Getting Leaders On-Board Deciding to Use Agile and Leadership's Role To Ensure Agile's Success XP Agile Universe 2004 August 15-18, Calgary, Alberta

How can we convince managers, leaders and decision makers to use agile? This question has been asked again and again, by developers, team leads, and project managers. Together, in interactive format, we will discuss organizational considerations for using agile methods as well as evaluate the benefits they bring from a management perspective.

Once the decision is made, what do managers, leaders and decision makers need as they begin to use agile in their organizations? At every step of the way as agile is incorporated into the organization's culture, leadership wants to know what they can do to facilitate the process and what they can expect.

This half-day interactive workshop will first address how to decide if agile will provide sufficient business value and discuss each phase of bringing agile on board and what leaders can do to assist the transition and support the agile users. Communication techniques between users and leaders, what process indicators to look for and which ones to discard, and how to understand what role leadership plays in providing agile users what they need for success are some of the topics that will be covered.



Pollyanna Pixton and Mary Poppendieck will team lead this workshop.

About the Workshop Leaders

Pollyanna Pixton has been consulting with businesses in the implementation and deployment of strategies and concepts that improve their organization since she founded Evolutionary Systems in 1996. She views a business as a system, sees the 'big picture' and analyzes how, why and where the company can be strengthened to improve productivity, increase efficiency, expand profitability and reach key corporate goals.

She brings 30 years of global executive and managerial experience for business and information technology ventures. She built the Swiss Electronic Stock Exchange, developed control systems for electrical power plants throughout the world, and converted technologies for merging financial institutions. Her background includes e-commerce, real-time applications, positioning systems, and computational research.

Ms Pixton's education includes a Master's degree in Computer Science, three years of graduate studies in Theoretical Physics and a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics. She serves on the 2004 Agile Development Conference Organizing Committee and as a guest lecturer at the university level, she discusses ethics in business, organizational development and leadership.

Contact Ms Pixton at 801.582.1608, cell: 801.209.0195, and via email: ppixton@evolutionarysystems.net

Mary Poppendieck is a Senior Consultant with Cutter Consortium's Agile Software Development and Project Management Practice. She has been in the information technology industry for 25 years. She has managed solutions for companies in several disciplines, including supply chain management, manufacturing systems, and digital media. As a seasoned leader in both operations and new product development, she provides a business perspective to software development problems. Lean development is just one of Poppendieck's areas of expertise. She first encountered the Toyota Production System, which later became known as Lean Production, as Information Systems Manager in a video tape manufacturing plant.

She implemented one of the first just-in-time systems in 3M, resulting in dramatic improvements in the plant's performance. Poppendieck's team leadership skills are legendary at 3M, where new product development is a core competency. One team commercialized a graphics interface controller three times faster than normal. Another team not only developed an image database system in partnership with a start-up company, but also set a new international standard for image formats. Poppendieck, a popular writer and speaker, is the author of Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit and Managing Director of AgileAlliance.

Contact Ms Poppendieck at 952.934.7998, via email: mary@poppendieck.com and web site: www.poppendieck.com.