“Agile has become overly decorated. Let’s scrape away those decorations for a minute, and get back to the center of agile.”
— Dr. Alistair Cockburn, co-author of the Agile Manifesto.

“When encouraging getting back to the center of agile, I found I kept emphasizing four things:

– Collaborate
– Deliver
– Reflect
– Improve

The nice thing about these four words is that they don’t need much explanation. They don’t need much teaching. With the exception of “Reflect”, which is done all too little in our times, the other three are known by most people. You know if you’re doing them or not.”

Agile has become overly decorated. Let’s scrape away those decorations for a minute, and get back to the center of agile.”
— Dr. Alistair Cockburn, co-author of the Agile Manifesto.

“When encouraging getting back to the center of agile, I found I kept emphasizing four things:

– Collaborate
– Deliver
– Reflect
– Improve

The nice thing about these four words is that they don’t need much explanation. They don’t need much teaching. With the exception of “Reflect”, which is done all too little in our times, the other three are known by most people. You know if you’re doing them or not.”

The Agile version of Cards Against Humanity. You may have seen versions of this on the internet, but rest assured this version has been enhanced to yield a minimum of 156% more awesomeness. Relatively fresh from its stellar debut at the 2017 Xero Unconference!

Autonomous and empowered teams are a key building block of agile organisations but require a great deal of trust to work. Management and leadership must trust people and teams to do the right thing, and teams need to trust that management will support them when needed.

Transparency is a low-cost means of building trust. Transparency gained through the open sharing of information, particularly visual information, has played a large part in agile and lean thinking - from lean's visual controls, to XP's "big visible charts" and beyond.

We will explore how transparency, and the radiation of information, can build trust and cultures where "safe to fail" is more than a theoretical concept.

The Medici Effect was a coined term by Frans Johansson to describe innovation that happens when disciplines and ideas intersect. Take for example the idea of using something very technically challenging such as blockchain, and an internet favourite such as cats and you have the CryptoCats and the Crypto Kitties! Indeed the most interesting ideas are borne out of collaboration & diverse thinking.

This hands-on workshop will provide an introduction to the Medici effect using the Mashup ideation method by IDEO.

The workshop aims to guide the participants on the steps detailed on the Mashup ideation method of IDEO.

Participants will work in groups and will be guided on IDEO's 4 step Mashup process and will end with a Cereal Box design activity and sharing of the created ideas.

Design Council's 'Double Diamond' model requires teams to shift between divergent thinking and convergent thinking with regular cadence. But what does that actually feel like and how do we do it?

In this session we'll play some Improv games together that prime divergent thinking (creating options), convergent thinking (making decisions) and the pivot point between the two.

This is a participatory session with a pinch of theory and whole lot of game playing.

In this session we will cover a brief introduction to the research by Kegan and Lahey where they discovered that behind each of our habits is a strongly held belief that not only keeps us in our groove, but also fights any change that threatens the status quo.

We will discuss why personal growth and increasing our mental complexity is so important for agile and business transformations in today's VUCA world to succeed.

We will create your Immunity To Change Map which is a simple way to bring to light the your personal barriers to change. We will start by outlining your commitment to an improvement goal. Then we will sketche out the things that you are either doing or not doing that prevent progress towards the achievement goal. The Map then identifies competing commitments, as well as the big underlying assumptions behind those competing commitments.

The objective is to pinpoint and address whatever beliefs and assumptions are blocking you from the changes you want to make.

You will leave this workshop with a better understanding and tools to overcome the forces of inertia and transform your life and your work.

Scrum is a great framework but there are many ways to do it poorly. The average IT worker is interrupted every 15 minutes, which equates to 2000+ interruptions for a Scrum team every sprint. Unthinkable on a production line, yet too often the norm in offices.

I conducted original research with Scrum teams in Australia last year as part of my Master of Management thesis (and achieved an A), to understand the causes, patterns and impacts of these interruptions on the team's effectiveness and their happiness. And, how mature teams control interruptions rather than let themselves be controlled by interruptions.

Attendees will play a short game to demonstrate how destructive the context switching from handling frequent interruptions is.

My talks are always highly practical and I provide 3 takeaway actions for teams to improve their 'flow' and reduce interruptions.

It's never been easier to work and collaborate with people anywhere in the world. That's really important as ways of working evolve, because not all of the best talent is located in the one place.

In this session I'll share some insights into how our hybrid remote friendly way of working works at Envato as well as share some of the challenges we have had and lessons learnt.

Management and managers have not gone away with the advent of Agile.

Old-fashioned carrot and stick management may have worked wonders back in the early days of industrialisation, but is woefully inadequate for undertaking complex knowledge work in an uncertain and volatile world.

At the other extreme, dropping all structure in favour of radical self-management — mocked as "everyone gathering around a campfire singing kumbaya" — doesn't instantly lead to effective coördination, let alone organisational success.

