Your LACE sets the tone for your transformation. Therefore, selecting members of the LACE can be a daunting task. Hear from our experts with unique perspectives on what they have seen work best in various contexts. Our panelists will deliver thoughtful answers about how to staff your LACE.
Speakers
Eduardo Alvim
SPCT, Head of Product Strategy and Development (Gladwell Academy)
Prior to becoming SPCT, I’ve gained extensive working experience in the areas of software development, IT and team management. Also, implemented Agile ways of working in industries as diverse as aviation, healthcare, pharmaceutical, banking & insurance, media and IT. This has led me to an extended practical knowledge of the need for agile ways of working and firsthand examples of the benefits of implementing SAFe.
Christine Babowicz
SPCT Candidate, Assistant Vice President, Global Lean-Agile Center of Excellence (Metlife)
Agility evangelist, industry speaker and founding member of the MetLife Global Lean-Agile Center of Excellence; proving that a small yet determined group of change agents can seed and influence a pull-based global agile transformation. Skilled in product portfolio mapping, facilitation, implementing the lean-agile toolbox and developing an in-house coaching capability to sustain enterprise agility. Experience applying agility to Portfolios, Solutions, Programs and Teams across MetLife. Execution expertise also extends to organizational change management and leadership coaching. SPCT Candidate
Deema Dajani
SAFe Fellow, Product Manager (Scaled Agile, Inc.)
Deema draws on a Startup background and an MBA from Kellogg. Deema helps established enterprises create the environment to shape disruption with business agility and Lean Portfolio Management (LPM). Started her Agile journey in the early 2000’s as a Product Manager, Director of Strategy, and pre-IPO turn around specialist. Deema transitioned to advisory where she led some of the largest transformations to Lean-Agile with SAFe in Financial Services and Insurance. Deema currently serves as a Scaled Agile Product Manager focused on LPM and Leadership. Co-founder of the Women in Agile, a non-profit organization focused on breaking barriers and inclusivity in the agile community.
Mike Foster
iSPCT Candidate, Agile Coach (Zurich Insurance Company Ltd.)
I help technical people be happy at work by delivering amazing results while having fun.
Agilists have been talking about business and technology alignment since the beginning of the Agile movement. Many experience challenges with integrating POs and PMs from the business onto the delivery ARTs, especially if the ARTs are in technology organizations. What’s the career incentive and path? What skills are needed? And how to create high-performing teams including the business members. Join this expert panel of Mark Saymen and Vikas Kapila to discuss why this is important and tips to help overcome these challenges.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity to transform to business-enabled ARTs!
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Speakers
Deema Dajani
SAFe® Fellow, Product Director (Scaled Agile, Inc.)
Draws on a Startup background and an MBA from Kellogg Deema helps established enterprises create the environment to shape disruption with business agility and Lean Portfolio Management (LPM). Started her Agile journey in the early 2000’s as a Product Manager, Director of Strategy, and pre-IPO turn around specialist. Deema transitioned to advisory where she led some of the largest transformations to Lean-Agile with SAFe in Financial Services and Insurance. Deema currently serves as a Scaled Agile Product Manager focused on LPM and Leadership. Co-founder of the Women in Agile, a non-profit organization focused on breaking barriers and inclusivity in the agile community.
Vikas Kapila
CEO (Enterprise Agility Consulting)
Vikas is a business transformation practitioner with a passion for applying Lean-Agile principles, behaviors and practices to enable delivery of highest business value with built-in quality at the earliest in a predictably and sustainable cycle. He excels at quickly delivering business value, simplifying the seemingly complex, and delighting customers. He is able to achieve these results by consistently building radically prolific, high performing teams by believing to look listen & learn before initiating collaboration, coaching, training and facilitation.
Mark Saymen
Title (Agile Agilist)
A career story from Developer to Partner has taken me around the world implementing digital transformation, training, and implementing SAFe. Mark thrives with ambiguity and challenges. Mark welcomes tough questions and complex challenges leveraging the power of Digital to help organizations create a culture of innovation and increase team happiness, fulfillment, and engagement. Some of my tools are Resilience Engineering, DevOps, Coaching, Agile at Scale, Training, and Mindset.
