OKRs are a goal-setting, strategy execution tool that involves setting ambitious goals that lead to measurable results. The thing is, over the years, OKRs have gotten too complicated - they need to be put on a diet - and that’s where Lean OKRs step in. They are hyper-focused on one single OKR to rule all others. Often, OKRs are not set up for success and thus tossed aside. I can name four (and a half) common reasons why your OKRs aren’t working. Among them, the importance of finding a rhythm for making OKRs part of your way of working, leading teams with trust, and getting the foundation in place so teams aren’t running before they learn how to walk.

Are you interested in learning more about self-management and how to share authority within an organization? Then this talk is for you! We will discuss the basic patterns and processes of sociocracy, a system of self-governance that can be used in combination with agile practices to scale self-organization across all decisions made in an organization. This interactive class will cover topics such as patterns of organizing and consent decision-making. So come prepared to learn and participate in the discussion!

As per IDC, 81% of enterprises are using multiple public clouds along with one or more private cloud deployments. Opting for a multi cloud strategy is becoming a necessary requirement for most organization driven by many business imperatives such as: leverage best-of-breed services, address business continuity, avoid vendor lock-in etc. 

Most enterprises struggle with the complexity of multi cloud strategy when they approach it as a reactive response rather than a strategic initiative. We propose a structured framework for building a successful and long term multi cloud strategy which consists of 3 critical lenses: 1) assess the workload  2) select technology and topology and 3) establish cloud operating model. In this session, we cover this multi cloud strategy framework along with pragmatic tips on working with multi cloud. 

As a startup scales (whether it's a product or a service company), operational efficiency plays the crucial role! It could be the defining point between a drop, plateau, linear or exponential growth.

Much to chagrin of most founders, funding doesn't help in scaling operations, the operational efficiency does! Money helps but only if it's deployed for strategic growth!  This talk is about scale of an enterprise

Operational efficiency is divided into 3 parts: Operations, MIS and Finance! Different tools & processes, security paradigms can make or break your company as it scales to 30, 300 and even 3000 people.

The aim of this talk/mini workshop is to utilise a Story telling way of sharing our experience in the space of Leadership Agility. As the business world moved from the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world to BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Non-Linear and Incomprehensible) world, we as change agents have come to understand time and again the importance of having a leadership that supports “Being Agile” over “Doing Agile” in their organisations. So it has become more imperative that we design paths for leadership training and coaching that can enable leaders to embrace change with alacrity instead of compulsion. In this session we would give a glimpse of what Leadership Agility workshop might look like and what we had done for one of our customers in our organisation to enable tenets of newer ways of operating in the minds of leaders and important stakeholders for achieving a critical business goal

Digital disruption is all about how fast you can deliver customer and business value in a most efficiently to beat the competition. Most of the transformation efforts are spent on IT as a function and local optimizations but time to value goes far beyond only IT functions. Digital transformations need to focus on several aspects across business and IT. In this session, participants will learn holistic approach of transformation which enables the organizations to truly build products and services in a most disruptive, efficient and innovative ways.

Any transformation journey usually has a roadmap that focuses on process, tools, technology and people. Studies have shown that some key reasons why transformations fail are due to cultural aspects. However, culture is often ignored and we expect magic to happen quickly. Hence, a transformation needs to weave in culture shift as a critical part of the roadmap.

We delve into…

• What constitutes culture?
• Why should a transformation look into culture shift?
• A ‘culture gauge’ as a tool to calibrate the cultural aspects
• The E3R model as a recipe to plan the culture shift journey
• The elements of ‘thin slice’ and ‘1% improvement’ as key ingredients

… we weave in our stories of failure, some good practices and envision how we would use the culture gauge and E3R model.

We were part of an engagement with a client who wanted to transform themselves from legacy ways of working and tools to being Agile in terms of tech and business. We had a limited in resources, be it time, people and scope. It was a humongous task and we couldn't get overwhelmed with what we had in hand. 

We had to stick to the basics and focus on the principles of XP rather than bogged down by getting into the immense number of rituals and practices and see where it takes us. And apparently we gained the trust of the clients in 3 months and we where able to get subsequent work.

What makes champions perform better than others?

Champions like Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Michele Jordon, Usian Bolt, Stefi Graph, Michel Jordan, Serena Williams. Pele, Muhammad Ali, Sachin Tendulkar, Ayrton Senna and many more accomplished people in other fields have some things in common. One of them is it is not just they become champions once they achieve results, they are much before, it is a function of who they are being.

