To say that the human species has never been here before is the understatement of the millennium.

As agilists, we have key super skills, significant influence in business, and a worldwide community that rocks. In this keynote, Lyssa invites you into a deeper inquiry — What if we were made for this time? What if all the experience you’ve gained in bringing agility into teams, programs, portfolios, and organizations was training for a bigger contribution?

You’ll explore how agility is not just a way of working — it’s an emergent response to a world in flux. You’ll be invited to consider your role in metabolizing change, revealing and addressing the impediments that matter most, and bringing in your leadership presence. As agilists and Women in Agile, we are uniquely skilled to make a massively positive impact. In this keynote, find out how.

Meet and greet with the speakers while enjoying a buffet style dinner.
Menu will be different from the Closing Dinner on the night of the conference.

Dinner starts at 18:00. You can come late until 18:30. After that, food experience may decrease. Menu will be decided later. Drinks from a selected choice are included. Other drinks are at your own cost.

Speakers Dinner ends at 22:00. Those who wish can continue in a nearby location.

You can bring your luggage and bring it to the restaurant.
Collect your luggage when you leave.

The restaurant “Asmali Konak” in Cologne looks back on a long-standing tradition. We at Asmali Konak (the villa with grapevines) would like to warmly welcome you to our restaurant. Enjoy our diverse offerings, from our daily changing lunch specials to a delightful dinner.

Our kitchen always offers the best. Our chefs cook using traditional family recipes. We always prepare our dishes fresh. While you’re visiting our restaurant, we strive to make your stay as pleasant as possible so that you feel comfortable and satisfied. You are always warmly welcome here!

We look forward to your visit. We wish you a good appetite and a pleasant stay.

We would also like to mention that we are the only restaurant on Keupstraße that offers alcoholic beverages. Enjoy a delicious glass of wine or a cold beer with your meal.

Details will follow

This talk shares the real-world story of coaching transformation inside rigid, top-down BFSI organisations in the GCC and UK, where Agile Coaches were disempowered, divided, and under-valued.

Drawing on 22 years of global experience, I’ll share practical tools and techniques for creating micro-cultures of psychological safety, trust, and resilience. Through emotional agility, cultural intelligence, and courageous coaching, you’ll follow the journey of a team as they navigate silos and role insecurity, to come together to build a stronger, more influential Agile Chapter.

If you’re navigating complex, traditional systems, this talk offers strategies, and most importantly, hope.

We end up stretched too thin, detached from real outcomes, and are often the first to be cut. But great coaching is not about ceremonies—it’s about enabling flow, fostering alignment, and shaping how work happens across the system.

By embedding coaches into the operating model, aligning cadences, limiting coaching work-in-progress (WIP), and using metrics that matter, we created a measurable impact and lasting cultural change. Drawing on Team Topologies, The Goal, and real-life war stories from a complex fintech environment, we’ll explore how Agile Coaches can become the engine of continuous improvement when given the right conditions.

This talk is a call to action for coaches to rethink their role—and for organizations to recognize the strategic impact Agile Coaching can have when truly embedded.

As Agile leaders, we’re used to navigating change, lifting our teams, and driving innovation.

But what happens when the real challenge isn’t the work, but the environment around us? Even the most resilient leaders can find themselves stuck in toxic workplaces that leave them feeling drained, disconnected, and questioning their worth.

This session is a safe, honest space to pause and reflect. You’ll learn to spot the subtle (and not-so-subtle) signs of toxic dynamics, understand how they impact your ability to lead, and reconnect with your inner compass.

Using simple, powerful tools inspired by Agile, you’ll discover how to listen to what your mind and body are telling you—and take bold, healthy steps forward.

You deserve to work in a place that supports your growth, values your voice, and brings out your best. This session will help you reclaim your power, protect your well-being, and make confident choices that align with who you truly are.

Join us and take the first step toward a healthier, happier, and more empowered work life. You are strong, adaptable, and unstoppable. Let your workplace reflect that, too.

In this talk, I share the story of a real project that began in rescue mode: a fractured team, deep resistance to Agile ways of working, and a complex mix of conflicting partners and priorities.

In an environment that seemed incompatible with Agile principles, I had to choose: hold to a passive, purist coaching stance, or meet the team where they were, with intention, courage, and drive.

This talk explores the shift from traditional coaching neutrality to intentional enablement, a stance that brings momentum and leadership without attachment to outcomes.

I’ll share the pivotal decisions that helped unlock team cohesion, navigate peer resistance, and align around shared purpose, while helping the team evolve their own ways of working from the inside out.

You’ll walk away with practical insights on:

1. How to identify when your stance is helping or hindering your team
2. Navigating resistance without power struggles
3. Leading with energy and equanimity in complex environments

If you’ve ever wrestled with when to step in and when to step back, this talk offers a roadmap, and a reframe, for showing up as the leader your team actually needs.

