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.

Successfully onboarding new developers is vital to the overall success of a development team. This talk provides a framework for evaluating your specific onboarding program. It doesn't pretend to provide a one-size-fits-all program, but rather gives leaders the insights they need to build a world class onboarding program specific to their own circumstances and company values.

Company culture, or its DNA, is one of the most important factors to determing if a company succeeds.  Many companies claim to have great company culture.  But what does this mean, how can you know if your company has a great culture, and how can you go about improving the culture?  This talk will explore what great companies have in common, and share experiences I have had in helping to develop engineering culture during my career.    

Will also explore how Agile principles help to foster creating the best possible culture for your organization.

You cannot effectively push a rope, similarly you cannot force innovation to happen. You can only set up an environment where it is fostered and allowed to thrive. This is even more relevant in an Agile environment, where there is freedom to explore innovation. This talk will be a review of the lessons learned while implementing innovation programs in Agile environments at Atlassian and Bigcommerce. This session covers programs that worked (like FedEx/ShipIt/Hackathons, 20% time) and programs that failed (dedicated Innovation Team). Most importantly it will explore why certain types of programs are more successful that others.

It will also explore how Agile methodolgies and practices can help to improve the results of innovation programs. The talk will also detail some strategies for setting up a culture of innovation, and discuss the pre-requistes to creating and fostering an environment where innovation is celebrated.