Industry and Practice Abstracts

Managing the Agile Delivery of Machine Learning Products

Zorina Alliata (Amazon) and Lyubov Berzin (The Private Sector Group).

Abstract

In this interactive session, you will learn how to initiate and manage successful Machine Learning product delivery using Agile techniques. You’ll get a high-level understanding of what Machine Learning is, why Agile is best suited for the delivery of these products, the specific challenges posed to the delivery managers, and how to measure success. This workshop is based on my extensive experience at GEICO, Capital One and Amazon working with the Data Science and Machine Learning teams to bring them through an Agile transformation and help them deliver on complex Machine Learning portfolios. Pieces of the content have been presented as training for the delivery and product management teams, as well as at the Agile Summit at Capital One in 2018. This workshop is intended for delivery managers, product managers and product owners who are in need of a practical set of tools to manage Machine Learning product development.

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Creating Psychological Safety

Mehmet Baha (Solution Folder).

Abstract

“Psychological safety is one of the most important leadership responsibilities of the twenty-first century” says Amy Edmondson, an influential business thinker.  The research of Google titled “Project Aristotle” named psychological safety as the most important factor for high-performing teams. As leaders, we need to champion a psychologically safe workplace where our teams and organisations can innovate and grow. In this very interactive session, you will learn best practices of creating psychological safety and apply an approach from Amy Edmondson to make your team more successful.

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Tackling socio-technical complexity in the heart of your team

Kenny Baas-Schwegler (Xebia) and Evelyn van Kelle (Xebia).

Abstract

As a software engineering team, we want to solve complex business problems in the most efficient way possible. We invest a lot in technology to improve our team flow and try to make our technology process sustainable. We’ve got quite compulsive about automation and autonomy in achieving this. However, we are still tribal creatures that require tribal safety. Which means that if we want to make our technology process sustainable, we must also invest in people. For that, we need to tackle socio-technical complexity in the heart of our team.

In this session, Evelyn and Kenny will introduce you to the concept of socio-technical systems. We will explain what socio-technical complexity we are facing when building software to improve our team flow. How you can get a sense of the type of complexity you’re dealing with by using the Cynefin framework. Cynefin can aid your decision-making process by helping you make less biased decisions on how to approach your software development flow with your team. Finally, we’ll show you how visual collaboration tools like EventStorming and many others that can help you visualise complexity. You will leave this session knowing how to start tackling socio-technical complexity in your team. Making sure you create a sustainable technology process for your team flow!

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Designing bounded contexts for microservices by coding outside-in TDD

Kenny Baas-Schwegler (Xebia) and João Rosa (Xebia).

Abstract

There is an industry trend where businesses are moving towards autonomous product teams. These teams aim to be end-to-end responsible for the product they are building and maintaining. With the help of Continuous Delivery, teams have faster feedback cycles in which they can probe if a feature work. To achieve end-to-end team autonomy, companies move towards a microservices architecture to successfully inspect and adapt. To be successful with a microservices architecture, we need to use the Domain-driven design bounded context pattern. However, only by implementing a bounded context in code, we can experience if the model is useful.

In this session, we take you on a journey, where we explain how we implemented a complex software system within a bounded context. We start coding to explore and quickly iterate over our naive domain model with outside-in Test-Driven Development (TDD). With outside-in TDD, we grow our model guided by coarse-grain tests without the need of using mocks inside our domain. We eventually leverage the ports and adapter architecture to keep our domain model protected from technical complexity. In the end, we will demonstrate an example of how to split your domain model towards microservices.

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Self-organization cooking workshop

Ziryan Salayi (Ziryan consulting) and Jordann Gross (Agileety).

Abstract

Remember those old companies reorganizing every few years? Remember the time when managers and consultants were the ones to decide which employee was the best fit for each team or department? By using self-organization, we break the traditional organizational set-up that managers and consultants decide how the new structure will look like. By involving your teams and collaborating with them to find the best organizational design, you create more committed and motivated employees.

In this ‘cooking workshop‘ we share good practices and an approach to organize co-creating your new organization. Under our guidance, we offer agile coaches, managers and other change agents the chance to design their own self-organization event. We offer multiple recipes like co-creation starters, self-selection main dishes, and continuous change desserts to choose from.

The cooking metaphor enables starting self-organization ’cooks’ to follow the recipes. For seasoned ‘cooks’ the framework behind it is helpful as they experiment to find the right flavor for their organization.

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Agile in Government Sector

Mark Saymen (IBM).

