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My name is Bryan Stallings. That’s me with the face paint. I live and work in and around beautiful Seattle, Washington, the destination city for the upcoming Scrum Gathering. The dates are coming up fast, so be sure to circle May 16-18, 2011 on your calendar. The CST/CSC Retreat will be held on May 15th.

During the past seven weeks I’ve learned a lot in my role as event chair. They let me select the hotel, how cool is that? I can’t imagine a more ideal location than the Grand Hyatt Seattle. We’ll be right in the heart of downtown, mere blocks from everything.

Take a moment to reflect on the theme for the Gathering: “Scrum Better – Move the Needle.” That should mean something to every practitioner of Scrum. Let's get together for this conference to improve our knowledge, capability, and commitment. We'll consider how we can "Scrum Better," and learn new methods to help us “Move the Needle” as we perform our roles as practitioners, managers, coaches and trainers.

I’m excited about the Gathering! We have some great keynote speakers who will participate, and I invite you to get involved by submitting a proposal to speak at this event. Giving a presentation at the Scrum Gathering is a great opportunity to share your knowledge, experience and passion for Scrum.

WHAT ARE WE INTERESTED IN?

In order to create a Scrum Gathering that promotes space for in-depth discussion as well as a breadth of great ideas and collaborations, we've organized the program into a series of tracks. The track names may seem funny to you at first, but they are all inspired by cooking. Kind of odd, huh? Maybe, but, there's a story behind it. I like to cook and I like good food -- Seattle is a good city for that. As we get closer to the Gathering, I’ll tell you more about the cooking-inspired program and what it has to do with the following tracks:

Mise en Place (“Everything in Place”) - Getting the Scrum basics in place

A chef always gets ready to cook by assembling the key ingredients prepared and in place. Sessions in this track will be helpful to many of the attendees that are new(ish) to Scrum and cover key essentials that a novice should know. Sessions like, “Five Essential Characteristics of a Product Backlog” belong here.

Get Cooking - Useful recipes for improved success with Scrum

Do you have favorite recipies you always rely on because they almost never fail? For the advanced-beginner to the proficient, we’re looking for tips, tutorials, and good practices. Share what you know about your favorite approaches and techniques. Sessions like, “Sure-Fire Strategies for Building a Better Product Owner” belong here.

Turn Up the Heat - Scrum affects things beyond teams and software

Scrum can be a catalyst that accelerates learning and delivery, but it can also make things a little warm as change occurs. What else happens when Scrum enters the scene? Our roles evolve, we are managed differently, and a whole lot more. Change is pervasive where Scrum finds a home. Sessions like, “How Scrum Resulted in a Revamp the HR Review Process” should find their way here.

Utensils & Gadgets - Helping Scrum teams to shape, form, and finish

Like a team of skilled chefs, a successful Scrum teams finds a few essential “utensils” and “gadgets” that they rely on to shape their success and finish their work well. This track is focused on these types of tools, whether they be complex software solutions, or simple paper and pencil-based techniques. Sessions like, “How Did We Survive Before Post It’s?” or “Mocks and Stubs Can Be Your Friends!” are a good fit for this section.

Knife Skills - Hacks, tinkering, and experimenting

In the kitchen, a trained chef knows how to substitute one available ingredient for something that's missing or won’t work. In that same vein, hacks force the available material into doing what you need or want. They are clever, and they may break the rules. Some hacks are illegal, and some just make you proud and embarrassed that it worked. Sometimes a hack is the only way to go. Sessions of this nature should be submitted here (unless you hack the database).

Seasonings - Methods for coaching, training, and influencing others

Even when all the key ingredients are there, success isn’t always forthcoming without a sprinkle of a little something extra. These unique ingredients flavor the entire dish and combine in ways that are more powerful than when used alone. The ability to influence through facilitation, coaching, training, and so on are master seasonings because of the power of their influence. How do you find success through a deft and delicate touch? A session like,“This is the Best Training Technique Ever” works well here.

"Big Cheese" Course - Leading organizations that leverage Scrum to deliver value

Leadership continues to have increasing involvement as companies scale their use of Scrum. The sessions in this track provide an opportunity for leaders who have already passed this way before to share those insights with others. Sessions such as, “How Scrum + My Division Beat the Competition” should be submitted here.

WHAT ARE THE SESSIONS SPECIFICS?

