TBC

If you've been searching for a fab new role like me, you too may have experienced all of the emotions that come along with you on this journey.  Searching for a new role can be exciting, scary and overwhelming, sometimes all at the same time. And it can be lonely and frustrating, leaving you feeling lost and confused. Am I the only one not getting interviews or not hearing back from anyone? What are all of these other people I see getting jobs each day doing that I'm not doing? What else should I be doing?

Over the past 11 months, I've been running a weekly Job Accountability Group, coaching and supporting senior and executive-level people to run their job search like creating a product.  In this workshop, I'll share this process as a 12-point plan to 'Finding your next role'. 

Key success measures for this approach have been:

• adopting a product approach to understand each job seeker's needs and problems; defining values and vision; research and generate opportunities; planning and synthesizing insights and metrics; validating what's working; and continuously iterating this strategy 
• drawing on the power of a supportive community to hold you to account
• and my own mantras: You only need one job, 'No, no, no eventually leads to Yes and There's always more Money

It’s important is to remember we’re talented, experienced people, with a huge amount of value to offer the world. It’s hard to see why we wouldn’t be able to find new roles. This session will outline the approach I've been coaching and using and which you might like to use too. 

Your backlog is (probably) broken - here's how to fix it!

Agile software development introduced the backlog as a beautiful, powerful, and delightfully simple tool for managing variability and uncertainty in modern organizations. Unfortunately,  the backlog can also be a major impediment to flow and break the value stream with substantial economic loss. This happens because our traditional model of backlog management presents the backlog as a stack of plates reservoir for the development team.

Agile grew up, and now so does our model of the backlog.

Based on the recently launched book “The Rock Crusher” (available from Amazon or the IIBA) this session introduces a flow-based model for backlog management.

We explore how some organisations are managing their backlogs well, yet others struggle, show how turbulence is necessary for innovation, introduce the waste gate as a way to help focus on doing the right work and show how using a rock crusher helps maximise the value generated for our customers and stakeholders.

Selena and Michael will take you on a roller coaster journey of how to get started and get the most out of pair-programming. Live on stage they will switch from conversational overview straight into acting out various highs, lows, do's and don'ts of pair-programming collaboration. Laughs and tears are guaranteed as the audience connect on the difficulties and ultimately the rewards that can be reaped from teamwork through effective pairing.

Pair-programming, 2 developers writing code collaboratively with 2 keyboards and 1 computer, might feel weird, foreign, or impossible. Pair-programming was popularised through agile methodologies like Kent Beck's Extreme Programming and get's a lot of lip service but many teams fail to implement it effectively and reap its rewards. Come and join us for a demonstration of what it is and how to get the most out of it. Pairing is applicable to writing better agile software or just a great life skill to have to collaborate with other humans.

Ever wonder which practices people in other orgs are using to improve their organisational agility?   Come learn and discuss what your local and global peers are doing, through the lens of the time and "maturity" insights that flow from the 2023 Business Agility Report - which I'm a co-author of. 

This session is a combination of quick presentation - longer discussion group - quick presentation.  We'll talk to the insights of the 2023 Business Agility Report, run a quick survey and discussions on practices attendees are using, and close with learning what the global survey said in this space.  If there's audience time and appetite, we can run a short Q&A on the report itself. 

note: I'm proposing this as a discussion, with a presentation component to frame it. It could be flipped the other way around as a 40min presentation (with much less discussion time).   

Lean has proven to be effective in streamlining processes, reducing costs, enhancing quality, and increasing customer satisfaction. Lean improves efficiency and eliminates defects across different sectors leading to operational excellence. It is important for teams to build quality into their deliverables. This implies that teams need to continuously test and check quality because delays in doing so will cost more in the short and long run. Lean is no more only about building cars but also about systemically building great organisations through continuous learning.

In this session, I will introduce some sources of waste in the knowledge work environment to the attendees and invite them to share their stories, actions taken to curb waste, outcomes realised, and the overall experience. This session will trigger the thinking of the attendees about the principles of Lean, the session is intended to be collaborative in nature so that attendees can deep dive into their wealth of experience to bring out instances where their action or inaction has resulted in both positive and negative outcomes. After all, as agile practitioners, we are expected to partner with organisations and teams to efficiently and responsibly reduce or better eliminate waste where possible, to improve efficiency and deliver more value to customers.

Do you believe you and your team could release new features to production 2 times a day with no bugs discovered in production over a year and a half?

In this talk I will tell you my team and I formed the important habits that took us from hundreds of bugs in production, to zero known bugs and highly effective habits for creating products in an agile way.

The greatest change and consistency in technical habits I have seen has been during mobbing.

4 Minutes: Intro, Habits, and their importance
This will tie technical excellence to habits detailed in extreme programming skills as well as relevant organizational habits. The importance of habits will be detailed by covering good habits vs bad habits in our personal lives.

4 Minutes: Topics from Power of Habit/Atomic Habits books including the Habit Loop.
This section will cover the habit loop and tools for changing habits. This will lead to habit change for technical excellence later in the talk.

