The purpose of the presentation was threefold:

• how to implement an enterprise-level agile transformation in their organisation, and the role of the PMO
• details of different methods to enable a successful agile transformation through both literature review and practice
• organisational rituals for sustaining agility

I had trouble to get focused as Burak is highly knowledgeable but does not come across as the leader who did all that and unfortunately remained up there at 36,000 feet. The presentation content was ok but as listed for intermediate level, not sure it was necessary to go back to Toyota, etc… we all heard that 1,000 times now I assume!

What annoyed me in this was that the PMO was barely mentioned and it is the title of the session… some told me they felt it was not right… I won’t go that far as the content was relevant and from an academic perspective, nothing sounded wrong but gee a bit of enthusiasm would have helped to sell the story that by the way is clearly a success story!

Ok enough about charisma must let’s talk about the content a bit… I liked the fact that we are here definitely talking about the overall organisation mindset shift to achieve a more Agile way of working. That is including even a more horizontal organisation and moving project management to Agile.

On the other hand I am still in disagreement to mix Project Manager and SCRUM Master roles. I still believe that these two roles should not overlap and it would be best to dissociate them.

Another point I can’t really agree on is that it is suggested that the team should select the SCRUM Master… still waiting for a final answer here on how it can work and for sure when you say that you also to decrease your dependency on consultants. Selecting internally would basically mean that all projects would compete to best resources and by definition this pool is limited… Else you need consultants but then even if the base is much wider, what do you really know about them and you will need to invest to get them up to speed and anyway at the end of the ramp-up period they can then be considered as the internal pool i.e. the problem is still not solved and you increased your dependency to consultants.

All the rest was so high level that it is all making sense in theory BUT at the end, the objectives have not been fulfilled and I would say it was not the highlight of my congress!

I don’t like talking about cosmetics but please red or yellow on black… really! It was ugly, picks show that and spelling mistakes… not at this level…

Nevertheless even if this sounds negative, it is not as Burak has nicely reacted to my comments on Twitter and accepted a selfie (here above). So I guess my frustration will stay as I still wonder how the PMO really helped on this…