Laurens is an Agile Trainer & Management Consultant and a mentor to leaders creating resilient organizations at any scale. He has a strong background in IT with experience in almost every role. Laurens takes great pride in his work, and it shows in the recommendations he has received over the years. As a Professional Scrum Trainer and SAFe Practice Consultant, he helps to improve the profession of software delivery as well as marketing, human resources, and finance. Laurens brings his experience in enterprise IT since 1999 and on Scrum Teams since 2006 to his teaching, is a driving force in the Agile community, and a sought-after speaker at conferences and events.
Audrey Boydston
SAFe Fellow and SPCT (Scaled Agile, Inc.)
Audrey Boydston is a SAFe Fellow and Strategic Advisor at Scaled Agile and an experienced SPCT, Leadership Coach, and Master Facilitator. Her work focuses on continuous learning, community building, strategy development, and helping leaders create exceptional experiences for their employees and customers. Audrey spent her early career working in leadership roles at financial institutions, including GE Capital, Citigroup, Discover, and Capital One. While at Capital One she transitioned from strategy and product management into Agile coaching, where she successfully rebooted her business unit’s Agile transformation through coaching, re-training, and establishing mentoring programs. At Scaled Agile she co-created a program to help leaders understand their critical role in leading enterprise Lean-Agile transformations. She also co-created a virtual edition of the Training from the BACK of the Room! course with Sharon Bowman and 10 other Certified Trainers around the world.
This online live talk, scheduled for the beginning of May, is dedicated to answering your questions and facilitating a meaningful dialogue on applying agility to address the rapid changes in the sector.
Speakers
Harry Koehnemann
SAFe Fellow and Principal Consultant (Scaled Agile, Inc.)
Harry Koehnemann is a SAFe Fellow and Principal Consultant at Scaled Agile, Inc., where he helps organizations build and deliver solutions faster, more predictably, and with high quality. He has spent the past two decades consulting with aerospace, defense, automotive, and other organizations to adopt better engineering practices, including Lean, Agile, MBSE, requirements management, quality management, and the related activities necessary to support compliance. Harry is a regular presenter on Lean-Agile topics and engineering practices at Agile, Systems Engineering, and government conferences.
Jeff Shupack
SAFe Fellow, President of Advisory Practice (Project & Team)
Jeff Shupack helps organizations deliver some of the world’s most complex virtual and physical products at scale. As a SAFe Fellow & SPCT, he is a sought-after transformation expert focusing on digital enterprise, cyber-physical delivery, and change leadership. Jeff is President of Advisory Practice at Project & Team, specializing in digital transformations within highly regulated and complex environments for the Fortune 100 and government agencies.
Markus Vogg
Global Head of the Business Agility practice (Capgemini Invent)
As Global Head of the Business Agility Practice at Capgemini Invent, Markus has a strong passion for Agile Transformations. In recent years he has focused on helping organizations introduce the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and is continuously working with (senior) stakeholders to achieve a sustainable Agile transformation based on a fundamental shift in mindset. As a SAFe SPCT, he has coached many different corporations across the globe, combining deep knowledge of SAFe with practical knowledge of Agile@Scale in general.
Since the March launch, you have reviewed SAFe 6.0 and considered how it will affect your enterprise. You likely have thought of questions for the teams working on the updated guidance then. This Ask the Experts session is your chance to ask those questions!
Speakers
Deema Dajani
SAFe Fellow, Product Management Director (Scaled Agile)
A SAFe® Fellow and Product Management Director at Scaled Agile, Deema helps large institutions create the environment to shape disruption like a startup with business agility and Lean Portfolio Management (LPM). Deema has spent the past 2 years in researching LPM implementations across various types of organizations and at different stages, she has been synthesizing the proven patterns into online assets that can help change agents implement and advance their LPM. Co-founder of Women in Agile, a non-profit organization focused on breaking barriers and inclusivity in the agile community.
Alysa Kirkpatrick
Director Product Management (Scaled Agile)
Dean Leffingwell
Co-founder, Chief Methodologist (Scaled Agile)
Recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on Lean-Agile best practices, Dean Leffingwell is an entrepreneur and software development methodologist best known for creating SAFe®, the world’s most widely used framework for business agility. His best-selling books, Agile Software Requirements, Scaling Software Agility, and SAFe® Distilled, form much of the basis of modern thinking on Lean-Agile practices and principles. Founder of several successful startups, including Requisite, Inc. (acquired by Rational), Mr. Leffingwell also served as Chief Methodologist to Rally Software, and prior to that, as Sr. Vice President at Rational Software (now part of IBM). He currently serves as Chief Methodologist to Scaled Agile, Inc., which he co-founded in 2011.
