Sign in to the conference in the foyer of the ATC building

The web is increasingly becoming the standard way in which we conduct our business, but despite the use of ever improving technologies many websites are frustratingly slow and getting slower. It is becoming more difficult to compete for and retain users attention, and If you operate in the online space you can no longer afford to ignore the performance of your website or platform.

This talk will provide an introduction to and the benefits of web-performance optimisation, explain why it matters now more than ever and why it's so commonly overlooked during the development process. It will also show how you can identify and fix the most common performance pitfalls, resulting in reduced costs, and increased user engagement and satisfaction.

During this talk there will be an opportunity to follow along on your own laptop and learn how to use some of the tools firsthand.

Amazon ECS is a widely-used Docker container scheduling and orchestration platform, but some of the constraints it applies makes for ... interesting ... workarounds. Chief among the challenges are connecting containers to each other, across services, clusters, and even regions. Working in hybrid cloud environments is also a problem.

This talk will show you one way to address these challenges: by using the "weave" Docker overlay network, a self-discovering and self-configuring mesh network that permits configuration simplicity and out-of-the-box parity with the popular docker-compose structure.

The past decade has seen an explosion of scientific research into happiness what helps humans truly thrive.

This talk will look at:

• Why happiness at work is so important
• What wellbeing science is telling us about agility
• Practical ways to apply the science to create awesome thriving, high-performing, resilient teams
• What the science is telling us about the future of work

I LOVE the research, so we will talk science, but never fear it will all be super-accessible, usable and relevant - and I hope to leave you feeling as energised and enthusiastic about all the cool stuff we're learning as I do!

This is an interactive session

* Identify what are the constraints when we try to communicate / collaborate in an organisation - especially if you have distributed team 

* Understand the frustration of getting the meaning of the message across

* Identify how communication can be improved

There is much discussion about the changing roles of Development and Operations staff when organisations undergo agile/digital/devops transformations. But what about the changing role of the Team Leader?

In pre-agile environments, as a Team Lead, your role is one of structure and co-ordination, it is through you that work routes. You know the skills and capacity of your team and are regularly making decisions about what can and can’t be done.

But as your team starts to work in agile teams, the need for you to keep them busy is reduced, as this is now a responsibility of the product owner and agile team itself.

You might find yourself asking “Do we need Team Lead’s in an agile/devops culture?”, and if so “What value can I provide?

This sessions looks at the opportunities existing Team Leaders have to support and drive digital transformation through the discussion of focus' they can bring to the team.

In a historical moment where everything is political, and we keep hearing references to "walls", "bans" and all sorts of restrictions that try to inhibit a person's mobility around the world, it has never been so important to discuss global mobility in relation to the future of work. The future of work is, undoubtedly, deeply connected to remote work and global mobility. Forrester Research’s (US) estimates that the number of mobile workers will reach 63 million (43 percent of the U.S. workforce) sometime in 2016. (REF)

While “work from home” has been a common model, the pervasiveness of digital nomadism has changed the face of global work patterns. Remote and mobile work is here to stay.

This exciting trend brings about new work configurations and possibilities, but also new challenges. Tension and contradiction can sometimes exist between our basic social needs and physical disconnection, and between flexibility for the individual and the collective needs of collaboration. If agile is still cutting edge, shouldn’t agile organisations be leading the way in pursuit of answers to these things? Agile organisations can lead the way and provide solutions that enable a team to make the best out of blended work practices while avoiding the pitfalls of remote work.

Agile frameworks that are effective arrive at seamless blended workflows. During this talk I will present the cutting-edge agile practices used at [Company Name] to embrace digital nomadism and shape the future of work. I will share with the attendees the challenges, triumphs, tools and characteristics that make up an organisation that is successfully embracing digital nomadism. [Company Name]'s Work From Anywhere policy is more than just an effective policy. In today's global society, it is also a symbol of another kind of world, of another way to live and work together. It is an example of what is possible when we have trust in each other and in our communities.

A diverse set of luminaries to discuss how to enhance agility in the enterprise. Covering all the big scale challenges that large organisations face, such as multiple business lines, disparate technology stacks, geographically dispersed teams, 10s to 100s of products, etc.

One principle in the Agile Manifesto talks about the importance of face-to-face conversation. SAFe takes this to the next level with PI Planning which is a routine face-to-face event where teams create their plans for the upcoming Program Increment (PI). PI planning is facilitated by the Release Train Engineer (RTE) and includes all members of the Agile Release Train (ART).

To the non-SAFe practitioner, when they hear about the whole PI planning day palaver, they look askance and shake their heads and think to themselves "what a waste of time".  Is PI Planning a waste of time?  As part of an organisation that have had to embrace a framework to enable them to scale, PI planning is considered the heartbeat of the Agile Release Train.  In this lightening talk, I will share my experience with planning in 10-12 week increments.  Will 5 minutes be sufficient to change your mind?

Any journey is a combination of planning, expectation, experiences, conversations, and knowledge gained.  The metrics journey that this Enterprise Agile Coach and experienced Release Train Engineer have travelled has all of this and more!  And many travelers like to have a copy of their Travel Guide to hand to not only plan their experiences but to help them manage some of the intricacies of their journey.  Consider this talk your opportunity to dip into an expedition through the wilds of agile metrics – with a cheat sheet.

