Join us for a fast-paced online Agile MiniCon that shows how Agile can make your work easier and more effective. Experienced practitioners will share practical sessions on Agile principles that solve common project challenges and give you tools you can use right away. Whether you are new to Agile or already experimenting, you’ll walk away with fresh perspectives and actionable strategies to bridge traditional project management with Agile approaches.
Don’t let AI’s confidence fool you into derailing your teams and projects. This keynote challenges the risky practice of drafting deliverables with GenAI first, resulting in technically sound but “soulless” outputs lacking valuable context and team buy-in. Instead, discover a repeatable process where subject matter experts and teams set the route and clear the signals first through structured discussion, debate, and consensus-building, integrating the team’s expertise and surfacing local constraints and insights. Then, bring GenAI onboard to identify gaps, amplify insights, and accelerate delivery without sacrificing quality or buy-in. This presentation is perfect for project leaders who want to blend human expertise with AI power.
Mike Griffiths is a project management author, trainer, and consultant working for the Project Management Institute (PMI). Prior to joining PMI, Mike owned a project management consulting company working in Europe, South, Central, and North America. He was involved in the creation of DSDM in 1994 and served on the board of the Agile Alliance. He co-founded the PMI Agile Community of Practice and was part of the steering committee that created the PMI-ACP credential. Mike was chair for the PMI Agile Practice Guide and has contributed to the PMBOK Guide since the 3rd Edition. He was co-chair for the PMBOK Guide 7th Edition and advisor for the 8th Edition.
Fixed budget and fixed date contracts often leave project managers feeling that Agile is not an option. In this talk, I share a real experience from a project delivered for two global companies with strict contractual constraints and multicultural team setups. Rather than abandoning Agile ideas, we adapted them: using Scrum to structure delivery, Kanban to support discovery and flow, and transparent goals to align teams and stakeholders around what truly mattered. The session focuses on how these practices helped us manage uncertainty, make risks visible early, and build trust with stakeholders, ultimately enabling the team to deliver the solution ten days ahead of schedule. This talk offers a practical path for project managers who want to make progress with Agile in real-world conditions where the contract already says “no.”
Maria Ghlonti is an Agile Project Manager, PMP, trainer, and community leader with over 15 years of experience delivering complex initiatives in financial institutions and global organizations. After becoming a PMP in 2017, she spent seven years working in traditional PMO environments where plans, certainty, and formal reporting were the norm; her shift toward Agile began in 2019 when increasing complexity and ambiguity in global companies made classical approaches insufficient. Since then, Maria has applied Agile and hybrid ways of working across roles including Scrum Master, Agile Coach, Product Lead, Program Manager, and OKR Champion, focusing on practical delivery rather than theory. For the past two years, she has worked as an Agile Project Manager on AI product development, where learning, adaptation, and incremental delivery are part of everyday work. Alongside delivery, she is a Udemy instructor, podcast host, organizer of Agile conferences in Georgia, and an active member of the PMI Georgia Chapter, with a strong focus on helping project managers apply Agile thinking in real-world conditions, not ideal ones.
Website | LinkedIn
Project managers can get stuck in a lose/lose cycle. The more uncertainty you have, the more the organization demands plans and status updates. And the more time you spend managing the plan, the less time the team spends producing evidence. In this fast-paced talk, Mike Lyons will show you how he helps PMs reduce delivery risk by delivering value earlier—even when the environment isn’t “perfect Agile.” It’s a simple shift: stop trying to predict everything up front and start creating fast, visible proof that the work is on track.
I’m a PMP and Agile delivery expert with over 20 years of experience shipping digital products from prototype to launch to scale. I coach cross-functional teams and leaders to deliver customer value faster using practical agile and flow-based approaches (not theory). I also run KaiRise, where I build and teach self-paced ICAgile-certified training to a global audience. I’m known for clear, no-fluff facilitation and translating Agile into language that makes sense to project managers in real-world constraints.
Website | LinkedIn
Project managers know the drill: required project status reports filled with bullet-pointed accomplishments that stakeholders politely endure. But what if those contractual obligations could become your most powerful engagement tool? In this session, we’ll share lessons from a six-year Air Force digital transformation where we converted mandatory compliance reports into live demos that stakeholders actually look forward to. You’ll discover how to transform “we completed X tasks” PowerPoints into “here’s what we built, and here’s where we need your input” conversations—without violating a single contractual requirement.
Dr. Andrea Scott-Kelch is an Agile Coach and Deputy Program Manager for an Air Force program, where she has spearheaded a comprehensive Agile transformation since 2021. With an EdD in Education and 20 years of experience in software development as a project manager, Agile coach, and transformation leader, Dr. Scott-Kelch bridges academic rigor with practical implementation expertise.
Dr. Scott-Kelch specializes in applying Agile principles and frameworks in non-technical industry sectors, higher education, and government environments, with particular expertise in servant leadership, adaptive planning, and bringing people together to deliver high-quality solutions in complex organizational contexts.
Mr. Mike Shaw is a Program Manager for Dine Development Corporation. He has 40 years of experience in Air Force Logistics. Mr. Shaw proudly served nine years in the United States Air Force. He firmly believes that developing people and culture is the root of success. His passion for people has led him into multiple agile and operations roles.
Agile Manifesto Co-author
There’s a consistent rumor that “Agile” projects don’t need a project manager. When examining project failures, however, we see that there is still plenty for a project manager to do, even if you take away all their bureaucratic assignments.
The talk was first written by one of the authors of the Agile Manifesto – Dr. Alistair Cockburn – in the early 2000s to show there was still room for a good project manager on an Agile team. This talk is the original talk updated to the current state of the world in 2026. Alistair will address head-on the question: What is the role of the project manager on full-on, even fanatical Agile projects?
Dr. Alistair Cockburn (pronounced CO-BURN), one of the 17 authors of the Agile Manifesto, was named as one of the “42 Greatest Software Professionals of All Time” in 2020. He is a world expert on methodologies, project management, software architecture, use cases, and Agile development. He co-authored both the Agile Manifesto and the Project Management Declaration of Inter-dependence. Since 2015, he has been working on expanding agile to cover every kind of initiative, including social impact project, governments, and families. For his latest work, visit his website.
Agile Alliance Board Chair
Bob Hartman, known to his clients as “Agile Bob,” is a Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and Certified Agile Coach (CAC), and is newly based in Newnan, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. He trains and coaches companies throughout the United States and internationally. Bob has trained over 60,000 people and coached thousands more. He has been a speaker at numerous major conferences, seminars, workshops, and user group meetings where his engaging style, holistic view of organizations, and personal anecdotes are always well received by attendees.
Bob has a passion for Making Agile a Reality® for organizations. He draws on his 45+ years of experience in software development, training, and coaching to guide companies through the challenges and nuances of embracing Agile and creating a one-of-a-kind transformation.
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Agile Coach and Consultant
Based in Ottawa, Canada, Ellen has been working in software development for over 20 years, moving from software testing to user-centered design to managing development teams to Agile coaching and training. Ellen is an Agile Coach, trainer and facilitator who works with organizations of all sizes – from startups to multinationals – to help them find more effective ways of working based on Lean and Agile principles and practices. After many years of organizing and presenting at Agile events at home and around the world, Ellen was elected to the Agile Alliance board of directors in 2017 and became the chair of the board in February 2020, before stepping into her current role.
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