A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing

Would you try a new sport that involves risk of injury or harm without some form of guidance, training, or coaching? For most people, the answer is likely to be a very firm “no!” In contrast, organizations and teams new to Agile, or scaling, often adopt a “we’ll try it anyway” approach. The results vary from wasted time to delivery disasters.

As a keen amateur figure skater, our speaker Mark Warner has found that his journey from first stepping onto the ice to successfully competing, closely mirrors how teams attempt to apply Agile. You’ll learn how, with Agile as with ice skating, many slips and falls can be avoided. You’ll discover some warning signs to look out for and actions you can take toward a smoother, safer winning team.

Prerequisite knowledge: The role of a product owner and basic knowledge of the Agile framework.

Learning Outcomes

• Explain how just a little knowledge can harm a project team and its delivery
• Recognize the need for adequate training, guidance, and coaching to successfully implement any Agile approach.
• Identify behaviors in teams that indicate dangerously low levels of knowledge and understanding
• Identify new ways to communicate the need for training and coaching.

Meet your speaker, Mark Warner

Mark Warner is an ICAgile certified Agile Coach (IPC-ACC) with experience coaching, mentoring, and supporting large, globally distributed software development teams. Mark is very familiar with the challenges of coordinating on-site and offshore multi-vendor teams. Mark has spent much of his working life leading teams, first as a Project Manager, then as Scrum Master, then as head of Agile PMO, and now as an Agile Coach. He’s helped teams that were misunderstanding and struggling with adopting Scrum, Kanban, and Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). Mark especially enjoys helping teams flourish by improving estimating and planning capabilities as well as communication and coordination, both within and between teams. A keen believer in continual improvement and lifelong learning, Mark holds an MBA (specializing in IT Management) together with various other academic and professional qualifications. He has a background in business intelligence and database solution development.

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