Saturday 18 August 2012

Announcing the Speakers for the Upcoming September 10th Meeting: Jeff Anderson and Alexis Hui

The next meeting of the Limited WIP Society of Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge and Guelph will take place on September 10, 5:30-7:30pm at the Tannery Building in Kitchener.


We are pleased to announce Jeff Anderson and Alexis Hui as the speakers.

Their topicEnabling Agile Transformation through Lean Startup Methods

AbstractScrum, Kanban and other agile methods provide a means to transform IT to a high maturity state. Yet anyone who has been part of a large scale agile transformation can tell you that outcomes are anything but predictable. Sometimes these transformations succeed, sometimes they provide mixed results, sometimes the transformation outright fails. The change tactics used, and the specific methods chosen for adoption vary wildly depending on context. In a nutshell, the only certainty about large-scale agile transformation it is to expect uncertainty.
Eric Ries definition of a startup is as follows: "A startup is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.  By this definition, an enterprise Agile change initiative could be deemed a startup, one that could take advantage of Lean Startup techniques.
During this session we will present a case study on how a team of Agile change agents leveraged the Lean Startup approach to enable validated learning on a large scale organizational transformation.  We'll discuss how we tested the assumptions behind our transformation by introducing incremental waves of change we have dubbed "Minimal Viable Changes".   We will showcase how we cycled through a continuous learn, build, and measure loop to steer the course of our transformation.  Finally, We'll give an overview of our key pivot/pursue decisions, and describe how the lean startup approach provided us with the feedback required to make several significant changes in direction during the course of the transformation.

About the speakersJeff Anderson started his professional life as your typical IT development geek. He tried to create software delivery joy through the use of things like patterns, agile methods, and overall object-oriented goodness.  Jeff continued to be disappointed in the way IT delivery projects were managed, the reason they were started, and how they ended up.

This dissatisfaction with the status quo led him to gradually embrace a new mission in life, to help IT workers become awesome.  To that end Jeff has created the Deloitte LEAN service offering, providing advisory, coaching, and change management services to IT departments.  He has built this capability within Deloitte to help IT clients truly transform the way they operate their business. Jeff has played a leadership role in some of the largest Kanban based enterprise transformations worldwide.  Recently he has guided several large public sector organizations along the path of organizational maturity. 

Jeff continues to add new tools to his organizational transformation utility belt including, lean startup, gamification, design thinking, and other collaborative, high feedback systems necessary to developing the next generation of work environments for knowledge professionals.  Jeff is a passionate member and a fellow of the Lean Systems Society and is the first Canadian to win a Brickell Key award nomination.  Jeff blogs frequently atagileconsulting.blogspot.com. Jeff is the proud father of his brand new daughter Mila, and lucky enough to be the husband of the most amazing wife in the world, Barbara.

The presentation will take place from 6:00pm to 7:30pm.  The doors will open at 5:30pm.  You're very welcome to join us for networking.  Food and drinks will be served.

If you'd like to attend, simply "like" or "+1" this page or post a short comment so that we can better estimate the number of participants.  We'd also appreciate it if you registered on this RSVP page.

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