Abstract

Speaking about implementing Agile in Government sector, and how different compared to any other entrprise, as the motive to profitability and competition do not exist the same way compare to any agile implementation or transformation.

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An Agile Way to Architect Web Apps

Doguhan Uluca (Excella).

Abstract

With Scrum, teams rush to implement features, then a few months later realizing they’ve been going down the wrong path. The right architecture should encourage teams to ask the hard questions early, which will allow them to right-size their solutions while achieving good application performance.

The router-first approach to Single Page Application (SPA) architecture enables developers to start small, with a decoupled and lazy-loaded architecture, giving them the option to stay small or scale while achieving sub-second first meaningful paints. Router-first architecture is designed to force teams to ask the hard questions early, build a roadmap and then iterate over a solution.

Router-first: • Enforces high-level thinking, • Ensures consensus on features, before coding starts, • Accounts for source code and team growth, • Keeps engineering overhead low.

I will demonstrate this concept with a concrete implementation of a sample application. I will also share real-world statistics about how this methodology helped my team.

These concepts are demonstrated through my Lemon Mart app on GitHub and in my book: Angular 6 for Enterprise-Ready Web Applications, May 2018, Packt Publishing.

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Survive! – A collective goal setting experience

Nienke Alma (ING), Wessel Hofman (ScrumIt) and Jasper Lamers (Xebia).

Abstract

It happened again: you thought you had set clear goals for the company, but at the end of the year results are disappointing. People worked hard, but for some reason all the efforts of the individual employees and their departments didn’t add up to one clear successful achievement. Your employees don’t seem to be happy either. They complain about the company goals to be “pushed” to them, while at the same time clear direction on how to create value is lacking.

The alignment between the strategy defined at the top and the collective intelligence of the employees is a common challenge to many large companies. The use of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) has been recognized as a way to overcome this challenge since this framework was successfully applied at Google. Although the knowledge about how to define good OKRs increases, applying this knowledge to unleash the full potential of the entire workforce of the company is still difficult.

This workshop is all about the experience. Wessel Hofman (Rugby player and Agile coach at Scrumit), Jasper Lamers (Agile consultant at Xebia), and Nienke Alma (Agile Coach at ING) create an experiential environment inspired by the special circumstances we are all facing today that will help you to understand the dynamics of collective goal setting, and collective goal achievement. What is the role of management in that process? And what is expected from the people on the ‘shop floor’? What is needed to make their interaction effective? Join this interactive session to find out!

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Agile at scale generative principles, an alternative to scaled frameworks

Luca Minudel (Luca Minudel) and Giovanni Asproni (Zuhlke Engineering Ltd).

Abstract

If you are part of the ever-growing number of practitioners thinking that scaled agile frameworks often fall short of achieving sustainable agility, they are a band-aid solution or even deleterious, and none of them can be a substitute for knowledge, understanding, and experience…

If you are noticing that most of the companies that succeed in achieving agility at scale grew their ways of working internally, experimenting-learning-adapting-evolving…

If you are not, but you are curious to explore and maybe challenge a different point of view…

You will be introduced to a lightweight alternative to scaled frameworks: 9 generative principles, with people at the centre, founded on lean-agile principles, the metaphor of organisations as human organisms, the theory of Complex Adaptive Systems, modern Management Science, and case studies.

During this interactive session, you will be invited to participate in activities to discuss, challenge and improve the 9 principles. You will also be invited to bringing forward the conversation in the Lean-Agile Community, with your point of view.

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Team Norming – A low tech, high fidelity technique to gain alignment with new concepts

Jann Thomas (WestRock).

Abstract

In my experience as an Agile Coach introducing the Agile practices to a new team, there are team members who have positive Agile experiences from other companies, team members with no agile experience and team members with no desire to change.   Team Norming is the single most empowering and effective workshop  to align team members with the new way of working.   This workshop is intended to be given shortly after the team has been trained on the Agile Practices in some type of Agile bootcamp.   Bootcamp is typically a 1 – 2 day hands on experience where the participants learn the roles and responsibilities of the team members and the ceremonies for the team.  Team norming is a follow up workshop where the team decides how the practices will work for them.  The goal of team norming is to set up the schedule for team meetings based on team consensus and define the flow of work through the system.  Attendees to this session will learn how to conduct a team norming session, participate in a Mock team norming workshop and receive the team norming facilitators guide.  There will be short question and answer session to identify improvements to the process.

