Experience Design within Scrum - Sharing my experience as a designer working within the Scrum process

Norman is known as the “The Godfather of Lean”. He has published over 200 books, including translating the legendary Toyota Production System authors, such as Shingo and Ohno, into English.

He will be joining LAST Conference Canberra, from his home in Portland, via video.

In a historical moment where everything is political, and we keep hearing references to "walls", "bans" and all sorts of restrictions that try to inhibit a person's mobility around the world, it has never been so important to discuss global mobility in relation to the future of work. The future of work is, undoubtedly, deeply connected to remote work and global mobility. Forrester Research’s (US) estimates that the number of mobile workers will reach 63 million (43 percent of the U.S. workforce) sometime in 2016. (REF)

While “work from home” has been a common model, the pervasiveness of digital nomadism has changed the face of global work patterns. Remote and mobile work is here to stay.

This exciting trend brings about new work configurations and possibilities, but also new challenges. Tension and contradiction can sometimes exist between our basic social needs and physical disconnection, and between flexibility for the individual and the collective needs of collaboration. If agile is still cutting edge, shouldn’t agile organisations be leading the way in pursuit of answers to these things? Agile organisations can lead the way and provide solutions that enable a team to make the best out of blended work practices while avoiding the pitfalls of remote work.

Agile frameworks that are effective arrive at seamlessly blended workflows. During this talk, I will present the cutting-edge agile practices used at [Company Name] to embrace digital nomadism and shape the future of work. I will share with the attendees the challenges, triumphs, tools, and characteristics that make up an organization that is successfully embracing digital nomadism. Envato's Work From Anywhere policy is more than just an effective policy. In today's global society, it is also a symbol of another kind of world, of another way to live and work together. It is an example of what is possible when we have trust in each other and in our communities.

You are a scrum master or an agile coach that has been working with software development teams for some time; suddenly someone else from a different department (marketing, HR, sales...) asks you if you can help them also to "do" this agile thing...

In this talk, you will learn our successful approach to coaching non-software development agile teams; the tools we use, our approach and a step-by-step guide you can follow when you go back to work the next day.

According to the 2016 State of Agile Survey the #3 cause of agile project failure is “Lack of management support” at 38%. To compound the matter, the #5 cause of prevention of further agile adoption is “Management support” at 29%. In contrast, the #2 reason for success in scaling agile is “Executive sponsorship” at 40%.

Clearly the executives and C-suite are a key part of a successful agile transformation. As an agile coach or transformation agent it is imperative that you work with the C-suite so that your org can successfully adopt agile.

Learn about the different types of C-suite executives through the use of personas. We will cover 6 persona types in detail.

The communication tools of Liberating Structures will teach you how to facilitate the discussions your org needs. I am going to demonstrate how to use these techniques in the workshop. And all the attendees are going to be fully immersed and ready to wield their new knowledge the very next day at work.

Come learn how to help your team(s), org(s), and company(ies)!!!

For more information, watch my video at http://youtu.be/UNOjqMUv8h0

A version of this workshop that was presented at Agile Tour Sydney 2016 is at http://bit.ly/2f4Bie8

The Cynefin Framework by Dave Snowden is a very useful Sensemaking tool - it helps us to understand the most effective approaches to solving problems and managing change as the levels of certainty decrease and complexity increases. Whether you've come across this framework before or not, this session will cover both the basic explanation of the framework and the practical application of it to support and inform decision-making.

Scaling is an anti-pattern. Big meetings, long loops, slow cadence, tight coupling, and deep hierarchies represent bottlenecks no matter how Agile your individual teams may be. But de-scaling refactors an organisation into self-directing streams of self-organizing teams working together like pods of dolphins.

How do human organizations de-scale? How can we balance autonomy of teams against alignment to business realities? This session presents principles, metrics and practice patterns for de-scaling based on a long running historical precedent, the Iroquois Confederacy, which sustained a de-scaled society of hundreds of thousands for over five centuries. And the Spotify tribal model. And Steve Jobs' NeXT/Apple culture.

A complete working simulation of an Agile Organization - in Lego. No pre-made backlogs, no command and control, pure self-organization across multiple teams and streams driven directly by business constraints and numeric metrics.

Teal? Business Agility? Holarchy? Iroquois Treaties? Spotify Chapters? Sure, we got 'em all. Also dragons, walkers, a working small council and the greatest castle in Westeros - built entirely by Wildlings!

Check out a detailed description here and the slides here. Also there's a description of learnings from a Game we ran at the 2016 CukeUp conference here.

World of work has broken. According to Gallup in a study conducted worldwide between 2011-2012 - only 13% of employees working for an organisation are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace.

I'll explain why our current standard patterns in management are no longer good enough, and what we can do differently and better. I will showcase a number of modern modern management techniques - popularised by Jurgen Appelo and Management 3.0 - that are fundamentally aligned with lean and agile principles. These will help you get better engagement, better teamwork and make management an easier job.

You will walk away with a number of simple techniques you can use to help initiate teams or projects; change the level of conversation that you will with your peers and team members; and give you a way to build happier teams.

The Business Model Canvas and the A3 Report are classic examples of using visualization tools to help you/a team/an org analyze and plan. However, you might find that available canvases don't really suit your needs. Would you really use the traditional Business Model Canvas for a legacy product in a large enterprise?

