Project management will be the focus at the fourth Agile-Lean Ireland conference in Dublin in April, with a mix of talks, workshops, and coach clinics on this set of practices which organisers say is transforming the field.

According to the organisers of ALI 2020, the agile-lean approach was first popularised in software development companies to help teams to deliver faster, and its methods are now being used in other sectors including project and product management, finance, banking, insurance, manufacturing, AI, HR, government, telecommunications and marketing. 

This will be the fourth ALI conference and will take place in Croke Park on April 20-21, with around 1,000 people expected to attend — a huge increase on 2017’s initial attendance of 150 delegates.

Lead speaker this year will be Lyssa Adkins, co-founder of the Agile Coaching Institute and author of Coaching Agile Teams, a guide for Agile coaches and ‘scrum masters’ around the world, who will deliver the opening keynote.

Another keynote speaker is Dave Snowden, who developed the Cynefin framework, used to aid decision-making, when he was with IBM and  counter-terrorism software now used by governments worldwide. 

In Association with

Daniel Vacanti is a software industry veteran and helped develop the Kanban Method for knowledge work. He will speak about this workflow management method, which is designed to help visualise workload, maximise efficiency and encourage agility.

The final keynote will come from Josh Seiden, co-author of Lean UK, winner of a Jolt Award for books that "every serious programmer should read." He will give advice on how to make an organisation leaner, more entrepreneurial and more agile.

Anthony Byrne, David Denham and Rob Healy were the founders of Agile-Lean Ireland, joined by Joanna Koprowicz as co-founder of ALI2020.

What Is Agile-Lean?

Koprowicz said: “Agile-Lean methodologies are completely under-utilised here in Ireland, outside of the tech industry. The principles can be applied to almost any project. Agile-Lean encourages communication, collaboration and teamwork. It enables flexibility within projects and helps teams to adapt quickly and respond dynamically if a change of direction is needed, as opposed to focusing on one big delivery at the end.

“From humble beginnings, we’re incredibly proud to host the very top Agile-Lean professionals in the world here in Ireland in April. The theme for ALI2020 is ‘Go For It’ – capturing the spirit of the values of courage, commitment and focus to learn and innovate.”

She pointed out that networking is an important part of ALI Dublin, and that significant organisations including Accenture, the Central Bank, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Ryanair, Vodafone, the National Treasury Management Agency, and the Revenue Commissioners will all be in attendance.

There are several add-on and independent workshops around the same time including a Women in Agile workshop, which will look at integrating female and male energies, and a workshop on how to take sketch notes.

Tickets for the main event range in price from €349 for a single delegate to the two-day conference, to €644 for the conference plus add-on workshop on April 23, and are available here.