Being TOO Agile

This session will share insights and observations from having personally explored and navigated the journey of being agile and worked with others to find their pathway to developing and sustaining a state of agility.

What happens when you start from the point of being too agile, too much collaboration, not enough contracting, too much interaction not enough decision making, a great working solution but it doesn’t tick the boxes, a real time status and a vision, but not much of a plan.  

Being agile isn’t a simple mark on a scale, it’s a balancing act with multiple axis, where nothing is fixed, anything can change. The pivot, the balancing stick all shifting and changing as you try to walk the tightrope of agile working. It requires discipline and freedom to master, it requires a journey of self-awareness and personal development and everybody’s journey to agility is unique.  

Gain a better understanding and awareness of your own place on the agile continuum, and, where those you work with are on their agile journey. Identify the influence of natural preferences and the signals you need to refocus and restore a balance for agile working.

A hands on workshop facilitating a hands on retrospective team game that aims to help you achieve that feeling of Smooth Sailing.

Attendees will be introduced to this game, play the game, and feedback to the room, with case examples and tips for facilitating the game themselves.

Smooth Sailing is a game you can play as a development team, or, with clients and customers to help understand the product you are building better and, how the journey to its creation is fairing.

This game will give you a new and fun way to run a retrospective to help to gain your barrings, identify what's putting the wind in your sails, the anchors holding you back, and discover your buried treasure. Then you'll plot your course and map a way forward that raises those anchors and catches the tide and a fair wind.

Merchants, Pirates and Cruisers welcome, bring your captain, crew and guests! Join us for some constructive fun, and feel free to bring an idea for a topic you'd like to reflect on.

Teams attending the workshop as a group can work on their own current journeys. Individuals can join groups reflecting on a common shared topic. All puns intended, see you onboard!

Adventures with Agile beyond Software

Belinda will share her experience and insights from introducing agile and lean approaches to the county of Cornwall in the UK.

Firstly Belinda helped to introduce agile to the small tech sector in the county and then started taking agile beyond software development into business management. She will share the journey of a 2 year project to introduce agile to the wider business community including Geologists, Breweries, Design Agencies and Fashion Designers! Belinda will share how these businesses used agile to support their growth plans with great success.

Belinda will share how she used an agile approach to develop and deliver these projects, and the outputs they delivered including the world class agile conference Agile on the Beach. More recently she has co-founded a tech network in Cornwall which is now recognised as the second fastest growing tech cluster in the UK. Finally she will share the story of using agile to write and publish her book with Pearson.

In this session Belinda will share her insights and observations of what worked well, common reasons for resistance and why businesses outside the sector love agile too!

Check out a short video of Belinda and her clients talking about their adoption of agile http://www.beingagileinbusiness.co.uk/video-interview-agile-beyond-software/

Gain a fresh perspective of what agile working looks like, the journey of agility and how it can be applied as a mindset not just a methodology