AGILE METHODS IN THE FINANCE SECTOR

Keith Richards, agileKRC

Bola Rotibi CEng., Research Director, Creative Intellect Consulting Ltd.

In this presentation, industry analyst and Research Director, Bola Rotibi will outline strategies adopted by organisations of varying sizes and maturity, and from across the market landscape, towards Agile execution and greater business and operational agility.
The presentation will showcase the following:

• A reasoned position on the key business issues addressed by organisations moving to agile development or deployment practices along with the challenges presented and the solutions offered.
• The business and organisational process changes underpinning a move to agile deployment and delivery
• The top 3-5 patterns for Agile deployment practices within the market that can be reused across multiple contexts and for different industry sectors

In essence, this presentation will look to understand the presence of Agile or Lean practices within organisations along with their impact on the business and their applicability across key market sectors. The goal will be to leave the audience with the ability to identify areas of focus pertinent to their organisational needs. Just as importantly will be guidance that will allow them to ensure that they are well positioned to leverage best practices and solutions to common challenges.

Michael Nir, President, Sapir Consulting
Conclusive research findings inform us that many PMO roll-outs are disbanded in two years. Yet, we repeat the same mistakes in our PMO implementations – wasting budgets, resources and time. In this presentation we investigate the many pitfalls that PMOs fall into.

We present a contemporary model for PMO agility which includes:
• Removing waste in process and projects
• Selecting and prioritizing projects in a SAFe® approach
• Effective resource management using Kanban or CCPM tools and
• Promoting Agile leadership.

Key take away – a PMO must deliver value to the organization constantly. Value isn’t template, tools and processes rather it is the ability to finish the right projects faster!

Dan North, Dan North & Associates Ltd
A year ago hardly anyone had heard of Docker, a small open source project using some arcane features of the Unix operating system. Going into 2015 Docker, or more accurately container-based deployment, is suddenly on every corporate IT roadmap.

What is a Docker container? How is it different from a virtual machine? Why does it matter? And more importantly why should you care about it?

As physical servers give way to virtual machines, and virtual machines give way to cloud infrastructure, containers may be the magic dust that enables your organisation to make the best use of its existing hardware investment and pave the way to Continuous Delivery.

In this talk, Dan North describes the landscape that container-based deployment is shaping, and gives you some pointers to tools, technologies and resources so you can start exploring it for yourself.

Andrew Michael Howard, HP

In this presentation, Andrew will discuss HP's experiences of ways to scale Agile practices to the Enterprise level and to further realise the value of Enterprise Agility through DevOps practices. 

Daryl Searle, Sogeti

In this session, Daryl Searle will share personal experiences gained in various Investment Banks, where programmes attempt to unify new technology with legacy middleware. How do you maintain 'control' yet allow teams to be self-organising?

David Piper, Lamri & Patrick Holden, Programme Director, SITA

Organizations choose Agile because they see clear benefits in terms of sustainability, efficiency, quality, cost and customer satisfaction.  But many face the challenge of not being in the “Agile sweet-spot” – how can Agile (and the organization) be adapted to still deliver its key benefits when faced with the challenges of scale and distribution?  This session revisits the agile manifesto and key agile practices to see how one organization has successfully retained the key benefits of Agile while delivering very large, complex solutions using internationally distributed teams.  
SITA have faced the hard choices of how to realize the benefits of key agile practices and successfully demonstrated industry leading gains in quality, efficiency and sustainability.  This has been achieved by defining a standard framework within which all the distributed teams work.  A framework that supports agility, the experience and maturity of its suppliers and, at the same time, has allowed the organization to achieve its quality goals through successful appraisal at CMMI Maturity Level 3.

Nataliia Stepashko and Dennis Alexander, EPAM Systems

Case study about scaling up agile delivery capability from three to seven teams. The teams develop a platform of managing business processes within a leading investment bank. It is a unified solution within the firm, thus there is virtually infinite demand of new feature requests from different stakeholders and departments.

The case study focuses on coordination, capacity planning, roles and team setups, and flow of requirements. It also mentions importance of strong engineering practices such as without going in depth.
The talk will be interesting for Project, Programme and Portfolio Managers, Product Owners and Product Managers, Business Analysts, Team Leads.

Keith Richards, agilekrc

The way we work continually evolves and the impact that agile has made over the last decade has been very significant. PRINCE2 has continuously evolved too and in Spring 2015 an agile extension to PRINCE2 will be launched. This new product will address the needs of project managers working in agile environments, as well as the needs of agile teams looking for more governance and control when their work becomes larger and more complicated.

This session will look at:

• Why combine PRINCE2 with agile?
• What are their respective strengths?
• Where are the two approaches complimentary?
• What are the challenges when combining the two?
• How do you address the common misconceptions of agile and PRINCE2?
• Why PRINCE2 is NOT a ‘traditional’ approach to project management?
• How do you create a culture where they can operate together?
• What are the benefits? How will it help your organisation?

Many new agile concepts are now appearing to address the need to manage agile in wider and more complicated situations. But is this reinventing the wheel? PRINCE2 is a proven approach and an industry standard that already has the principles and processes to take agile to greater heights.

If you would like to know more about blending PRINCE2 with agile and perhaps be surprised by the outcome, why not attend this session and get the very latest news on the new addition to the agile family.