2021 Chapter Meeting Presentations

January 2021      Russell Cotter  - Storytelling for Leaders

February 2021     Brian Irwin - How the Socio-Economic Approach to Management (SEAM) Leverages Hidden Cost and Inclusion for Lasting Change

March 2021         Recruiter Panel

April 2021        Cassandra Faris - Emoji and Visual Communication

May 2021             Thomas Haver - The Rise and Benefits of Robotic Process Automation

June 2021           Emily Midgley - What’s Product Ownership All About?

July 2021             Summer Social

August 2021        10th Annual BACon Conference

September 2021  Kyle Morton - The Science of Focus: Unleashing the Power of Focused Teams

October 2021      Judy Alter - Five Characteristics Needed to be a Great Leader

November 2021   Logan Daigle - Effectively Using Value Stream Mapping, A Workshop

December 2021   Happy Holidays! 

Storytelling for Leaders

Storytelling for leaders is about helping to form the message for people to inspire them to action. The actions can be to alter or try out new behaviors, approaches to thinking or to re-assess conventional wisdom - which is rarely wise. I have used storytelling as a natural way to help engage audiences throughout various roles in my career to great effect (so it's nothing new)!

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How the Socio-Economic Approach to Management (SEAM) Leverages Hidden Cost and Inclusion for Lasting Change

Agile, as an industry, is failing many organizations. Most organizations are not experiencing the results expected from their investment in agile framework adoption. Therein lies the problem, organizations are adopting frameworks and expecting their chosen framework to manifest agility. However, they've not done the requisite work to enable their chosen delivery framework to achieve the desired results; they've not yet transformed. To be effective, agile frameworks require a different mental model of management and culture than what was conceived in the Industrial era. But, how is that done? Culture and mental models do not simply change through training, slogans on a poster, or implementing the prescribed roles and ceremonies outlined in a delivery framework.

 Enabling an agile culture requires pragmatic and actionable steps, which SEAM provides. SEAM was created to counteract what has been described as the TFW virus, named after early management theorists Fredrick Taylor, Henri Fayol, and Max Weber. Every step in the process is taken with specific intent and is supported by data gathered from over two-thousand interventions. SEAM works in part because it targets the organization system, as opposed to the individuals. Individual change is achieved by creating a system that allows individuals to have a new experience. These new experiences inform beliefs and attitudes which inspire behaviors and actions that provide positive results. As an industry, the agile community MUST do better; we owe it to organizations, ourselves, and society. If we do not take proven steps to enable the promise of the values and principles encapsulated within the Agile Manifesto, we risk it being reduced to nothing more than words captured on a web page.

 This session will explore why culture change is so difficult, present key SEAM principles, and help participants understand some of the tools used during a SEAM intervention. Learning to lead interventions takes practice through apprenticeship and guided coaching, but attendees will leave with an overview of the SEAM intervention process and why it's so effective. Participants will also gain a high-level understanding of how to identify and calculate hidden costs within their organization.

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Emoji and Visual Communication

From cave paintings to emoji, humans have always used images to communicate. Now we live in a world where communication is increasingly text-based. It can be hard to convey the emotion, subtext, and nuances of verbal communication through email, Slack, texts, and social media. This talk will discuss how emoji and other visuals can enhance your written communications. You’ll learn how and when to use them, with a focus on professional settings. You’ll also consider the challenges of relying on visuals to communicate. Along the way, you’ll discover how ASCII art and smileys became emoji and how they continue to evolve. If you’ve ever wondered why it took so long to get a taco emoji or why your social media feeds are full of memes, this session is for you.

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The Rise and Benefits of Robotic Process Automation

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a term given to technology that allows developers to programmatically emulate the actions of a human to execute a business process. RPA often operates on the user interface (UI) layer to capture data or interact with an application or across multiple applications to perform tasks that are considered repetitive or time-consuming. Originally focused on business processes, many RPA solutions now integrate with SDLC tools. While the promises of easy adoption and scaling are made by almost every vendor, the reality is long-term commitment to an RPA program is the same as any new application. In this presentation, the audience will learn about the benefits of RPA, multiple RPA use cases, and how RPA can be assimilated into an enterprise.

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What’s Product Ownership All About?

As more organizations transition from project-centric models to a product-centric view, it is important to understand how product ownership is evolving and how that affects business analysts working in this space. What is Product Ownership all about? Is there overlap in the roles Product Owners and Business Analysts play on project teams? What skills and techniques are important in the role?

In this presentation we’ll discuss:
· An overview of Product Ownership
· The role of the Product Owner and Business Analysis – the differences
· What skills does a Product Owner need?
· Business Analysis techniques and skills that give you an advantage as a Product Owner

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The Science of Focus: Unleashing the Power of Focused Teams

Coffee runs, manager drive-by, hallway conversations, pressing walk-up questions, texts, IMs, DMs, Email, Frequent Meetings - so many different voices calling for our attention. In our modern environments, we become busy as can be, but sometimes not accomplishing things that are important. In this session we will look at some of the research from Industrial and Organization Psychology that offers useful input into how we are able to focus and what situations are not conducive to focus. We will then spend time in groups discussing and evaluating approaches to help increase the quality focus of our agile teams.

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Five Characteristics Needed to be a Great Leader

A leader is not a job title but can be someone at any level. A leader is a coach that helps a person or group to develop. Today's business environment is collaborative and resembles more of a sports team mindset. Athletes have a "team-first" attitude. Leaders need to be mentors and develop their team or peers. Business Analysts can have more influence on the company direction than upper management. A Senior Business Analyst must be a leader and mentor.

Five Characteristics:
1. Ego: A Leader needs to put their own ego aside.
2. Instill a team attitude: Team members need to be flexible for the team's good.
3. Encourage Innovation and Questions: Leaders encourage questions and new ideas.
4. Encourage Excellence over Perfection: Team members must accept they will never be perfect.
5. Lead with Your Heart: A Leader shows how much they care for their team.

Learning Objectives:
1. Why BAs must be leaders and mentors.
2. How to become better BAs by leveraging leadership skills.
3. Why other team members better accept BAs as leaders.

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Effectively Using Value Stream Mapping, A Workshop

Have you ever been interested in exactly how to run a value stream mapping exercise? This workshop will give you the knowledge and experience to help answer that question, as well as facilitate your own session as soon as you return to work.

We will define the following:

1. What are value streams?

2. What is value stream mapping?

3. Why do I use value stream mapping?

4. What metrics do I use to measure my value stream?

5. What is the Theory of Constraints and how to apply it to value stream mapping.

The workshop will start as an information session to get you familiar with the things to define above. Then we will work together to map a pre-defined value stream so that you can learn how to facilitate the session.

During the actual mapping session you will learn:

1. How to map a current value stream, what metrics to capture, how to help the team understand these metrics

2. Take the current state value stream and analyze it through the Theory of Constraints

3. Produce a future state value stream with improvements that need to be made

4. Create an analysis for next steps of improvement after the future state value stream is met.

If you come to this workshop, you can expect the following outcomes:

1. When and why to use value stream mapping

2. How to convince your team to use value stream mapping as a tool

3. How to capture a value stream and analyze it

4. How to continue to use value stream mapping and analysis to improve people (team), process, and tooling.       

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