4 Minutes: Good technical Habits
This will cover the habits we know are good for us but have trouble committing to.

4 Minutes: Concrete technical examples of good habits
This will provide examples to show technical habits are not scary.

4 Minutes: Intro to Mob Programming
This is a brief into the Mob Programming, my history, and anecdotal experiences.

4 Minutes: Mob Programming’s effect on technical habits + Historic Metrics for our teams
Finally, we tie the habit loop and mob programming’s ability to effect habits in a stronger way through collaboration, peer accountability, and strong feedback loops.

16 Minutes Q&A

A Workshop about Workshops: Learn Building Blocks to create great interactive sessions

Facilitation is among the most important skills for building Working Intelligence. This highly interactive 50-minute workshop intend to provide any individual with an understanding and a toolset to create and structure their own interactive meetings and workshops.

In this high energy deep dive into a topic close to his heart, Aurelien inspires you to reflect on the crucial roles of the facilitator in meetings, and shares pragmatic ways to become meeting leaders and enable the collaboration of any team (“Agile” or “Traditional”), by resetting the focus on doing what matters if you want to make a real difference when getting together.

Come and attend this session and talk about workshops, in a workshop! In a style that Aurelien likes to call "workshop-ception."

When most people think of Architecture, they think of an activity that enables the software to be robust, secure, scalable and manageable, along with a host of other benefits; but one that is susceptible to analysis-paralysis, slows teams down and does not let the team respond to the customer need. In other words, architecture is annoying, architects do not live in the real world, and they're not letting me do the thing I really need to do to make my customer happy.  

And when these same most people think of Lean Agile Delivery, they think of a contemporary approach that's so perfect that it enables the customer to get exactly what they want, and when they want it. Except when it doesn't, but then it's not the delivery approach at fault, so we double down and do exactly what we were doing.

Even if I'm not being facetious, we operate in environments where the general wisdom is that delivery is optimised for speed, while architecture impedes speed. While this view is unfortunately very common, I feel it is one that leads to a lot of pain and takes away from the conversation we should all be having - the conversation around "value". 

Let's have a chat about why do we hold strong opinions on things we seem to believe in, what should we value while delivering customer outcomes, where can we create value together, and what are the considerations and trade-offs we need to work through.

The last five years feel like a lot. Bushfires, floods, protests, politics, covid, lockdowns, schooling from home, sweeping redundancies and layoffs in the tech industry. Looking forward, there’s plenty of challenges ahead too. Is it any wonder that exhaustion, burnout and mental health problems are affecting us all?

If you’re looking for another way to alleviate the burnout, an approach to making the world a better place that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely, then this talk is for you!

It’s time to REBEL! Don't just survive, Hope Punk's the art of being alive.

Come along and find your personal antidote to the crushing misery of the news cycle. Find your values, and use those to help lift yourself and others up.

This talk might just change your life.

So we won, right? Software products have upended our lives and disrupted countless industries.  We're collectively pretty good at producing products.   

Yet we keep losing data.  Boards and executive teams keep going on about privacy and security, yet you're not sure where to start improving product privacy.  Your legal team hasn't got time to help you and the security folks are busy fending off the internet criminals.  Looks like you're going to need to sort this out yourself.

One of the best tools for improving privacy is Privacy Impact Assessments (PIA)  They're easy to complete and help you get clear on what looks good in your product and what's risky.  This becomes important so you don't end up on the news for all the wrong reasons.  But most folks don't have experience making PIAs or talking about them.  So let's make three quick PIAs together.  You'll get some experience, without having to go full confession mode on your own products.

"A picture says more than a 1000 words"

Many of us use a form of "pen and paper": whether this an actual pen with ink and paper or a digital version like Miro or Mural. In this session, we are going to the participants with the skills and tools to enhance communication, collaboration, and problem-solving through visual representation.

Be part of an inspiring journey of "change and transformation" as we explore the Aqua system—a unique meta framework that addresses core organisational challenges and enables effective strategising and working.

In this interactive session, we'll go beyond conventional delivery methods and embrace self-sustained delivery systems. Discover how Aqua brings consistent alignment and clarity to organisations, breaking free from traditional scaling patterns and frameworks.

I'll share thought-provoking insights and practices from a case study with an Australian luxury brand, offering practical takeaways for leaders, senior managers, and agile professionals seeking to overcome obstacles and drive innovation.

We will combine actionable strategies and creative thinking challenging the norms of the agile industry.

How can you make the jump from an idea to an organised plan of work very quickly? It's possible with the right tools.

We're going to turn a conversation into a rough and ready (but well organised) user story map using Cockburn style use case notation to organise our thoughts. We'll be doing this with the darling of visual collaboration tools, Miro.

Effective change is often hampered by lack of agreement as to what the ‘real’ problem is and what solutions are likely to lead to success. Systems Thinking is a validated way to approach our problems and come to understand what the underlying problems are. It allows us to understand, collectively, what is happening, and move from conflict over different solutions to working together to solve the problem.