Even when invited, feedback can land as judgement, control, or a personal attack. Rather than building trust, it often triggers silence, defensiveness, or surface-level agreement.

This session explores why feedback stings and how to shift from reaction to reflection. We’ll use the Kübler-Ross Change Curve and the F.A.D.E. A.W.A.Y.™ model to surface emotional triggers shaped by lived experience, identity, and team culture.

You’ll learn how to recognise feedback resistance, regulate your response, and practise emotional agility as a foundation for resilience. I’ll also introduce the coaching-inspired COILED approach—a practical tool for delivering inclusive, trust-building feedback in Agile teams.

If we want to grow, we need to know what the others thinks about us and our work. But sometimes it hurts when we hear unpleasant or unexpected feedback. And with this type of experience from the past we are sometimes afraid to give feedback to others.

This workshop should equip the participants with a method how to formulate feedback that does not trigger resistance and how to control the conversation, so it is comfortable and productive no matter if you are the giver or receiver. 

The shared techniques are based not only on the well-known nonviolent communication (NVC) developed by Marshall B. Rosenberg in 1960s but also on recent work by Miki Kashtan who puts the feedback in the wider context of the conversation and points out the importance of follow-up.

It will go beyond the simple and sometimes unnatural 4-parts formulation to the core principles behind nonviolence and hopefully it will spark the passion to use it everywhere, not just in feedback conversations.

In this session, we’ll explore why burnout is a growing issue for Scrum Masters and introduce a practical solution: support circles that blend group supervision, coaching, and peer mentoring.

You’ll learn three adaptable models for running these circles, discover key principles for making them effective and inclusive, and leave with actionable tools to boost resilience and well-being in your teams.

Whether you’re in a startup or a large enterprise, this interactive workshop will equip you to support your Scrum Masters and help them thrive in today’s challenging Agile environments.

In this talk, you’ll hear about my true story of being uninvited from a workshop on diversity — because I AM A WOMAN.

It’s not just my story; it’s one many in tech can relate to. Whether you’re passed over for a role, ignored in meetings, or expected to adapt to fit in, these moments challenge us.

In this session, you’ll explore how to turn exclusion into resilience, speak up with confidence, and navigate bias—both conscious and unconscious.

We’ll discuss real-world strategies for self-advocacy, inclusive leadership, and creating space for underrepresented voices in Agile environments.

If you’ve ever felt you didn’t belong, this talk will equip you to not just belong — but lead.

This interactive session explores cognitive illusions: mental shortcuts that feel right, but often mislead.

With real-world agile examples, we’ll reveal how biases like confirmation bias, the IKEA effect, and the sunk cost fallacy show up in sprint rituals, team formation, and decision-making. Through engaging activities (like “The Misdirection Game”), you’ll learn to spot and navigate these pitfalls as a team.

Expect practical insights and tools to improve self-awareness, psychological flexibility, and group resilience.

Ideal for Scrum Masters, Product Owners, agile coaches, and team members who want to sharpen their critical thinking and improve collaboration and decision-making.

In this energetic and interactive Obeya workshop, participants become part of the team, helping Product Owner Sharon respond to real user feedback, like Jasmijn’s story of missed connections and unmet expectations.

Using a playful comic-style narrative, teams collaborate to uncover what’s missing in the Obeya to have meaningful discussions that lead to the right actions.

Together, we’ll build a physical Obeya structured around a product challenge. Along the way, participants will connect strategic thinking with practical Agile execution, experiencing how Obeya empowers teams to adapt, align, and act with purpose.

This workshop is ideal for all Agile practitioners and transformation coaches who want to experience Obeya not just as a visual method, but as a dynamic, decision-making environment that brings strategy to life.

During Speakers Dinner you also have the opportunity to ask speakers about questions you have.

By attending these lightning talks, you’ll gain an understanding of the fundamental concepts in building a diverse and inclusive workplace, and leave with actionable steps to drive positive change in your own organization.

Resilience in Motion: Leading with Neurodivergent Agility (Jennifer Brown)

Neurodivergent leaders aren’t inconsistent—we’re iterative. We don’t lack focus—we hyperfocus. And we’re not “too sensitive”—we lead with strategic empathy.

In this lightning talk, you’ll learn how to turn hyperfocus into intentional focus sprints, transform scattered ideas into tiny test cycles, and use micro-moments of empathy to build psychological safety in your teams.

The traits you’ve been taught to hide are exactly what make you adaptable, innovative, and unstoppable. Stop masking. Start leading.

Visible, Focused, Unstoppable: Leading with Yes and No (Nancy Akuamoah)

Success isn’t just about hard work, it’s about knowing when to say yes and when to say no.

Yes makes you visible and opens doors. No gives you focus, protects your priorities, and proves your leadership.

Master both, and you’ll be unstoppable.

Leadership Lessons on Authenticity and Compassion (Angeley Mullins)

Leaders who genuinely transform organisations and communities are those who embrace their humanity rather than mask it.

