I’ve worked with a number of incredible Scrum Masters over the years. For this talk I asked several what they feel is the most important secret behind their success. This session covers the things they identified as well as my observations about some of the things that made them successful.

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Why do some projects seemingly use failure to propel them forward while others wrest defeat from the jaws of apparent victory? In this talk, we are going to look at how a healthy, proactive approach to risk and failure can give software projects the momentum and solid foundation to deliver for our customers. We'll also look at how an unhealthy approach can hide pitfalls that result in canceled projects or, worse, spectacular failures. You'll leave with a better understanding of how to assess the health of your team's approach to failure and concrete ideas of how to make your process more resilient by leveraging good failures to avoid bad ones.

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Test-Driven Development has been around for decades and is considered a best practice, yet it still sees very little adoption. It is one of the most impactful practices software teams can adopt, but the challenges to introducing it often leave this practice abandoned. In this talk, you will get acquainted with TDD and learn an approach to successfully introduce it to a company at both a leadership and technical level, even if you can't code! You will leave equipped to talk through the TDD process, its nuances, common struggles, metrics for success, and even the role of AI.

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For April Fool's day we are going to look at a few case studies and situations and identify which ones are examples of agility and which ones were written as an April Fool's joke. Then we'll dig into some of the differences between situations that help achieve agility and situations that push teams away from it. There will be fun to be had and silly prizes given away. If you only like serious discussions of Agile, this might not be best talk for you.

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Lean concepts have become more and more popular in software development. Coming from the manufacturing world, understanding these concepts and how they can apply to your software development efforts can help you to deliver faster and more reliably. Join Mike as he makes the case for integrating lean software development principles into your software development methodology.

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You've probably heard about "splitting" user stories, but often the idea is mentioned without any real concrete idea of what it involves. In this talk we are going to look at why splitting user stories is valuable, some theory about how to do it, and then look at some real world examples of splitting users stories.

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In this presentation and live coding demo, I'll be talking about alternatives to "fake it 'till you make it". I'll share stories about challenging learning situations, and leave you with some concrete ideas for how to make yourself an expert in the tools and practices you use at work. I hope you'll leave the talk with more confidence and excitement about learning at work (or more ideas about how to stir up that hunger to learn in others).

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Featuring a newly finished Agile Cartoon that we'll be continuing our walk through all 12 Agile Principles, looking at Principle #8 - Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely. This principle may not e the most exciting, but that doesn't mean it isn't important. We'll explore how teams both follow and violate this principle and talk about how you can make sustainable development a more important part of your pursuit of agility.

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When asked for an estimate, how do you feel? What's your answer?

Let's look at some of the needs that the business has where estimates can help. We'll talk about ways to meet these needs in a reasonable fashion. And we'll turn "wrong estimates" into value for both the business and the developers.

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Genetic algorithms find solutions by "evolving" a solution from less fit to more fit versions. In this session, we'll look at the basics of genetic algorithms, what types of problems lend themselves to this approach, and then demonstrate a genetic algorithm used to draw pictures with lines. We will spend just a few minutes looking at code, but the talk is aimed at explaining the concepts in a way that should be useful for both developers and non-developers.

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