Tracks will run in parallel throughout the first two days of the conference. Sessions will be 90 minutes in length.

Perhaps you’ll prepare a Case Study or Experience Report and help your audience identify the key learning points while you tell what happened, or moderate a panel discussion among experienced practitioners Maybe you'll deliver a tutorial that provides participants with practical knowledge they can use right away, facilitate a Workshop where conference attendees learn from each other, or deliver a compelling talk from cutting edge materials. Do you have other creative and compelling ideas? Please share them with us in your submission.

Kind regards,

Bryan Stallings

Chair

Scrum Gathering

Seattle 2011 Global Event

Email: bstallings@solutionsiq.com

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Want a hard copy of the session schedule and descriptions? Download this handy PDF.

WEEK AT A GLANCE

• Saturday, May 14^th - Certification Event – Stevens Room, 7^th Floor – 9:00am – 5:00pm

• Sunday, May 15^th – CST/CSC Retreat – Stevens Room, 7^th Floor – 9:00am – 5:00pm; Meals – Washington Room, 7^th Floor
  

Monday, May 16th

Tuesday, May 17th

Wednesday, May 18th

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Keynote Speakers

Steve Denning is the author of the award-winning books, The Leader's Guide to Radical Management: Re-inventing the Workplace for the 21st Century (which was selected by 800-CEO-READ as one of the best five books on management in 2010), The Secret Language of Leadership and The Leader's Guide to Storytelling.

From 1996 to 2000, Steve was the Program Director, Knowledge Management at the World Bank where he spearheaded the organizational knowledge sharing program. In November 2000, Steve Denning was selected as one of the world’s ten Most Admired Knowledge Leaders (Teleos). He now works with organizations in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia on leadership, innovation, business narrative and most recently, radical management.

Steve was born and educated in Sydney, Australia. He studied law and psychology at Sydney University and worked as a lawyer in Sydney for several years. He did a postgraduate degree in law at Oxford University in the U.K. Steve then joined the World Bank where he worked for several decades in many capacities and held various management positions, including Director of the Southern Africa Department from 1990 to 1994 and Director of the Africa Region from 1994 to 1996. From 1996 to 2000, Steve was the Program Director, Knowledge Management at the World Bank.

KEYNOTE: MAKING THE ENTIRE ORGANIZATION AGILE

Traditional management has failed. To deal with a radically different marketplace and workplace, today the whole organization must be focused on creating a stream of additional value to customers through continuous innovation. This reinvention of management reflects in part an application of Agile/Scrum thinking to the whole organization.

Drawing on his award-winning book, The Leader's Guide to Radical Management (Jossey-Bass, 2010), Steve Denning shows how the reinvention of management involves five fundamental shifts in terms of the firm’s goal, the role of managers, the way work is coordinated, the shift from value to values and the shift in communications from command to conversation.

SESSION: Mastering the Basics of Leadership Storytelling - A central challenge for leaders at every level of an organization is communicating what needs to be done so as to inspire enduring enthusiasm for change. In this interactive workshop, Steve Denning shows how a specific kind of story can be used to communicate complex new ideas and spark rapid energetic action towards their implementation. In the workshop, participants learn how to craft and perform a springboard story i.e. a story that communicates a new idea and springs the audience into action. Using a simple exercises and a template, participants are equipped to start crafting their own springboard stories which they can use immediately in their work.

Joe Justice is a Seattle-area lean-software consultant and entrepreneur, and a registered automotive manufacture since 2007. In 2010, Joe's X Prize team, WIKISPEED, tied for 10th place in the mainstream class of the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize, a $10 million challenge for 100+ MPGe automobiles. Joe has spoken on social web application development, project methodology, and agile best practices to audiences at Denver University, University of California Berkley, Google, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Rotary International, and others. Joe is currently on assignment at Microsoft and CEO of WIKISPEED.

KEYNOTE: MANAGING  A COLLABORATIVE MULTI-NATIONAL TEAM IN REAL-TIME USING AGILE/LEAN.SCRUM/XP - BUILDING A 100 MPG ROAD CAR IN THREE MONTHS

Joe Justice shares how he ported software-team best practices back to their roots to compete for $10 million in the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize. Driven by a desire to optimize automotive performance while minimizing cost and environmental impact, Joe formed WIKISPEED, a small, volunteer-driven team. They are manufacturing a revolutionary 100 mpg, gasoline powered, four-seat car with a target price of $17,995. Joe will walk through how they are accomplishing the seemingly impossible. Joe will explain Agile applied by using his experience in the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize as the example.

