Program

Agility alone will not lead your organisation to success or encourage people to embrace change! Poor communication is a leading contributor to project and product failure so let’s start with the simple stuff.
Visual storytelling is an essential tool for inspiring stakeholders, enhancing communication and gaining a greater understanding of user needs. Research shows that 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual so isn’t it time you opted for a simpler and quicker way to tell a compelling business story in a way that will stick?
During this talk I will give examples of how visualisation techniques such as storyboarding can play a significant role in accelerating learning, solving problems and generating ideas at scale. I will explore the use of visual storytelling within the context of Agile and Human Centred Design.

Most companies claiming to, or wanting to, be agile, start at the team level. Often this involves adopting a model or framework that either only has those parts, or ignoring the Program and Stategy level changes.
At best this inspires a change journey, but more often this yields little impact on the core business metrics.

In this session I will draw in my experiences as a Product Lead in Telecoms and experience designing effective orgs at Spotify, to demonstrate how small changes in your program and portfolio layers can yield far great impact than training all your engineers in agile and checking a box

You thought that self-compassion is lame? What if it is actually key for better results?
Thanks to Google everyone knows the importance of the psychological safety in team performance. We wanted to understand how you build it. The results of the research done at Ericsson Finland in co-operation with Hanken School of Economics, University of Helsinki and Stanford University reveals one important ingredient. It all starts from oneself. It starts from your ability to self-compassion. Self-compassion meaning ability to listen and connect to your own feelings and needs, being kind and caring towards yourself and understanding yourself in hard moments. The research done at Ericsson Finland R&D shows that self-compassion relates to higher levels of experienced psychological safety, team trust and especially team authenticity. Same research also reveals how mindfulness impacts on opportunity recognition, proactive behavior and autonomous choice. These all together create conditions for the optimal atmosphere for learning and collaboration, enabling high-performance.
Self-compassion can be best learned through practising; thus, we want to focus on self-compassion exercises and cases on this workshop.

Can you predict which teams will work well together? What can we learn from looking at well functioning teams? A completely experience-based, totally non-scientific approach to great teams!

Bringing in change into a project or an organisation when you don’t have a leadership job title, which people usually respond to, can be difficult. You may find that people respond to titles and unsurprisingly, aren’t excited about change – even when it can make their lives easier. But initially, they don’t know that.

I’d like to share my experiences on bringing in change to a project, where my title was only “Agile Tester”. But after a few months, I started to make change happen, first but getting people in my team to stop doing test cases, and start trying out Structured Exploratory Testing, second by delivering workshops so people can learn new skills and encouraging others to deliver workshops and lastly, by helping create an atmosphere of open dialogue where ideas and people’s opinions are heard and acknowledged. No fancy job title needed.

By the end of this talk, I hope to encourage you, to take action towards making things better on your project. You don’t need to be a manager or someone with a fancy title to make things better in your project. YOU can make it happen.

In the face of digitalization and amidst risk of being disrupted by new products, companies, and business models, many companies have woken up to the need for change in company culture, management and the way of operation.

Whether the goal is business agility, the culture of experimentation, or agile company culture, the key challenge is how to foster change in a large organization. The big question is: what investments to actions help make the change stick in the organization while still providing a return bigger than the investment.

One approach to this that I have been a part of at Agile Company Culture Accelerator at Yle, as well as other companies, is creating coaching curriculums to grow leaders and change agents to enact and catalyze the change itself.

Change in organizations spreads like innovations in the population: in a network. You can reach the early adopters with a small change agent team, but to spread the meme of change wider in the organization network, you need other tactics.

In coaching curriculums such as Yle’s Culture of New Work Leadership Coaching, we offer coaching for the hub persons in the organization network (not necessarily the ones in management positions) to grow as and into leaders and change agents. This way, we foster the change in the organization at an arm’s length. This way, different parts of the organization can tailor the change according to their own context and take responsibility for the change themselves.

In this talk, I will share my experiences in designing and carrying out these kinds of coaching curriculums for the leaders. I will also discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this way of fostering change.

This talk is targeted at coaches, change agents and managers who want new ideas on how to foster change in their organization and for their customers. The audience will walk away with tips on how to, and how not to, organize a coaching curriculum for leaders, as well as an idea how and in what context it makes sense to consider this way of fostering change.

Many organisations have scaled up their agile development effort. While they may have reached improvements in time-to-market and software quality they still struggle in ensuring they are building the right things and driving decisions based on data, especially at scale. In this session Marko will walk us through the principles and a case example(s) how these benefits have been reached in large organisations.

It’s the year 2025 and our long-time CEO has just made his last decision. Earlier today our CEO announced that with support of the Board of Directors, we will be eliminating our management hierarchy and departmental structure to better distribute decision making and promote self-management. A company of 100,000 people distributed around the world with revenues of $10 billion annually, this change has already sparked many important questions such as “how does this effect the way I work today?” The CEO has asked us, a group of employees representing all aspects of the company, to come up with a plan to implement his final mandate within 90 days. Now we must figure out what this means for us, our customers, and ultimately the future of our company.