Some of the concepts her talk will cover are:

– Being real over being perfect
– Vulnerability as strength
– Head and heart in harmony

Angeley’s talk will focus on how you can be both a great technology leader and also a memorable people leader.

In 2015, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provided a comprehensive plan for a sustainable world by 2030. However, progress is not happening fast enough, and we urgently need to increase our collective abilities to face and work effectively with complex challenges.

This is why there is co-creation of the Inner Development Goals (IDG) – in a non-profit initiative committed to fostering inner development towards more sustainable futures. It’s about the research, collection, and communication of science-based skills and qualities that help us to live purposeful, sustainable, and productive lives.

As Women in Agile, we already bring a lot to the table to support this global movement, on small and larger scales.

Purpose of the Workshop:

To explore how Agile values, principles, and ways of working already nurture the Inner Development Goals — a framework of 23 essential human skills and qualities for sustainable development — and how we can intentionally strengthen this connection to grow personal and collective resilience.

In this slot, we will light-handedly co-create using liberating structures – we will feel, think, share and move together.

At the end of the workshop, you will be able to answer what inner quality you will cultivate to be more resilient, adaptive, and unstoppable in your Agile journey.

Intended Outcomes:

Participants will:

• Understand the basic idea of the Inner Development Goals (IDGs) and their relevance to Agile ways of working – and vice versa
• Identify intersections between Agile principles/Scrum values and IDG dimensions.
• Reflect on how personal and team-level growth supports sustainable, adaptive collaboration.
• Leave with one actionable idea or mindset shift to apply in their work.

The Women in Agile Europe is coming to Cologne. REWE digital’s not only the main sponsor, but we’re also setting up a free Pre-Meetup for EVERYONE!

One day before the Women in Agile Europe is literally taking place next door, we’re welcoming you, Christina, Esjona and Francesco to our “Pre-Meetup” at Schanzenstraße 6-20, 51063 Cologne (Building 2.20). As always, we provide our location with free parking spots, big screens, enough seating for everyone, free and tasy food and drinks as well as two superb talks!

Here’s the Agenda:

16:00/4:00pm – Open Doors

16:30/4:30pm – Start of Talk #1

~17:00/5:00pm – Start of Talk #2

~17:30/5:30pm – Stark of Talk #3 [NEW]

afterwards Q&A Session, Food, Drinks*and Networking

~19:00/7:00pm – Time to go home

*Plenty of free food and drinks available all evening long!

Please note: Those who are joining the WiA EU Speakers Dinner (starting at 18:00) are warmly encouraged to head there after the pre-meetup.

We speak English and German during this Meetup.

Talk #1: Francesco Bianchi (VisAgi) about “GenZen”
Gen Z is here and they’re not ruining the workplace, they’re redefining it. In this interactive session hosted by GenZen, we’ll explore how generational differences manifest in communication, expectations, and collaboration. Participants will engage in interactive activities, explore surprising data, and reflect on what it takes to build workplaces that work for everyone. Come curious, leave connected.

Talk #2: To be announced soon “From Resistance to Resonance: Navigating Change with Empathy”

Talk #3: Christina Hartmann (REWE digital) “Wie man Frauen aus der IT vergrault”
Die Zahlen sind erschreckend. Nur 25% Frauen starten ein IT-Studium und gerade mal 7% eine Ausbildung im Informatikbereich. Aber leider beenden nicht alle ihre Ausbildung, sondern brechen vorzeitig ab. Und die, die ihre Ausbildung beenden, starten nicht zwangsläufig einen Job in der IT. Hier gehen uns schon Unmengen an Nachwuchs-ITlerinnen verloren. Und wäre das noch nicht genug, sind 90% der IT-Hochschulabsolventinnen im Alter von 45 Jahren nicht mehr im IT-Sektor tätig. Was sind die Gründe dafür? Womit verschrecken oder vergraulen wir die Fachkräfte, die so dringend gebraucht werden? Was treibt Frauen dazu, ihren Job zu beenden oder gar nicht erst zu beginnen? Ich möchte mit euch auf Spurensuche gehen und mögliche Wege aus diesem Dilemma erkunden

Location:
REWE digital, Schanzenstraße 6-20, 51063 Köln, Building 2.20
Free parking available at the “REWE digital”-Carlswerk parking spots around the building.

All Genders and Ages welcome!

Dinner starts at 18:00. You can come late until 18:30. After that, food experience may decrease. Menu will be decided later. Drinks from a selected choice are included. Other drinks are at your own cost.

Closing Dinner ends at 21:00. Those who wish can continue in a nearby bar.

You can bring your luggage and bring it to the restaurant.
Collect your luggage when you leave.

WIA New Voices initiative is a unique opportunity to experience speaking in-person
in a large conference setting. The objective is to grow the confidence of the next generation
of contributors in the field of Agility.

Three New Voices prepared a 7 minute presentation and were mentored by an experienced mentor.