What we learned from Ágiles 2018, Latin America’s Agile Methodologies Conference

Insights from Latin America’s main Agile Conference

On October 2018 I went to my first Latin American Conference on Agile Methodologies, Ágiles 2018. I can definitely say that it was an amazing experience, not only because of the quality of the content but because of the sheer quality of the people that went to that event.

In this post, I want to share with you some of my thoughts about how to make the most out of the conference if you decide to attend Ágiles 2019 as well as my top takeaways.

Tips for getting ready for the Ágiles Conference

If you work for a software company, no matter if it’s Agile or not, you should convince your boss to let you attend. For those who work in an agile environment, the experiences you’ll hear from other companies or coaches can give you new perspectives and ideas . If your company is not Agile, the event will still be very useful because you can find other people that are new to the Agile world as well. Together, you can attend sessions that focus on how to make the transition from a traditional methodology into an agile one and most importantly, how to get management buy-in to make the shift.

It’s not always easy to convince your boss to send you to a conference. If management is difficult to persuade, you could propose to pay for your own flight, while your company covers the associated hotel and conference expenses or whatever makes sense for you.

It can be a good idea to write down the problems or doubts that you have been dealing with at work before getting to the event. Take some time to identify the issues that you’re facing that you could benefit from discussing with someone independent and unbiased. That way, once the event starts, you can choose to attend sessions centered on those issues and you can even have the opportunity to address them with some of the speakers.

Things you can do to make the most out of the conference

It may sound overrated, but getting to the conference early in the morning will help you plan the day and make the most out of it . Nowadays it’s really common that these conferences are done in an Open Space format. Long story short, in an Open Space event, anyone can propose a talk and the schedule is self-organized. The importance of getting there early is that during the first hours of the event, the speakers present all the topics in an elevator-pitch kind of way which gives you context about the relevance of each talk and the objectives and the methodology they will follow. Having all this information really makes it easier to decide which talks you’ll be attending during the day.

I suggest leaving some free time on purpose during the day for networking. Pick the sessions you like the most, but then, also identify the ones that do not appeal to you and take that time off to wander around the place and make new contacts… You’ll be surprised by the advantage that this free time can bring. In my case, I met some new Agilists, and during that time, I even discussed with them some of the questions related to the issues I had in my mind (The ones I wrote down before traveling, remember?). The networking was so good that I even added them as friends on social networks and we continue to share articles and discuss questions via chat!

My top takeaways from Ágiles 2018

After the conference, I realized I had learned a lot. Here are some of the top takeaways for me:

Graphic Facilitation

So, I also work as a Product Owner in addition to being a Scrum Master, and I had been curious about the use of Graphic Facilitation because I thought that it would be useful for various business-related tasks. However, I was a little skeptical about it because I’ve never considered myself to be a good drawer.

I attended a talk by Juliana Betancur and Pablo Tortorella which proved to me that anyone, with a little effort, can start facilitating or documenting meetings with graphics and symbols. You don’t have to be Da Vinci to accomplish a meaningful drawing. The only thing you need to do is find your style and practice a lot—even if it is the style of a 7-year old.

The talk focused mainly on Visual Management, which uses graphic tools to help you on a daily basis.

Some of the tips they shared are:

Manage a visual agenda during meetings. This means doing a Kanban board and putting the topics on Post-its and moving them from To Do, to Doing, to Done as the meeting unfolds.

Jeff Patton said, “Shared documents doesn’t mean shared understanding.” Visual indicators help convey a sense of urgency to the whole team . It is common nowadays to use the Kanban board in a digital format. However, it’s also useful to check with the team if they prefer to have a real board in the office. If so, the whole team could gather around the board for dailies, for example, and generate new discussions about the status of tasks.

Habit tracker: This is one of those really useful tools for your personal goals as well. A habit tracker is a calendar in which you write down a goal. Then, the idea is to color in each day that you accomplish that goal. For example, meditating or exercising. The logic behind it is that you feel motivated to keep doing the habit once you start seeing that the month has almost every day colored in.

Bullet journal: The bullet journal is an organizational system in a notebook to help you plan your life; kind of like a task manager. This is a bit more complex to explain, but I invite you to research it to determine if it’s suitable for you.

Nonviolent Communication

In the Agile world and in horizontal organizations, it’s common to give and take feedback in a more open and honest way. Nonviolent Communication is an approach developed by Marshall Rosenberg to develop strategies and ask things of others. In the talk led by Rox Muñoz, she explains that NVC has 4 key steps:

Observe the facts without any kind of judgment; just the way things happened. Try to define exactly how it made us feel, search for the appropriate feeling. Identify what need was not met for me; what was left “unprotected” in myself. Make a request to the other person for a specific action to meet the need identified in step 3. It’s recommended that requests use positive and concrete language about what is desired to happen.

I’ve found this approach really useful to give and prepare better feedback sessions for colleagues, or even to drive the difficult conversations with loved ones in your personal life.

Retrospectives

I attended several talks on Retrospectives. The ones I enjoyed the most were from Carmen Díaz and Renato Otaíza. Retrospectives have a suggested structure which is:

Set the stage Gather data Generate insights Decide the actions to implement Close the retrospective

We also had some time to play around and learn some group icebreakers. I suggest you look for icebreaker activities to liven up the meetings in your office. We also shared some useful websites that have all kinds of activities for retrospectives such as Fun Retrospectives and Retromat.

What does “Control” mean?

This was one of those talks I did not expect; it was kind of a meditative, introspective session. The talk, given by Gabriel García, encouraged us to envision the feelings and emotions you experience when you cannot control a situation even though you really want to, but it’s not yours to control (for example, fear, stress, sadness, pressure). Then, we remembered the emotions you feel when you let yourself go with the flow (such as, peace, calmness, optimism, tranquility). And afterwards, we identified the “bridges” we have to pass from the first point to the second point (which are focus, desire, consciousness, decision, perseverance).

In this video, you can see a bit of what I am talking about.

I also learned a wise quote from Bruce Lee:

You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. If you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.

The talk not only showed me that there is always a much more human side to being an Agilist but also had such a positive impact within me, because every time I find myself struggling with a thought, I think to myself: how can I “be” water? How can I flow better?

OKRs

Have you always wanted to measure something in a project or in your company but didn’t know where to start? Well, this workshop given by Carlos Gil and Johnny Ordoñez was super useful for learning about OKRs and KPIs. The topic itself is dense, but the whole idea is to summarize the objective you want to accomplish on a canvas that contains all relevant information:

The objective to accomplish.

Key results that will validate if it’s being achieved.

Visual indicators that give the measurement.

The hypotheses (or ideas) you want to test along the way and

What you learned while testing those hypotheses.

I invite you to take a look at their presentation. After that (and maybe reading a couple more articles about it), you can start testing the canvas with an objective of your own. At UruIT, we are taking all that information and creating the objectives for UruIT’s People Care and Delivery teams for 2019.

As you can see, this agile conference is one-of-a-kind. Agilists are open and always willing to share their knowledge. I felt honored to be there and to meet so many great people. In case you want to learn more about what happened, you can check the hashtag, #Agiles2018, on Twitter.

Have you found other meaningful conferences for Agilists? Let us know in the comments below!