“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.

 
 

Outline/Structure of the Talk

I apologise with deep sorrow, this will include a slide pack and me talking.

Learning Outcome

Clarity and simplicity in what it means to be Lean.

Target Audience

Anybody new to Lean or who wants a refresher on what Lean really means.

Prerequisites for Attendees

Nothing. Empty your mind.

schedule Submitted 5 years ago

  • Steven Mitchell
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    Steven Mitchell / Craig Brown - Friday Keynote: 2 John

  • Steven Mitchell
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    Steven Mitchell / Craig Brown - Friday Keynote 1: Henry

  • Steven Mitchell
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    Steven Mitchell / Craig Brown - Thursday Keynote - Kriti

  • Michele Playfair
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    Michele Playfair - Cards Against Agility Game

    Michele Playfair
    Michele Playfair
    Executive Director
    YOW!
    schedule 5 years ago
    Sold Out!
    45 Mins
    Interactive
    Beginner

    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!

  • Alex Sloley
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    Alex Sloley - The Product Owner and Scrum Master Brain Transplant! Mwuhahahaha!!!

    45 Mins
    Talk
    Intermediate

    Imagine you are a Mad Agile Scientist and have a diabolical experiment to conduct - what would happen if you exchanged the brains of a Product Owner and Scrum Master? Mwuhahahaha!!! How would the body of a Product Owner with the brain of a Scrum Master act? And vice versa?

    Perhaps the Scrum Master would now treat the team like a backlog? This Scrum Master would be focused on value and maintaining a coaching backlog of team and person improvements. This Scrum Master is refining the team, crafting a group that delivers value.

    And perhaps the Product Owner might treat the backlog like a team? Rather than backlog refining, they coach the backlog. They would be focused on nurturing, protecting, and empowering the backlog. The backlog might transform from an irritation into a labor of love.

    Although this experiment sounds terrible, this change of perspective might be what you need to reanimate your dead team or backlog.

    Join the fun and come learn what horrifying results await!

  • Mark Barber
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    Mark Barber - Trust through transparency - Radiating information to build trust

    Mark Barber
    Mark Barber
    Agile Coach
    Adaptovate
    schedule 5 years ago
    Sold Out!
    45 Mins
    Talk
    Intermediate

    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.

  • Ruma Dak
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    Ruma Dak - Agile Dojo at MYOB: 6 weeks of Accelerated Learning

    Ruma Dak
    Ruma Dak
    Lead Delivery Coach
    IAG
    schedule 5 years ago
    Sold Out!
    30 Mins
    Talk
    Beginner
    Starting in November 2017, a crew at MYOB embarked on an exciting 6 weeks journey of an Agile Dojo! Guided by an Agile Coach, it was an intensive learning experience which gave us opportunities to challenge the status quo, carry out various experiments, introduced them to new tools, techniques & practices to foster collaboration, refine team dynamics, bring structure to their approaches and improve the way they worked in general.
    We used 'Improvement Kata' and 'Coaching Kata' from Lean Management for learning, adapting, experimenting and coaching. It was a time to pause, observe and ponder over things.
    In a nutshell, it was a time-boxed immersive accelerated learning opportunity which resulted in productivity improvements ranging from 10%-90%. MYOB ran this Dojo as an investment in their knowledge workers! It was an experiment run at both Auckland and Melbourne and was successful. This talk will give you glimpses of our 'dojo' adventure, learnings, challenges, interesting surprises and lots of 'aha' moments!
  • Leoren Tanyag
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    Leoren Tanyag - Mentoring: A Newcomer's Perspective

    Leoren Tanyag
    Leoren Tanyag
    Systems Engineer
    REA Group
    schedule 5 years ago
    Sold Out!
    30 Mins
    Talk
    Beginner

    How do we make an impact to the starters in our field regardless of your position in the industry? Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a newcomer and explore mentoring from a different perspective.

    Coming from being a part of an 18 month Graduate Program position at REA Group, my peers and I have been fortunate enough to find ourselves in an environment where mentoring and pairing is a big part of the culture. This talk is designed to give the attendees an insight on what a diverse range of mentees actually wish and crave for, to empower people to mentor and help shape the future of tech.

  • Julia Birks
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    Julia Birks / Dave Calleja - Getting to Value Atoll: how you can deliver value from insights by creating a culture of experimentation

    45 Mins
    Talk
    Intermediate

    Most organisations now understand why they need insights on customers’ needs and behaviours to drive customer-centred outcomes within agile teams. But many organisations struggle to convert insights from their quantitative and qualitative research into value that actually gets delivered to customers.

    And whilst many organisations are employing researchers, and building agile teams, organisational behaviours—at a team level, and also at a leadership level—often get in the way of those teams converting insights into value, leaving teams feeling lost at sea.

    But there are behaviours and principles that teams and leaders can put into practice to create an culture of effective experimentation based on insights. By being more human, we can enable our teams to deliver efficient value to customers, and even within the organisation itself.

