Date: April 8-9, 2024  Time: Noon – 3pm EDT

Agile games and simulations, often called “Serious Play,” are critical tools in a successful Agile adoption. Games and simulations help people learn Agile principles and practices faster, immediately apply them, and thus retain them longer. Most Agile games and simulations are done in teams which enables teams to learn more about each other and work together more effectively.

The Agile Games Conference (April 8-9, 2024), an annual event hosted by Agile New England, provides an immersive exploration of serious games at work. Its sessions explore some of the most interesting concepts behind Agile and Lean. Based on experience from ten successful years, the Agile Games Conference provides participants with a highly interactive learning experience, an internationally recognized group of presenters and facilitators, and opportunities to practice their new skills.

What are Agile Games?

12pm – 12:15pm – introductory remarks by Damon Poole
12:15 – 1pm – Opening Keynote by Jordann Gross and Eddy Bruin
1pm – 1:30pm – Creating the Open Space Marketplace
1:30pm – 3pm – Open Space

Tuesday April 9th – All Times EDT
12pm – 12:30pm – Creating the Open Space Marketplace
12:30pm – 3pm – Open Space

Featured Participants

Jordann Gross
Jordann’s purpose is nurturing environments in which people can become their best selves. He believes one should manage the system and not just the people. Enabling environments in which people grow to new heigths give him energy.

Doing this made him an experienced enterprise and executive coach. He coaches on agile leadership & mindset, facilitates transformations to become future fit and designs adaptive & scaling organizational structures.

Jordann’s hobbies around kid’s camp and board games give him an energetic and playful approach. Leading to his motto: ‘putting the fun in functional.’ As work in the current age of disruption should be something that gives you energy.

Eddy Bruin
Eddy Bruin has a passion to be in the midst of business, customers and teams. His personal mission is showing work can be more fun and as a result more effective. Using playful metaphors, serious games and facilitation techniques Eddy enables individuals and teams to become more effective and agile in their efforts to change themselves and therefore the world.

Gillian Lee
Gillian partners with Agile teams and their leaders to improve product discovery and delivery outcomes. She also helps others develop their coaching and facilitation competencies through playful workshops and mentorship. Gillian has coached at a variety of growth-stage organizations such as Oanda, Rangle.io, Nulogy and Amplify and shares stories of what she’s learned at meetups, Agile Alliance conferences and Open Space events. Gillian is a certified professional in Scrum, Kanban and Agile Coaching and studied Computer Science and Engineering at MIT. Prior to becoming an Agile Coach, Gillian coded as a Disney Imagineer.

Damon Poole
Damon is an Enterprise Agile Coach and the co-author of Professional Coaching for Agilists (Addison-Wesley). In addition he offers ICAgile and ICF accredited coach training programs. He has coached and trained thousands of people at companies such as Capital One, Oanda, Ford, Perforce, and Fidelity. Damon frequently presents at local and international Agile meetups and conferences such as the Agile Alliance Conference, Play4Agile, and Agile and Beyond. He has also co-created a series of popular Agile games such as User Story Games, Agile Coaching Games, Heroes of Agility, and a small collection of online games. Learning through play is a consistent element of his work.

Jenny Tarwater
Jenny is a connector and collector of people and ideas! She is an international speaker, Agile coach, and trainer. Jenny has a passion for driving the adoption and understanding of Agile values, principles, and practices. Her endless enthusiasm drives her involvement in cultivating the “small company start-up culture” across organizations large and small. Jenny is a kinetic leader, partner, and consummate student who brings positivity and fun to all she does.

Jenny co-created the “Game Design Canvas for Good Games Gone Bad” and the game “Never Would I Ever, Examining Your Agile Non-Negotiables” with her co-conspirator Laura Powers. She founded GALE-KC (Games for Agility, Learning, and Engagement), and Lean Agile KC, and has served on organizing teams for Agile20xx, Agile for Humanity, PMI-Professional Development Days, and Agile KC.

Jenny is a frequent conference speaker. Her keynotes include “Making it Pop – Debriefing Experiential Learning.” Her workshops include “Moving Motivators,” “Innovation Games,” “Agile Fluency Game,” “Brain-Based Training,” and “Liberating Structures.”

Dana Pylayeva 
Dana Pylayeva is a business games designer, trainer, and
coach, known for infusing playfulness in the most serious teams and workplaces.
Author of several games (DevOps with Lego and Chocolate, Fear in the Workplace, Safety in the Workplace, Dependency Game), Dana is an international speaker (80 conferences in 18 countries), organizer of local meetups in NYC as well as the conference chair at Agile2024 conference.

Dana brings a unique blend of exceptional facilitation skills with Liberating Structures, her diverse technical background (as a former Java Developer, a DBA Manager, an Application Architect), her 20 + years of Agile/ DevOps coaching experience (with clients in US, UK, Canada, India, Japan, and Ireland) as well as a strong professional coaching mindset (rooted in Co-Active and ORSC). She is currently working on the second edition of her book “DevSecOps Adventures. Game
changing approach with Lego, Chocolate and Coaching Games” as well as experimenting with bringing in more playfulness into the Agile Coaching Growth Wheel.

Dennis Wagner
Dennis has been passionate about software (and product)
development since he sold his first software product at the age of 17. He’s
worn various hats, including Architect, Team Lead, Developer, and Product
Manager, successfully improving software development practices.

Today, Dennis serves as an end-to-end consultant, helping
teams, leaders, and organizations discover and unlock their full potential. His
expertise spans a wide range of topics, from cutting-edge concepts like
#NoEstimates, Beyond Budgeting, Enterprise Services Planning, OKRs, and
Strategy Development to classic methodologies like Scrum, Kanban, and Clean
Code.

Together with Marc Bless he co-wrote two German books on Agile Games. One of those is translated to English and is available at leanpub (https://leanpub.com/agile-games-and-simulations/)

Mario Moreira
Mario E. Moreira is an Enterprise Agile consultant and
Master Agile Coach who has led Agile initiatives at Fidelity Investments, CA
(Computer Associates), Walmart, Vistaprint, and more. Mario focuses on holistic
company success by increasing the value of products, optimizing flow for faster
delivery, and increasing quality through customer feedback. He coaches at all
levels, helping to bring about an Agile mindset and instill Agile concepts,
methods, and practices.  

Mario specializes in transforming enterprises to Agile and
introducing cutting-edge concepts and practices such as Open Space, Scrum, XP,
Kanban, Lean Canvas, VFQ, Story Mapping, Agile Games, Value Stream Mapping,
Psychological Safety, Self-organizing teams, Cost of Delay, and much more. He
energizes companies looking to innovate and experiment with new ideas to better
serve customers.  

Mario has authored several Agile books including: The Agile Enterprise: Building and Running Agile Organizations, Being Agile: Your Roadmap to Successful Adoption of Agile, and Adapting Configuration Management for Agile Teams. He writes regularly on his blog at Agile Adoption Roadmap.

John Sillay
John is now building a consulting practice centered around coaching, change management, and Agile leadership. He recently left Liberty Mutual after spending a dozen years there, most recently as a Scrum Master supporting multiple teams. He has participated in Open Space sessions targeted at solving issues in technology, product development and organizational change management and been a regular attendee at Agile Open Northwest.

He has hosted many Agile education events for internal Liberty Mutual teams and presented “Thinking outside the Box” at Agile Games New
England in 2019. Specific areas of interest besides organization structure and
Change Management are Decision Theory (Money Ball) and Cynefin (focused on
agent/system interaction).