Track 1: Agile in Action | Room: 1258
Brent Hickman, Agile Delivery Manager, HM Health Solutions

Teams often struggle with their Retrospectives where it is common for them to hit a plateau. Evidence of teams stuck in a rut include disengagement and problems being restated in each Retrospective without clear ideas on how to solve them. The presenters will introduce an interactive session featuring a facilitation technique called Liberating Structures. This technique is designed to foster open engagement with all participants. This will enable them to generate and organize innovative ideas within a safe and comfortable atmosphere. During the session, a case study will be presented introducing an issue observed by a team that has reached this plateau. The audience, participating as team members will utilize Liberating Structures to generate several creative solutions to solve the team’s issue. Through active participation, the audience will leave the session with the following takeaways:

  • An understanding of Liberating Structures as a facilitation technique
  • A new approach to reinvigorate their Retrospectives
  • The ability to generate and organize innovative ideas for any size group
  • Potential ideas to address issues currently being observed with their own teams based on session collaboration
In his current role as Agile Delivery Manager at HM Health Solutions, Brent coaches corporate leadership and development teams to value an Agile culture and management style that fosters empowered, self-organizing teams. He has enabled divisions within HMHS to achieve a CMMI level 3 certification while improving the quality of delivery and reducing time to market by embedding evidenced based management techniques and lean process improvements within the defined Agile processes. With over 10 years of Agile experience in the healthcare industry, he has held the roles of Scrum Master, Product Owner and Program Manager. Brent holds the Project Management Professional (PMP), Certified Scrum Professional – Scrum Master (SCP-SM) and a Certified Scrum Professional – Product Owner (CSP-PO) certifications.