After a long year of anticipation, we were excited to return to in-person networking with our 6th annual RTE Summit at the start of November! Taking place at the Railway Museum in Utrecht, the 2021 RTE Summit featured a number of exciting workshops and presentations, organized by companies such as Vodafone, Amadeus, Rentouch, and so many others. Participants -- nearly 150 of them -- came from all over the world to join us at this inspiring event, with Andrew James Conroy of Avianca traveling 24 hours to make sure he didn’t miss out on this year’s RTE Summit! Talk about commitment.

The RTE community will gather in less than a month at the Railway Museum in Utrecht, The Netherlands, for the 6^th edition of the RTE Summit. This event location has been chosen as the perfect metaphor for deliberate planning, aligning teams, reducing risk, and creating value.

What happens when you combine RTE-training with the RTE-Summit? You get the completely immersive “RTE in a Week”-course: combining theory and practice, learning and networking.

My personal highlight of the RTE Summit Global: seeing the conference’s chairman Ali Hajou wearing a black braided ‘hippie’ wig for a themed presentation halfway through the second day. That, and seeing so many seasoned RTEs share their stories of failure, struggle, strength and success at the end-of-day online roundtables. What was yours?

Chris James expresses a deep appreciation for the Release Train Engineer. He has to, in a way: as CEO of Scaled Agile, RTEs are his bread and butter. But as CEO he’s also a Business Owner himself, working with the RTEs of Scaled Agile’s own ARTs – and from that perspective he’s seen some room to improve for many who drive that Train. So, Chris James’ keynote for this year’s RTE Summit on November 9^th… dives into the business-RTE relationship.

Jenny van Rinsum and Larry Anderson are both witty personalities who like to share a joke. They also share the responsibility for a monumental undertaking at Nike: the replacement of its huge legacy ERP platform Island Pacific with SAP CAR and S/4HANA. And that’s no joke, especially because it involves a cross-continental ART that has several complex dependencies with other ARTs.

RTE Amy Doerflinger of Boeing, a self-described “recovering project manager,” is planning a discussion at this year’s RTE Summit Global. Her activity will be based around how through increased awareness of diversity and inclusion she was able to facilitate improved unity, cohesiveness, and performance throughout her Agile Release Train.

Each RTE Summit features the election of an ‘RTE of the Year’ in recognition of someone’s contribution to building the Release Train Engineer practice. In preparation for the RTE Summit Global, learn about what this year’s winner Weronika Śreniawa-Pisarska has been up to since receiving the award.

Ali Hajou, co-chairman of the RTE Summit discusses his ambitions for the first ever virtual RTE Summit, set to be online from Gladwell Academy’s professional. Aimed entirely at strengthening the community of practice of Release Train Engineers everywhere, he invites both experienced hands and newcomers to contribute: “If you have a real-life story to share, or a question you need answers to, The RTE Summit Global is the place for you.”

Join up with Gladwell’s ‘RTE Bootcamp’ for a full week and learn all the needs and requirements of an RTE through the mentorship, knowledge, and experience of some of the industry’s best and brightest RTEs and SPCTs. Begin your RTE by attending the first ever virtual RTE Summit Global on November 9 – 10, followed by our three-day course. 

Certified SPCT Saahil Panikar of Icon Agility Services is planning a workshop at the virtual RTE Summit Global. The pitch: a deep-dive into the conflicts of communication and visualization that take place between teams during PI planning events. Saahil being an expert in every facet of working within an Agile framework, we expect an exciting, informative moment.

Yesterday’s LinkedIn post by Bengt Magnus Dyrkorn of EVRY/Tieto just about sums it up for us: “…two super exiting days at the yearly RTE Summit in Amsterdam.…really inspirational talks and presentations on a variety of subjects.”

First-time Platinum partners to the RTE Summit UMS consulting are ready to share their experience with end-to-end transformations. Senior Manager Roger Balcombe and Partner Frank Rill will present together alongside the global stainless-steel manufacturer, Outokumpu.

From Airbus France come two seasoned Agilists to share their experiences. Solution Train Engineer (STE) Laeticia Chatiron and Agile Coach Florian Labadens present on the Skywise Solution Train: “It has gone very quickly. We started two years ago and already we’re at 500 team members.” 

First time Bronze Partners to the RTE Summit, Rentouch look forward to sharing how their piplanning app enables RTEs to facilitate remote PI planning events. SPC Silvio Wandfluh: “RTEs are constantly looking for opportunities to increase performance and effectivity of teams and ARTs. That’s why the RTE Summit community is the perfect stage for the piplanning app!”

Petrie Velthof pioneer the Agile transformation within the Dutch police force takes the stage at this year’s RTE Summit to introduce how the Agile way of working is increasingly allowing the police to work faster and with higher satisfaction rates – for officers as well as civilians. 

First-time bronze partners to the RTE Summit, Targetprocess will be looking to demonstrate how RTEs can benefit from their software. Managing Director of Targetprocess Germany Egor Sviridenko: “RTEs are among our key top three personas who see the most value in our solution; naturally, coming to the RTE Summit this year was essential for us.”

After visiting last year’s RTE Summit, platinum partner CollabNet VersionOne is once again looking forward to this year’s RTE event. Enterprise Account Director Olav Maassen: “whether you’re using enterprise Agile or more traditional methods, we have an option for everyone.”

Motivational non-speaker Steve Barnett, also known as ‘The Silent Conductor’, gives us a hint of what we can expect on the November 12th at the RTE Summit. 

CEO Wessel Herwijnen was quick to decide on a renewed Bronze partnership between AgilityMasters.com and Gladwell Academy’s RTE Summit: “Of course we’re doing this…!”