Steve McConnell is CEO and Chief Software Engineer at Construx Software where he consults to a broad range of industries, teaches seminars, and oversees Construx’s software engineering practices. Steve is the author of: Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art (2006), Code Complete (1993, 2004), Rapid Development (1996), Software Project Survival Guide (1998), and Professional Software Development (2004), as well as numerous technical articles. His first two books won Software Development magazine's Jolt Excellence award for best programming books of their years. In 1998, readers of Software Development magazine named Steve one of the three most influential people in the software industry along with Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds. He is also past Editor in Chief of IEEE Software magazine. He can be reached at stevemcc@construx.com.

KEYNOTE: THE JOURNEY TO ORGANIZATION-WIDE SCRUM

Scrum practitioners know what a successful Scrum project looks like. After a few successful pilot projects, many organizations struggle when they try to roll out Scrum more broadly. What does it take to roll out Scrum organization-wide? How much does by-the-book Scrum change, and what stays the same? Where do you draw the line between ScrumBut vs. necessary adaptation? What are the common stumbling blocks, and how do you overcome them? Who has to be involved?

In this presentation, award-winning author Steve McConnell shares a typical organization’s gap analysis between small-pilot-project-success and consistent-large-project-success. He describes the work needed from technical contributors, technical leaders, executive managers, and other business partners to implement Scrum. And he describes the path that has allowed his clients to realize the benefits of Scrum in larger teams, geographically distributed teams, and more complex organizations.

Session Speakers

Pete Behrens is the Founder and President of Trail Ridge Consulting, a firm specializing in leadership agility and enterprise-wide agile transitions and adoption. Certified as a Scrum Trainer (CST), Scrum Coach (CSC), and Leadership Agility 360 Coach (LA360), Pete enables high-performing adaptive environments through a focus on leadership and organizational agility. Pete led the development of the Certified Scrum Coaching (CSC) program for the Scrum Alliance and continues to serve as the program lead. Through this program, Pete collaborates with coaching peers from around the globe to better understand the skills, competencies and tools required for coaching successful and sustaining agile organizations.

SESSION: THE SCRUM COACHING ICEBERG - What is Scrum coaching? In general, it is guiding an organization in applying Scrum on one or more teams. The challenge, however, can be rooted in Scrum itself - what does it mean to apply Scrum? This session introduces The Scrum Coaching Iceberg - a three-tiered coaching model to achieve organizational agility. Above the water's surface lie visible behaviours and processes of the organization - a typical coaching focus. However, the real work for a coach rests below the water's surface in the organizational structures and culture. We will evaluate coaching tools which expose and align organizational structures and cultures which are key to an effective Scrum adoption and sustaining organizational agility.

Dr. Alistair Cockburn (pronounced Co-burn) was voted one of the "The All-Time Top 150 i-Technology Heroes" for his instrumental work in creating and steering the field of agile software development. He co-authored both the Manifesto for Agile Software Development and the "Declaration of Interdependence," created the first Agile Software Development Conference, co-founded the Agile Project Leadership Network, served on the board of the AgileAlliance, designed the Crystal family of agile methodologies, and most recently co-founded the International Consortium for Agile. Of his five books, three have won Jolt awards and been listed in "The Top 100 Best Software Books of All Time". He consistently receives high ratings for the humor and content of his presentations and courses. Much of his material is online at http://Alistair.Cockburn.us.

SESSION: Introduction to Advanced Agile - Past collecting tips and tricks to apply in sticky situations, it is time to start examining the lines of force that lead us to understand what works, why it works, and how to analyze situations to derive solutions. The agile community is mature enough by now to take this next step. In this workshop-styled session, we will review five sections of theory about designing in teams, and then move into groups to select and discuss problems and their solutions. Dr. Alistair Cockburn will review and co-analyze with the groups as many of the problems and the analyses as time permits in the 90 minutes.