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Discover the Surprising Truths Behind Your Immunity to Change

Bella Trenkova (Ardigent Consulting).

Abstract

Agilists are embracing change fearlessly. (Most of us, most of the time!) But ask any Agile Coach or Agile Transformation Lead and they’ll show you their bruises and scars from people and organizations who strongly resisted any change.

Why is change so difficult? And why do most organizations seem to approach it with one foot on the gas pedal and one foot on the break?

“Immunity to Change” is a novel tool developed by a duo of Harvard Development and Leadership Researchers. It unveils the sources of individual and collective resistance to change. The discoveries range from unexpected and surprising, to enlightening and profound. The method identifies the hidden roadblocks to sustaining change and provides a systematic approach for clearing them.

The workshop is designed for Agile Coaches, Transformation Trailblazers, and Agile Leaders who want to become more effective in overcoming the natural resistance to change. The participants will complete their individual actionable Immunity to Change Maps and will discuss the applicability of the method in the context of their organizations.

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Short techniques for improved info gathering and generating action points

Frederik Vannieuwenhuyse (iLean).

Abstract

You will participate in a session facilitated with Liberating Structures. Liberating Structures are micro-patterns for conversations. Too many meetings suffer from low energy, one-way communication,  dullness. I adapted the session for an online experience. Liberating Structures  foster lively participation in groups of any size, making it possible to include and unleash everyone truly. Liberating Structures are a disruptive innovation that can replace more controlling or constraining approaches. Liberating Structures are easy-to-learn effective facilitation techniques for interaction and conversation in small and large groups. You can easily start experimenting with these, without the need to explain them too much! Step into the session and experience!

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The MVP Canvas: how to decide the least effort to achieve the most learning

Paulo Caroli (Thoughtyworks).

Abstract

Join this mini-workshop to experience the usage of the MVP Canvas, a tool for entrepreneurs, designers and product creators to validate business ideas. On it, you will detail the MVP and its functionalities, from the perspective of Design Thinking and Lean StartUp.

The MVP Canvas is a lean startup template for validating new or clarifying existing lean product ideas. It is a visual chart with elements describing a MVP—minimum viable product´s proposal, business hypothesis, metrics, features, personas, journeys, and schedule. It assists entrepreneurs in aligning their ideas with the underlying (minimum & viable) work to create and validate it.

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Agile Cherry-Picking: How to identify my individual agility?

Philipp Diebold (Bagilstein GmbH).

Abstract

Scrum is the dominating method in agile. Nevertheless, studies show that it is often adapted afterwards to the specific needs of the context. Furthermore, it might not be the appropriate methods for everything (No silver bullet). But how to find the appropriate agile methods of practices? Answering this question, a structured and scientific-founded approach with an underlying data-set was developed. Within this session this approach with the process-steps is presented (including some information from existing case studies) and followed by an interactive workshop executing part of the process using given templates.

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Innovation by Sharing. How Collaborating on Learning Can Benefit Your Company

Jutta Eckstein (IT communication) and John Buck (Governance Alive).

Abstract

Being connected to society is essential to long-term profitability. If a company is not collaborating on its learning, it will not be innovative enough. At first sight, you might think sharing your learning would prevent you from being the number one in your industry, but the challenges we’re facing right now can only be addressed (quickly) together. Thus, being secretive and focusing on itself inhibits a company from being innovative. In a sense, your company needs to be influenced by outside ideas! A company, especially if it claims to be Agile, is expected to be aware of its ecosystem. Otherwise, it will be viewed as untrustworthy, and distrust will undermine all aspects of the business (including finding clients and talent).

In this session, we will explore how cross-functional teams constructed along BOSSA nova principles not only reach across the entire company but into the ecosystem to comprehend the company holistically.

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Agile vs, DDD. Friends or Foes

Avraham Poupko (Synamedia).

Abstract

“We Welcome changing requirements, even late in development” says the Agile Manifesto.  “Complex Designs are based on a model of the domain” – Says DDD (Domain Driven Design). Do those two contradict or compliment each other?

In this talk I will explain how DDD will help us identify those structures, theories and models that will make the software structure robust in face of changing requirements. Where as Agile will allow us the flexibity needed to support the same changes.  This talk provides some insight as to how the two might work together to provide for some great software.

This is a talk targeted to software architects or advanced programmers. I assumed that the audience has a solid understanding of the Agile Principles.

I am an experienced software architect in Synamedia. I have presented on similar topics in XP conferences, Agile Conferences and in DDD conferences.

