In the late 1990ies I took two turnoffs of the path of my professional development. One of them was signposted XP, the other Scrum. I took them without knowing where the road will take me. Will I hit a dead-end? Will the road be too rough to travel on and I will lose interest after a while? Will I meet fellow travelers and we will continue the journey together? I continued without knowing if there would be a reward waiting. It was mainly my curiosity that fuelled my movement back then.

Later I realized, in my organization it was not just me being interested in a new approach how to make endeavours more successful. I found peers and we started to debate details about it. I learned, that these approaches inspired people to write academic theses about it, to apply it in their daily business, and to rethink interactions and collaboration with their peers and clients. I soon got interested in joining this larger crowd, who wants to help evolving Scrum and Agile. But was I really on the right track? Was I doing the right thing, thinking it the right way? And what could be the short-, mid-, and long-term benefits of it?

Today, about 20 years later, the movement is strong. Changing the way we work has reached so many people and companies. Agile can be found and heard at any corner. It helps people and companies to simplify their way of working, and get more value out of it. It became almost a de-facto standard. But still the questions why, how to, and how did others approach it are present and important to be asked. This is why we chose "The Road to Agile" as this year's theme with the underlying tracks "Why Agile", "How To: Agile", and "Case Studies". With this year's Agile Austria Conference, we hope to help you further in your journey and to inspire even more people to join us.

Wolfgang Richter,
Initiator of Agile Austria Conference, Agile CEO, Coach and Certified LeSS Trainer @ JIPP.IT

Facts

• 220 agile participants
• 24h hours of agile know-how
• 40 international speaker
• 28 workshops
• 2 intense Workshop days with Zuzi Sochova and Wolfgang Richter (JIPP.IT)