Speak at ABE

Status

Call for speakers & trainers is now OPEN. Share your example at ABE26!

We’re waiting for submissions until May 17th, 2026.

Read below about what we’re looking for and then choose your submission form.

The forms

Call for speakers

We are looking for 8–12 speakers to deliver 15m talk plus 5m Q&A.

In 2026 the overarching theme is “Effectiveness over Agile Theatre” and we’ll be focusing on four thematic areas, described below…

Call for trainers

We are looking for 12–14 trainers to do 3–3.5 hour workshop.

We are not limiting the topics, everything that’s practical and related to lean & agile is welcome. The best workshops focus on interactions between the participants and engage them in practice activities.

We’re not looking for lectures, definitely hands-on workshop are better.

Tracks and Focus Areas

Hi-Octane Teams, Real Results

Teams “doing agile” but still stuck. Stories are completed, ceremonies happen, dashboards are full — yet nothing seems to move. Business asks for results, not story points or velocity charts. This track is for talks about what actually made a difference.

We’re looking for:

• Real cases of boosting team performance under real constraints
• Hard trade-offs: speed vs quality, autonomy vs alignment
• What you stopped doing (roles, rituals, practices) to get results
• Situations where standard “best practices” failed — and what you learned

Not a good fit:

• Generic “how to build a high-performing team” theory
• Motivation, culture, or team-building talks without measurable outcomes
• Framework evangelism without real-world application
• Yet Another Retrospective Format
• Facilitation skills, Coaching, etc.

Projects, Products… and Reality

Everyone talks about “product over projects,” but many organizations still operate like projects. Some, focused on products, could benefit from smart project management. You are navigating the messy middle.

We’re looking for:

• Real cases of applying product thinking in project-heavy organizations
• Lessons from integrating project management practices into product-driven teams
• Hard trade-offs: priorities, timelines, and scope in messy, hybrid contexts
• Data-driven decisions: how choices were made, measured, and adjusted

Not a good fit:

• Explaining “how to do product management” in abstract, without context
• Promoting frameworks or methodology as a silver bullet
• Stories that ignore trade-offs, constraints, or real organizational friction
• Focusing on outputs (features shipped, slides created) instead of real outcomes

Life in the Scaled World

Your company introduced a scaling framework. But the honeymoon ended fast. Teams are still blocked, dependencies multiply, and coordination feels impossible. Welcome to the reality of Agile at scale.

We’re looking for:

• Real cases of making multiple teams deliver under real constraints
• Lessons from balancing autonomy and alignment across teams
• Cohesion that doesn’t kill effectiveness or productivity, and actually brings value
• Dropping parts of the framework that didn’t work
• Finding and managing low-performing teams
• Multi-team effectiveness metrics backed with real data

Not a good fit:

• Explaining scaling frameworks or methodologies in abstract, without context
• Promoting SAFe, LeSS, or other models as silver bullets

Decisions Over Ceremonies

Endless meetings. Rituals that don’t matter. Dashboards that don’t help. Choices take forever and often miss the point. You need to make decisions faster and better.

We’re looking for:

• Real cases of cutting through endless meetings to make faster, better decisions
• Metrics and data used to prioritize and act effectively
• Removing ceremonies, reports, or rituals that didn’t add value
• Hard trade-offs: speed vs completeness, consensus vs accountability

Not a good fit:

• Explaining meetings, retros, or rituals in abstract, without outcomes
• Adding more ceremonies, dashboards, or slide decks as solutions
• New formats of ceremonies for the sake of increasing involvement

General info