Jurgen De Smet

Many product organizations out there are adding new value by means of initiating and managing projects, lot’s of them. As such not necessarily a bad idea but many underestimate the influence this has within their organizations possibly ending up with mere illusions and real magic performed on the work-floor. This talk will guide attendees through a story of illusions and real magic so that one can recognize when it occurs and also gets some ideas on how to organize things differently.

The acronym MVP is frequently used in a context of a fully working application or minimal set of features where one forget to truly validate assumptions. PO’s are writing detailed user stories but not always following up on the business impact of it all. Let’s see how we can do things differently! A cocktail of different models that put business outcomes at the center. A different way to look at so-called product backlogs, stepping away from a flat list of items. This cocktail is one of many LeSS experiments you could try and some things to avoid.

I see Agile being used as synonym of Scrum even though Agile is more of an umbrella where Scrum is just one flavour of getting there. Many inquiries show that Scrum is the most used Agile flavour in the world and I’m here to tell you to stop that movement unless you truly mean it. Let me guide you through some basic elements and help you evaluate if you and your organisation should ditch Scrum or not. Help you recognise if you are truly a Scrum Master or rather a Scrum Novice. And much more.

Many of us are operating in an organization that has a very complex structure and there is a reason for that! This talk is there to explore some of the reasoning behind the structures you are in. We’ll end the talk with a kind of fishbowl to explore options to get out of an endless loop of nut-ness.