Tamara Nation
SAFe® Fellow, Senior Director Product Management (Scaled Agile)
This one-day workshop will provide an overview of SAFe’s comprehensive measurement model and explore how it can be applied across teams, ARTs, and portfolios. Attendees will have the opportunity to consider their own context and design a balanced metrics dashboard to support improvement at all enterprise levels.
When:
April 20, 2023, 9:00 am – April 20, 2023, 5:00 pm MST
The workshop supports everyone involved with building solutions with SAFe®. This may include, but is not limited to, the following:
Cross-functional members of Agile Teams, Agile Release Trains, or Solution Trains running for one PI or longer
A SAFe Portfolio that has already identified its value streams and begun implementing LPM
Full Agile Teams across multiple value streams within a single Portfolio
What attendees will learn
The flow tools and coaching available to them
Current usage of SAFe Flow Metrics within their organization
How each of the SAFe Flow Accelerators applies within their organization
How to align on actions and create a flow-based improvement backlog
How improvement items affect the larger flow of the value stream or Portfolio
Prerequisites
This workshop is designed to support a set of cross- functional attendees from value stream(s) applying SAFe for at least one PI.
What’s included
Workshop materials
Eight hours of facilitation from a SAFe Strategic Advisor or SAFe Fellow
Three hours of prep time with internal SPCs or leaders
Speakers
Rosana (Ro) Johnson
Strategic Advisor (Scaled Agile, Inc.)
Rosana has twenty-five years of experience and is a successful result driven leader. She has an extensive background in transforming people, systems, tools and processes. Her expertise ranges from creating deliverables for complex tooling deployments to transforming teams to agile ways of working to drive productivity while delivering a solid customer/employee experience by accelerating time to market and ensuring quality and business agility. Rosana’s strength is mentoring client leadership teams in changing their language, influencing new habits, and ultimately shifting mindsets. She is known for being the “glue” that unites collaboration between business needs and IT solution
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SPCT, Strategic Advisor (Scaled Agile, Inc.)
Jim has worked with many notable enterprises and government agencies such as Microsoft, Mercedes, Emerson, GM, and NASA assisting the Supply Chain Engineering and other groups, helping them define, implement, evangelize, and train the organisations in a new operating model based on the SAFe framework. While at Microsoft Jim helped to form a team of top notch coaches, acted as an adviser to the leadership teams of the organizations, helped form transformation plans, trained more than 1,000 team members, coached teams to improve their agile maturity, and customized Azure DevOps/VSTS to support the SAFe structure for work tracking and reporting.
Learn how to apply Flow Accelerators to your context in this workshop to deliver value to your customers faster. After instruction and work time, you’ll see how your area of flow affects the larger system.
When:
April 19, 2023, 9:00 am – April 19, 2023, 5:00 pm MST
We designed this eight-hour workshop to support the range of participants needed to optimize one or many value streams.
Who will benefit: The workshop supports everyone involved with building solutions with SAFe®. This may include, but is not limited to, the following: • Cross-functional members of Agile Teams, Agile Release Trains, or Solution Trains running for one PI or longer • A SAFe Portfolio that has already identified its value streams and begun implementing LPM • Full Agile Teams across multiple value streams within a single Portfolio
What attendees will learn: • The flow tools and coaching available to them • Current usage of SAFe Flow Metrics within their organization • How each of the SAFe Flow Accelerators applies within their organization • How to align on actions and create a flow-based improvement backlog • How improvement items affect the larger flow of the value stream or Portfolio
Prerequisites: This workshop is designed to support a set of cross-functional attendees from value stream(s) applying SAFe for at least one PI.
What’s included: • Workshop materials • Eight hours of facilitation from a SAFe Strategic Advisor or SAFe Fellow • Three hours of prep time with internal SPCs or leaders
Speakers
Cheryl Crupi
Methodologist and SAFe Fellow (Scaled Agile, Inc.)
Cheryl Crupi is an internationally recognized speaker, author and executive coach specializing in Lean-Agile change leadership. Cheryl is passionate about achieving the benefits of Agility, starting with the building blocks of team Agility to the full span of enterprise business Agility. In over a decade as an enterprise Agile change champion in Fortune 500 companies, she successfully activated confident, adaptive and innovate Agilists in 40+ countries.
