Do you like green eggs and ham?
As I read these bed time stories to my son, I can't help but notice the many lessons that Dr Seuss could be teaching Agilists.
We can get inspiration from our everyday activities, such as reading bed time stories and this presentation will explore 6 lessons to grow your agile mindset.
From the experimentation mindset to making people awesome, come and explore how these stories relate to growing our Agile mindset
Intro - 4-5 mins
Dr Seuss Insight 1: Experimentation with Green Eggs and Ham 3-4 mins
Insight 2: Dealing with the Unknowns with The Cat In the Hat 3-4 mins
Insight 3: Listen to your Customers with Horton Hears a Who! 3-4 mins
Insight 4: Sustainable change with The Lorax 3-4 mins
Insight 5: Diversity and Inclusion with The Sneetches 3-4 mins
Insight 6: Make people awesome with Oh, The Places You'll Go! 3-4 mins
Wrap Up 4-5 mins
TOTAL 28-34 mins
By attending this presentation, people will learn:
Everyone
A curiosity into developing the Agile mindset
Speaking References:
Anthony Murphy - [email protected]
Alex Sloley - [email protected]
Presentation History:
- Macquarie Bank Scrum Master Guild - The power of Metrics
Culture has a huge part to play in moving a team to high performance and the leader of the team plays a critical role in creating that culture. Sam uses the voices of the diverse scaled agile team he led for 2 years from their entries in his leaving card, and shared how the key themes of their feedback, energy, caring and fun came together to create a culture where team members feel valued, trusted and able to do their best every day regardless of their cultural background or which team or company they work for.
Think about your last BBQ when your brother in law told you he was dealing at work with an "agile change manager".
What was your first reaction?
How your brother in law told you he understood now what your job is about?
Schrödinger faced the same challenges when quantic physic suffered from its own labelling between scepticism and dogmatism.
Drawing from both history lessons and thought experiments we will observe together with the effect of the challenges we face when assisting people finding their approach in context to develop agility.
Either we can let the box with the cat closed with no way to predict if the cat dead or alive, or open it to trigger the state.
In the same way, we can prevent yourself from using "Agile labels" to keep the box closed or start using them to trigger reactions and dealing with.
The craft of Agile Coaching fundamentally requires deep, insightful, meaningful communication. In everyday execution, this typically involves a coach and the coachees having a conversation, or dialog. However, there are other ways that an Agile Coach and their coachees can connect – nonverbal communication.
Explore the different aspects of nonverbal communication in the domain of the Agile Coach! This workshop overviews nonverbal communication in Agile Coaching and provides a starting point for developing this critical skill.
What is that magic that makes some teams bubble and fizz whilst others just fizzle out?
Why do some truly soar when others stumble and fail?
In Agile, we talk about nurturing high performing teams, but what is the formula for high performance?
In this session we’ll explore the traits of success and learn some inspiring lessons from a real life Champagne team to help you and your teams find their winning edge!
We often expect our leaders to be imbued with superpowers, effortlessly balancing the needs of the many against their own convictions and values. A leader's ability to navigate these scenarios can lead to their success or downfall. As such we don't often provide the space for leaders to admit failure or uncertainty.
"Contrary to equating vulnerability to weakness, exhibiting vulnerability offers the possibility of inspiring people and connecting on a deeper level" - Hanson
Join us in this session as we explore the concept of vulnerability in leaders and its impact on the ecosystem. We will share real life stories and tips we've learnt along the way in coaching leaders on transparency and vulnerability.
Agile has become all the rage with corporate leaders. Agile transitioned in the last two decades from something mainly of interest to software developers (and, initially, only a small number of those) to a major concern for CEOs and senior executive teams. Who these days doesn't want their business to be agile?
The Agile mindset is now seen as important for almost every aspect of modern-day business "best practices". Management gurus, strategy journals and every big transformation program all extol user-centric design, rapid iterations for great product management, the importance of omnichannel customer experience and the ability to easily pivot versus multi-year plans and 500-page business cases. Not least, everyone proclaims the virtues of less "top down" hierarchy in structure, diversity and behaviour.
But in that process, have the goals of the Agile movement been co-opted by corporate leaders to align with their traditional agendas? These include maximising shareholder returns, increasing profit margins, reducing headcounts and relentless cost-cutting.
Is any of that a problem for Agile practitioners?
And, if so, what to do about it? What is your "One Metric That Matters"?
