Rodger Koopman

Many company leaders ignore decades of study and resulting freely available knowledge and thus lose out on potentially tremendous gains in productivity. It's not rocket science, yet surprisingly difficult for many senior leaders to simply follow what collective knowledge and wisdom has told us for decades. Yet, they cling to managing instead of leading using a century old industrial paradigm that completely mismatched to the new dynamic of the information age.

Many companies focus on Agile and miss out on the tremendous value of combining Lean with Agile. Lean focuses on continuous improvement (Kaizen), waste reduction, small batches and flow optimization. Leaders can get their arms around that, yet completely ignore the huge benefits they could realize from following both sound Agile AND Lean practices. In other words, don't "just" do an Agile transformation. Instead, do a Lean-Agile transformation. When Lean and Agile are combined you truly have a winning formula. A formula which can accelerate the clip and cadence at which your organization or company will scale and transform. Don't play Agile theater. Get real about Lean too.

History matters. Context matters. Yet, surprisingly few product managers know the history of their craft. Where it began, how it evolved, and who the major players and contributors were. Yet, the story is fascinating and worth telling. Furthermore, the feedback from all PMs that have attended this presentation was positive and appreciative. All of them learned something; it widened their perspective and created new opportunities for growing as a professional. We include some nuggets that many times are overlooked, yet add tremendous value when included in a PM's toolkit.