Mike Cohn is the founder of Mountain Goat Software, where he teaches and coaches on Scrum and agile development. He is the author of Succeeding with Agile: Software Development with Scrum, Agile Estimating and Planning, and User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development. With more than 25 years of experience, Mike has previously been a technology executive in companies of various sizes, from startup to Fortune 40. A frequent magazine contributor and conference speaker, Mike is a founding member of the Scrum Alliance and the Agile Alliance. He can be reached at www.mountaingoatsoftware.com

SESSION: LEADING A SELF-ORGANIZING TEAM - One of the challenges of agile is coming to grips with the role of leaders and managers of self-organizing teams. Many go to the extreme of refusing to exert any influence on their teams at all. Others retain too much of a command-and-control style. Leading a self-organizing team can be a fine line. In this session you will learn the proper ways to influence the path taken by a team to solving the problems given to it. You will learn how to become comfortable in this role. You’ll understand why influencing a self-organizing team is neither sneaky nor inappropriate but is necessary.

Michael Corrigan is the Director of Engineering in the Prosumer business unit of Cisco . He currently is leading an agile development of cloud services for the home energy management market as part of Cisco’s Smart Grid offerings. Michael has over 25 years’ experience in software development, 15 years in building global internet services and 12 years of managing scrum and agile teams in startups and large enterprises. Prior to Cisco, Michael spent 10 years at Microsoft as an engineering leader of over a dozen team using scrum and agile. Michael has also served as a technology consultant into the defense, pharmaceutical, financial, insurance and manufacturing industries.

SESSION: The Evolution of Agile Leadership – This session will focus on how leaders in scrum and agile will help businesses evolve to better adapt to knowledge workers over the next 10 years. We know that Scrum and Agile have rewritten how software products and services are being built, but this is only the first phase of the changes that organizations are making to take advantage of how knowledge workers create value. We will discuss the roles various leaders will play today and how this will change as agile leaders will take on larger roles in the evolution of business. We will specifically talk about how a leader will need to apply agile/scrum principles to a broader set of business challenges. Leaders attending this session will participate in a discussion on the evolution of agile leadership and the opportunities that agile leaders will have to tackle the transformation of business as it evolve in the next 10 years.

Dave Karle has a single goal, to use visual communications to unlock the trapped human potential in every team. He does this through the Modern Presentation Method, a lightweight, easy to learn presentation creation and delivery method. The Modern Presentation Method reduces the amount of time it takes to create a presentation, and at the same time delivers better outcomes. For teams, it results in meetings where the focus is on the dialogue, not the slides or the presenter. As a result teams are more productive and spend less time in meetings.

Dave crafted the Modern Presentation Method over the last six years while he worked in strategic communication at Microsoft. During this time, Dave created over one thousand presentations and has incorporated the best practices developed during this time into the Modern Presentation Method. David has had the privilege of working with an ex-President, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and hundreds of successful executives from the technology industry. During the Great Recession, Dave was responsible for all executive communications to Microsoft’s six hundred thousand partner companies who collectively generate almost 100% of Microsoft’s Sixty Billion Dollars in revenue. During this time, Dave was also responsible for all communications during the internal strategic planning for Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Business.

SESSION: Revolutionize The Meeting: Do More In Less Time And Drive Better Outcomes – Today, teams are in crisis because of poor internal communications driven by poor presenters and an over reliance on outdated techniques. Find out how you can use the Modern Presentation Method to turn the switch in your organization. The Method will help you prepare a presentation in less time, drive more productive dialogue, and ultimately drive better outcomes. Come learn how Microsoft, The US Military, and others are using this method to revolutionize their internal communications! Even more important, find out how you can use this open source method to revolutionize your team’s internal communications.

Jeremy Lightsmith is a seasoned agile coach, trainer & facilitator, Jeremy excels at creating environments where teams can discover how they work best. He has a deep understanding of agile, and is constantly looking for better ways to share knowledge and collaborate. As a presenter, Jeremy favors interactive and group techniques and pulls from disciplines as diverse as Theatre Improv and Montessori.

Session: Secrets for Better Backlogs and Planning Using User Story Maps [with Jeff Patton] - User story mapping is an intuitive way to build and organize a product backlog. During this short talk you’ll get hands-on experience building a user story map. You’ll learn how to use story mapping to drive productive conversations with users and stakeholders. You’ll learn how to plan incremental releases of your product using minimal holistic slices that deliver value at each product release. You’ll learn secrets to effective prioritization for both planning releases and figuring out what to build next. And, you’ll learn how to tactically manage your backlog as you grow your working software to releasable. The backlog building and managing strategies in this talk take you well beyond the agile basics.

