Open Tech Calendar

On 08 July we will be joined by Lynda Girvan and Ceri Newton-Sargunar.

Talk 1
“Backlogs – the good the bad and the ugly” by Lynda Girvan.

Backlogs have become the ‘go to’ technique for managing and driving the work of agile teams.Yet, despite being critical to success, there is surprisingly little advice in how to create a good backlog – or how to avoid a bad one. Unfortunately, it is deceptively easy to create a bad backlog, and bad backlogs can do a huge amount of harm to the success of projects.

This talk discusses:

- How using goals and outcomes can lead to better backlog
- How to create value stories
- How to split stories so they still retain value
- Incorporating NFRs into backlogs

Lynda Girvan has over 25 years' experience in business and systems development as a consultant, professional trainer and practitioner in both public and private sectors. Lynda has extensive experience of adding value to organisations at a variety of levels including coaching agile development teams, or helping board level change projects. Lynda’s particular strength is applying business analysis and agile techniques together to help organisations overcome challenging business problems. Lynda explored this topic as co-author of the BCS book, ‘Agile and Business Analysis’ published in 2017. Lyn is Head of Profession for Business Analysis and Lead Agile Business Analyst at CMC Partnership Limited. She is also an examiner on the BCS BA Diploma and a regular speaker on Business Analysis and Agile topics.

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Talk 2
"Sound the a-llama! Communication and Conflict during Crisis" by Ceri Newton-Sargunar

When we think of conflict, we typically imagine two people yelling & screaming at each other. But this type of conflict rarely happens in the office (though of course it still does), and actually there are other types of conflict that are less visible, but just as destructive - if not more so.

Silent disengagement, passive aggression, straight up ignoring people... These micro-aggressions can be far more damaging to the team, the product, and to the business, as well as being harder to effectively address because they are less obvious - especially when they are somehow explained away, when we do confront them.

Over 45 minutes, we'll take a look at these subtler kinds of conflicts. We'll look into why they arise, uncover what can make them worse, and explore some steps we could take, to deal with them more effectively.

Ceri is now working with teams across Europe, Ceri focuses much of her effort on showing how we can use conscious language to get the best from ourselves and our teams, create safe spaces to work in and attain outcome-focused delivery for healthy interactions and happy clients

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I am really looking forward to these 2 talks from these two inspirational women.

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