Event Report: The WoW of Agile ~ Beyond Technology

On June 22nd, 2023, we held "The WoW of Agile ~ Beyond Technology", in Downtown Toronto, in partnership with Deloitte Latin American Community (DLAC). It was the first time we organized a hybrid event, with speakers and participants joining on site as well as online.

At the start, Melissa Rosado Dimayuga introduced DLAC's mission which is to connect Deloitte's Latin American professionals and their allies through a firm-wide networking and leadership platform. One of their aims, to build meaningful relationships with the Latin American community in Canada, aligns with LPMN's goals of collaborating with organizations in the private sector to assist project management professionals and create stronger communities.

Our President Jaime Gonzalez introduced LPMN's vision, mission, and trajectory as a federally-incorporated nonprofit organization that has earned recognition in the financial and technology sectors.

Esperanza Castellanos opened the talks with her presentation about the Agile Framework, giving an overview of its history and the top four Agile Values.

1. Individual interactions versus Process tools
2. Working software versus Thorough documentation
3. Collaboration with customers versus Contract negotiations
4. Responding to Change versus Following a Plan

She also explained the key roles for Scrum, seven scaling factors, and frequently used lifecycles. From her talk, it was insightful to understand "What's not Agile" as well, because Agile tends to be overused.

Key takeaways were:

• The Agile methodologies, when implemented well, result in better products, happier customers and more engaged team members?
• The Agile Values are very important to be successful
• Methodologies are just a framework, but each team should identify their WoW (Way of Working)
• Always reflect: What can we do better? How can we delight customers?

The next presenter, Ed Morrison from Strategic Doing, joined us via MS Teams from Alabama. He explained that Agile is a constant cycle of designing and doing. While "strategic planning" is linear, "strategic doing" is an iterative process with a goal to get to alignment.

Problems in all contexts and disciplines are becoming more complex or "wicked"; therefore solutions require increasingly complex collaboration. Strategic Doing generates solutions by guiding conversations, asking What we could and should do?, What's our 30/30? and What will we do? These cycles get repeated to manage the risk and adjust to quickly create value. It's a management practice: a set of frameworks and tools embedded in a discipline to generate new knowledge.

Agile management practices require new behaviours and skills. They take practice to master. It's best to start both small and slowly. That's the paradox. We want to move fast with Agile. But to master the discipline, we need to move slowly at first and keep repeating. It's learning by doing.

This was a great transition to Santiago Najera who started telling us from Quito, Ecuador, about applications of the Agile mindset in global supply chain.

Strategic Doing is about how individuals and a core team can start the process of design/do, and then scale the practices through peer-to-peer learning to build various teams working together.

First, Julio Jose Prado brought Strategic Doing to Ecuador. He traveled to Purdue University, where Ed was working, to learn more about Strategic Doing. His concern was, that many analytic technics were able to describe WHAT clusters are, but Strategic Doing is the only process that explains HOW to develop clusters.

Once the methodology was applied with by Julio, Santiago and his supply chain teams, they started to decide what could be done to solve complex problems, select the main courses of action, choose an action, and set up the next meeting.

Thanks to Strategic Doing, the 20 Iniciativas Cluster (Cluster Initiatives) were developed and presented by Ecuador's Ministry of Production, Foreign Trade, Investments and Fisheries to reactivate the economy. From the Ministry's press release (original in Spanish):

Cluster initiatives are organized efforts that facilitate collaborative work between the public, private and academic sectors, aimed at improving the productivity of the business fabric and the environment for the different productive sectors.

The Logistics Cluster not only provided resources for the Ecuadorian government but also expanded to other sectors and was noticed by the World Bank.

In the essence of this Agile process, it was critical to build trust among team members, have continuous meetings and start doing. People learn skills by doing and generating results quickly. Even with all the adversities in Ecuador, the WoW (Way of Working) of Agile fit their reality and enabled to build capacity to make an outstanding impact.

Throughout the event, our Board Member Alejandro Escalante moderated the discussions, summarized key concepts for the audience, coordinated the many interesting questions of the Q&A portion, and on top of all that, acted as the virtual producer managing the online audience -great multi-tasking!

At the end of the evening, approximately 40 in-person attendees took time to network and build meaningful professional connections.

Appreciation

We would like to thank Melissa Rosado Dimayuga from Deloitte Latin American Community for supporting our partnership which played a pivotal role in the success of our event. We also appreciate the professionalism and enthusiasm demonstrated by the entire DLAC team throughout our collaboration.

Another big appreciation is extended to all our attendees, in person and virtual, who provided extremely positive feedback throughout the event. We hope to see you at the next Happy Friday in Toronto on July 28th!

Last but not least, LPMN recognizes the enormous efforts put forth by our volunteers who worked day and night (literally) to make this happen so seamlessly: Angela Buitrago,?Alejandro Escalante, Andrea Hernandez, Bernardo Rios,?Esperanza Castellanos,?Johanna Diaz, Maria Camila Jimenez Ceballos, Liliana Nakamura, and Roberto Cortés, with the continuous support of our President Jaime Gonzalez. We could not have done it without you!

About LPMN

Latin Project Management Network (LPMN) is a federally registered non-for-profit organization committed to empower project and program management practitioners to succeed in project delivery and become stronger strategic and influential leaders.

The LPMN team of Board of Directors and Operating Committee are all Volunteer Project Management Professionals that enjoy giving back to the profession and the community at large. To get involved, visit our website at www.lpmn.ca or send us an email at [email protected] to find out more about the available opportunities. You can make a difference!