Tom Mellor works in the State Farm IT department where he introduced and now champions, trains, and coaches Scrum / agile-based product development. He also assists and coaches development teams at State Farm in effectively communicating inside and outside the teams through understanding and application of skills relevant to holding effective “crucial conversations” and “crucial confrontations.” He is past chairman of the board of directors of the Scrum Alliance and is a Certified Scrum Trainer. In his personal time, Tom enjoys spending time with his family, spoiling a good walk by golfing and instructing scuba diving and diving recreationally.

SESSION: Crucial Conversation Skills for Teams, Trainers and Coaches - This session will involve discussion about skills people need to have “crucial conversations” (a discussion between two or more people where the stakes are high, their opinions vary, and emotions can run strong) and “crucial confrontations” (discussions between people about unmet expectations, disappointing results, poorly perceived behavior, etc.) In close collaborative environments, team members need to have “crucial skills” so that misunderstandings and negative effects from ineffective conversations can be avoided and respect can be maintained. These skills will also help coaches, trainers, and others by keeping conversations safe and avoiding the “sucker’s choice” of moving to silence or violence.

Jeff Patton makes use of over 15 years experience with a wide variety of products from on-line aircraft parts ordering to electronic medical records to help organizations improve the way they work. Where many development processes focus on delivery speed and efficiency, Jeff balances those concerns with the need for building products that deliver exceptional value and marketplace success.

Jeff currently works as an independent consultant, agile process coach, product design process coach, and instructor. Current articles, essays, and presentations can be found at www.AgileProductDesign.com He’s a columnist with StickyMinds.com and IEEE Software, a Certified Scrum Trainer, and winner of the Agile Alliance’s 2007 Gordon Pask Award for contributions to Agile Development.

SESSION: Secrets for Better Backlogs and Planning Using User Story Maps [with Jeremy Lightsmith] -  User story mapping is an intuitive way to build and organize a product backlog. During this short talk you’ll get hands-on experience building a user story map. You’ll learn how to use story mapping to drive productive conversations with users and stakeholders. You’ll learn how to plan incremental releases of your product using minimal holistic slices that deliver value at each product release. You’ll learn secrets to effective prioritization for both planning releases and figuring out what to build next. And, you’ll learn how to tactically manage your backlog as you grow your working software to releasable. The backlog building and managing strategies in this talk take you well beyond the agile basics.

SESSION: Building Rigorous User Experience Design into Scrum - UX work isn’t just the design of the user interface we see. It’s the work we do early to understand prospective users and what we might build for them, identifying product concepts and refining those into solutions we could build, designing detailed user interface, and evaluating the working software with users to confirm the software meets their and our expectations. In a Scrum process framework, UX work must happen before the sprint as part of getting ready, during the sprint as parting getting work to done, and after the sprint as part of inspecting and adapting. In this short talk you’ll learn how effective Scrum and agile teams have included rigorous user experience practice within a Scrum process framework and how you can too.

John Rudd’s professional focus is on identifying, developing, and implementing creative financial solutions for clients in financial distress. John is the Managing Principal at Scouler & Company, LLC. He specializes in financial advisory services, including financial restructuring, investment banking, mergers and acquisitions, and bankruptcy. In addition, John is CFO and part-owner of SolutionsIQ, a leading provider of Agile coaching, consulting, training, and distributed Agile software development services.

John has held the roles of Chief Restructuring Officer, CFO, President, and CEO for multiple companies including manufacturers, distributors, service businesses in industries varying from automotive and metals to technology and environmental services. Mr. Rudd has an MBA from the University of Southern California and a BS in Economics from the University of Minnesota.

SESSIONS: The Business Case for Agile: What Every Executive Needs to Know - Too many technology projects fail to deliver on the expected value. Some don’t deliver at all. From experience we’ve all come to know the outcomes of software initiatives where results aren’t matching forecasts. The application of traditional project management methods offer poor risk mitigation and continues to frustrate business professionals.

The impact of today’s economy only adds to the challenge, forcing financial and technology professionals to make tough decisions in order to free up capital, reduce cost, and increase overall project and portfolio return. Business as usual is risky. In the current economic environment, businesses are forced to reduce those capital budgets as they cannot afford to make significant investments without more certainty of returns.