In this workshop we explore the state of the art of management with a mix of design thinking and facilitated discussion to uncover rich insights and perspectives into the nature of management, and what a re-boot could look like.

Let's level-up management!

Agile Mindset is highly talked about and prized amongst agilists. Claims for its benefits range from 10x improvement, can’t be agile without it and requires organisational and cultural change to achieve.

Social psychology presnets a different view where mindset is a cognittive toolkit used to understand and taking action in a complex world. This defintion implies everyone posesses an agile mindset.

Is agile mindset a nirvana state which will enable you to levitate and be at peace with the world? Is it what is constraining everyone from achieving life, love and happiness. Or is it something more practical, humanistic and useful.

Looking through the lenses of behavioural and social psychology we will understand what mindset is, how it works and how you can become more aware of how yours and others mindset are operating within the agile domain.

As organisations have become more agile and try to build “high-performing” teams, they have started to hire for cultural and team fit. As a result they search for people who can collaborate and are team players; who are willing to develop a deep trust in each other and in the team’s purpose; who freely express feelings and ideas; who engage in extensive discussion; who are adaptable and embrace change and who are comfortable managing constructive conflict towards a better outcome.

There are however, many people who do not meet that criteria, and for various reasons, may struggle to meet that criteria in the future.

Everyone brain is wired slightly differently and not everyone’s wiring fits the mould described above.

Does the exclusivity of the above criteria result in certain people missing out who could have significant positive value.

You were created for a specific and unique purpose - there is a special mix of gifts and talents in you that need to be shared with the world. In today's workplaces, it's critical to have the skills to continually self-evaluate, evolve and inspire others to change. We apply continuous improvement to our products, but not often enough to ourselves and our cultures. So how do we access the greatness within ourselves and call it out from those we’re leading? This session will look at 4 principles that promote growth and foster transformative collaboration. You’ll come away with a combination of mindset and action points to put into practice.

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.

If you are a recent convert to LS, come learn a new set of techniques to continue the journey. If you are new to LS, this will start you on your path of facilitation mastery.

You were created for a specific and unique purpose - there is a special mix of gifts and talents in you that need to be shared with the world. In today's workplaces, it's critical to have the skills to continually self-evaluate, evolve and inspire others to change. We apply continuous improvement to our products, but not often enough to ourselves and our cultures. So how do we access the greatness within ourselves and call it out from those we’re leading?

Do you wish you were doing your best work but find that somehow you can't make it happen? Ever wondered why you keep repeating the same conflicts at different workplaces and with different teams? This session will delve into the specific areas of your life that, when unblocked, will allow the best version of yourself to operate more frequently. You’ll come away with a combination of mindset and action points to put into practice.

Despite progress in our agile processes at work, the people piece remains the pacesetter of change. How do we help people move flexibly through complexity? How do we work generously with our colleagues and tap into our collective intelligence? What control over the pace of change can you personally have by learning more about yourself? Dr Amy Silver shares her expertise in creating the psychological safety, trust and effective communication necessary for us to achieve elevated outcomes, despite the discomfort of our VUCA workplaces (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous).
Proposed

“Agile has become overly decorated. Let’s scrape away those decorations for a minute, and get back to the center of agile.”
— Dr. Alistair Cockburn, co-author of the Agile Manifesto.

Lean has become a decorated (*cough* bullshit *cough*) prefixed buzzword plastered on to every latest (and not necessarily greatest) industry trend. Steve Mitchell will strip back the fluff and guff to what Lean really means.

Leadership is challenging, but what if it could be as easy as walking? Or is walking really that easy?

Drawing upon almost a decade of experience in improvisational theatre and two decades in the knowledge sector, this interactive workshop will provide novel insights to common domains. It will make you think and feel differently about leadership in the workplace.

Despite progress in our agile processes at work, the people piece remains the pacesetter of change. How do we help people move flexibly through complexity? How do we work generously with our colleagues and tap into our collective intelligence? What control over the pace of change can you personally have by learning more about yourself? Dr Amy Silver shares her expertise in creating the psychological safety, trust and effective communication necessary for us to achieve elevated outcomes, despite the discomfort of our VUCA workplaces (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous).
Proposed

Agile is now considered as a "must-have methodology" to be successful in developing software. Even, it starts extending to non-software businesses and its practices and principles are spreading out to many teams and organizations.

But beyond the buzz-words, we often race to apply solutions and miss the true values beyond naming, frameworks or tools provided by Agility.

This session is an Lightning talk to foundation ideas that underpin Agility. It revisits some basic fundamentals that have dropped out of the modern agile discourse when leading the change toward better ways of working. Beyond the buzz-word that Agile became, let remind us what be Agile truly is.

It will be particularly useful to agile consultants, scrum masters, iteration managers and change agents driving the agile agenda.

This session can be adapted to a longer Agile 101 format mixing introduction of fundamentals and debat/experience feedback.