On April 4th-5th, Colors in Projects, in partnership with Today Software Magazine, went fo the third time to meet Cluj with the event ...even mammoths can be Agile.Apart from previous editions, this time we had two parallel streams and World Café sessions. Participants had the possibility to choose what presentations to attend based on their topics of interest. In the first stream, the presentations were focused on the "hard" part of Agile, related to Information an Techology, and in the second the area of "soft skills" was addressed. In the World Café sessions of both streams, the participants were invited to debate on different topics with the event speakers, who moderated the six groups formed.
Guided by our moderators, Dan Radoiu and Adina Grigoroiu, the over 200 participants had the opportunity to discuss with local and international speakers, each sharing its own experience.
We had three international speakers: Michael Nir, Andrea Provaglio and Reiner Kuehn.
Michael Nir showed us some of the secrets of a successful Product Owner (among them the powers of Business Analysis), its vital role in the organizational development as well as his roadmap on its way to excellence.
Andrea Provaglio told us about the major cultural changes encountered in knowledge based projects, and also about the strategies and mental models required to meet high levels of uncertainty. We also talked about ephemeralization, uncertainty, knowledge and the need for restructuring our wetware in the present context.
Reiner Kuehn explained to us how and why it is important to use slack in Agile project management, what impact has this on innovation and motivation, as well as the challenges of using slack in an environment where resource usage is a main KPI and managers measure progress by the amount of delivered features.
George Anghelache & Cristian Cazan delighted us with a different presentation: by imitating famous characters, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, they fought with lightsabers in the challenge to change the IT galaxy one Agile Transformation at a time. They also staged various situations faced by a Scrum Master, offering each of these solutions to improve communication and activities.
We found out from Ruxandra Banici that the method selected to lead a project (Scrum or another) must be continuously adjusted to the needs of the project, while trying, at the same time, to change the context so that it supports the basic method. All by following a clear set of principles.
Oana Oros highlighted, by analogy with examples from everyday life, a few communication gaps between Agile actors, hidden gaps that can occur on several levels such as: analysis, development, testing, leadership, management...
Andrei Doibani talked about how the adoption of Agile methodologies works in highly regulated industries and also about hybrid approaches such as Water-Scrum-Fall.
Izabella Paun & Danielle Popescu-Abrudan showed us how business behind the scenes works, how a a Delivery Manager and a Project Manager work together, and how the Agile approach helped them build success in a highly complex structure.
Adrian Lupei told us about the Kanban method. He explained how, by implementing Kanban in Bitdefender, work processes were improved, visibility increased and teams started to collaborate better.
Dan Berteanu challenged us to debate: what are the criteria we use to make our decisions when they have ethical implications? By bringing into our attention two of the most famous ethical experiments - the Trolley and the Prisoner problems - Dan has managed to create a cheerful and full of humor atmosphere.
Calin Damian told us about the importance of choosing the right tools in adapting to the new changes with regard to computing and storage requirements that organizations are facing, having a major impact on software development teams, quality assurance and support.
Simona Bonghez talked about decisions in projects and their consequences on projects evolution. We learned from Simona which are key decision points in the life cycle of a project, which are the decision models we can rely on, and which are the biases that influence the decision making process of a project manager.
We ended the event with many gifts and surprises and we all went to cocktail, where The Glass Fish band delighted us with very good music. We had many colorful balloons, big smiles from everyone present and lots of good cheer!
The next day two workshops were held: Conflict Management delivered by Simona Bonghez and Kanban in practice delivered by Adrian Lupei, both exceeding the maximum number of participants.
We will gladly return next year for the fourth time in Cluj, it has already become a tradition. We invite you to access images from the event on our Facebook/ Colors in Projects page or by accessing the link http://goo.gl/kz06Ob.
We are welcomeing you at our next events on October 10th-11th 2014, in Iasi and next spring in Cluj!