Staying Agile When It Gets Hard

By now, we have all learned how to reach agile maturity, but what do you do when it starts slipping away? After two decades of agile adoption, we still face the same struggles: code ownership disappears, tests become unreliable, technical debt piles up, and knowledge sharing fades away. We will explore three types of interventions (from subtle, prompt actions to crisis-mode reorganization actions), and how developers, architects, scrum masters, and managers can each contribute across five dimensions (leadership, domain, technology, staff, social).

This scientifically based presentation shares a new model for mentoring agility, focusing on the later stages of agile maturity and how practical measures can be used to reverse the downward spiral. You’ll leave with: A practical framework for spotting decline early, real examples from a team that survived major challenges over six years, and the motivation to act - because regardless of your role, doing nothing is rarely the right choice.