About the Speaker:
Alex Yates is currently Assistant Vice President of Change Management at Genpact. He’s worked in senior change transformation and communication roles with companies in the media, healthcare, and consumer goods industries, and in Major League Baseball. Alex loves learning about AI, neuroscience, and human-centered design, as well as travelling and cliff jumping.

Agile New England’s Monthly Keynote Speaker is Virtual!

Please note our November, 2024, keynote will be fully virtual with no in-person meeting. The new timeline follows:

5:00 – 5:30 pm ET – Zoom meeting open for informal discussion

5:30 – 6:30 pm ET – Agile 101 breakout with Garry Miller (or network in main Zoom session)

6:30 – 8:00 pm ET – Keynote Speaker, followed by announcements and free-form networking

About the Speakers:

Justin Chapman

Justin Chapman is an experienced Product Operations/Management professional, known for his proficiency in applying an Agile mindset against dogma and his skill in talent management and design thinking.

Steve Jaccaud

Steve Jaccaud is a seasoned Enterprise Agile coach and consultant, noted for his expertise in transformation and change management, organizational design and development, and leadership effectiveness coaching.

Together these two practitioners will host an interactive session exploring whether or not AI could kill Agile Coaching.

About the Speaker:
Dan Gallagher is driven by the notion that life is too short to build products people won’t use. He has logged 30 years as a product designer, product manager, product owner, agile team member, product executive, product consultant, and even scrum master. Dan has battled on the ground, led from the trenches, fought through the middle, and surveilled from above. He has combined this experience with extensive product research, wisdom from pundits (applied and validated), and life observations to evolve the Product Agility methodology into a powerful force for change in product development.

About the Speaker:
Natalie Vinitsky is a Senior Director of the Agile and Innovation Center at Citi within the Risk function. She oversees the Portfolio of Operational Risk Management and Global Risk Review book of work using Agile as a delivery method. She is a certified Agile and Design Thinking Coach and an expert in executive coaching, digital transformation, and lean portfolio management. She has over 25 years experience helping executives and their organizations achieve higher delivery value, sustain growth, and continuously improve by focusing on human-centric design.

This session will describe why conventional management models are ill-equipped to meet the unprecedented challenges of a radically different business world. It will acquaint participants with a new organizational paradigm — the self-managed peer-to-peer network — where leadership and decision-making are exercised by teams rather than individuals, and will spotlight organizations using collective intelligence and shared power to navigate business environments transformed by increasing change and escalating complexity.

Nobody Is Smarter Than Everybody is for leaders who are open to learning about the extraordinary advantages that self-managed networks provide through better and faster problem solving, more effective and efficient work processes, and consistent customer satisfaction and profitability.

About the Speaker:
Rod Collins is an author, keynote speaker, and leadership coach. He is a leading expert and thought leader on the future of business transformation. Rod’s books, blogs, and speeches inspire through their use of storytelling and leading-edge ideas. During his tenure as Chief Operating Executive, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Federal Employee Program experienced its greatest five-year growth period in the company’s 60-year history. An award-winning author, Rod’s books include Wiki Management, which highlights the innovative tools and practices of a revolutionary new management model, and Leadership in a Wiki World, which illustrates how leaders can leverage the power of collective intelligence to sustain extraordinary performance in rapidly changing markets. His latest book, Nobody Is Smarter Than Everybody spotlights three companies who grew from starts-ups to market leaders by building organizations where no one is a boss and everyone is a leader.

In this talk, we’ll explore concepts such as trust-building and psychological safety and how they intertwine in the Virtuous Trust Cycle to provide a supportive context for individuals to practice and improve EQ. We will  describe how measurements of psychological safety can accurately predict whether your Agile transformation will be effective or challenged. In addition, we’ll practice an exercise on how to enable and measure conditions for psychological safety.

Come join us at ANE to explore how the Trust Virtuous Cycle framework can help leaders and team members increase trust levels that create conditions for psychological safety for shaping a culture of innovation.

About the Speaker:

Pepe Lopez is a longtime business coach and Agile strategist who specializes in building the trust-based relationships critical for development teams and projects that require high levels of collaboration. He’s the author of the Trust Virtuous Cycle, a light framework to build trust and measure psychological safety. Pepe has 20 plus years of experience in roles such as People Leader, PM, Portfolio Manager, and Change Manager. In these roles he’s developed expertise in relationship building, quality frameworks, product development, roadmap execution, and training and development. Most importantly, he’s gained hands-on experience helping organizational cultures in transition.

Are you interested in UI design practices to make your interfaces more accessible? We’ll review topics like screen reader compatibility (ensuring that elements are properly labeled so screen readers provide accurate information to blind users), high contrast modes (to accommodate users with low vision or color blindness), and keyboard navigation (keyboard shortcuts and navigational aids for users who cannot rely on a mouse or touch input).

Are you involved in defining and prioritizing product features? We’ll help you navigate the complexities of requirements for diverse user populations, examining subjects such as multilingual support (language options to cater to users from diverse linguistic backgrounds), customizable interfaces (enabling users to personalize their experience based on individual preferences), and gesture-based interaction (gesture-based controls, voice commands, and other interaction methods for users with physical disabilities).

Whether you’re a UI designer, product owner, software engineer, application architect, or simply someone interested in enhancing accessibility and usability in design, this talk will offer valuable perspectives and actionable takeaways.

About the Speaker:

Weslyn Rawlins is a seasoned people and culture leader, adept at driving transformative initiatives and fostering inclusive workplaces. With a background in program and project management, she’s honed skills in strategic communication, operations management, and cross-functional team leadership. During her tenure at a top fortune 500 company, she orchestrated multimillion-dollar business transformations and enhanced sales enablement. She has trained tech enthusiasts with Black Girls Code. As a DEI advocate and leader, Weslyn has overseen programs, expanded membership, and influenced enterprise-wide strategies to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion.

In this session, we’ll cover some of the important ideas that we used when creating Software Teaming. The 4 main points are:

• Make it easy for everyone to excel
• Turn Up The Good on things that are going well
• Deal with failures to communicate
• Lead from within so everyone can both lead and follow dynamically

About the Speaker:

Woody Zuill is an Agile and Lean Software Development guide who has been programming computers for 40+ years. He is an originator and pioneer of the Software Teaming (Mob Programming) approach to teamwork in software development and provides workshops, coaching, and training on team software development. He is also a founder of the “Beyond Estimates” discussion, and a frequent speaker at conferences and developer meet-ups all over the world. He has been a founder, Product Owner, and key facilitator of Agile New England’s Mob Programming and Software Teaming conferences.

To achieve meaningful and sustainable improvement, you must work across the entire value delivery system, from idea to production.

Based on work with over 100 client organizations, Gil Broza has identified 10 strategies that optimize a system’s fitness for purpose (how well it helps the company achieve its mission and objectives). In this session, you’ll use a quick, process-agnostic way to determine your value delivery system’s fitness level. You’ll learn about the strategies and which to apply in your current situation. You will walk away with a practical model that respects human systems’ tolerance for change without being philosophical, touchy-feely, or prescriptive.

About the Speaker:

Gil Broza helps tech leaders deliver far better results by upgrading their organizations’ Agile ways of working. He also provides guidance to non-software managers on how to create real business agility in their teams. Gil has helped over 100 organizations achieve real, sustainable improvements by focusing on mindset, culture, and leadership in each enterprise’s unique value delivery context. He is the author of four highly acclaimed books: Deliver Better Results, The Agile Mind-Set, The Human Side of Agile, and Agile for Non-Software Teams.