Regional Scrum Gatherings®, supported by Scrum Alliance, take place around the Globe every year. South Africa’s event has been running for a number of years. It enjoys a reputation for being an excellent place to learn and to connect with the Agile/Scrum/Software Development communities; making it a popular, highly anticipated event in the calendar. This year we are excited to host it in Durban for the first time (the venue will be announced once finalised).

We look forward to considering your proposal for the 2018 conference. All accepted speakers (including lightning talks) and co-speakers will be granted a ticket to attend the conference. Tickets are not transferable.

Please see below for our thoughts on what our delegates (and therefore us) are looking for from the presenters at this conference. If you would like some guidance to increase your chances of having your session accepted, read through the following blog post: http://bit.ly/TalkAccept. If you would like to include an additional speaker in your session, please include their details in the Notes section of your submission.

What delegates want

Past feedback tells us that our delegates want any or all of the following:

• To learn new things that they can use straight away at work
• To learn about new and engaging topics
• To think more deeply about agility
• To be inspired and re-energised
• To have their own thinking challenged

Delegates are often from the IT, banking, financial industries and we are experiencing growing interest from other industries as well.

The topic themes

Here are our thoughts on these themes so that you can align your talk or workshop appropriately with a theme. We are looking for engaging topics that will help this track achieve its goal. We hope the comments will give you some ideas, please don’t let them restrict you.

Creating Better Leaders

• An agile way of working isn’t only about the teams. Senior and middle managers, as well as department heads, both in operational and support functions, need to be agile to bring about a high performing agile organisation.
• What does it mean to be an agile leader? How do you tackle the organizational impediments to change? How do you transform an organisation’s culture to one of autonomy, self-organisation and continuous improvement? How can you as a leader or manager create an environment that enables the teams to be more agile?
• Do you as an Agile leader have a story (case study) to share your experience? Tell us what you did, what worked and what didn’t.
• Do you as a thought leader or Agile Coach have knowledge to share that will help leaders in organizations trying to be agile?

Creating Better Scrum Masters

• The audience for this track will probably be new and experienced Scrum Masters, Agile coaches, project leaders and change agents.
• Think about the knowledge, skills, tools and techniques that make the Scrum Master role add value: everything and anything that can help Scrum Masters guide their teams to deliver the right quality product, in the best possible time, with maximum enjoyment.
• How does one deal with resistance and conflict? How do you adjust your approach to bring out the best in distributed teams? What coaching and facilitation skills can you share? How does one increase your sphere of influence in an organisation?
• Do you have any agile games that have worked for you, to share with Scrum Masters?
• Do you have a story (case study) to share your experience? Tell us what you did. what worked and what didn’t.

Creating Better Product Owners

• This theme will, of course, attract Product Owners. It may also attract product and delivery managers and perhaps leaders exploring the value of the Product Owner role.
• What can you share that helps ensure an end result that delights the client? What defines a ‘product’? What innovative tools and techniques can you teach? What principles make ‘safe to fail’ experiments possible? How can one improve the relationships between the stakeholders and the team?
• Do you have a story (case study) to share your experience? Tell us what you did. what worked and what didn’t.

Creating Better Teams

Often the focus of agile and agile frameworks is on the Scrum Master and the Product Owner. However, every member of the team makes the difference as to how effective the team is; on a technical level and on a behavioural level. And not every team is working within the Scrum Framework.

• The audience for this track could be anyone delivering products and services within a team: developers, testers, business analysts …
• How can team members learn to get the most out of themselves and everyone else connected with the team? What behaviours help teams to perform beyond their individual abilities? What technical skills, tips and tricks, make the work easier or more accurate? How can teams better handle planning and testing/quality management? How can team conflict be resolved and communication improved? What does decision making look like in a self-organising team?
• Do you have a story (case study) to share your experience? Tell us what you did. what worked and what didn’t.

Please try to indicate which theme your submission most aligns to, and where it has relevance to more than one, please indicate as such to make it easier for the program team to design a program that our community will get the most benefit from.