This talk will be one hour long. This can also be presented as a two hour workshop where we work through examples.

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High-Performance Teams: Core Protocols for Psychological Safety and EI

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Real change by the people who own their own work

Ari Tikka (Gosei Oy).

Abstract

As the sponsoring executive or transformation leader, you want your Agile to be effective, sustainable and fit for your organization.

This is systematically built in the organization by growing a cross-role cross-organization network of internal coaches. Economy and sustainability come from people owning their own work, processes, and improvement, unlike delegating the change to temporary overspecialized coaches.

The internal coaches drive continuous improvement locally. They merge their local view to the system analysis. Based on the realistic system understanding, working improvements are found and experimented in teams.

Based on 20 years of experience, We explain how to do this in practice, analyze failure patterns, and crystallize the key takeaways into one picture.

The conference session is Q/A based on pre-recorded talk. Two versions of the recorded talk, the slides, and session info are available at https://gosei.fi/blog/xp2020

Ari started to develop fault-tolerant real-time systems 1990. He became a full­-time organizational therapist 1997, working with individuals, groups, and organizations. Ari has worked with Agile and LeSS since 2006.

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BDD your solution from git init to Kubernetes

Nicolas Paez (UBA).

Abstract

Behaviour-Driven Development is a key agile technique to ensure the developed software behaves according to user expectations. In this session we will start by reviewing BDD concepts and we will see how to develop an application from scratch by applying BDD and other agile techniques like Hexagonal Architecture and Walking Skeleton.  We will explore in detail the BDD/TDD/CI cycle and we will see how to integrate it in a Continuous Delivery Pipeline to take our code from the source control system to the cloud. We will use BDD to drive the coding of the application and also the coding of the infrastructure. We will be using tools like SerenityBDD, GitLab-CI, Docker and Kubernetes among others.

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Agile Software Development in an Agile Company

Federico Zuppa (10Pines).

Abstract

I started with Agile almost 15 years ago, working in teams that did Agile for companies with little or no interest for it. I realized that was the way I wanted to work, but there was something not feeling quite right. Problems with other areas which didn’t work the way we did, performance evaluations focused on individuals, etc. 10 years ago I joined 10Pines, a company founded under the Agile values & principles. Throughout these years, we (the pines) have created our Methodology, with our values, processes, techniques & tools. A couple of years ago I felt urged to describe such process. The book I wrote is the result of it. Let me tell you how it is and how it feels to work in an Agile company. Among the topics I will describe are: – How we do our Product Discoveries (and why it’s so important) – How we plan and manage our developments, including how we estimate and prioritize – How we staff and gel our teams – How we iteratively and incrementally build the product using TDD.

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How to achieve a collaborative culture in a command and control environment

Fernando de Sá (Brazilian Air Force).

Abstract

The fourth Industrial Revolution is once again transforming the way humans live, work, and relate. Are we ready? Many organizations, whether private or public, are still organized in centralized paradigms. They have great command and control structures and strong hierarchy. Companies with this paradigm have great difficulty adapting to the new scenarios that are emerging. Besides, the world is becoming increasingly complex. Are we able to change this scenario? How to change from command and control culture based on hierarchy, processes, and standards, to a collaborative culture focused on people and their interaction, the sense of team, and self-organization? In this workshop, I will share some techniques and practices to achieve a collaborative culture in a Command and Control environment. With the experience acquired in the Agile Transformation of a military organization of the Brazilian Air Force, I will present the challenges of Transformation into an Organization strongly based on hierarchy.

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Beyond User Stories: Modern Software Requirements need a Visual Model of Representation

Deepak K Gupta (CodesBay).

Abstract

Welcome to a world where Modern Software Requirements are not only simple & intuitive, but also fun to create.  You’ll end this session cum workshop with something which you’d like to try as soon as you go back to your work next week.

User Stories were created as part of eXtreme Programming more than 20 years back.  They are text based descriptions modeled on the requirements of end users.  It has worked relatively well in unifying the language of requirements.

However, Modern Software Development is a complex undertaking. The emergence of new technologies like MicroServices, Cloud Computing, Machine Learning and Distributed Systems aided by  ever increasing (faster & reliable)  internet connectivity has changed the way we develop software today and a text based user story is neither intuitive nor sufficient to explain the requirements

It’s also extremely difficult to draw some kind of intuitive relationship between different user stories.  Often times, a couple of lines of text can draw multiple interpretations which are limited only to people’s imaginations.

