Integrating Systems Thinking into Enterprise Agile With the Lessons of Lean
ÜberConf
Denver · July 16 - 19, 2013
About this Presentation
While Scrum and XP have become very popular in agile development shops, most companies adopting them run into problems beyond just a few teams. These challenges often fall into a common set of patterns, which points to a lack of systems thinking—the process of understanding how things influence one another within a larger whole.
Alan Shalloway shares his ideas on how the agile community can move beyond its team-centric approach to adopt a more holistic, systems-based approach. Systems thinking creates new opportunities to create substantially larger development teams—Alan calls them “pan-teams.” These teams work interdependently with a common vision and context. Pan-teams enhance the motivations for the teams and individuals to collaborate as a normal part of their daily work thus reducing the amount of forced collaboration. Although not a panacea, systems thinking provides a better platform to solve enterprise-wide challenges because your organization learns to approach problem-solving holistically and avoid the trap of unintended consequences

Lead Author of Design Patterns Explained, Essential Skills for Agile Developer
Al Shalloway is the founder and CEO of Net Objectives. With over 40 years of experience, Al is an industry thought leader in Lean, Kanban, product portfolio management, Scrum and agile design. He helps companies transition to Lean and Agile methods enterprise-wide as well teaches courses in these areas. Al is a SAFe Program Consultant as well as a certified Kanban instructor by the Lean Kanban University. Al has developed training and coaching methods for Lean-Agile that have helped Net Objectives' clients achieve long-term, sustainable productivity gains. He is a popular speaker at prestigious conferences worldwide. He is the primary author of Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design, Lean-Agile Pocket Guide for Scrum Teams, Lean-Agile Software Development: Achieving Enterprise Agility and Essential Skills for the Agile Developer. Al has worked in literally dozens of industries over his career. He is a co-founder and board member for the Lean Software and Systems Consortium. He has a Masters in Computer Science from M.I.T. as well as a Masters in Mathematics from Emory University.