This is no ordinary workshop. No PowerPoint presentation. No talk. Rather, this will be an experimental storytelling game. Taking a highly possible situation, we’ll experiment with how it might play out in the real world. Working in groups, you’ll be given complex problems to solve, such as how do we support employees who don’t want to participate in the change, what happens to those in management roles, and how do we make sure customers don’t get forgotten throughout the change. Groups will collaborate during the session to paint the picture of what such a transition might look like, including the actions we could take to make the transition smoother. Join me as we reimagine the future of work by playing with it first.

What to build first? We ask this question when we configure both a brand new product or a new set of functionality in an existing one. How to define what is in and what is out? How not to miss something important? How to leave emotions and company politics out of MVP equation?

Goal-oriented MVP is a methodology that joins principles of lean business model, human-oriented design and agile development. It covers the whole process step by step: from initial vision all the way to mockups and detailed plan of the first release. The approach we suggest is elegant, scientific and proven by practice. It ensures that the release is really minimal, but at the same time complete and helps to solve user problems and reach business goals.

What we suggest is not a strict framework, but a set of flexible techniques that are applicable in different projects with different stakeholders and team composition. We focus on team collaboration but we do not try to make everyone a designer. Instead we show how to include different people at the right time so that we are building a product together, but still everyone is doing their own job.

The participants will learn:

• How to decide what is really necessary to build in the first version of the product and what should wait until stage two;
• How to make this first version as small as it can be and send it to the market as early as possible;
• How to proceed from the overall vision all the way to well structured Agile sprints.

So, you’re the new person in the team? How do you quickly build rapport? How do you quickly establish credibility? How can you lead effective change for a better tomorrow? In this high energy chat, Amber Vanderburg discusses practical applications that you can use as the new leader in a team through applied research, case studies, and witty tales as the only female, only American, and only blonde Academy football coach for the PSG Football Academy in Bangalore, India. Working within diverse and international dynamics, Amber will share her experiences along with best practical applications for attendees to effectively lead change as the new person.

Many of us associate the word “Anarchy” with conditions like lawlessness and disorder. If you were to look in the dictionary you’d see a definition that might surprise you…“a society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government.” Once a beacon for autonomy and creativity within the software development community, the Agile movement has fallen prey to standardization, monetization and bureaucracy. Many in the community believe that this distortion of Agile has resulted from one specific variable; the negative influence of management. In response, developers around the world are looking to reclaim their Agile with the introduction of the Developer Anarchy movement; enabling complete freedom by eliminating the role of management entirely. During this interactive session we will explore the emergence of the Developer Anarchy movement and why removing the influence of management can unlock true agility in software development. We will explore the connection between Developer Anarchy and Self-Management Theory, including concepts such as Holocracy and Sociocracy, showing how these ideas are fueling a new way people are organizing around work. Examining several real-world examples from companies like eBay, Zappos, and Valve Software, we will experiment with some tactical changes that can be implemented right away to drive more autonomy within your organization. So if your Agile transformation doesn’t feel like it’s changing the way you work, maybe it’s time to insight a little anarchy!

What really matters? How can you lead your life, your project or your company according to what really matters? How can you get your stakeholders at work to agree on what to do and why? Personal Agility is a simple, easy-to-use approach to coaching that helps you and those you work with figure out and do more of what really matters

According to research, psychological safety has been identified as the number one key ingredient of high performing teams. We all know its importance, but how do you actually go on about creating it? We can all imagine how tension and fear erode trust and the team becomes less than the sum of its parts. Often this happens by accident. Likewise we tend to think that psychological safety is also accidental. But it can be created, and it can be cultivated.

This is a hands-on workshop where we practise how everyone can contribute to building affect-based trust and psychological safety. How to bring your real self to the office and encourage others to do the same. It should come as no surprise that emotions play a big role in this workshop, but as with so many truly meaningful things, some discomfort is required. So leave your masks at the door and join us in becoming a bit better versions of yourselves!

Why should we be interested about the brain? And why coaching?
Our brains have evolved over millions of years for a very different environment than our current world. By default, we are not at our best in thinking clearly and in collaborating with others when we are under pressure. To make matters worse, under pressure we are unable to notice we might be acting in dysfunctional ways. The good news: seemingly small changes can have a surprisingly large positive effect. A coaching approach in problem solving is one effective way forward.

Join us to explore further how we can tap on the strengths and avoid the pitfalls of this fascinating 1,5 kg gelatinous blob we call the brain.

