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APLN Leadership Summit


26 July 2006
At Agile 2006, Minneapolis, MN
Note: This summit sold out!
You can sign up now for the London Summit on 7 Novemeber 2006!
For details, click here!
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Introduction

The Executive Summit from Agile Development Conference and Agile2005 has been refactored into the APLN Leadership Summit to include the exploration of agile leadership of projects and enterprises. Under the guidance of the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN), the summit objectives, are to connect, develop, and support great project and enterprise leaders.


This Summit offers you a unique opportunity to start or to continue your journey towards being a great Agile Leader. The summit targets both new and seasoned Agile leaders – and it targets both organizational leaders and project leaders. This is your chance to spend a whole day with some of the world’s leading experts in the area of Agile Leadership, to network with them and to share your experiences and concerns with them and other leaders, who are in the same situation as yourself.

The Summit

The program, for novice to expert agile leaders who are interested in learning more, educates through a tutorial and experience track in parallel with discovery in think tank breakout sessions that build on each other as the day progresses. For 2006, the one-day APLN Leadership Summit format provides:

  • Networking opportunities throughout the day
  • A suite of intensive seminars and experience reports on How to Be an Agile Leader.
  • "Think Tank" discussion sessions on Agile Leadership with topics addressing advanced leadership tools, experiences, lessons learned, and issues yet to be resolved, decided by the group.
  • A panel discussion over lunch where practicing agile leaders will discuss the Value of Agile Leadership in the Enterprise. Panelists include Steven Ambrose, Director IT, DTE Energy, Bud Phillips, Vice President of Capital One's Decisioning Services, Peter George, Senior VP, Kronos, Inc., and Israel Gat, BMC.

In an open forum, participants move from venue to venue as the day progresses.

Tutorial and Experience Track Discovery Think Tank Track
Networking Breakfast
Event and Iteration 1 Expectation Setting
  "What is an Agile Leader"
By Tim Lister
"Share War Stories"
"How to Be an Agile Leader"
By Jim Highsmith
"Explore War Stories"
Outcomes and Retrospective
Lunch Panel: "The Value of Agile Leadership To The Enterprise"
Four Executives talk about leading an Agile company.
Iteration 2 Expectation Setting
"Leading From a Position of No Power"
Experience Reports (details below)
 "Extract Agile Leadership Strategies"
"Leading Agile in a Non-Agile Environment"
Experience Reports (details below)
 "Going Really, Really Deep"
Outcomes, Retrospective and Next Steps
Networking

Agenda Overview

After a networking breakfast, participants participate in the planning of the Think Tank sessions by identifying discussion topics and grouping them into breakout sessions during the Event and Iteration 1 Expectation Setting. The Think Tank breakout sessions run concurrently, with each session building on the previous sessions. Attendees will discover, share, and develop tools and techniques for becoming great leaders in their organization.


The Tutorial and Experience Track begins with two tutorials:

  • What is an Agile Leader, presented by Tim Lister, providing the principles of Agile Project Leadership in the framework of the Declaration of Interdependence, and
  • How to Be an Agile Leader, taught by Jim Highsmith, presenting sample practices that support Agile Project Leadership Principles.

Over lunch, several agile leaders will discuss the Value of Agile Leadership to the Enterprise, organization or corporation. The members of the panel include:

  • Steven Ambrose, Director IT, DTE Energy
  • Bud Phillips, Vice President of Capital One’s Decisioning Services
  • Israel Gat, BMC
  • Peter George, Kronos, Senior VP leading a 600 person agile transition

The afternoon continues with experience reports around two topics:

  • Leading From a Position of No Power:

    1. Leading from a Position of No Power: A Customer's Perspective of an Agile Team by Alexia Bowers. Leadership challenges that customers face on an agile project.
    2. Leading the Agile Way: Duty, Honor, Delivery by Mark Salamango and John Cunningham. A contractors experience doing a project for the military and the challenges involved providing security monitoring for the Super Bowl.
  • Leading Agile in a Non-Agile Environment:

    1. Reflecting Forward - A Guided Agile Transition by Tor Stenstad and David Hussman. Introduction of Agile into a Large Organization (100+ Developers) starting with one project and spreading throughout the organization.
    2. Adapting Through Agility in a PMI World by Ahsan Rahi and Todd Little. Introducing agile into an oil & gas services company that is committed to PMI based Project Management. A great view of how agile is applied in an environment other than Software.
The tutorials and experience reports will be followed by a discussion giving the attendees an opportunity to ask questions or share their experiences. 

At the end of the morning and afternoon sessions, participants convene to report out discussion results. The day will end with a networking wrap up event.

The People Behind the Summit


Pollyanna Pixton, APLN Leadership Summit Chair

Pollyanna is the President of Evolutionary Systems, a consulting firm that assists companies in moving to the next level through collaboration, collaborative leadership and agile practices. She founded and directs the Institute for Collaborative Leadership, an organization assisting in developing collaborative leaders to create agile enterprises. As a co-founder of the APLN, she serves as the Secretary on the board.


Kent McDonald, Tutorial and Experience Track Lead

Kent J. McDonald is a consultant with Genesis 10 with over 10 years experience as a business analyst and project leader. Kent writes and speaks on leadership, business analysis, and agile principles and practices. He has a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Iowa State University and an MBA from Kent State University. He is co-founder and current Board Member of the Agile Project Leadership Network, is a founder of the Agile Iowa Group, and is on the board of the Central Iowa Chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.


Ole Jepsen, Discovery Think Tank Track Facilitator

Ole works with Agile Leadership in his job as head of Projects with Unwire, a service provider for SMS and WAP solutions for Telecom and Media companies in the Nordic countries. He is the founder of the Danish Agile Users Group, a member of the Agile Alliance board and a member of the Agile Project Leadership board. Ole is a frequent speaker at conferences - and a highly esteemed facilitator. He facilitated the creation of the Declaration of Interdependence (DOI) - viewed as the "Manifesto For Great Project Leaders" and a significant contribution to the agile leadership community.


Todd Little, Summit Budget, Finance and Flow

Todd has been a major contributor to the agile movement for five years, as the Agile Conference director for the last three conferences. He is a co-founder of the APLN and services on the Agile Alliance board. Todd's agile experiences and models arise from his leadership work at Landmark Graphics.


This core group is supported by an Advisory Committee consisting of Sanjiv Augustine, Christopher Avery, Jim Highsmith, Lowell Lindstrom, and David Spann.