Agile Games New England Program, April 8-10

Too often we find ourselves at the cusp of exploring something new, something greenfield. This could be a brand-new app, a large digital product, or just a shiny new module in an existing product. But before your organization commits time and resources, wouldn't you want to be able to understand the risks, get your entire team (POs, UX, Engineer and so on) on board, evaluate if the product idea is even worth pursuing, and finally get a high-level backlog ready? That is where a Design Sprint can help!
Come and join us as we take an in-depth and hands-on look at the Design Sprint framework, and how we can go from an exciting idea to a product backlog in a week, or even better; in 180 minutes!

Too often we find ourselves at the cusp of exploring something new, something greenfield. This could be a brand-new app, a large digital product, or just a shiny new module in an existing product. But before your organization commits time and resources, wouldn't you want to be able to understand the risks, get your entire team (POs, UX, Engineer and so on) on board, evaluate if the product idea is even worth pursuing, and finally get a high-level backlog ready? That is where a Design Sprint can help!

Come and join us as we take an in-depth and hands-on look at the Design Sprint framework, and how we can go from an exciting idea to a product backlog in a week, or even better; in 180 minutes!

Using the game "Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes" we'll explore and highlight teamwork, communication, developing shared language, creating a shared understanding, and much more. This session will be an interactive session for a small group with others observing. With multiple rounds, everyone who wants to participate will be able to! This is a very practical team activity, which easily scales beyond the team. While it works well in-person, it's even better with distributed teams as we explore the ways we interact and communicate when not co-located.

Do you think concepts such as psychological safety, teamwork, and emotional assertiveness are luxuries? Do you believe teams can produce the same results regardless of their psychological safety? Do you suppose that these concepts are overrated and managers shouldn't worry about them because employees will have relatively same level of productivity anyway? Then you should attend this workshop.

We will play two rounds of a wireframe development game and you will see how the presence and absence of psychological safety can alter the end results and bottom lines. Depending on cultural values, how the teams are set up, and the way senior managers treat and reward people, they will feel psychologically safe, not safe, or worse, threatened. They will behave differently, express their opinions differently, and collaborate differently. The teams will function differently and the product they make will look like significantly different.

Join the workshop and experience it firsthand. This workshop will help Agilists, coaches, and managers to experience the cause and effect relationship between psychological safety and productivity of teams.