Many teams have been following the same few patterns for facilitating sessions such as daily scrums, sprint reviews, retrospectives, and backlog refinement events for decades now. However, while these well-trodden approaches can be good starting points, there are ways to make them tremendously more effective with minimal effort. You will learn to design agile meetings that account for your particular circumstances and goals while wasting as little time as possible. First, Arlen will cover: exploring the true purpose of agile meetings – Is the daily scrum more about status or planning? Is...
Arlen Bankston
Grow-Lean LLC
Arlen Bankston was at the vanguard of the agile movement, beginning to practice within two years of the Agile Manifesto’s writing. He was among the first to explicitly blend lean systems thinking and user experience practices with agile software development practices. Arlen was one of the earliest Certified Scrum Trainers, exploring Lean, Six Sigma, BPM, and other process management and systems thinking approaches to ensure that organizations took a holistic perspective beyond just the software. He became a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt while leading a Lean-Agile practice for six years, and was a successful entrepreneur helping to lead the consultancy LitheSpeed for fifteen years following. Now he has formed the company Adaptagility LLC and is working in concert with Grow-Lean LLC. Today, Arlen works across every industry and enjoys a reputation as a thought leader and a dynamic, entertaining, and practical trainer and presenter. He has trained and mentored thousands of ScrumMasters, Product Owners, team members, and executives. Arlen wrote the book “HR and the Agile Organization” to describe how human resources departments can adapt to better support organizations that are trying to become more adaptive while improving employee engagement and retention along the way.