In agile cross-functional environments, classic top-down leadership is being replaced by new decision-making and leadership models. In most cases, the leadership is handed over to the team member who is considered an expert in the area affected by the decision. Since there are no “Vorgesetzte” in this structure (German word for supervisor. Literally translated: Someone who has been placed in front of you), no team member can withdraw to a (hierarchical) position or refer to it. All are equal. Although the teams work autonomously and self-organized and are all equally responsible for achieving the common goals, it can be observed that in most cases the measures and analysis of outcomes is driven by one person in the team. However, this can lead to ambiguities and misunderstandings within the team: There is an asymmetry of information regarding the goals to be achieved and the status of goal achievement. Especially in agile networks, however, there must be a direction which everyone is heading to. OKRs help here to a certain extent, since an alignment in the team is created by defining and communicating the objectives and key results together. However, the more comprehensively a topic is developed, the more detailed questions arise to which OKRs cannot provide answers. As a framework for goal management, they are located at a completely different flight level than implementation details. In order to achieve the objectives, however, decisions must also be made on a daily basis at the implementation level. But who takes the lead? Lateral leadership is needed to ensure that the entire team focuses on the same goal. Every expert must be able to captivate the colleagues thematically and convince them. Pure specialist knowledge is not enough for this. Leadership without authority places high demands on the individual soft skills of all team members: empathy, communication and conflict skills. In order to be able to discuss a decision openly without dictating, strong and mutual trust is required. In my talk I will show why OKRs and Lateral Leadership can be practiced independently of each other, but only together unleash their full power.

Your Agile IT teams complain how the rest of the business is too slow and bureaucratic. And the business side sees the IT teams as fast, but not really focussing on customer value. Sounds familiar? In my presentation I will share examples of large (5000+ employees) companies that have moved beyond Agile in IT to Enterprise Agile. These companies apply agility and self-management across the whole organization: combined BizDevOps squads for customer journeys and products, self-managing teams in contact centres, flow-to-work pools in support functions, squads in B2B sales and service, retail shops without managers and so on. Also in focus is the “stable backbone” needed to support these teams – how these companies transformed their governance, budgeting, people model, culture etc. to enable agile at scale. Key questions answered – How to apply agile in different parts of the business? – How to transform a large traditional company into agile across structure, processes, people & culture and technology? – How does the journey look like in practice? Cases include Spark New Zealand (telco), a large Australian bank, another large telco and numerous other companies on the journey.

I help organisations of all sizes to improve performance. Sometimes the business outcomes can be improved by using Agile practices and principles. These are useful, but not sufficient. If it were easy, we would all be Agile already. Usually something else needs to happen before we can get the full benefits from Agile. How do you help the top management to set focus, create clarity around strategy, alignment in the organisation and to step back from the Agile way of working? I will share the tools and methods I use for helping companies set strategy and to execute it. (E.g. Wardley mapping, start-up canvases, KT strategy process, Cynefin etc.)
Some agenda items: 

• First rule of Agile club is we do not talk about Agile. If you want to influence major business decisions, you have to speak in the language of money.
• Understanding your competitive landscape and internal context.
• Formulating and executing strategy. – Critical issues of strategy execution: competencies, compensation, processes, and organisational structure.
• Understanding principles to evolve local practices.

What do you do when teams in your organisation are agile, but the organisation itself is not? In this talk we’ll discuss some practical approaches to guiding your organisation towards a more agile and customer-centred future. Applying an agile mindset and principles will help you create better products and service, and win the war for talent.

“My only complaint is that my cheeks hurt from laughing too much.” Clownban workshop attendee.

Learning should be fun. And so should teaching.

Join us for something a little bit different. How do use kanban to build and market test a product? Using your own hands and creativity, this highly interactive workshop will see you build and market test a product that is fun for all the family. We will be building and collaborating in a multiple team setting to bring ideas to life, and use customer feedback to test and learn using kanban to bring visualisation and focus across complicated dependencies as we build and deploy an integrated product.

This workshop is suited to those who have little to no knowledge of kanban AND for those looking for a fun and new way to teach Kanban. We invite you to participate and plagiarise at will. We will share the pack and train the trainer note to anyone interested following the session.

Why should we be interested about the brain? And why coaching?
Our brains have evolved over millions of years for a very different environment than our current world. By default, we are not at our best in thinking clearly and in collaborating with others when we are under pressure. To make matters worse, under pressure we are unable to notice we might be acting in dysfunctional ways. The good news: seemingly small changes can have a surprisingly large positive effect. A coaching approach in problem solving is one effective way forward.

Join us to explore further how we can tap on the strengths and avoid the pitfalls of this fascinating 1,5 kg gelatinous blob we call the brain.

Organizations are striving to use Agile to unlock customer value and competitive advantage all over the world. While scaling frameworks and adoption of Agile practices are important, on their own they are not enough. In order to become Agile as a business, you must look beyond these to the next wave of agility. SolutionsIQ has been working in the Agile transformation business for over 20 years. Hear how we’ve helped our clients outlearn their competition by looking at all the elements of their business environment and unifying them into a single holistic transformation, and then guiding them along a proven path to successful outcomes.

After organisations adopt Agile, they start facing new challenges related to running agile projects and coordinating multiple agile teams. Even if mechanisms to coordinate agile teams are in place, organisations face problems and bottlenecks that can’t be resolved by Scrum of Scrums or similar practices.

In our presentation we will share how we have successfully addressed this issue. We evolved our co-working practices in special events several times during development projects. Our ideas were based on the principles described in the Agile Manifesto and the hackathon events.

The audience will learn that agile principles can be applied to other areas than just software development; how to have an effective cross-team co-working event with selected representatives of the teams in order to deliver more value in shorter time; they will learn a useful tool for their agile scrum master’s/facilitator’s/project manager’s toolbox with do’s and dont’s.