Agile Day Riga is back in the new format of unconference. We will be glad you to join the crowd on April 26, 2014.

Years passed and the word Agile is not a hype anymore. All of us heard about it. Most of us tried it. Some of us gained and continue to gain experience with it.

As we mentioned, this year we are back in the format of unconference — the unique format, because it creates the space for peer-to-peer learning, collaboration and creativity. We invite you to join and share your insights and feelings, discuss the questions you care about.

Become part of something bigger than you alone. With over 375,000 members worldwide, Scrum Alliance brings you together with like-minded people who are passionate about Scrum and who are changing the world of work every day. We are a nonprofit membership organization that encourages and supports the widespread adoption and effective practice of Scrum. We provide advocacy, community, and education to support this movement, equip our members, and help them succeed with Scrum in software development and beyond. Learn more at www.ScrumAlliance.org and come sprint with us!

Performance Reviews Are Incompatible with the Agile MindSet (10:15 - 11:00)

Have you had blood pressure and heart beat increase with the proximity of the annual performance review rituals? Do you get the chills just before your 'performance improvement plan' meeting with your boss? Have you had a poor review because you were not able to perform how you boss wanted, but in reality you could not have done anything different? Performance Reviews are based in completely wrong assumptions. Companies still think that Performance Reviews are great tools to provide feedback, to set goals and to improve the individuals. All this is pure nonsense and in reality Performance Reviews are a cancer for our companies and they need to be removed. Come to see my talk and you will understand how Performance Reviews are completely incompatible with Agile Mindset and I will explain what can be done using examples of companies from all over the world that successfully tackled this problem.

Organizational Design and Scrum (11:15 - 12:15)

It's very easy to become hierarchical and turn into a 'bank' when software company is growing fast. Is there a way to avoid that? How to keep the focus on value creation? What about Value departments, not Functional departments? Want to share ideas what we can learn from Scrum and apply in organisational design. Will share hypothesis how company could look like when everybody is focused on value creation.

Agile in Big Projects Using Jira (12:15 - 12:45)

Jira is leader in collaborative software and long time supported Scrum/Kanban workflows. However, with its rich tools it is a challenge to understand how to organize your work across the boards to manage: back log in a way that it does not mess with issues ready for development/in progress; scrum board; overall project flow. How to structure issues efficiently to manage 200, 300 or 500 issues at the same time and overview entire project with few clicks.

Agile vs. Chaotic Projects — Similarities and Differentiations (12:45 - 13:15)

Field experiences and many observations for the Agile adaptations in various programming set-ups. Some of them has been catastrophic, others very successful. What makes not standard waterfall models to fail or ether to be successful? Is it determined by the size, by customer or by developer teams? How agile can be used to avoid chaos and cost overrun at any parties side?

Expanding an Agile Culture in Organisations with Design Thinking (14:00 - 14:30)

Design Thinking refers to the methods and processes to investigate complex problems in highly uncertain systems, acquiring information, analysing knowledge, and positing solutions. This workshop is about the usage of this process to better understand organisation's culture and minimise resistance to change in the creation of an Agile culture. The strategy is to combine empathy for the context, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality to analyse and fit solutions to the context. This solutions are aimed to create reasons for people in the organisation to embrace Agile. This iterative process of observation, ideation and implementation can be integrated within your retrospectives and also applied outside IT to create a continuous improvement engine for organisational culture in organisations. This workshop is about how to use a design thinking process an techniques to better understand organisation's culture and minimize resistance to change in the creation of an Agile culture. The strategy is to combine empathy for the context, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality to analyze and fit solutions to the context. This solutions are aimed to create reasons for people in the organisation to embrace Agile. You'll also learn some useful design thinking techniques that you can use in your retrospectives!!

How to Achieve Efficiency and Happiness Combining Methodologies (14:30 - 15:00)

Management By Objectives, Getting Things Done, Agile Results, Strengths Based Development, Positive Psychology etc. A lot of methodologies and each of them provides ideas and concepts, fewer - concrete steps and criteria to measure achievements. Let's talk about how to better understand and achieve our goals, how to focus and enjoy our daily work and how make it all together to help our development as professionals and our feeling of happiness by using not one, but combining of those methodologies. What exact steps to make and what tools come handy (some demonstration and comparison also). Real cases will be shown to demonstrate exactly why and how each part can work for everyone of us. Session and topic is for you, if you: sometimes feel panic because of overload or just feel overloaded, miss feeling of development as professional, miss the feeling of happiness, even if looks like everything is going fine. As result of this session will be no miracle cure, but maybe some ideas to help you to get in more control of your life and happiness.

Telco Case: Clash of Agile Project and Waterfall Organisation (15:15 - 16:00)

Let's focus on practical case analysis and avoid general statements you can hear on any agile conference. I will become a storyteller and will share a set of stories, representing lessons learned from runnung an agile project in a waterfall-based telecom culture. I will also give a clear understanding what was a project setup. What was done differently from the enterprise waterfall-based project management standard? What agile principles and specific practices were applied? What were tangible benefits to the business from the situation where one project team became 'outlaws' of the corporate culture. Moreover, I will share the challenges and lessons learned related to both phases - the transfer project and further operations and development of the Service Desk function.

Agile as a Success, Grown up Agile Without Dogma's (16:15 - 17:00)

Agile is not new. Agile is not a trend. Agile is established. Yet we struggle with a lot of problems doing Agile. Arie's diagnose regarding this problem is most of the time connected to what Arie calls 'Agile in the Core'. Arie has found over the last 20 years that the success of Agile is connected to the quality and discipline used applying the Agile techniques. These techniques are based in strong foundations. During his key note Arie will talk about the true the core of Agile, what it means, how you do them and how you can coach your client doing it. Learn more about Agile in the Core, application and how take your client with you in either continuous delivery or projects.