I see this session as having 2 possible forms:

1. Simple talk: I've given this talk before at Agile On The Beach NZ 2023. It was well-received, with feedback stating that people wished it could have been longer. It was a 15 minute session, and probably could have easily gone for either 30 or 45.

2. Case study: I have used these techniques with clients. I can take one of my latest ones, and work through it with the audience. Perhaps share the problem statement that lead to my engagement and ask how the audience would approach it. Let them work on identifying a solution, and then walk the audience through what I did, and what the results were.

Here’s a question I’ve started asking every now and then to attendees of my Professional Scrum courses: What made you want to learn about Scrum?

And while I’m thrilled to hear the occasional “oh it makes complete sense to work in this way” or “oh I experienced it in my previous team and want to bring this into my current environment”, the most common response is a shrug or a guilty smile and something along the lines of “oh, it’s the best agile method”, and “everyone in our organisation/around me is doing it” and my most dreaded response of them all “because my company sent me here to learn about it”.

Cue Zombie Scrum.

As a Professional Scrum Trainer™, while I’m proud when I hear statistics like 87% of Agile practitioners are leveraging Scrum (in the 16th State of Agile report) - I can’t help but shudder at how many of these are mechanical applications of the framework: slap on one of 3 new job titles, call your specifications document a backlog, your (pre-planned) list of features your sprint goals, provide a daily status update to the powers that be and...you’re scrumming!

There are no cultural or procedural changes to the ways of working, let alone the incredible mindset shift that is required for a barely-not-shaky adoption of scrum, and the disengaged, exhausted people in the weeds of “the scrums” have only one question when they rock up to a course to learn more about the framework - does Scrum actually work?

Here’s my confession - no, it doesn’t.

Not always, and in my experience, not in most environments it’s currently being applied in.

In a fast-changing world, adapting our ways of working, systems and tools for environment sustainability is a complex challenge and many organisations, and people within them, are struggling to achieve better outcomes.

Attendees will hear how a research program run by an international group of coaches was empirically validated and demonstrably helped individuals and teams grow their capability in sustainability action, while also delivering other benefits such as:

• employee growth
• increased teamwork and collaboration
• reduced time and cost overcoming challenges
• satisfaction and a sense of belonging

Agile features strongly in modern sustainability approaches, such as Giles Hutchins’ and Laura Storm’s Regenerative Leadership. Therefore, in line with the continuous improvement mantra, lessons can be learned from both tech and sustainability sides complementing one another.

Ultimately, this presentation aims to inspire and empower attendees to embrace the interconnectedness between agile thinking, environmental sustainability, and inner development. By recognising the mutual benefits and synergies between these elements, we can foster a collective sense of agency and catalyse a transformative shift towards a sustainable future.

Attendees will leave with the ability to consider alternative forms of employee training and growth programs, which enhance:

• employee engagement and resilience
• enable behaviour change
  and
• improve cognitive ability across the board

As the adage goes, the only constant in most organisations is change. Whether it's changing missions, adding new team members, or changes in leadership, most teams will experience a significant change in the next six months. 

To help navigate this change, this session will introduce attendees to the Team Formation Canvas, a practical tool and workshop that helps build the minimum viable shared understanding of the essential topics that all teams need to accelerate their time to "team".

Drawing heavily on the Drexler and Sibbet Team Performance Model, this tool provides leaders and teams a repeatable and structured way to build the necessary shared understanding to self-organise around how they work together to achieve their objective. 

Far too frequently I hear stories about people not using kanban because of myths they've heard. I also see people trying kanban but giving up and perpetuating these myths. From my perspective it's the most powerful tool I've ever used. I've seen teams who wanted to quit or were on the verge of being fired be able take control of their work and be able to have productive discussions about how to continue to improve their work. I'll present many of the myths I've heard, talk about why they aren't true, and share resources to gain more information so others can experience the joy that comes from understanding and owning your work.

An elite F1 racing team is designed to deliver optimum performance up to and including the driver. The F1 Team has a responsibility to optimise these critical components (tyres, aerodynamics, fuel efficiency, analysis of track conditions etc.) that drive performance of the system including starting at the top with the driver's performance.

Similarly, as agile, system and lean practitioner practitioners of high performing teams, we have a holistic responsibility and commitment to all of the components of a system including the 'driver' of that system, be it a GM, head of business, Tribe/Platform lead, or Scrum Master/Product Owner.

Performance coaching is based on the science of optimising human motivation and behaviour for any given endeavour. The self-coaching Leadership canvas is a lightweight coaching framework designed to improve a Leaders personal performance.

The canvas brings together over 20 years of performance coaching experience of business leaders designed to improve self-awareness, understanding, motivations & targeted actions.

In this workshop simulation participants will test drive the self-coaching leadership canvas working in groups of 3. The canvas will provide guidance on how to use highly effective and less well-known leadership coaching tools for the purpose of self-coaching performance.