Jim Fowler
Strategic Advisor (Scaled Agile, Inc.)
Jim has worked with many notable enterprises and government agencies such as Microsoft, Mercedes, Emerson, GM, and NASA assisting the Supply Chain Engineering and other groups, helping them define, implement, evangelize, and train the organizations in a new operating model based on the SAFe framework. While at Microsoft Jim helped to form a team of top-notch coaches, acted as an adviser to the leadership teams of the organizations, helped form transformation plans, trained more than 1,000 team members, coached teams to improve their agile maturity, and customized Azure DevOps/VSTS to support the SAFe structure for work tracking and reporting.
Rosana Johnson
Strategic Advisor (Scaled Agile, Inc.)
Rosana has twenty-five years of experience and is a successful result-driven leader. She has an extensive background in transforming people, systems, tools, and processes. Her expertise ranges from creating deliverables for complex tooling deployments to transforming teams to agile ways of working to drive productivity while delivering a solid customer/employee experience by accelerating time to market and ensuring quality and business agility. Rosana’s strength is mentoring client leadership teams in changing their language, influencing new habits, and ultimately shifting mindsets. She is known for being the “glue” that unites collaboration between business needs and IT solutions.
Join our virtual event on Wednesday, March 15, at 12:00 PM MDT/6:00 PM GMT to see the full launch and learn what it means for your organization. Sign up to receive a reminder one hour before the event to ensure you don’t miss it.
Measure What Matters in Business Agility Workshops
This one-day workshop will provide an overview of this comprehensive measurement model and explore how it can be applied across teams, ARTs, and portfolios.
When:
March 8, 2023, 9:00 am – March 8, 2023, 5:00 pm MST
Business Agility sets new performance standards for organizations, requiring fast, effective responses to emerging opportunities. This changes what we measure, how we measure, and how we use the data to support key decision-making. Measurement becomes a critical enabler of continuous business performance improvement.
Learning Objectives
At the end of this workshop attendees should be able to:
Explain the three measurement domains that help organizations measure and grow toward Business Agility
Describe how KPIs and OKRs are used to define measurable outcomes
Apply the SAFe assessments to measure competency
Select appropriate flow metrics for each level of the framework
Identify a key set of metrics that support improved decision-making in your Enterprise
Speakers
Jim Fowler
SPCT and Strategic Advisor (Scaled Agile, Inc.)
Jim has worked with many notable enterprises and government agencies such as Microsoft, Mercedes, Emerson, GM, and NASA assisting the Supply Chain Engineering and other groups, helping them define, implement, evangelize, and train the organisations in a new operating model based on the SAFe framework. While at Microsoft Jim helped to form a team of top notch coaches, acted as an adviser to the leadership teams of the organizations, helped form transformation plans, trained more than 1,000 team members, coached teams to improve their agile maturity, and customized Azure DevOps/VSTS to support the SAFe structure for work tracking and reporting.
Andrew has been supporting organizations with their Agile transformation for more than 10 years, drawing on his experiences from software development, project management, and product management. He previously led the Agile Services Practice across EMEA for CA Technologies (formerly Rally) and is a regular speaker at Agile conferences and contributor to the Agile community.
This one-day event, hosted by Scaled Agile at the Ronald Reagan Building, will explore the challenges agencies face in implementing Agile acquisitions within the unique constraints of the US Government.
When:
April 11, 2023, 9:00 am – April 11, 2023, 5:00 pm EST
Where:
Ronald Reagan Building – 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20004
Who:
Agile Coach, Consultant, Director, SAFe Program Consultant
This year’s conference focuses on developing Agile Leadership skills for an Agile (SAFe) transformation. The conference will provide insight and ideas around common United States Government staff concerns such as Agile contracting, measuring an Agile acquisition, and strategies to build an agile workforce.
Prior to the conference, there will be a one-day workshop on April 10th. You can attend one or both days based on the pass you purchase. Group discounts are available for teams with five or more attendees.
Speakers
Check back as we confirm additional speakers.
Dr. Steve Mayner
SAFe Fellow and Principal Consultant (Scaled Agile Inc.)
Expert thought leader, speaker, coach, consultant, and trainer in the principles and practices of agility at an enterprise level. Extensive experience building positive relationships with C-Level executives and management teams, translating business goals and objectives into initiatives that provide IT capabilities in support of organizational investment themes. Strong background in both Federal and commercial organizations.
