June Meeting: How to hire the right Agile teammate

Looking for the right Agile Developer, Tester or ScrumMaster?  Previous knowledge and experience are certainly key considerations when hiring Agile teammates, but how do you know if they would be a good fit?

Come join Greg Barrett from the Oliver Group as he explains how a behavioral assessment can really help you to make key business decisions such as hiring the right Developer or Tester.  Learn about the business case for objective behavioral assessments. When you know what motivates people and can match them to the right role, you can better motivate those you hire and your retention rates will improve. You can save thousands of dollars by making the right hire the first time. 

In this interactive session, Greg will show you how you can apply this knowledge to hire the right teammate, then motivate, retain and coach your team, leading to higher performance and improved outcomes. Complete a complimentary Predictive Index Survey by June 11 (2 business days before the event) and receive your results at the event!

Greg Barrett is a dynamic professional with a wealth of experience in sales and as a senior level strategist. His track record of success ranges from start-up ventures (including a software start-up) to large corporations on a national scale.  At The Oliver Group, Greg works primarily with CEO’s and other senior leaders on strategic planning, team building, succession planning, executive search, coaching, conflict resolution and sales coaching.

When: June 13, 2013  (Second Thursday).
Networking: 5:30-6pm.
Program: 6-7:30pm.
Where: Max Training. 4900 Parkway Drive Suite 160 , Mason (Cincinnati), OH 45040

PMP's: This event counts for 1 (one) PDU

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Complementary Predictive Index Survey

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May Meeting: Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) - Agile Adoption For The Enterprise

For those folks seeking to adopt agile in complex, large scale environments where silos are alive and well (basically every company in Cincinnati), SAFe is for you.  SAFe is a framework created to scale agile to the enterprise.  Unlike other scaling models, SAFe assumes you are working in a more traditional enterprise environment with all the common constraints that come with it.  SAFe was created by Dean Leffingwell and has been credited for the successful agile adoption at several XXL companies.  If you would like to learn more about SAFe, come listen to my introduction and check out the Scaled Agile Framework website.

Sean Heuer (CSM, CSP, PMI-ACP, SPC) is an experienced agile practitioner and agile evangelist. He has a passion for helping people improve and realize their full potential through agile. He has a thirst for knowledge, which he seeks to appease through reading every book, blog, and article he can find on organizational design, business, psychology, organizational change management, teaching and learning, and anything else that catches his eye.
Sean is currently working as an Agile Advisor and Program Manager, supporting an agile transformation at Vantiv here in Cincinnati.  In Sean’s previous position as an Agile Coach with Rally Software, he supported several SAFe adoptions and Agile Release Train launches.  He also co-delivered a Leading SAFe certification course and is enabled to teach SAFe certification courses in the future.

When: May 09, 2013  (Second Thursday).
Networking: 5:30-6pm.
Program: 6-7:30pm.
Where: Max Training. 4900 Parkway Drive Suite 160 , Mason (Cincinnati), OH 45040

PMP's: This event counts for 1 (one) PDU

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Sean shared the concepts of SAFe with the Agile Cincinnati Group.

Thanks for sharing your experiences with us!! 

                      

And the book winner was:

  

Cardinal Solutions Becomes Gold Sponsor!

Cardinal Solutions purchased annual Gold level sponsorship this month!  Please thank them for their support when you see them at the meeting this month.  Agile Cincinnati would not be able to cover our operating costs or provide great programs to you without the sponsorship of organizations like Cardinal.  Click on the image below to find our more about our latest sponsor or directly navigate to www.cardinalsolutions.com.

April Meeting: Reinvigorating Agile Teams with Innovation Games

Innovation Games® are serious games that can be used to super-charge Agile teams in the product planning process.

It sounds crazy, but research shows that human beings are hard-wired to express themselves and interact with each other through play. Engaging your customers, agile team members, and stakeholders through games delivers deeper, more actionable insight than is available through stodgy brainstorming sessions. Innovation Games® for Agile Teams enables agile practitioners to identify customer requirements, improve retrospectives, prioritize backlogs, create better release plans, and much more. 

While there is a lot to love about Agile development, some practices can get tiresome. Retrospectives stop working when teams become bored with answering the same three questions (“what worked, what didn’t work, what should we change?”). Prioritizing a product backlog in a single meeting before, or during, release planning using a spreadsheet isn’t very engaging. Developing and presenting a product roadmap using PowerPoint gets pretty old, especially when you can’t find a way to show the growth in functionality of your product.

Innovation Games® are fun ways to collaborate with management teams to better understand internal perceptions and market needs, improve holistic design thinking, discover new business opportunities, drive strategy and product road map decisions. Innovation Games® Online enabled the Scrum Alliance to solicit and collaboratively identify, shape and prioritize new and/or improved services while generating almost 100 unique ideas on how to “grow” the Scrum Alliance. In our April session, you will get similar hands-on, practical experience, and explore a broad range of serious games, along with background on how the games are used in context.

Agile should be fun! And when you integrate the games described in this session into your Agile practice, it will be.

Scott Jacobs is the CEO/Marketing Strategist/Business Coach of Harvest Consulting. Since 2007, as a Trained Facilitator for Innovation Games,® Jacobs has successfully used these proven techniques (serious games) for working with small groups of customers to create higher value products and services and as a means of fueling innovation by understanding what customers really want.

When: April 11, 2013  (Second Thursday).
Networking: 5:30-6pm.
Program: 6-7:30pm.
Where: Max Training. 4900 Parkway Drive Suite 160 , Mason (Cincinnati), OH 45040

PMP's: This event counts for 1 (one) PDU

Door Prize Sponsor

This meeting was very interactive. Scott divided us into groups and we played a very interesting game that helped us prioritize the features of our "product". Thanks Scott!! Very informative and fun night! 

                   

           

And the book winner was: Mark Wavle