Come learn about classic examples of canvases and what they are trying to achieve. Learn about a simple framework that enables you to build a custom canvas that is suited to your needs. And walk away with a custom canvas, because you are going to build your own canvas in this workshop!

The Prime Minister wants the Australian Public Service to be more agile, the Digital Transformation Agency has mandated it in the Digital Service Standards and it seems like there is increasing demand for Agile services across the Australian Public Service (APS), but do they really know what they are getting themselves in to?

In this talk Shane will explore the practical application of the Agile Principles in the context of non-software development programs. He will draw from his experience in roles such as Program Management Office lead, Program Manager, Scrum Master and Agile Coach in software development and business programs in government and the private sector.

Using Scrum at scale using LESS, SAFe and Nexus, how does the APS top down organisational structure fit in to existing scaled frameworks, can they co-exist, or do we need to fundamentally change the structure of the APS, the products being demanded by Government decision-making functions, or both?

An Agile approach encourages organisations to form self-organising teams that are empowered to figure out how to work together and deliver value. But it's one thing to tell a team they are responsible for themselves and quite another to understand what this even means and to put it into practice in a healthy, sustainable and rewarding way.

This workshop will explore what it means to self-organise through an understanding of the fundamentals, the relaying of experiences helping teams in the field develop their self-organising capabilities, and some fun role playing exercises to illustrate and convey techniques that anyone can easily adopt to help improve their team effectiveness.

Big programs? Lots of teams? What works and what doesn't when it comes to delivering and aligning agile team delivery with program/portfolio outcomes with the good and avoid the ugly and bad of risks and the pain of change?

Out of experiences with agencies like the ATO, DHS, ABS, AUSTRAC, Health, AIS and more, you'll hear the lessons learned from using SAFe, LeSS and NEXUS, including:

• Engaging SES and ELs to prepare them to lead agile teams
• How to scale with agile
• What's needed to make scaling agile work, including the role of the PMO
• They key to transitioning old roles to new agile roles
• What managers do in scaled agile
• Looking beyond software development to agile in the business

Sorry to say it guys, but Agile has gone limp over the last few years.  As we get more and more coaches into the mix, both external as well as internal, organizations somehow have forgotten that it’s software that we’re trying to produce.  Not great stand-ups.

Technical practices matter.  In fact, if we could dispense with ALL process and still create the valuable quality software that is needed, we should do that.  From a Lean perspective, process adds no customer facing value.  But getting rid of all process is crazy talk.  Even Fred George, who promoted “Programmer Anarchy” several years ago never got away from all process.  In reality, his movement was premised on driving business decision making directly into technical decision making, and completely empowering teams to “be” the company.  He premised the concept of “Programmer Anarchy” on using the best and brightest developers out there, and trusting that if they could do something as difficult as create great code that they could do the business decision making as well.

But perhaps we don’t have the absolute best talent out there.  Perhaps it’s hard to lure people away from Google and Facebook because of the money and the chance to get great work environment and unbelievable work challenges (change the world, anyone?)  Does that mean that we have to go back into the Fredrick Winslow Taylor world view of “The One Best Way”?  With that way becoming making a choice between Scrum, SAFe, Lean/Kanban, and other development processes?

I’d like to convince you that what’s going to work for your organization and your employees is something in the middle.  I, of course, lean into the “better technical practices will yield better outcomes” frame of mind.  You may as well.  But when Garrison Keillor said, on “A Prairie Home Companion” (a long running radio show on National Public Radio in the States), “Well, that's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average”, that was satire!  And the same is true of your organization.  It can logically be true that all organizations’ developers are all above average.  But we can hold people to an acceptable level of technical practices that will yield in writing better code than merely having a process that talks about writing better code. 

This session will speak to the specifics of the whats and whys.

When we think about change, we often get stuck focusing on how we will do agile and the frameworks we will use to do it. This often focused on how we prioritise the work, how escalate issues, how will we structure our teams, but often we lose sight of the people who are doing the work and how important it is for them to feel engaged about the work they are doing.

To truly create an amazing workplace, not only do we want people to feel engaged about working in new ways, but to deeply care about the company itself and what it is trying to do.

During this session I'll introduce the model I use to help leaders at Boral and Campaign Monitor think about making deliberate change to how alongside supportive investments in engaging people towards our goals.

Using the model I will explore some of the common designs that companies use and how they impact autonomy and engagement.

This session will help you think about how to deliberately create engagement and an autonomous environment and some of the basic factors needed for its success.

Business agility is the ability of a business system to rapidly respond to change by adapting its initial stable configuration. Business agility can be maintained by maintaining and adapting goods and services to meet customer demands, adjusting to the changes in a business environment and taking advantage of human resources.

This talk provides an introduction to business agility, including business drivers, getting started, and current trends.

Games are fun! We use them from childhood through to corporate events; and we often don’t realise that we’re learning at the time. We cover how games continue in that vein; in helping individuals and teams in so many ways. Games can help solve team problems, re-engage teams, build trust and understanding, and much more.

I will work through scenarios where games have been employed to achieve varying outcomes; including why games make sense (at the right time); and how games help people get the point, while laughing!

In short, playing games costs little, adds significant value and can have amazing results!

This workshop is inspired by drama therapy.  This approach can provide the context for participants to tell their stories, set goals and solve problems, express feelings, or achieve catharsis. Bring in your challenges in adopting Lean, Agile or System thinking. We will stage the story and help you find the solution through interactive play.