Agile Project Management is completely misled by some of those who practice the so called Agile. It is sometime assumed by them, Agile is the solution for all projects issues without making prior assessment into the project they handle.

The presenter will focus on 2 risk management tools for Agile project implantation which targets Agile suitability and Agile readiness.  Under the Agile suitability, the presenter will focus on the ESI Model which talks deeper into factors mentioned below in each area that forms the model

1. Organisations - Innovative, Independent, Risk Tolerance, Resource Allocation, Flexibility and Customer Focus
2. Team – Autonomy, Cohesiveness, Co-location, Customer Participation, Creativity and Skill Level
3. Leader - Customer Focus, Flexibility, Tolerance for Ambiguity, Communication, Commitment and Leadership (motivate the team, delegate, and resolve impediments)
4. Stakeholder – Flexibility, Availability, Risk Tolerance, Collaboration, Involvement and Knowledgeable

The Viable Systems Model (VSM) offers a systematic approach to diagnosing organisational issues and designing organisational structures in consideration of how the organisation adapts to its environment. This session will provide an overview of the VSM's insights and modes of use. 

We propose that enterprises can be considered to have three aspects: setting the strategy (direction), getting the work done (realisation), and structuring for sustainable effectiveness (organisation).

Popular contemporary frameworks for Strategy development include the Business Model Canvas and systems thinking approaches such as causal loop diagrams and system dynamics models.

Realisation methodologies include Lean and Six Sigma techniques for process improvement and BPM for process management, as well as specialist IT practices such as Agile and Enterprise Architecture. 

There appears to be a gap when it comes to methodologies for organisational design.

The Viable Systems Model (VSM), developed by Stafford Beer on cybernetics principles in the 1960s, offers a complementary, systems oriented, approach to the Organisation dimension. 

Stafford Beer's books are not widely available, and much of the discussion on the internet is highly technical and specialised. However, the basic concepts of the VSM can be very useful in analysing and designing organisational structures and interactions.

This talk will provide a non-technical introductory overview to the elements, objectives and application of the VSM, and will invite participants to consider its applicability to their own needs.

When we decide to move from big batch, plan driven long dated constructs of change, so projects and programs in the traditional sense, to more agile methods, we need to rethink a whole raft of stuff. Assume for a second, if you will, we are using the historical program and project construct to identify and deliver change. Initiatives are bundled into a sequential approach and governed through stages of largely documentation production accordingly. As long as you are on track to the stages, your documents are reviewed and signed off, you are Green.

Then we disrupt this. We want more agility on how we identify, plan, deploy and release change. We want to deliver outputs to our customers and ultimately value or outcomes earlier and more regularly, which is one of the significant advantages of an agile delivery model. So we get an ROI uplift. Projects can be self funded.

So lets start a new theory and trial it. EVERY project is red until your first release to a real customer. No more debate, hand wringing, angst or arguments. Recognise and accept that until you have delivered something that tests your theories, is validated and works, and your customers are using it, you have done nothing. Use the RED as it is meant to be - a call to action to pay attention, provide support , facilitate and break through barriers, provide resources and time. Help the team get to done.

My goal is for the attendees to use this session to actually crowd source and  develop a model that people can take back to their business and propose, from scratch using design thinking and agile techniques. 

In this interactive session, Rob and Many from REA Group will go through an exercise designed to explore the agile testing mindset.  Together with the rest of the room we will build up a mindmap of a test plan for a simple application.  

Testing is an often mis-understood, under-estimated role.  We hope to challenge people into thinking outside the box and give people a better understanding of what a "QA" role brings to a high performing agile team.

In a time when it is the in thing to support and be onboard with workplace disruption genuinely discussing the challenges it evokes can be career limiting. We hear a lot of talk about having the courageous conversations, are we really having them? And do we know how? And if we don’t what is the impact for the organisation and humans within. And aren't we all at least a little worried about what it means for us?  

Making space for and hearing people's concerns and making it safe for people to share them could make a positive difference on the effectiveness of any evolving organisation.

This isn't a program of work, this is the future of work and our new life.  Is it really adapt or die, or could it be adapt together?

What if you had a simple but powerful roadmap, just 3 steps to take your groups through, so that you can have effective discussions safely. We'd like to share one with you.

Amazon are famous for their Leadership Principles and pride themselves on being peculiar because of them.

Customer Obsession is one of the principles that is not hard to grasp but easy to overlook.  It reads...  

       "Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers."

One of the ways this is done is specifically to construct a "Working Backwards" document before a project begins - its not hard and anyone can do it and it can be a great leveler for delivering real value for your customers.

Having done the inhouse training for this method and contributed to a few of these (and seen the benefits they bring) I want to briefly outline the approach

Hang on, what does the scientific method have to do with agile?  Agile delivery includes fast feedback loops and experimentation.  Many LAST attendees will have some exposure to A/B testing.  My experience of this has been long debates and hand wringing once the results are in, factions using the results to justify their starting position and  frequent use of the phrase "statistical significance" .  At one point I asked a group "who would be comfortable providing a definition of statistical significance" and received no takers.  Something is not right!

This talk will discuss one teams efforts to get a bit more scientific with their delivery experiments and why it's been worthwhile so far.

When you encourage people to "Fail fast; fail often" or "Embrace failure!" have you noticed a lukewarm response or blank stares?

This session will be a discussion on why people don't like "failure" and question if we should really be asking them to embrace something they define as repulsive.  The discussion will touch on the effect failure has on people plus how the god complex and society itself all play a role in our natural distaste of failure.  

Finally, we'll discuss whether successfully embracing failure is actually re-framing/redefining failure.  If so, why not drop the word "failure" and ask them to embrace .... ?

In contemporary product development, affirmation bias has one foot in the door, but we can learn a few things from philosophers like Socrates to build better products. Socrates took great pleasure in questioning the ideas of the people around him, with the goal of them knowing more about what they do not understand. Socrates questioning often led people to a state of aporia - the literal meaning of which is puzzlement. I like to call this "progressing to a state of still now knowing s**t, from a state where you knew less s**t that you do now."

This lightning talk will explore how two different states of ignorance can product vastly different product result.