Written by Donya Sabaghi, PMC
Sameer Bendre, an Engagement Manager with Outsystems and Judith Mills, with Judith Mills Consulting, kicked off the evening with a very collaborative session to a room full of PMI Atlanta Agile Forum attendees on Tuesday, January 20. Right off the bat, the two individuals had the audience's attention as Judith asked, “Does anyone know what Agile is?” While most of the audience remained quiet as they knew what Agile was, a couple hands were raised. Judith explained that a backlog is a list of items prioritized by business value. She also mentioned in order to be a good agile coach, you have to be a good facilitator. Judith then proceeded to explain what to expect from the evening in the short hour by presenting a very detailed and time boxed schedule. The primary goal of the night was to create a backlog of topics, created and prioritized by the audience for future PMI Atlanta Agile Forums events in 2015. The schedule for the evening was as follows: 
Starting with passing out a notecard to each individual around the room, Judith asked everyone to write down a topic from a previous event they previously attended where they benefited from the presentations/speakers/content and materials shared. While the audience filled out their notecard, Sameer proceeded to let the audience know he was extremely thrilled with the attendance and thanked everyone for being there.
Once everyone wrote down a topic in the 10 minute timebox, Judith instructed the audience to do the following:
35 Sort:
1. Find a partner
2. Discuss your cards
3. Score the cards out of 7 (number just needs to add up to 7)
4. Swap Cards
5. Find a new partner
6. Repeat until you have 5 Scores on the card you are holding
7. Total the 5 scores
8. Place the card on the table with the numbers = TOTAL
Once the totals were achieved, the cards were placed on top of a piece of paper covering the table with respective numbers.
Judith explained when you build a product backlog, it is first consisted of high level epics and ideas, but what does that really mean? How would you use that and what do you need it for? That is what we need to know by taking the top topics written on the notecards and fleshing them out.
Before moving on to the next activity, Sameer read out loud the 15 topics with the highest scores and asked the audience to listen carefully while picking out a favorite topic that sparked their interest. The highest ranked topics were as follows:
1. Agile best practices
2. What are the different Agile practices and how do they work together?
3. Facilitation skills
4. Language of Agile (collaboration with other PMs)
5. Unconventional ways companies are using Agile
6. Challenges from moving a waterfall enterprise to Agile
7. Introduction to Agile
8. Advantages and disadvantages of using Agile
9. Using Agile in non-tech companies
10. Using Scrum Framework
11. What is the appropriate level of documentation in Agile?
12. How does Agile interact with other waterfall projects
13. Agile: Why not waterfall?
14. How do I ensure I make the most of out the investment in using Agile?
15. Agile tools: Pros and Cons
Now it was time for the audience to walk around between 3 rooms where each topic was placed on a flipchart on the walls to find the topic of most interest. In an organized fashion, the audience began by working in groups of 3 and 4 against the topics. Each topic was carefully fleshed out into smaller subsets of what the audience was interested in hearing and learning about in future forums. The flipcharts were quickly filled with questions and ideas. Once the time was up, everyone had to make the hardest decision of the night by voting on their favorite topic. Before doing so, Sameer kindly read what everyone wrote for each topic on the flipcharts.
Judith then passed out colored 3 dots to each individual to be used for voting. The colors represented priorities in the following fashion:
VOTE:
Green = #1
Orange = #2
Pink = #3
For the last activity of the evening, the audience walked up to the flipcharts and carefully placed the dots on the topics that would bring them the most value. As a result, the members of the group have set a prioritized backlog with details for 2015. Judith opens up the floor for questions and made sure to ask one last time if everyone knew the meaning of backlog. Lastly, Sameer ends the session by thanking everyone for coming out as well as the sponsors and volunteers.
Thank you to our speakers and sponsors for making this meeting possible!
Sameer S. Bendre and Judith Mills
Matrix Resource, Venue Sponsor
PMI Atlanta Chapter, Food Sponsor
BIOGRAPHY
Sameer Bendre, CSM, PMP®, PMI-ACP®, CSP, PSM I, is an Agile coach, practitioner and trainer with experience in various roles of software development lifecycle.
He works as an Engagement Manager with Outsystems, Inc. and is based out of their Atlanta office. He is an active contributor in local and global Agile community. As a collaborative leader, his contribution as an ex-Program Manager for the PMIATLAgile forum and the Global PMI Agile Community of Practice (CoP) as Knowledge Management lead is recognized significantly.
You can learn more about Sameer’s practice via his LinkedIn profile (https:// www.linkedin.com/in/sbendre). You can also follow Sameer on Twitter - @Bendre.
Judith Mills is an independent coach specializing in making software companies efficient with multiple Agile methodologies. Judith has extensive experience in guiding large organizations and teams through the adoption of Agile to create efficient and adaptable structures that deliver reliably and repeatedly. These organizations and teams have varied from smaller teams with everyone in one room to multi-national, distributed teams spread across many continents. Prior to going independent, Judith held VP positions in different capacities at several software companies.
Judith is a Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Practitioner (CSP), Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and a Leadership Gift Coach.
You can learn more about Judith’s practice via her website (http://www.judithmillsconsulting.com/) and her LinkedIn profile (https://www.linkedin.com/in/judithmillsconsulting). You can also follow Judith on Twitter - @JudithMills.
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