Find Your Edge - Human Specialties in the Age of AI

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"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

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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.

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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

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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.

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"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.

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As the world in which we live in becomes more and more reliant on technology, the challenges we face at work become increasingly complex. This workshop aims to introduce you to a way of thinking that makes solving complex problems more manageable.

It begins with taking you through the basic framework of Systems Thinking and provide you with a set of tools and methods that will help you shift mindsets and unravel the root cause of problems.

During this workshop you will:

Gain an understanding of what systems thinking is and how it can be applied to your work.

Shift your mindset from a linear one to a systems thinking mindset.

Learn hands on practical tools that you can use to solve problems of all shapes and sizes.

Be Inspired to delve deeper into the world of systems thinking to create change.

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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.

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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.

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What could it be like to work through a real-life security incident at your company? As awareness about security in our industry improves, we hear much about how to keep our applications secure, but rarely do we consider what happens with your employees when something goes wrong. Allow me to share my story about the emotional highs and lows of working through a security incident, as we look past its technical surface and into the human experience behind it instead.

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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

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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:

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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.

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Collaboration over Contracts we say. But... how many times our contracts weren't designed to promote true collaboration? and, how many times our contracts are not linked to any specific constrain or achievement so we cannot confirm if we are succeeding by any tangible means? In my years of experience, most of them.

So Yes, Collaboration over Contracts. But... Contracts before Collaboration!

Normally we use to work on a fixed salary or daily rate basis but, is this the way to leverage best possible collaboration? In my context the answer is a clear NO. That's why I've been experimenting with different approaches since I became an Agile Lean coach back in 2010.

Applying to myself what I advice to my clients is one of my key principles so here I came up with different new formats of Win-Win-Lose-Lose contracts, designed to make sure I’m always putting the collaboration with my clients before the contract itself. Those are normally pretty simple 1-page contracts based on the principles of Full transparency, Short cycles, Results driven approach, Autonomy and Freedom.

In this session I will share these models with the audience, together with their key mechanisms to succeed and the constrains that we have to consider before taking these leap of faith and trust in ourselves.

I wish you enjoy this session and get some good take-aways from it. Meanwhile, I´ll appreciate your comments to my proposal to be able to tweak and improve it if required. Thanks

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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.

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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.

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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"?

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Solution Design for Agile Actual Delivery

How to break down a huge problem with many parts and components, risks and unknowns.

Too often, agile is explained using simple projects, or making changes to existing mature products and codebases. But how can you successfully be agile when working with real-world ‘warts and all’ systems, a team of people who may not have all the skills to support the change, little experience using modern engineering practices and tooling, and in an organisation that can’t help but sabotage it’s own efforts to change?

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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!

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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.

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If you are involved in any form of product development an understanding of strategy is important in any decision you make in a competitive environment. But we learn very little of this from our day to day training. Very little situational awareness beyond 'gut feel' is ever part of our education system. This talk hopes to combine two inspirations. The first one is Simon Wardley and his mapping techniques. I share how his techniques and thought processes can help you in your decision making whether directly building products or managing large teams. Then I share my passion for tech from two angles - a fascination of the new wave of A.I. algorithms of the last few years plus a love of the game Starcraft. These two recently combined with Deepmind being able to beat top e-sport professionals not by being faster but by being smarter. This forms a background to my talk as I show even a computer can learn strategy. A sprinkling of Sun Tzu's Art of War along the way to demonstrate the power of these algorithms.

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If you had grown up on another planet, had stalks for ears and didn’t understand the concepts of male & female, how would you make sense of the gender imbalance in technology?

Seen through the eyes of a Martian anthopologist, this talk explores the curious lack of human females in full-time programming roles. In 2019, despite generations of campaigning, why are so few women writing code?

In a good-natured look at a serious topic, we ask what drives the odd Earthling behaviour. Why do they exclude half their talent from key roles in the modern economy? Is there some basis to the disparity and is there anything the strange bipeds can do to bring their technology sector into balance?

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Big or small, failure is not a doubt but a certainty.

The question is how does one recover from failure? How can you help your team recover from failure? How do you help yourself through it?

Accompanied with stories of real life failures, I will introduce a few items you should have in your first aid kit to help your teams and yourself through team failure, personal failure and something I call 'hard fails'.

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Boral is on a rapid Agile transformation and one of the challenges is to provide senior executives and the board of directors an understanding what agile really means for the company.

In the end its not about Scrum or Kanban, or any other framework for that matter.

They really just want to know what outcomes will it drive for the company.

We will explore the 9 factors that I've used to paint a picture of what an organisation would feel like if it truly became an agile organisation.

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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.

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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

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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!

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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.

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Find Your Edge with a fun quiz

You hear lots of big words at conferences but can you use them in a sentence?

"Are you taking Holacracy and the Dark Arts this term, Hermione?

"We need to talk about CYNEFIN"

"Does your partner like the Monte Carlo method?"

This light-hearted talk tests your knowledge of tricky vocabulary words and concepts.

Lean and Agile come with their own languages. Learn these words quickly. Once politicians start using them it's too late to impress anybody.

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