Agiles 2011 Buenos Aires, Argentina – Agile Growth in Latin American

4th Annual Agiles Conference

I write this on my return journey home from Buenos Aires, Argentina and Speaking at the Agiles 2011. This is the fourth annual Agiles Conference. The organizers should be commended as the conference has improved each year according to attendees including Katia Sullivan who has attended since the first instance and was the advocate within VersionOne that landed sponsorship for the conference from VersionOne since the first.

I had just come from speaking at Agile Cambridge and attending the LSSC Lean /Kanban in Antwerp. IMO the Organizers of Agiles 2011 did as good of a job in most area as these other two conferences and in some areas ,they did better.

Jeff Patton - Product Discovery Using Story Mapping

Agiles 2011 started off with a keynote address from Jeff Patton on the “” which was very well received. Jeff’s workshops on the use of story mapping

were very popular. There were probably 3 to 4 times the number of folks that wanted to attend than could, due to the room size the workshop attendance was limited to 30 for each session. This was like dejavue from Agile 2011 in Salt Lake where there was a much larger room, but standing room only.

My favorite talks were Jeff Patton’s keynote and his workshop on Product Discovery using story mapping.

My talk was attended to capacity and seemed well received. My talk was entitled “Establishing and Maintaining Collaboration and Transparency – The Foundation of Effective Teams”. In my session I introduced the attendees to a non-technical tool, Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI), that allows for self-discovery about one’s Motivational Value System and Valued Relating Style. This knowledge when applied and practiced gives members of a team an understanding of not only how to best relate to those with different relating styles than their own, but also why they communicate and behave.

Mike DePaoli speaking at Agiles 2011

SDI looks at behavior from 2 perspectives, when things are going good and when in conflict or facing opposition. It also provides a fairly simple 3stage conflict resolution model which is an excellent tool for team members to utilize to recognize when the Type of conflict they are engaged in and how best to handle it given the style of their opposition and their ‘conflict sequence’.

During my workshop we only scratched the surface of how SDI can be leverage to help foster openness and trust which are the keys to realizing collaboration and transparency. If you’d like to find out more about SDI, visit the website Www.PersonalStrengthsTraing.com

The conference ended with a party at a club that had been reserved for the event. The party started with a conference retrospective with all who attended the party. This note only demonstrates commitment to Agile, walking the talk, but also to continuous improvement. Kudos!

I hope to have the chance to attend and speak at the conference next year.