This panel will examine how Agile is making a difference to how agencies and organisations in Canberra, approach for digital transformation, organisational change, improvements in productivity and quality as well as organisational agility. The panel will discuss their experiences leading these changes in our industry and look at the innovation that Agile is bringing to the Canberra Community. They will also share their trails and tribulations along the way.

Finally, this panel will give you their predictions for where Agile might be happening with innovative applications of tech and application of agile principles to business organisations as well as Government. Join us as we travel forward in time – to 2020 and beyond - to have a look at the future of innovative applications of agile in Canberra and our industry.

Facilitator - Irene Zhen

Kerrie Campbell – CIO, Finders Uni

Kerrie is a Chief Information Officer with a rich experience in the higher education industry. She is passionate about introducing new continuous improvement cultures and changing the way IT works with organisations. She has experience in the university sector and also with Government, notably with the Department of Human Services. At the DHA, she managed a large team of developers, programmers and systems analysts to develop,design and maintain programs of work.

Petr Adamek - CEO Canberra Innovation Network

Petr is the CEO of the Canberra Innovation Network, a collaboration between the tertiary and research institutions in Canberra with support of the ACT Government. He is passionate about innovation ecosystems with experience in Europe and New Zealand.

Matthew Hodgson - CEO, Zen Ex Machina

Matthew Hodgson is an executive and portfolio-level agile coach. He's an ICT strategist with two decades of experience focussing on coaching executives from strategy through to execution by leveraging organisational psychology, organisational change and modern Agile, Lean, UCD and Lean UX methods.

Kristy Dam - Assistant Commissioner EST Strategy, Innovation and Information Technology Australian Taxation Office.

Other panelists - TBA

How do you deliver a big policy outcome that normally take 6 months when you only have weeks?

An early election was called and we faced having to develop two sets of a comprehensive policy documents -- the red book (left-wing) and the blue book (right-wing) -- to brief an incoming government in 8 weeks. We were caught by surprise, the normal lead time were gone, and news about policy commitments came faster from TV and social media than traditional internal sources. This was a non ICT business team who hadn't done Agile before however we felt given the time frames, it was the best way to approach for such a high profile project.

Come and learn about and application of Lean Kanban and how we delivered the outcome through:

• engagement with the executive to share drafts of chapters, then gather and incorporate feedback in short iterative cycles to improve transparency and alignment.
• team design in non-software environment
• limiting waste and duplication
• visualising flow
• coordination of “Scrum of Scrums” key daily meetings to promote collaboration, visibility and transparency
• supporting team leads to coordinate the collaborative, dynamic planning process, prioritising work that needs to be done against the capacity and capability of the team
• providing visibility and transparency of work in progress and flow and share this with other teams and stakeholders.

Mia will discuss how she addressed business agility through working with a Portfolio Management Office (PMO) to assist the Incoming Government Brief (IGB) task force to work iteratively and apply agile practices to draft and deliver policy documentation to articulate the details and costing of policy initiatives from each of the major political parties in the lead up to the Federal election. This involved working with Executives and Business stakeholders within the policy domain during a hectic period where policy could change or be adjusted and costed daily as policies were revealed by each side during the campaign. The policy team need to improve the enterprises business agility to respond to rapid change and this involved working with the leadership across 12 branches to align iterations of draft policy documentation over an intensive period. (the taskforce was pulled together to deliver the IGB over 8 weeks). Specifically, Kanban and Lean were chosen as the method for delivery.

This approach resulted in executives having earlier visibility of the approach and content of the IGB and improved quality of IGB by reducing the risk that significant changes being identified late in the delivery. The Teams were focused to delivery higher value work more efficiently, while being transparent about delays to lower value activities. The success of this initiative in a non-ICT environment has promoted the PMO to look at other business areas to implement Agile to develop an Agile mindset across the Agency.

Culture, management problems and experience are amongst the most common reasons why agile initiatives fail. So how do you get managers to lead a change where they fear the erosion of their legitimate positions of power and control?

Come and hear a practical application of cultural and behavioural change frameworks to middle managers in a large, hierarchical organisation attempting to take its first real steps toward business agility. We'll define culture, examine psychological safety from a leader's perspective, the tools and practices that helped thaw inaction, and those used to reinforce agile behaviours and its mindset.

Are you a safe pair of hands? How do you know?? People need to feel secure to explore on their own terms, learn, make mistakes and grow, and so do agile teams. But when the security to learn and fail-fast vanishes, when teams fear failure and punishment, a risk-averse culture can grow -- a culture that can destroy agile initiatives and kills continuous improvement behaviours.

Come and learn about the Circle of Security framework – a psychological research-based approach to creating psychological safety – and an example of its use to deal with agile team dysfunction, strengthen trust and help build a learning culture in teams.