AgileDays'18: content is the head of everything

We have been making this conference for the 12th time in a row, and each time the careful choice of speakers and topics remains unchanged. Any performance is selected by the program committee. Let's try to show how everything works.

We already wrote in a previous post that before our program committee consisted of ScrumTrek employees. We ourselves selected reports and worked with speakers, but this year we have more than 200 applications for speeches, and it became clear that we need to expand.

There are 9 topics announced at AgileDays 2018. Each topic is a future conference track. Each track has its own curator. Inside, we call him the "producer of the track."

Meet the


Agile for All Track by
Michael Podurets , Qiwi
Developed and tested software for aircraft. In a flexible world since 2008. He was a scrum master and product owner. He went into consulting to help other organizations build effective processes. He worked mainly with large Western and Russian banks, telecom companies. Now works at Qiwi.


Track “Agile in large products and programs”
Lilia Alekseeva , Sberbank
Agile evangelist, Owner of the product “Agile Production Process”, an expert in scaling agile approaches in large corporations.

Track “Flexible Organizations”
Evgeny Dzhamalov , M. Video
He has been working in the IT industry for 18 years, starting with the “Enikeyschik”, developer, analyst, architect. Managerial experience lies in the areas of design, vendor, resource and release. Transformer, facilitator and mentor. He has rich experience in project management, scrum-master and agile-coach.


Track "Agile in Public Administration"
Ivan Dubrovin , ScrumTrek
Agile coach ScrumTrek, leader and founder of the SES-Agile movement, expert in Agile application in the public sector, specialist in the field of Agile economics, certified trainer ICAgile.

Track "Lean and Kanban"
Vasily Cheptsov , Avito
Has been developing since 2001. He worked as a web designer, developer, technical / IT director, system / business analyst, project / product manager.


Track "DevOps and Engineering Culture"
Sergey Baranov , ScrumTrek
15 years in business! Behind the development, architecture, business development and startups. ScrumTrek came to develop engineering, but it soon became clear - processes, engineering, culture, products - these are indivisible parts of a single whole. ScrumTrek is currently developing DevOps and working with large companies to help them make changes leading to Business Agility.


Track “Agile Leadership and Scrum Mastery”
Alexey Yan , Sberbank
Agile coach, former developer, product manager, scrum master. Over the past 4 years, he has been launching agile teams and transforming organizations. Professional Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Product Owner, Certified Scrum Professional


Motivation and Psychology at Agile track
Natalia Gulchevskaya , Business Leadership Consulting Group
Certified ACC ICF coach, prize winner Svetlana Chumakova Leadership Coaching Awards 2017, member of the Board of Directors of the Russian branch of the ICF International Coaching Federation 2014-2015



Product Management Track
Team Octoberry
And it happens when the curator is not one person, but a team of people. In this case, a team of guys from Octoberry who help companies make successful products and services and increase the expertise of product managers.

What is the producer responsible for?

First of all, for the "purity" of the topic. The producer makes sure that the reports comply with the general concept of the track, which, by the way, he can refine and change.
Technically, the system works like this: an application for speech "flies" to the site. On the board of the program committee, a potential speaker card is automatically created with a note about the selected topic. The producer of the corresponding track receives a notification of a new application. If the topic of the report corresponds to the stated theme of the track, the application is accepted for work.

Of course, a producer alone cannot physically verify all reports, therefore, in agreement with the other members of the program committee, we also engage assistant reviewers. The reviewer is always an experienced speaker and competent expert.
We do not hide information about reviews and producers anywhere. On the contrary, we are proud to announce them on our conference website.

How we work with speakers

Inside, we call this process a report review. We will use this terminology here too.

Why do I need a review?

• To understand whether the report for the conference is suitable or not: relevant, interesting, is it consistent with Agile topics, etc.
• Give feedback to the speaker on the content, style of presentation, presentation, so that the report will turn out really cool.

How does the review go

• We agree on a 30 minute call with the speaker. We ask him to prepare a draft presentation or at least empty slides with headings. This will help the speaker to think over his story a little at the preliminary stage.
• 5 minutes - an acquaintance, a story about the purpose of the review and the format of the review.
• We usually tell the speaker that the purpose of the review is to help him make a cool report through feedback.
• 10 minutes - a short story by the speaker. At this time, it is better not to interrupt him and record feedback during these 10 minutes.
• 15 minutes - feedback from the reviewer in dialogue mode.
• If necessary, agree on the next call.

What to look for when reviewing

Style of presentation

It is desirable that it be informal, as if you are communicating with your team or friends.

Illustrations, artifacts

We always recommend inserting photographs (boards, teams, meetings, etc.), screenshots (Jira, requirements, excel, etc.) into the presentation. With such artifacts, your report does not look like an empty theory, and it’s easier for people to perceive information and “land” it.

Format

One proven and effective is Story Telling. In this format, the report is built on the principle of stories or fairy tales: there is a protagonist who finds himself in a difficult situation, tries to get out of it, but he doesn’t succeed, he reflects, comes up with a solution, and it works. The presentation of cases is based on this principle. This style of report involves the participants, makes them empathize. But, of course, you can use other presentation formats. For example, if it is a review report.

Involvement of the hall

It is advisable to periodically throw questions into the hall so that the participants turn on and think out the report. This allows for engagement. For example, do not hesitate to ask the audience what they would do in such a situation, what tools they would use to solve such a problem, etc.

A minimum of text A

hackneyed advice, which is still not listened to a lot :) In presentations, it is advisable to avoid a large amount of text, otherwise you will put the conference participants before the choice, either read the text or listen to the speaker. Try to use more visual images and short phrases in large print, capturing the main thoughts.

And, perhaps, the most important - the report should have been interesting :)

For our speakers, we do special trainings in the evenings to help prepare better and hone our oratory skills.

Formal Reporting Requirements

When registering an application on the site, any speaker gets acquainted with our rules:

• Compliance with at least one of the conference topics.
• Minimum theory, maximum cases / practical experience.
• Focus on solving one problem (or several related problems). Too general reports, such as “How Agile Works with Us,” will be rejected. Reports where there are no problems or there is advertising will be rejected.
• If your similar report was already at any conference, you should explain to the program committee what differences will be.

We do not consider:

• theoretical reports and reports in the spirit of "as I understand what Agile";
• reports of Agile consultants without cases and names of specific companies where these cases were;
• about your own pseudo-scrum;
• selfPR;
• obvious things, for example: scrum in a small studio for 6 people;
• silo scrum, for example: sales scrum (unless they are on the value chain).

In conclusion, it should be said that the rules are the same for everyone and there are no exceptions, including sponsors of the conference. All our sponsors know that you can’t just pay the money and come up with an advertising report or not go through a review on the basis that "we pay you money." In fairness, all sponsors treat this with understanding and gratitude. It is important to explain in advance that a bad performance will be remembered much more clearly than the sponsor’s logo on the badges and press will, which means sponsorship money will be wasted.

We hope that this post will be useful to both our speakers and conference participants who want to understand why the program turned out to be so, and to daredevils who dream, or maybe already prepare their own IT events.

Visit us on March 22 and 23! The program is very saturated. Especially for Habr’s readers, a 10% discount on the HABRAD18 promotional code .