The Heart of Agile, assuming AI

AI increases  individual output by x100, but what happens to the team? 
Return to the core principles of Agile, understanding that AI changes collaboration and agile ways of working. A masterclass with Agile Manifesto co-author Dr. Alistair Cockburn.

Agile was never meant to be a collection of frameworks, roles, or rules. It was designed to help people collaborate effectively, make better decisions, and deliver value under uncertainty.

• Don't think about the ceremonies: stand up or don't stand up, sprint or don't sprint. They don't contain the magic. 
• Focus on the quality of collaboration. AI changes the conversations, but how? And how do you improve the collaboration?
• Deliver. Okay, super fast, but how are you getting your feedback?
• Pause. Reflect: Where do you want to go? How do you improve and course correct?

AI changes things, but it's still about the people, their level of trust and amicability, their willingness to collaborate, their ability to reflect and improve. These are core.

Join as prolific author, technical expert, and insightful teacher Dr. Alistair Cockburn leads this unique masterclass in team effectiveness. Spend two days with one of the authors of the Agile Manifesto and get your hardest questions answered. Learn 18 ways to improve collaboration; learn three steps that lead micro-improvements to become macro-improvements; have fun along the way.

Here is what people said after attending Alistair's masterclasses:

• "Alistair re-ignited my passion for agile."
• "People walk away with more insight with which to advance their own agility and those of the people around them."
• “By lunchtime you knew there is no going back.”

This event is a conversation, a workshop, an experience. Key is the power of the concepts introduced. Each concept is introduced with activities to help anchor them.

Who Should Attend: 

The course is relevant both for people new to agile organisations and for experienced practitioners who want to counter cargo-cult agility and sharpen their judgement. It applies to any industry, any organisation, any initiative, and all job titles. It is especially valuable for:

• Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters
• Product Managers and Product Owners
• Team Leads and Engineering Leads
• Consultants and Transformation Leads
• Leaders working with agile or hybrid organizations

Level: The concepts and exercises are kept simple, to meet practitioners in any industry or role, but even experts say they gain insights from Alistair's presentation of known topics.

What you will learn in this training:

• Why Agile works, independently of Scrum, SAFe, Kanban, LeSS or other frameworks
• Why the Heart of Agile contains only four essential elements: Collaborate, Deliver, Reflect, Improve.
• How to consciously improve collaboration using the Alphabet of Collaboration
• Why decisions are the unit of work in modern knowledge work, and how to manage them effectively
• How to split initiatives and work into small, valuable increments.
• How to deliver value earlier and respond better to changing needs and deadlines
• How to deliberately reflect on and improve team habits instead of adding more process
• How the Heart of Agile fits with both Scrum and non-Scrum approaches
• How AI can meaningfully amplify agile practices
• Which agile practices become simpler, obsolete, or newly possible with AI support

This workshop gives those attendees new to agile an appreciation for the power of human collaboration when done effectively. Using the core elements, Collaborate, Deliver, Reflect, Improve, the workshop gives those attendees already familiar with agile a chance to investigate how LLM-driven development will change their conversations, and how to deal with the new problems using collaboration and reflection tools.

Note: This class is being taught in collaboration with and at TechTalk Vienna. Reserve your place here on their registration page as you prefer:
Register on the TechTalk site!

Author Bio:

Dr. Alistair Cockburn (pronounced CO-BURN) was named as one of the “42 Greatest Software Professionals of All Times" in 2020, as a world expert on methodologies, project management, software architecture, use cases and agile development. He co-authored both the Agile Manifesto and the Project Management Declaration of Inter-dependence. Since 2015 he has been working on expanding agile to cover every kind of initiative, including social impact project, governments, and families. For his latest work, see https://alistaircockburn.com/. 

Alistair's "Hexagonal Tour", May 2026

• Copenhagen, May 13: Half-day Elephant Carpaccio, Full-day Hexagonal Architecture
• Vienna, May 18: Half-day Elephant Carpaccio, Full-day Hexagonal Architecture
• Vienna, May 21-22: Two-day Heart of Agile
• Utrecht NL, May 29: Half-day Elephant Carpaccio, Full-day Hexagonal Architecture
• The full tour content