Agile Connect Rochester 2026
Upstate New York's Premier Agile Meetup
Date: Oct 1, 2026
Time: 8:30 AM - 3:30 PM with a happy hour afterwards
Location: Hyatt Regency Rochester
TechRochester's Agile Connect is the premier agile meetup in Upstate New York and you don't have to be an agile pro to join the fun.
From beginners to seasoned practitioners, we bring together curious minds from 40+ companies for a high energy day of learning, connection, and practical insights you can actually use. Whether you're just agile curious or you've been living and breathing agility for years, you'll find your people here.
This is where Rochester's tech and product community comes to connect, grow, and get energized about what's next.
AGENDA
8:00 AM - 9:00 AM
Registration & Breakfast
9:00 AM - 9:15 AM
Opening Remarks
9:15 AM - 10:30 AM
Keynote Speaker
10:30 AM - 11:00 AM
Break & Networking
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Breakout Sessions
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Lunch & Networking
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
Breakout Sessions
2:00 PM - 2:30 PM
Break
2:30 PM - 3:30 PM
Panel Discussion
3:30 PM - 4:30 PM
Networking & Happy Hour
Where Agile minds meet and momentum builds |
Where Agile minds meet and momentum builds |
Keynote SPeaker
Building Resilience
Tricia Broderick, Co-Author of Lead without Blame
Tricia Broderick, co-author of Lead without Blame, is a highly respected leadership and organizational advisor with over twenty-five years of experience. In 2020, she founded Ignite Insight + Innovation to further her mission of “Igniting What’s Possible.” Today, she is a dynamic CXO at X2A, who aligns vision, capability, and impact to create meaningful experiences that help people and organizations become tomorrow-ready.
A sought-after advisor, facilitator, trainer, keynote speaker, and author, she is known for her passionate, authentic, and results-oriented leadership. What makes Tricia especially powerful as a speaker is the way she brings both depth and humanity into the room. She blends theory with lived experience, offering practical insight, honest perspective, and the kind of hard-won wisdom that resonates with real people doing real work.
Breakout Sessions
Leading Through Change: AI, Agility, and the MEssy middle
Chris Macri, Sr Manager - Enterprise Portfolio Management, PaychexJazmin Locke, Enterprise Program Manager, Paychex
AI adoption and organizational change rarely fail because of strategy—they struggle in the “messy middle,” where uncertainty, resistance, and fatigue collide.
In this interactive workshop, you will explore what it really takes to lead people through change in an agile environment—especially when introducing AI into everyday work. Using a relatable, story-driven approach inspired by Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, we’ll surface the human side of transformation: where things feel unclear, uncomfortable, and imperfect.
Through guided discussion, hands-on activities, and the intentional use of AI during the session, attendees will reflect on their own change experiences, identify common breakdown points in the “messy middle,” and explore practical ways to better support teams through uncertainty, learning curves, and shifting expectations.
You will leave with actionable insights, practical questions, and approaches they can immediately apply to lead more human-centered, resilient, and effective change—especially when navigating AI adoption in agile environments.
Making Sound Product Decisions: From Vision to Value
Dan Sharp, Product Manager, ITXAs AI accelerates delivery, product teams are under more pressure than ever to make sound decisions. But most teams still have more ideas than time and more opinions than evidence. This hands-on workshop gives participants a repeatable mental model for connecting business outcomes to the right opportunities, evaluating solutions in terms of real dollar impact, and communicating those decisions to skeptical stakeholders. Using a single fictional product scenario throughout, participants work from a defined business outcome to solution ideation and impact assessment, using AI to pressure-test assumptions, help synthesize qualitative data, and build a value case they can defend in the room.
You will leave with a practical model and set of AI prompts they can immediately apply to evaluate solutions that drive business impact.
Loaded Toolkits: Setting methodology dictates aside to deliver business value and happy customers.
Leighanne Barry, Senior Agile Team Coach, Wegmans Food MarketsMichelle Nemitz, Senior Project Manager, Wegmans Food Markets
Implementing complex software is rarely a single project. It is multiple workstreams, competing priorities, vendor dependencies, and teams that are not fully dedicated.
In this interactive 45-minute session, we share a real implementation where a Project Manager, Product Owner, and Agile Coach had to move beyond traditional role boundaries to keep delivery moving with hard deadlines. Rather than choosing a methodology, the team combined milestone planning, backlog visibility, and iterative delivery practices to manage four parallel workstreams under real constraints.
Participants will work through common delivery scenarios, including slipping dependencies and overloaded teams, and explore how role flexibility, visible work, and shared decision-making improve flow and outcomes.
This session is for leaders and practitioners who are less interested in methodology debates and more focused on getting complex work across the line.
Why Isn't This Getting Built Faster? Diagnosing the Problems Agile Can't Solve
Sheila Herbert, Founder and CEO of Conspiracy Product Co. and Co-founder and CTO of UnderStory Works"Why isn't this getting built faster?"
It's one of the most common questions in product and technology organizations. The answer is usually another delivery improvement: refine the backlog, improve estimation, optimize ceremonies, or ask teams to become "more agile."
But what if the real problem isn't delivery?
Program managers, Scrum Masters, engineering leaders, and product leaders are often expected to solve delivery challenges that were created long before work reached the team. By the time an initiative enters execution, the decisions that determine its success may have already been made.
In this interactive workshop, you'll use a real initiative from your own organization to diagnose the problems hiding upstream. Together, we'll uncover hidden assumptions, misalignment, and readiness gaps that quietly undermine delivery, regardless of the framework your team follows.
You'll leave with a practical diagnostic you can apply immediately to identify whether you're facing an execution problem or a decision problem, and with new ways to influence better conversations before teams start building.
Meet our Sponsors
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Paychex
Breakout Sponsor
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ITX
Breakout Sponsor
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Wegmans
Breakout Sponsor
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Mindex
Panel Sponsor
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Tek Systems
Happy Hour Sponsor
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X2A
Sponsor
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Clear Sky
Wifi Sponsor
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Understory
Community Sponsor
Event Information
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Hyatt Regency Rochester is attached to the South Avenue Parking Garage, which serves as the main parking facility for the Hotel. Fees will apply for parking.
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There will be an extra room available for those who need to step away for a meeting/call during the event.
