Getting to and Surviving Your First Agile Release Train
The Agile Release Train is to SAFe what the Sprint is to Scrum and ensuring that the train runs smoothly is no easy matter. Every 10-12 weeks dozens (sometimes hundreds) of people come together for 1-3 days to make decisions about the work they will perform to deliver real business value over the next few months. These decisions will impact all those present and many who are not present. This is a nervous and exciting time as commitments are made around not only what will delivered but also what will not be delivered. It is also a difficult time as there are numerous dependencies to be considered, risks to be mitigated and voices to be heard. For an Agile Coach there are few greater challenges. Tamara will share her narrative of leading an Agile Release Train of 17 teams and invite those present to join in the dialog and tell their own stories.
Referent:Tamara Nation; Rally Software
Tamara Nation is an Agile Coach at Rally Software, where she pursues her passion for enabling individuals to learn, grow and thrive using Agile and Lean principles and processes. She has helped launch dozens of teams with their Agile and Rally tool adoptions and considers facilitating collaborative meetings to be her specialty. She was the first SAFe Program Consultant in Europe and is an active member of the SAFe community in Europe.
Tamara has spent 15 years working in a variety of roles on software development teams large and small. She started her career as an ADA programmer for unmanned aircraft. Other notable work experiences include being the solo production Oracle DBA for a team of 50, building a software support team from scratch and leading Web development teams for Fortune 100 companies. It was her experience as a technical project manager that led her to discover Scrum in 2008. Frustrated with delays and a lack of real results, she began to add Scrum best practices to her project and was amazed as it transformed her team completely.