Equal Experts works with failing projects and more often than not, it is agile that is blamed as the reason for failure rather than the execution. Although many teams understand the principles of agile, some struggle to see "what good looks like" when they haven't experienced it before.
The Ball Point Game by Boris Gloger is an excellent game to demonstrate the basics of scrum; this session is a twisted version of that game that allows you to show problems that you are facing and the impact on the team and delivering value.
An interactive session which will get you all moving about but will hopefully leave you feeling energised and ready to solve those issues
It started as a simple way to bring lightness and safety to a team’s scrum of scrums.
Shared learnings from my own journey as a leader and contributor within fiercely competitive teams.
Over time these lessons from the world of Dragon Boating became a regular feature with my teams and now I'll share them with you too!
From working smarter not harder, to developing a minimum viable habit and the power of compound interest. Come and learn how these honest and valuable lessons helped me power an awesome team & culture.
Architecture is a topic which I think doesn’t get the attention, especially not in the agile space, as it really should.
As the world demands us to be more adaptable and responsive the need for reinventing how we think and approach IT architecture is becoming ever prevalent.
The ship is sinking for many companies — the agile ship that is — as many companies continuing to approach architecture as they did 10+ years ago with the goal of enterprise architecture to maximise reuse, consistency and ultimately reduce operating costs. Over the decades this has left many companies with massive monolithic architectures, large “enterprise solutions” which are wide spread and shared by many teams across the organisation. Great from a $$ point of view but for speed to market and agility it does nothing but leave teams with their hands tied, bound by a proliferation of inter-dependencies.
Like a kid trying to jam a square peg into a round hole, organisations are "going agile" trying to make make feature teams work on top of a traditional architecture - have we neglected what's under the hood? Architecture and agility are not mutually exclusive things.
So what does an agile architecture look like? I will share with you things that I've found has both worked and not worked so well. As well as some guiding principles and patterns that I've found useful for creating an agile architecture of your own.
"Leadership is not an affair of the head. Leadership is an affair of the heart."
Has it ever crossed your mind to become a SCRUM Master?
Are you SCRUM Master starting your servant-leader journey?
Do you like stories?
Then this talk is for you! Step into the confessions of a Software Engineer turned SCRUM Master.
I was a Software Engineer for 7 years before I fell in love with Servant Leadership. My journey began with a great servant-leader & our Daily Stand up.
In this talk, I will share the story of my ongoing journey into servant leadership, the hurdles I encountered and the lessons & essential skills I have acquired along the way.
Let's explore the woes of being part of a team that strongly believed that they didn't need a SCRUM Master, the perils of becoming a servant-leader with a Software Engineer problem-solving mindset, and the joys of getting the team's buy-in on an idea.
Let's venture into the wonderful world of influencing people, knowing your team as individuals, and embracing what it means to be a servant-leader.
How can an Agile Coach figure out when an Agile “Transformation” is going wrong? Are there signs that they might see, heed, and take action upon? Of course, there are!
Hindsight is 20/20, but in the moment, these warning signs can be hard to see. Let’s explore some of the more common, and frightening, warning signs that your Agile “Transformation” might be exhibiting. We will discuss transformation provider types, frameworks, keywords, and other anti-patterns that might be signs that THE END IS NIGH.
This session will review common themes and help familiarize you with the warning signs. Armed with this new knowledge, you will be able to plan as appropriate, to help navigate your organization through potential impending doom.
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!
Forming, or Launching, a new Agile Team is a critical step that is very often skipped due to lack of knowledge, time pressure or just eagerness to get on with work as soon as possible. This workshop discusses and demonstrates the importance of taking the time to launch teams and provides hand-on knowledge on how to Form a Team. This technique has been used by several organizations in the US and Australia. The last being the 2nd largest bank in Australia launching teams in an organization of 4500 people.
"That's just how it's always been"
"Don't bother asking, nothing changes around here"
"It's easier to just go with the status quo"
Ever heard these terms being spoken amongst your teams? Your peers? Fellow coaches?
Learned helplessness can be a pervasive parasite in your organisation, creating a persistent barrier to change and a dangerous edge to disengaged individuals.
Join us in this talk as we share practical take away's to spot learned helplessness and the tips to stop the infection spreading.
Cumulative flow diagrams (CFDs) can seem complicated and theoretical - something we should put off until our teams are more mature. There's a lot of mythology around them too, like how they're all about heuristics and terrifying maths (Queuing Theory anyone?). To top it off, tools like Jira, that have CFDs as part of automated reporting, actually obscure the real benefits.
