I often reflect on what work developing products was like before I was introduced to Scrum. The difference is like night and day—Scrum is life-changing. Practicing good Scrum empowers teams, allowing them to face (and solve!) their toughest problems. But it's impossible to realize Scrum's benefits when Scrum Teams get weighed down by organizational silos, bad practices, limited thinking, and restrictive scaling techniques.
That’s why the theme for this year’s Scrum Day event in Madison, Wisconsin is “Scrum is a Team Sport.” So much of what holds us back as Scrum practitioners is ways of thinking that create unnecessary barriers to value delivery. Scrum Day will peel back the layers blocking us from agility's benefits so that we can focus on what matters: empowering teams to deliver greater value.
Keith McCandless will kick Scrum Day off as our morning keynote speaker. Keith is the co-creator of Liberating Structures, a dynamic facilitation technique changing how groups work together. Half of the battle of good facilitation is organizing the conversation. Liberating Structures offers a menu of different ways to organize and facilitate powerful, interactive engagement.
Breakout sessions
Following the morning keynote, we will have five breakout sessions running concurrently. Participants can choose from a series of acclaimed speakers who will focus on removing barriers to value delivery in specific areas.
Scrum Master: It’s not about how busy your team is; it’s about the value it provides.
Product Owner: What does good Product Owner practice look like?
Leadership: How do I lead in my specific environment?
Development: Complementary techniques that deliver value sooner.
Making connections: Meet fellow Scrum Day participants and speakers and have conversations about resources, scaling Scrum across multiple teams, or anything else on your mind. We will have a speed networking activity to help break the ice.
Our afternoon keynote speaker is Dave West. Dave is the CEO of Scrum.org, known as "the home of Scrum" because its founder, Ken Schwaber, co-created the framework. Dave's address will be your opportunity to hear directly from Scrum.org, whose mission is to help people and teams solve complex problems.
Scrum Day will close with a facilitated conversation exploring the theme and takeaways from our sessions allowing us to debrief with our peers. We’ll integrate everything we have learned to create action items to apply in our daily lives.
I hope that you are as excited about Scrum Day as I am. This is a time to learn, grow, be inspired and above all remove any barriers in the way of our success.
Scrum Day is scheduled for September 14, 2023, in Madison, Wisconsin. Early bird tickets are on sale until July 1, 2023. See you there!
Author: Mary Iqbal, Scrum Day USA organizer and founder of Rebel Scrum, which is a proud Scrum Day USA Platinum Sponsor.