European Leadership Summit at the Agile Business Conference 2006

The Agile Business Conference 2006, organized by the DSDM Consortium with the support of the Agile Alliance and the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN), is Europe's largest Agile conference.  It will take place next week, November 7 - 9 in London, England.  This conference is specifically created to provide practical help for managers and leaders - both those starting out with Agile approaches and those wanting to improve existent Agile teamwork.  It also provides a valuable networking opportunity to meeting like-minded colleagues. 

This year's theme is "Responding to the Challenge of Change", and the conference is specifically designed to help Business and IT executives make informed strategic decisions related to the use of agile approaches as an integral part of business processes.  Keynotes will be delivered by internationally renowned speakers:

• Scott Ambler, Practice Leader Agile Development within the IBM Methods Group, and prolific writer and speaker on Agile methods
• Pippa Bass, Director of Knowledge, Innovation, Skills and Standards Division, with responsibility for the Best Practice Portfolioof the UK's Office of Government Commerce
  
• Kent Beck, co-author of the Agile Manifesto and of the books Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change 2nd Edition, Test-Driven Development: By Example, and Planning Extreme Programming, among others
• Sean Hanly, who works as a handson mentor and trainer, and heads delivery services overseeing Agile transitions for Exoftware, which he co-founded
• Richard Pharro, creator a new Programme and Project Management Diploma for the Chartered Management Institute, and author of The Relationship Manager: The Next Generation of Project Management
  
• Pollyanna Pixton, management consultant and co-founder of both the APLN and the Institute for Collaborative Leadership.
• David Taylor, creator of TheNakedLeader.com, an executive management consultant with 25 years experience working in real companies

The optional first day of the conference is dedicated to the APLN's European Leadership Summit, a limited-attendance event allowing attendees to interact directly with industry experts in two tracks: the Tutorial and Experience track, and the Think Tank track.  This is the APLN's second Leadership Summit this year - the first took place in July at Agile2006 in the US.

In the Summit's last session of the day, Niel Nickolaisen, CIO of Headwaters, Inc. will present "Guardrails - Aligning Agility and Collaboration With Strategy,"  in which he will present strategic planning models that provide strategic "guardrails" for the agile enterprise. These models provide a pragmatic, aligned framework for making the numerous and dynamic decisions required for organizational and project success, and the presentation includes real-world case studies so that the models can be immediately applied.