why AI amplifies existing organizational patterns
- The collaboration structures required for agentic workflows
- How to align AI output with product goals
- Where AI breaks down in production environments

This talk bridges AI workflows with human systems design — a missing conversation in most AI conferences.

Key Takeaways
- The 5 structural traits of AI-ready teams
- How to prevent AI from multiplying siloed thinking
- How to align AI tooling with product intent
- A readiness assessment leaders can apply immediately

Metrics That Matter: Moving Beyond Velocity to Innovation Throughput

Velocity is not performance. And shipping more features is not innovation.

This session challenges conventional Agile metrics and introduces a systems-level approach to measuring innovation throughput.

We’ll cover:
- The difference between output metrics and system health indicators
- Measuring learning velocity
- Designing metrics that improve decision quality
- Leading indicators vs lagging indicators in product organizations

This is an advanced session for leaders who are tired of dashboard theater and want metrics that actually drive better outcomes.

Key Takeaways
- A framework for evaluating whether your metrics improve behavior
- How to align engineering metrics with business outcomes
- How to avoid metric-driven dysfunction
- Practical examples from large-scale environments

Breaking the Multi-Tasking Myth in Modern Engineering Organizations

Context switching is not a productivity strategy — it’s a hidden tax on innovation.

This session explores the neuroscience and systems dynamics behind multi-tasking in engineering organizations. We’ll analyze:
- How WIP inflation slows throughput
- Why leadership unintentionally incentivizes context switching
- The cost of partial work
- How to redesign work systems to increase flow

This talk blends cognitive science, Kanban principles, and organizational design into practical strategies for senior teams.

Key Takeaways
- The real cost of multi-tasking at scale
- How to identify systemic WIP overload
- Structural interventions to improve focus
- How flow increases innovation capacity

Designing for Behavioral Change in Engineering Teams

Software changes behavior. So do leadership systems.

This session applies behavioral science to team design, DevOps adoption, and product development environments.

We’ll explore:
- Habit loops inside engineering culture
- Why process changes fail
- The psychology of adoption
- Designing systems that make good engineering behavior easier

This session connects product design thinking with team design — and shows how both influence performance.

Key Takeaways
- A practical behavioral model for engineering teams
- Why willpower-based change fails
- How to design adoption-friendly systems
- How to create lasting cultural shifts

Scaling Innovation Without Killing Agility

Scaling doesn’t kill agility. Poor system design does.

As organizations grow, complexity increases. Coordination costs rise. Decision latency expands. Innovation slows.

This talk explores:
- Structural bottlenecks in multi-team environments
- Decision architecture vs org charts
- Coordination overhead in distributed systems
- How to design scaling mechanisms that preserve experimentation

This is for leaders dealing with 5–50 team environments and struggling to maintain speed.

Key Takeaways
- The difference between scaling teams and scaling decision systems
- How to reduce architectural and organizational coupling
- How to preserve experimentation at scale
- A systems-thinking approach to enterprise agility

Agentic AI and the Human Bottleneck: Designing Reliable AI Workflows

AI agents can write code, generate tests, and propose architectures. But they cannot resolve ambiguity, align stakeholders, or define value.

The constraint is no longer tooling. It’s the human bottleneck.

This session examines:
- Where AI agents break down in real workflows
- Orchestration patterns that reduce hallucination risk
- Aligning AI outputs with product intent
- Governance models for responsible AI integration

This is a pragmatic look at integrating AI into real development pipelines — without hype.

Key Takeaways
- Patterns for reliable AI workflow orchestration
- How to prevent drift between AI output and business goals
- Where to insert human judgment
- Governance strategies for production environments

Retrospectives for Senior Teams: Moving from Reflection to System Redesign

Most retrospectives optimize local problems. High-performing teams redesign systems.

This session explores:
- Moving from symptom discussion to structural diagnosis
- Using causal loop thinking in retrospectives
- Identifying reinforcing dysfunction
- Designing experiments that shift system behavior

This is not “fun retro formats.” It’s systemic improvement for mature teams.

Key Takeaways
- How to diagnose structural root causes
- How to avoid repetitive retro conversations
- How to convert reflection into measurable improvement
- How to elevate retros from ceremony to leverage