Find Your Edge - Human Specialties in the Age of AI

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.

Scrum is a great framework but there are many ways to do it poorly. For example, the average IT worker is interrupted every 15 minutes, which equates to 2000+ interruptions for a Scrum team every sprint. This severely impacts 'flow', team productivity and often reduces happiness and increases stress. It's unthinkable on a production line, yet too often the norm in offices.

I conducted original research with Scrum teams in Australia 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.

I delivered this talk at LAST Melbourne in 2018 and based on strong attendance, would like to deliver it in Sydney this year.

The move away from traditional ways of working and thinking to digitization leads to change in the way we work, learn and measure. It is important to understand how the digital economy has shifted our ways of working in a digital organization from strategy to execution.

Join us in game play where we will explore Digital Product Management and the Critical Success Factors, Events and Skills needed to create value flow to customers. We will look at the skills needed for a company to move from being descriptive to one that can respond to emergent needs. Applying this knowledge will help organisations transform their operating model have a competitive edge in a VUCA economy. Plan to Win!

Do packaged frameworks for organising the system of work help or limit performance, outcome and relationships at work? Do frameworks give you an edge or take it away?

Where is the balance between mandating a framework to get started as compared to allowing for a model of work to emerge within the local context of a social system?

We define serious realism as being a cynical optimist with a dash of science and open mind, compassion and open heart, activism and open will and a sense of fun and play.

We take a "relatively" scientific approach to create "almost" comparable outcomes in order to find "less" biased questions to help you find your edge. The participants will also sharpen their tools and techniques that help them on their real life problems at work. This will give confidence to find and apply their edge.

In this immersive social experiment, participants will experience different approaches to social systems change and their effect on the outcome, performance and people in teams or organisations. Participant will also experience different possibilities to organise the work, build relationships and achieve outcomes.

Together, we will find our edge by asking better questions that open new possibilities for work, community and our relationship to those.

Come and experience sciencing, arting and funning in a bundle

A couple of years ago Christiaan Verwijs and Johannes Schartau coined the term ‘Zombie-Scrum’. What's it all about?

Well, at first sight Zombie Scrum seems to be normal Scrum. But it lacks a beating heart. The Scrum teams do all the Scrum events but a potential releasable increment is rarely the result of a Sprint. Zombie Scrum teams have a very unambitious definition of what ‘done’ means, and no drive to extend it. They see themselves as a cog in the wheel, unable and unwilling to change anything and have a real impact: I’m only here to code! Zombie Scrum teams show no response to a failed or successful Sprint and also don’t have any intention to improve their situation. Actually nobody cares about this team. The stakeholders have forgotten the existence of this team long time ago.

Zombie Scrum is Scrum, but without the beating heart of working software and its on the rise. This workshop will help you understand how to recognise the symptoms and cuases of Zombie Scrum and what you can do to get started to combat and treat Zombie-Scrum.Knowing what causes Zombie Scrum might help prevent a further outbreak and prevent the apocalypse

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.

Its increasingly common that teams are distributed across multiple offices, in different countries, all working on the same product or project. But how do you make this work well? There seem to be a number of readily accepted tenants of conventional wisdom to help deal with leading distributed teams, from seeming good ideas “teams must be co-located” to ones that are purely economic “offshore teams can be run at a far lower cost”.

This talk will challenge the conventional wisdom around leading distributed teams. I will explore how I have structured distributed teams at finder.com, and explain where and why I deviate from conventional practices (teams are not co-located or bounded by geography for instance). I will show how ignoring or modifying these can produce much better outcomes, happier, more productive teams, and a great culture of distributed work.

I have over 10 years experience leading geographically dispersed teams (in the US, Australia, Manila, and Europe) and growing successful high performing tech teams. I recently set up teams in the Philippines and Poland and will be drawing on that experience for this talk.

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.

What's winemaking got to do with an Agile mindset I hear you ask. Do keep reading!

I've been fortunate enough to work with and learn from Agile teams and organisations since 2012. And since 2017, I'm proud to say that I've also jumped into the winemaking industry.

In this talk, I'd love to share my learnings from working in these two diverse fields and draw some parallels between my two passions - Agile and winemaking.

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.

"Everyone is already doing their best; the problems are with the system … only management can change the system." —W. Edwards Deming

Everybody is talking about Systems thinking these days. But what is "systems thinking" really? And how can we practically use it to get tangible benefits in solving complex organisational problems? Value stream mapping is a very powerful systems thinking tool used to give us a bird's eye view and help us identify key components of the system/organisation that need to be changed in order to optimise the whole.

In this session, we will run a simulation of an actual value stream mapping workshop to solving complex organisational problems such as DevOps transformation. After a short presentation, the facilitator will help each table to identify a value stream, then the teams will work together and map their value streams on wall pads.

You will take away practical tools that you can use the next day in your organisation that will impress everyone and provide tangible benefits for your team/company.

In this session we will explore the following concepts:

- Lead time

- Process time

- Percent complete and accurate

- Activity ratio

- DevOps

- Systems Thinking

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"?

Lousy meetings.

We have ALL been there.

It's like being stuck in a torturous, seemingly inescapable hell.

This session will help participants to learn some short sharp 'ice breaker' games to liven up and brighten even the worst of meetings.

Find your meeting facilitation edge by coming to our session, we promise it won't be hell.

How can a Scrum Master ensures that the team feels safe and protected? Why building connections within the team is so important? Do we know what is the secret sauce for the magical recipe of high performing teams?

Let’s explore together three activities which can help in building connections within the team.

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

AI as a technology is being adopted by more and more organisations to solve interesting and challenging problems recently thought unfathomable. However, our experiences are that while the principles we have used over the last 20 years in Agile and Lean still apply, the practices might not. While sharing some of the opportunities AI provides, I will share some of those experiences and learnings with you.

Architecture Katas are a collaborative way to practice software design first done by Ted Neward. Teams are asked to come up with a software design for a random problem and consider the specifics of problem to design something that could be quickly released while being scalable and secure.

But I really like running the variation by Martin Salias where the teams are limited to 10 minute sprints. And at the end of each sprint they will face random extra challenges based on Tarot cards he has designed. The tarot cards will include complications for the team to overcome like internationalisation, accessibility, price or testability. As facilitator I will interpret the tarot cards as to how their design is letting down their customers and they will need to react.

Will teams be able to prioritise quickly? Will they work together as a cohesive team? Can they design something of value to customers in only 10 minutes? And how easy will it be for their design to react to new challenges because no one can predict every possible issue that will happen in the real world.

Some images from the last time I ran this as a workshop:

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.