Over 9 months I kept CFDs for a couple of new teams. I learned a huge amount about the teams and quite a bit about CFDs. In this session, we'll make a CFD with Post-It notes for one imaginary sprint by an imaginary team. As we make it, and when we inspect the result, we'll see that:
Credits: This workshop has been evolving out of some of comics I drew earlier this year that led to discussions at Agile Coach Camp, and the Lean Coffee meet-up. Thanks to Nina for your support and ideas, and to Alex for tolerating my "obsession" with CFDs.
About limits and the limits of our limits... !?
The word “boundary” has been very successful in its literal sense, even more so as a metaphor of multitude realities involving limits.
A good appreciation of boundaries supposes we go beyond the simple jump over an imaginary line in the sand.
Playing on the edges with limits for both a personal and systemic growth
What can the theory of constraints and our brain both tell us on our usage of limits?
What separates the comfy from the danger zone and how we can see and use it better?
Where can we find help and supports from some limits to go further than our own preconceived ones?
Are our beliefs limiting us from going where the magic happens?
Can parenting strategies, which deal with a complex environment, inspire our daily routine?
Let's explore together and clarify blurry concepts to make small yet tangible improvements.
There is nothing more disruptive than someone who thinks differently to you!
Then we very naturally seek out people like us... We certainly know we shouldn't be we still do it!
So why research proved to us that diversity makes us collectively smarter but we cannot marry this with our instinct feeling when opportunities occur.
The world is telling us to tidy up and order things to help to clear out uncertainty, improve efficiency.
What can we learn from jazz and the principles of improvisation?
A thin frontier separates music from noise, how beauty can come out from the mess?
Let's explore some fascinating experiment to identify the most productive and inspiring office setup.
Creativity is not out of reach, how to celebrates the benefits that messiness has in our lives?
The best storytelling might be the one that you experienced yourself.
Let me tell you the story of how a 500-employee company completely changed its structure, lead by the employees' impulse.
After 10 years and an average of 20% organic growth every year, it was time to change, for the organisation to keep growing.
Originally, the teams were composed of senior & highly skilled consultants, divided into 3 industry-focused departments.
But over time, consultants started feeling frustrated being stuck in one department, working in 1 industry, on the same types of missions.
The company turnover reached a peak and in 2014 the executive team decided to address the problem.
More than half of the employees gathered to answer the question: how should the organisation be organised, in order to fulfil both business and consultants needs?
This talk will be about how the company organised a bottom-up conversation to invent and to collectively design their very own great place to work.
More than the organisation model itself, the talk will emphasis on the collective design process of the organisation based on a clearly stated problem, on the core principles on which the Tribes lie on and on the benefits that have been observed after 3 years of operation.
Greatly inspired by the book "Tribal Leadership" by David Logan, the employees ended up organising themselves as Tribes of expertise.
Workplace incivility has been defined as low-intensity deviant behavior with ambiguous intent to harm the target. Uncivil behaviors are characteristically rude and discourteous, displaying a lack of regard for others.
Research is proving workplace incivility is on the rise and is having a signficant effect on productivity and mental health.
Not addressing workplace incivility is sitting back and letting an agile team or any team for that matter to slowly spiral into ineffectiveness and negatively impact.
It's time to address it. Join me to find out how.
Agile adoptions involve a huge number of change decisions that are made based on mental models. Unfortunately such mental models are usually invisible and many of them are them are flawed.
"More software projects have gone awry from management’s taking action based on incorrect system models than for all other causes combined." - Jerry Weinberg
Drawing Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs) interactively as we have conversations is a powerful way to share mental models for better informed decisions about change interventions.
In this hands-on workshop we use a richly interdependent world imagined by Dr Seuss as the source material for practising causal loop diagramming. Credit goes to Don Gray for this idea (Phoenix AZ, 2010).
"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." - Dr Seuss
Welcome! We are super excited to hear from you.
As we are focused on the local community, we don’t expect people to travel from interstate or overseas to participate, although you are welcome if you choose to come. LAST Sydney is an event with low registration prices, so we need to keep overheads low. Therefore, we generally do not reimburse travel and accommodation or pay a fee to session leaders/speakers.
Paid registration for LAST Sydney opens on Monday 6th May. As we always sell out, and as successful submitters won't be notified until early July, it could be wise of you to grab a registration. If you are accepted onto the schedule, you can request a refund.
We would love to know who else you know who has a great idea but needs a nudge. LAST welcomes first time and experienced speakers. Let us know, and we'd be happy to reach out.
We look forward to hearing from you!