    Come on a swashbuckling journey with us, as we show you how to navigate the oft-treacherous waters of organisational culture, to help your teams reach the mystical location we call Value Atoll.

  • David Williams
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    David Williams - Scaling connection, trust and agility using Management 3.0 practice

    David Williams
    David Williams
    Agile Coach
    ANZ Bank
    schedule 5 years ago
    Sold Out!
    45 Mins
    Case Study
    Beginner

    This interactive session will explore connections and how personal mapping can be scaled to kick-start a platform to build better communications, trust and psychological safety to underpin your agility journey.

  • Liam Brobst
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    Liam Brobst - Improv games to prime divergent and convergent mindsets

    60 Mins
    Interactive
    Beginner

    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.

  • Chris Chan
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    Chris Chan - Overcoming Your Immunity To Change

    90 Mins
    Workshop
    Intermediate

    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.

  • Katrina Kolt
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    Katrina Kolt - 10 Agile culture hacks that won’t get you fired!

    Katrina Kolt
    Katrina Kolt
    Agile Capability Lead
    Coles
    schedule 5 years ago
    Sold Out!
    45 Mins
    Interactive
    Intermediate

    Is your team or organisation in a funk? Seeking some fun ways to shake things up, or change behaviours?

    Put simply, a culture hack is an intentional action to affect positive change within a team or organisation.

    This session will take you through 10 easy to implement hacks to create an Agile culture within your team or organisation.

    Come away with:

    • A deeper understanding of how culture hacks work
    • The excitement to try one of the ready-made culture hacks
    • The confidence to create your own culture hack!
  • Justin Holland
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    Justin Holland - From Apathy to Intent: A story of making meaningful change

    Justin Holland
    Justin Holland
    Product Manager
    Xero
    schedule 5 years ago
    Sold Out!
    30 Mins
    Talk
    Beginner

    I've been on a journey, and I've come to know that apathy and ambivalence are an awful place to be.

    I want to talk about big life changes and the uncertainty that comes with them.

    We will look at navigating this kind of journey in your own life. How curiosity and self-awareness can lead to meaningful change that will better equip you for new and exciting things in your life.

    We will also discuss the importance of healthy company culture as the undercurrent that enables all of this.

  • Suzanne Nottage
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    Suzanne Nottage - GO WITH THE FLOW: your Scrum teams are interrupted 2,000 times per sprint. Let's talk about flow

    45 Mins
    Interactive
    Advanced

    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.

  • Daniel Ploeg
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    Daniel Ploeg - Scrum and Kanban - making the most of both with Scrumban

    Daniel Ploeg
    Daniel Ploeg
    Kanban Coach
    Evogility
    schedule 5 years ago
    Sold Out!
    45 Mins
    Talk
    Beginner

    This is essentially the same session that I did at the recent Scrum meetup. The presentation material is here:

    https://www.slideshare.net/DanielPloeg/scrum-and-kanban-92219317

    I will need to go through the material a little more rapidly for the timebox and perhaps restrict questions.

  • Daniel Prager
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    Daniel Prager / Jemma Ritchie - Levelling up management: Beyond carrots, sticks, and kumbaya

    90 Mins
    Workshop
    Intermediate

    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!

  • Jatin Bhasin
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    Jatin Bhasin - Go Lean or Go Bust: Be Ruthless to Survive

    Jatin Bhasin
    Jatin Bhasin
    Sr. Business Analyst
    REA
    schedule 5 years ago
    Sold Out!
    45 Mins
    Talk
    Intermediate

    Over the years REA has mastered the art of delivering products following the lean startup principles, however, working with a bank to create a home loans product was a different ballgame. Functioning in the Build-Measure-Learn cycles requires a fundamental change in the way people (or organizations) think and work.

    In spring of 2017, REA made a big leap from being purely a media organization to venturing into financial services. As a result, there is now an innovative product offering in the Australian home loans market that allows consumers to sort out their home finance needs while they are still in the market looking for their dream home, all from the comfort of their living room couch.

    This talk is about how to shape up your products with decisions based on data, metrics, and evidence over personal opinion.

  • Bob Martin
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    Bob Martin - Are you stuck in a WTF loop? Your choice of words may have something to do with it.

    45 Mins
    Interactive
    Advanced

    Language sets the tone for change, but we continue to use the same tired language that we have been for years. You know the language, that dialog, those words that fill the pages of Linked In, airline magazines, and 'modern' management speak. Meaningful change continues to eludes us; and in the end, if we don't change our language, our dialog, our words, we're just waiting to fail (and not the good kind of fail!).

    Join me for an interactive discussion of my top ~five words / phrases that I believe cause more harm than good. We'll discuss why they're an issue, and I'll suggest alternatives that may help guide you onto a better path.

  • Mark Grebler
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    Mark Grebler / Lay Clough - Does Agile culture discriminate against the neurodiverse

    45 Mins
    Interactive
    Beginner

    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.

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