Over 3 months John recorded over 75 hours of interviews and spoke to some of the most respected people in the industry to produce an audio documentary that attempts to answer the question “What is safety? And why is it important anyway?”

This highly interactive talk will present the findings and guide and challenge you through a journey to understanding safety. Including short interactive sessions and role play exercises to cover the following topics:

• What is safety?
• What are the elements that make a team effective?
• Is psychological safety the foundation to team performance?
• What can we all do to help foster psychological safety in our teams?
• What is the relationship between safety, stress and engagement?
• What is the profound impact of a lack of safety and engagement on society?

This talk has grown as John created the new podcast The Agile Path. The first season on this podcast is about safety in teams. John has interviewed world renowned specialists in the field; Christopher Avery, David Marquet, Jerry Weinberg, Esther Derby, Johanna Rothman, Woody Zuill and many more in over 75 hours of audio. This has been a fascinating deep dive learning experience for John and he hopes to explore these insights with the audience.

You've sent the managers to Scrum Master training. The development team is getting pretty good at writing automated tests and have most of the release process automated. Your CIO is recognizing that Quality Assurance, Security, and Independent Testing is going to need to change to take advantage. But something isn't right. Specifically, you're still not producing products that delight customers. Or, you are producing products that delight customers, but they can't see the light of day because of other stakeholders.

The dirty secret in Agile Transformation is that for all the talk about how the IT organization needs to change to engage with customers and produce working software, what gets less talked about is how comfortable the customers, or the proverbial "Business", has gotten with the status quo before Agile.

In this talk, we explore who are the stakeholders that comprise "the Business", what barriers they often face in adapting to Agile, as well as some practices that can help you ensure that they have seat on the Agile Transformation train.

Diversity. It's the topic of the hour. Organisations are all putting 'diversity' and 'equal opportunities' on every job ad. But, for some organisations it still seems to be a struggle.

What's the goal? Do we want diverse teams because it's the "right thing to do" or is it "good for our teams and organisations"? Are we hiring minorities to keep up with quotas or our competition?

This talk will engage the audience in a frank discussion on what diversity is, why we need it and how we might achieve it. Guiding attendees through the latest research with practical exercises to demonstrate the issues and open discussion to find answers to the following questions:

• What does diversity mean? How does it relate to me? 
• Why does diversity matter in effective teams? 
• How can teams where everyone is different be effective? 
• How can we increase diversity in our organisations? 
• Is positive discrimination a feasible and ethical way to achieve diversity in our organisations? 
• How can I employ a diverse group, when they are not applying?

Diversity is no longer just a moral imperative, it's critical to effective organisations.

Agile adoption has changed the corporate landscape in many different ways. And while the change has been mostly positive for the teams, some can see Agile and Scrum ideas as a revolt against the traditional management practices. If the team is self-organized, what’s the manager’s role? Uncertainty leads to confusion and fear, stress and distrust. Managers who don’t understand the spirit of Agile, who cling to their titles and try to preserve the chain of command, can sabotage and hurt the Agile transformation. During the talk we will discuss different ways managers can become an obstacle during Agile transformation, and what they should do instead to help the teams grow to their full potential and be successful. We’ll see how the manager’s role has changed over time, what they have lost in the transition, and how their fear and insecurities can lead to management dysfunctions. We’ll review examples of how managers can ruin the agile spirit, and then take a look into ways managers can boost agile transformation and become true leaders.

At the end of the session you'll understand the conflicts and dilemmas that make your managers behave like they do, you'll learn how become a great Agile manager and how to help your manager to turn into an awesome Agile leader. You'll also have a better idea on what to expect from Agile transformation, how roles will change over time and what you can do to make it successful.

I am a Director of Software Engineering and I'm speaking from experience of being a manager in Agile world.