This presentation will cover:

• Where am I?  Context is king.  Knowing your starting point is key.  Baseline metrics.
• Who’s on the journey?  Knowing your audience, who else is on the journey with you and what are their expectations. Agile vs Waterfall PMO. Internal vs External metrics
• What could go wrong?  Being clear about the challenges for metrics at scale
• Metrics as your compass.  Using metrics to help identify changes in direction

We started our metrics journey with different goals in mind and have uncovered some surprising aspects in what works and in particular what doesnt!  In this presentation they weave their expectations, experience and knowledge to show how these perspectives can meet.

An anti-pattern: “something that looks like a good idea, but which backfires badly when applied”.

My recent work implementing scaling frameworks showed me the inherent risk of using frameworks as an explicit means to affect change; any framework will always contain anti-pattern risks.

The infographics associated with frameworks (whether SAFe, LeSS or DaD, Nexus) are always drawn with the best of intent but how they are applied is where things can run contrary to agile principles.

Using real work examples and telling the story of a recent 18-month, 40-team experiment in scaling; Niall will highlight some of the "pot holes" to avoid when using frameworks.

Niall will also present his approach to using frameworks including when and how to "let go" of ceremonies/practices when they become redundant.

Lastly, a coaching approach will be presented to enable coaches to leverage the best of what frameworks offer without getting caught up in dogma.

NOTE: this is NOT a framework-bashing presentation but a hands-on report on the risks of mis-interpretation of any principles-based scaling framework.

We have been lucky enough to work with a not-for-profit organization called EPIC Recruit Assist to offer software testing training to a group of young adults on the autism spectrum, through a new initiative known as the “EPIC TestAbility Academy”.

In this talk, we will describe:

• What is the autism spectrum and why it aligns with software testing
• How this relationship came about
• Why it is important to seek opportunities that drive diversity
• Key relationships, shared goals and building the vision
• The importance of communication
• Building a balanced programme
• Preparation that was required to get the programme off the ground
• Lessons learned in finding participants
• Lessons learned delivering the training
• The outcomes for the candidates on completion of the programme.

Please don't assume that Agile is only good for Software Development, Startups, DevOps, Change Management, Personal Productivity, Product Development, Marketing, Sales, Time Management, Organisational Change, Educating Children, Operations, Infrastructure, Design, Teamwork and Saving your Organisation just because they are the only things that happened to be on the list.

Applying Agile principles in everyday life is a great way to not only improve your quality of life, but to experiment with Agile approaches and find out what you've really internalised.

For coaches and leaders practicing Agile in Everyday Life presents a rich opportunity to not just talk the talk, but also walk the walk.

In this talk I'll give a couple of examples of how I've drawn on Agile approaches to help address personal challenges, plus discuss with the audience what areas folks are "doin' it for themselves".

This will be an interactive session, somewhere between a talk and a short workshop.

When we decide to move from big batch, plan driven long dated constructs of change, so projects and programs in the traditional sense, to more agile methods, we need to rethink a whole raft of stuff. Assume for a second, if you will, we are using the historical program and project construct to identify and deliver change. Initiatives are bundled into a sequential approach and governed through stages of largely documentation production accordingly. As long as you are on track to the stages, your documents are reviewed and signed off, you are Green.

Then we disrupt this. We want more agility on how we identify, plan, deploy and release change. We want to deliver outputs to our customers and ultimately value or outcomes earlier and more regularly, which is one of the significant advantages of an agile delivery model. So we get an ROI uplift. Projects can be self funded.

So lets start a new theory and trial it. EVERY project is red until your first release to a real customer. No more debate, hand wringing, angst or arguments. Recognise and accept that until you have delivered something that tests your theories, is validated and works, and your customers are using it, you have done nothing. Use the RED as it is meant to be - a call to action to pay attention, provide support , facilitate and break through barriers, provide resources and time. Help the team get to done.

My goal is for the attendees to use this session to actually crowd source and  develop a model that people can take back to their business and propose, from scratch using design thinking and agile techniques. 

This will also be run on Friday.

Want to build highly collaborative and cohesive teams? Looking to be energise your team and bring out the best in people?

Drawing on positive leadership research and how best to apply it, you’ll discover:

• The value of connecting well with colleagues, clients, and stakeholders to be more engaged, energised and perform better as a team.
• The four pathways Professor Jane Dutton has found you can take to rapidly build high-quality connections during micro moments of your busy day.
• How to deal with jerks at work who corrode your energy, effort and crush your soul.
• Ways to help others connect well and build positive relationships at work.

Docker is an awesome container platform. As part of this talk , I would like to show and discuss , how it can help solve some of the common and annoying issues faced while testing . Namely :

• "It worked on my machine" problem
• Testing different configurations, with the same codebase
• Efficiently testing on your / dev's machine.
• Setting up the Continuous Integration Environment
• Scaling  / Parallelising Test Runs ( via Selenium Grid  & Docker Compose ) 

In 2008, I became a Scrum Master at a large Dutch Bank. I was sent to Scrum training and I learned how to 'read' and adopt the  Scrum Guide. During my journey as a Scrum Master, I worked with different teams (distributed and local) in organizations big & small. Last year, I decided to become a Professional Scrum Trainer and it was during that grueling track that I again learned more about Scrum, and myths got busted and misconceptions were unraveled.

In this talk I will reflect back on my experiences and share five things I have learned about Daily Scrums, Done, Sprint Goal(s), Sprint Reviews and myths.

Based on a recent Blog post I wrote - I cover what I have learnt from allowing myself to look back on my mistakes.

Bugger, I stuffed that up