Do Agile practices offer an attractive alternative to wholesale cost cutting? How can we reduce cash commitments to projects? Can we align incremental cost with incremental value? Are there proven practices that will enable us to realize more value, sooner, with better results? In this session, we discuss some of the financial benefits of adopting Agile, and quantify the potential value of these innovative practices for your organization. We will also discuss how you can demonstrate this value for key decision makers.

Frank Schettini is the Vice President of Information Technology at PMI. Frank leads the team that is responsible for delivering value to PMI’s members, volunteer leaders, certification holders and staff through innovative and reliable technology solutions. With nearly 30 years of experience in various industries, Frank brings significant experience to PMI in the areas of strategic planning; project, program and portfolio management; process improvement; enterprise architecture; and change management.

Prior to joining PMI, Frank held technology management roles within the insurance and banking sectors. He has also served as a technology and management consultant in the defense, pharmaceuticals, finance, insurance and telecommunications industries.

SESSION: Debunking the top 5 myths about PMI, the PMBOK® Guide and Agile – This session will focus on debunking the myths associated with PMI. I will present industry based research results on the growth and acceptance of Agile and the PM Profession, both in organizations and globally. We will discuss the role that volunteers play in formulating industry best practices. We will also discuss how, by working together, we can reduce some of the perceived barriers and broaden the understanding and acceptance of Agile across the world. By putting some of the past biases behind us, we can work together, expand the value that Project Managers /ScrumMasters / Product Owners provide to organizations, and increase the acceptance and value that we bring to organizations.

Alan Shalloway is CEO of Net Objectives. With over 40 years of experience, Alan is an industry thought leader in Lean, Kanban, Scrum and design patterns. He helps companies transition to Lean-Agile methods enterprise-wide as well teaches courses in these areas. He is a popular speaker at prestigious conferences worldwide. He is the primary author of several books on Design Patterns, Scrum, Lean and Agile programming methods. Alan has worked in literally dozens of industries over his career. He has a Masters in Computer Science from M.I.T. as well as a Masters in Mathematics from Emory University. You can follow Alan on twitter @alshalloway.

SESSION: Extending Scrum with the Principles of Lean - While Kanban is more than a set of tools, the tools of Kanban can be used by existing Scrum teams to overcome many challenges they have. Scrum is a framework for discovering problems quickly. Unfortunately, it provides few insights on its own to provide solutions for these problems. The thought process of product development flow, which underlies Kanban’s methods, can be readily incorporated into Scrum teams – achieving many of the results pure Kanban teams achieve. This talk discusses how theories and practices of Lean and Kanban can be used to extend Scrum at the team and product management levels.

Steve (Steven M.) Smith is Technical Consultant for EMC, who detangles engineers and managers from a hairball of technical and social difficulties. An Aha! Moment for him was the realization that, all other things being equal, social difficulties were the biggest impediment to a team’s ability to solve technical problems. Astonished by the amount of precious time and energy squandered by squabbling between team members, fighting between managers, and warring between teams over turf, Steve devotes himself to researching and applying methods to enhance teamwork, improve management, and enable superior problem solving. He passionately consults, coaches, teaches, writes, and speaks about routes teams can take to produce better results faster, more economically and without pain. Learn more about his thinking by visiting his website—http://stevenMsmith.com.

SESSION: Rethinking Team Productivity When you are a member of team, what hopes do you have for productivity? My hope is for synergy — productivity that is clearly superior to the sum of the individual members’ productivity might have been working separately.   A school of thought about teamwork is epitomized by Michael Winner, a British film director, who says, “A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say.” Although this perspective turns me off, Mr. Winner’s approach has produced successful films. Another school of thought is epitomized in the Agile Manifesto, “The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.” This school of thought sings to me. And I have seen it produce remarkable results.

What are the barriers to self-organizing teams? Are there situations where directed teams are better? These are the type of questions we will explore. We will use simulation and group discussion to explore the role that context, teamwork and management plays in productivity. This session will be especially valuable to managers who form project teams and for individual contributors who seek to advise management about team composition.