It is not just their skills (doing) and experience (knowing) that determine how they perform but it is also a function of how the situation 'occurs' to them and who they are 'being 'at that moment. This workshop is based on the Ontological/phenomenological models. Ontology is a branch of philosophy interested in studying the nature of 'being' itself. It is also underpinned by the works of  Tim Galloway's - Inner Game of Tennis and Steve Zafforon's Three Laws of Performance. 

In this workshop, we will explore the mechanism to access the being and experience how we can significantly elevate the performance by shifting our ways of being. 

The inner game is based on our two selves, the first one (teller), which instructs, directs,  and judges continuously and the other 'self' obeys the first self, which is part of the un/subconscious mind. 

The Three Laws of Performance are:  

The First Law states: “How people perform correlates to how situations occur to them”. 

The Second Law states: “How a situation occurs, arises in language.”

The Third Law states: “Future-based language transforms how situations occur to people.”

Through language, we can influence our being.

Refernces: 

Though these concepts might look theoretical they are backed by extensive research and application of these practices (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1681682) 

The Handbook for Teaching Leadership. Knowing, Doing, and Being. First Edition. Edited by: Scott Snook - Harvard Business School, USA

Snook, Scott, Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana, eds. The Handbook for Teaching Leadership: Knowing, Doing, and Being. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2012

In this workshop, using ontological and phenomenological models the participants can first-hand experience the concepts and figure out actions for breakthrough results inside their current situation.

What do you think about our current state of Agile? 

Socrates says an unexamined mind is not worth living. 

The current state of Agile is struggling to go beyond some core values and principles. There are practically dozens of frameworks but very less agility than we see in practice. One of the reasons might be there is no sound theoretical underpinning for the body of knowledge around Agility.  Most of the Agile literature seldom passes the norms of the scientific method. It mainly employs casual and sometimes self-serving empirical evidence; it is rarely grounded on well-established theoretical tradition. Lacks intellectual rigour.

Why we should look at philosophy to address the current state of Agile?

May be the current scientific methods are not suitable for developing a solid basis for Agility. May we may have to start from the fundamentals, the first principles. 

In the session, a very brief introduction to Philosophy (as relevant to the agile community) will be shared. Philosophy is the love for Wisdom (Philo - love, Sophi - wisdom). 

What is ethics?  (moral philosophy) 

Where do our ideas of right and wrong come from? 

For example - our notion of freedom  (or free speech) is not the same across the globe. 

Another example. " Is it okay to provide a critical and negative review comment on a public/social media platform"?"

The notion of right and wrong - comes from our preferences.  A group of people debate, and critique an assertion and that group agrees that the assertion is good for the community that becomes a law. As the preferences of the community undergo change the laws get amended or changed or replaced by a new one. 

The scientific method is based on pure rationality maybe there is a need to re-look at this aspect. 

The world of Ethics is not black and white like the world of rationality. 

Some of the challenges in creating a framework for "Ethics in Agile" can be understood better if we have clear idea of ethics. 

three main types of ethical theory: deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics. 

Deontology : This is an ethical theory that uses rules to determine whether an action is right or wrong. It’s a way of thinking about ethics that emphasizes our duty to follow universal moral rules that apply equally to everyone.

You can observe this in religious doctrines. Example: You don't lie always tell the truth no matter what. 

consequentialism: it’s the theory that determines whether an action is right or wrong by looking to its consequences. It’s what people are talking about when they say that the ends justify the means.

It is based on context and consequence. If a gunman has attacked the school and asks where the children are hiding you lie (you don't tell the truth) to the gunman to save the children. 

virtue ethics: takes an entirely different approach. Here, the focus is not on doing moral actions, but on developing a moral character. 

For example, instead of getting hung up on the idea that everything you say has to be true, instead just focus on generally being a more honest person. 

Aristotle believed that humans have the latent potential to develop social virtues that benefit society, like honesty, courage, and patience – but these virtues don’t just arise naturally or spontaneously. We all know that we also have a latent potential to be lazy and selfish! So, virtue ethics proposes that we cultivate social virtues through education and practice.

Now, what do you think are the challenges in "Ethics in Agile"? Why do we need to think of "Ethics in Agile" or we should all practice ethical Agile?