My job as a software engineer is not to write code
Many software engineers are lead into the false assumption that we are hired to write code. This talk challenges that perception and discusses the real reason we are paid to turn up to work every day.
Coding is fun, but we are paid to solve problems.
I will try and convince you that you can add more value, and have more fun, by concentrating on the problem, not the code.
Outline/Structure of the Talk
A 30 minute presentation on the reason we are paid to turn up to work; then a 15 minute discussion afterwards
Learning Outcome
A greater understanding of the value we can add to the software we create
Target Audience
Anyone and everyone who lives code
Video
Links
schedule Submitted 4 years ago
People who liked this proposal, also liked:
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Michele Playfair - Cards Against Agility Game
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!
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Mark Barber - Trust through transparency - Radiating information to build trust
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.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Ruma Dak - Agile Dojo at MYOB: 6 weeks of Accelerated Learning
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! -
keyboard_arrow_down
David Williams - Scaling connection, trust and agility using Management 3.0 practice
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.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Katrina Kolt - 10 Agile culture hacks that won’t get you fired!
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!
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Justin Holland - From Apathy to Intent: A story of making meaningful change
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.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
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.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Gus Irisa - Say Less and Ask More Questions
90 Mins
Workshop
Beginner
Do you spend a lot of your time trying to solve people’s problems? What if you could learn a simple tool that you could use to help them learn to solve these problems for themselves? A tool that would enable team members to think more creatively and take more ownership of their work. By using coaching conversations to provide support and feedback, you can help individuals or teams to make sustainable changes and improve their effectiveness.
This workshop is based on the Wall Street Journal bestseller The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stainer. You will learn and practice his seven essential questions to help you coach people to find their own solutions to their problems.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Jatin Bhasin - Go Lean or Go Bust: Be Ruthless to Survive
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.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Julia Harper - Releasing Your Inner Greatness - 4 Growth Principles
90 Mins
Interactive
Beginner
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.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Alex Sloley - Liberating Structures... yet more facilitation techniques!
90 Mins
Workshop
Beginner
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.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Julia Harper - Releasing Your Inner Greatness - You, The System
90 Mins
Interactive
Beginner
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.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Alex Sloley - Build your own Canvas
90 Mins
Workshop
Beginner
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!
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Aurelien Marando - Agile, beyond the buzz-word
5 Mins
Lightning Talk
Beginner
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.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Suzanne Nottage - The Agile Ironman: how moving from Waterfall to Agile in Triathlons cut 4 hours off my time, and how you can do the same at work
45 Mins
Case Study
Beginner
* Many Agile practitioners don't have 100% free rein at work to practise Agile.
* After "failing" at Ironman with a Waterfall approach (multiple times), I experimented with Agile principles over several years, where I had 100% free rein to iterate, continuously improve and adapt. Ultimately, cutting 4 hours off my time and finishing 3rd in Ironman Australia 2017 in my age group.
* This is significant because at 5'2" and without any physical advantages, it was Agile principles (working smarter, not harder) that made the difference.
* You'll learn which principles had the biggest effects, and how you can apply these at work (or in other areas of your life).
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Genny Stevens - Hire outside the box
60 Mins
Interactive
Beginner
Look beyond product and engineering for the right people to help you unleash awesomeness. The qualities needed to be an effective effectiveness person is not specific to software or agile. How do we find the career switchers, create opportunities, and develop them.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
James Halprin - Four Things You Should Know About SAFe
45 Mins
Talk
Beginner
Many organisations have benefited from the transformational practices of Lean and Agile at the team level, but how do we apply the learnings within larger enterprises that are tasked with building complex solutions that potentially require hundreds of people to develop?
The Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) is a knowledge base of proven, integrated principles and practices for Lean, Agile, and DevOps that helps large organisations with this challenge. SAFe was released in 2011 and is currently the most popular method for scaling Lean-Agile.
If you’re considering whether SAFe is right for your context, then there are four things you should know about SAFe.
-
keyboard_arrow_down
Michele Playfair - The Conundrum of Job Titles
30 Mins
Interactive
Intermediate
Research into employee engagement asserts that what we want is "autonomy, mastery and purpose" not necessarily a corner office, a ping pong table, or a fancy job title.
Anecdotally though I have seen a different story where particularly those closer to the start of their career are very focused on job titles as evidence of progress.
Super-flat structures such Holacracy (where you perform a collection of roles rather than having a job title) only exacerbate this... there's really no concept of "promotion".
As managers/employers how do we attract, support, grow and retain our staff - is the answer more likely to be a giant skills matrix allowing progress through a level system than flat circles of autonomy?