  David Socha’s background in biology makes his training in Biomimicry a natural aspect of his computer science research on organizational effectiveness. William Rowden’s experience as a programmer, entrepreneur, and coach keeps him grounded in what works.  Both William and David have a long history with agile software development and practices. David has been a ScrumMaster and agile coach and currently is an Assistant Professor of Computing & Software Systems at University of Washington Bothell. William is a ScrumMaster, agile coach, and trainer at SolutionsIQ, with expertise in enterprise Agile adoption.

SESSION: Biomimicry: Innovation of the Future (Brought to you by the Past) - This session introduces attendees to Biomimicry’s use in software development. Knowledge of biological systems is increasingly contributing to multiple aspects of software development including product innovation, algorithm inspiration, and guidance for understanding and acting in organizations.

The theory of complex adaptive systems explains much of the empirical processes of Scrum and other agile processes. Biology provides the richest and most diverse source of examples of complex adaptive systems. Biomimicry is a well-established way of gaining product and process insight from natural systems. This session will leave you with a new way of thinking about, acting on, and evaluating wicked problems, processes, organizations, and innovation.

For more information on how to sponsor a Gathering, contact sponsorship@scrumalliance.org

PMI is the world’s largest project management member association, representing more than half a million practitioners in more than 185 countries. As a global thought leader and knowledge resource, PMI advances the profession through its global standards and credentials, collaborative chapters and virtual communities and academic research. And, now with more and more organizations applying Agile techniques in the management of successful projects, PMI has responded by launching an Agile Certification in February 2011 to support practitioners who want to demonstrate to employers their level of professionalism in Agile practices of project management. Learn more at www.pmi.org/agile.

With more than 30 years of experience, SolutionsIQ has a deep understanding of software delivery excellence. A leading provider of Agile consulting, certified training, coaching, development, and talent acquisition services, the company is uniquely equipped to help organizations leverage Agile project management and software development methods to deliver solutions more reliably with less risk and at lower cost. SolutionsIQ helps its international client base navigate complex cross-functional changes – increasing Agile competencies at the individual, team, and enterprise level – and gives them the tools and collaboration they need to succeed. Learn more about the company’s solutions and services at www.SolutionsIQ.com.

To make your reservations at the Grand Hyatt Seattle – Click here or call the Passkey Reservations line @ 1-888-421-1442. Please mention the Scrum Alliance rooming block when booking your rooms.

Why stay at the conference hotel?

This is where the action is! Networking opportunities are around every corner and in every elevator. Save time getting to and from breakouts and sessions, and enjoy the convenience of going back to your room between events to make phone calls and check emails. We appreciate you making your reservation at the conference hotel where we have negotiated contracts to give you the best value and service. Your reservation also helps ensure we meet our contractual obligations with the hotel.

Come for the Gathering, stay for the fun

If you've never been to Seattle, then you're in for a treat. There's so much to do, you'll probably want to pad a couple of extra days on to your travel plans so you can see the sights after the Scrum Gathering ends.

Home of the world's first Starbucks, the city is best known for its stunning Space Needle, but don't overlook the abundance of shopping, dining, and culture Seattle has to offer. The bustling city is flanked by majestic mountain ranges, gorgeous waterways, and a rain forest, giving visitors a wide choice of activities from hiking to kayaking.

Be sure to check out Seattle's Convention and Visitors Bureau website to learn more about the area and everything there is to see. Tour the original Air Force One at Seattle Museum of Flight, or get up close and personal with a giraffe at Woodland Park Zoo. Seattle Center houses a batch of great museums while Pikes Place Market is the go-to spot for antiques, crafts, and locally grown food.

If you're worried the weather will be cold and dreary during your visit, don't be. Seattle's average temperature in May is a balmy 65 degrees and the city typically gets a mere two inches of rain the whole month. The hotel we've selected for this Scrum Gathering, Grand Hyatt Seattle, is nestled in the theater district and the rooms boast views of Puget Sound, beautiful Lake Union, and downtown Seattle. Don't forget to mention Scrum Alliance when you book your room to get the specially negotiated rate.

Need ground transtoration from the airport? Use Downtown Airporter to arrange car or shuttle service to the hotel. You can even book your reservation right online! Of course, you can also jump on the light rail and be at the hotel in under 40 minutes for a mere $2.50.

721 Pine Street
Seattle, WA 98101
United States
http://grandseattle.hyatt.com/hyatt/hotels/index.jsp?null

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