Agile Workshops for Practitioners

Empowering Everyone

Choose from One of Two Interactive Workshops

The two most critical and, to many organisations, novel roles in any successful adoption of the Scaled Agile Framework are those of the Product Manager and Release Train Engineer.

In these two interactive, practitioner driven workshops we will take a deep dive into what it really means to adopt, resource and carry out these roles when applying SAFe in large, often quite traditional, internal software development organisations.

Join one of these sessions to find out what it’s really like to adopt SAFe from experienced practitioners who have done it and know what its like once the gloss of the new has worn off.

Each session will be a mixture of short presentations and round-table discussions focussed on the reality of applying SAFe and its impact on not just the agile development teams themselves but everyone else involved in the funding, development, deployment and exploitation of business applications.

Come along and get your questions answered by practitioners who have been there, done that and seen both the good and the bad of applying SAFe.

WORKSHOP #1

Product Management in Practice: Generating Concrete Business Results

Join Manal Koujan Senior Product Manager for a revolutionary new Profit and Loss platform at a global bank, Marc Schröter and Lars Bjerre Hansen, Product Management at SimCorp, and Brian Kerr from IJI as they discuss the reality and practicalities of Product Ownership in large and complex environments.

Discussion topics:

• Epic Forecasting
• Surviving in Complex Funding Environments
• Managing Competing Customers
• Demonstrating Value and not just Features
• Empowering Your Business
• Forming Product Management Teams to Cope with Complex Stakeholder Communities

And most importantly questions from the audience.

WORKSHOP #2

The Reality of Being a Release Train Engineer: Beyond Big Room Planning and Agile Coaching

Join Manish Patel, Release Train Engineer at a global bank, Marc Ellis, Director Strategic Program Management at Mastercard, Malene Krohn, VP of Services, SimCorp and Frank Iversen, Release Train Engineer, Front Office ART, at SimCorp, along with Ian Spence from IJI as they discuss the reality and practicalities of being a Release Train Engineer.

Discussion topics:

• Measuring What Counts
• Sustaining a High Performance Organisation, Moving Fast and at Scale
• Empowering Teams as a Servant Leader
• From Component Teams to Feature Teams
• Moving to Continuous Deployment - SAFe and DevOps
• Co-ordinating Highly Distributed Teams

And most importantly questions from the audience.

Both workshops have limited capacity and we will confirm attendance after you have submitted your application to attend.

Do you have some pressing questions that you want answered but can’t address them in a group session? We’re booking one-on-one sessions from 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm where you can spend 20 minutes with an Agile Consultant who will freely provide feedback and guidance on your agile programme.

Interested but can’t attend? Complete this form and we’ll email you the presentation materials after the event.

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SPEAKERS

Workshop 1: Product Management in Practice: Generating Concrete Business Results

Manal Koujan

Product Manager
Global German Bank
Manal Koujan has more than 15 years of experience providing guidance and direction to globally distributed teams delivering critical software within the Investment and Banking industry. Manal currently works as an independent consultant at a German bank and is presently the Product Manager for the banks’s strategic Profit and Loss Platform. She is a certified Scaled Agile Program Consultant.

Marc Schröter

Senior Vice President, Head of Product Management
SimCorp
Marc is responsible for the product strategy for SimCorp Dimension. He has been with SimCorp since 1995 and has worked as a consultant with investment managers on virtually all aspects of front-, middle- and back-office operations. He holds a Master’s degree in Engineering from Aalborg University and a Bachelor’s degree in Finance from Copenhagen Business School.

Lars Bjerre Hansen

Middle Office Product Manager, Product Management
SimCorp
Lars, M.Sc. in Mathematics and Economics, joined SimCorp in 1999 as part of SimCorp‘s special implementation team, acting as the Domain Manager for Performance since 2003 and heading up the middle office team in Product Management since 2012. Lars is an active member of both national and international networks of Performance professionals, and has since 2009 been the Danish representative in the GIPS governance structure. He has utilized his special knowledge within performance at several SimCorp Dimension implementation projects.

Brian Kerr

Principal Consultant
Ivar Jacobson International
Brian is an experienced agile coach, consultant, trainer, and change agent. He has spent the last 20 years in the software and IT consulting industry as a practitioner and coach, and is one of the Founders of IJI in the UK. Brian specializes in the adoption of key software development practices in a pragmatic and sustainable way. He has broad expertise in agile, iterative and incremental software development processes such as SCRUM, the Essential Unified Process, the Unified Process, and the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).

Workshop #2: The Reality of Being a Release Train Engineer: Beyond Big Planning and Agile Coaching

Manish Patel

Release Train Engineer
Global German Bank
Manish Patel has 15 years of experience leading globally distributed teams to deliver software systems for the Investment Banking industry. Manish strives to establish, trust amongst all team members, sustainable delivery, and continuous improvement in an ever changing environment. He is currently working at a Tier 1 Bank for a Product Control Platform that adopted SAFe in 2014.

Marc Ellis

Director, Strategic Program Management
Mastercard
Marc has 15 years of experience in program delivery and portfolio management in the finance industry. He began his career with the London Stock Exchange. From there, he moved to a role in the Currency Exchange and Travel industry with Travelex before moving to his current position at Mastercard. At Mastercard, he is responsible for the company’s Prepaid Management Services division’s early adoption of SAFe within the wider organisation. He has served as the Release Train Engineer, ensuring that Mastercard and the team continues to build on the early success of its implementation.

Malene Krohn

Vice President, PD Services
SimCorp
Malene joined SimCorp in 1998 and is heading up the Product Division Services unit, collecting the ‘shared services’ necessary for an integrated product with a common release cycle. She has been a key player in the agile transformation from its initiation.

Frank Iversen

Release Train Engineer, Front Office ART
SimCorp
Frank first joined SimCorp in 1997, but left again to seek challenges elsewhere in 2005. He however came back to SimCorp in 2007 and has since held various positions within management and project management. When SimCorp went agile in 2016, Frank was appointed Release Train Engineer in Front Office heading up 13 scrum teams with 100+ people.

Ian Spence

Chief Scientist
Ivar Jacobson International
Ian was one of the first European SAFe Program Consultant Trainer’s; a reflection of not just his knowledge of SAFe but also his long experience working with Dean Leffingwell over the last 15 years, and his vast experience of successfully leading large-scale agile transformations. He has coached and consulted a number of companies through their agile transformations including Schneider Electric (over 18 teams across three continents), Nordea (over 100 people in one room), MunichRe and Ericsson Modems. Ian regularly appears at conferences, publishes books and articles, and conducts webinars and seminars.