The need of the hour is NOT to add additional texts, but to have a  Simple Visual Model for describing Software Requirements which is NOT ONLY intuitive (even for a 6 year old)  but also DOESN’T require someone to learn totally  new syntax or styles.

That has become a reality using a visual Software Requirement Model called CDP, where the CDP stands for Consume, Does and Produce. A visual model is extremely powerful as compared to texts because as per science our brain processes the information 60,000 times faster than it does for texts

In this session cum workshop,  The participants shall be exposed to CDP requirement model (What & How ) with multiple real time examples, a couple of which will be done by participants along with the instructor for better understanding.  At the end of this session, I’ll also some of the testimonies about this technique

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Open Innovation through Collaboration

Steven Fraser (Innoxec) and Dennis Mancl (MSWX Software Experts).

Abstract

As we face the challenges of pandemic enforced separation, now more than ever, effective strategies for open innovation and collaboration “at a distance” are essential. This seminar will describe the benefits of open innovation and benefits to both company and university communities. Collaboration helps companies amplify the business impact of innovations by internal technical staff and external partners. Collaboration programs can be a cost-effective strategy for companies to catalyze innovation, attract new talent, and improve a company’s reputation. Universities benefit from an open innovation model by connecting with companies to attract additional funding, increase focus on real-world challenges, influence market/product direction, and incubate employment opportunities for their graduates. This seminar explores open innovation strategies, collaboration techniques, benefits, and potential challenges, discussing both benefits and failure modes and suggesting approaches for both seasoned organizations and those initiating collaboration programs.

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Coaching for Alignment using Lands Work

Nafees Butt (Elabor8).

Abstract

Ever struggled with creating alignment between the members of a team? Faced challenges in getting senior managers to understand each other’s viewpoints on an initiative and collaborate instead of work against each other? Can we go above and beyond individual coaching to help the relationship between the individuals? Russell Ackoff said that to manage a system effectively, you might focus on the interactions of the parts rather than their behavior taken separately. In this workshop, we will demonstrate working on the interactions of the parts, the relationship between individuals, to create alignment. We will use LandsWork, a group coaching activity from Organisational and Relationship System Coaching (ORSC), to simulate the coaching technique – a must-have for all coaches.

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XP@Scale – How to use XP practices in teams more than 100 members

Marcelo Walter (Objective) and Pedro Cruz (Objective).

Abstract

This session presents how we can tune Extreme Programming practices to apply in a context for more than 100 members team. We will expose a real case and simulate a system for multi teams attending multiple projects. Following the values and using all the XP practices, the public will share the experience of scale this agile methodology in a simple but very robust way. Come on and be a part of this learning shot to understand why XP is still one of the best approaches to maintain a development process with high quality, connected to the real client value and long term sustainability.

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Puzzling out a test strategy

Wouter Lagerweij (Wouter Lagerweij Consultancy).

Abstract

Testing 1, 2, 3, … We know we have to. But what does good testing look like? Let’s puzzle that out together!

Yes, we know about TDD, and BDD, but that only provides part of the picture. Testing a modern application takes a broad and versatile approach. It’s not always easy to know what to do or where to start, and it can be even harder explaining what’s necessary to those not versed in software development.

In this workshop, we will build three maps: system, process and delivery pipeline. We’ll learn how each type of testing fits as a puzzle piece to complete the picture on each map. We’ll work in groups to find out what function each test has for your system, how and when you might implement them in the process flow of a sprint, and when to run them in a deployment pipeline.

For coaches and managers, this session aims to provide the understanding of testing in purpose and process to create an agile test strategy at work. The more technically inclined can use the material to generate new ideas on what to test, and to discuss testing approaches with peers and management.

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Speaking C: What the Hollywood Elevator Pitch can Teach us about Communicating with Leaders

John Ryskowski (JFR Consulting).

Abstract

Agile coaches and agile team members are by their very nature focused on the team and project. Agile training, certificates, and experience afford ongoing improvement in these areas. Occasionally, however, we must effectively communicate and convince higher level management to do something we believe is necessary. Higher management is curious and craves information, but speaks a very different language, and typically reacts differently to information. This situation sets the stage for awkward communication and frustration for all parties. We shall crack the code of communicating with higher level management with help from Hollywood screenwriters and some lessons learned.

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Grow your culture

Outi Vaattanen (Ericsson), Hanna-Mari Loisa (Ericsson), Markus Päivinen (Ericsson), Kati Ilvonen (Ericsson) and Minna Hallikainen (Ericsson).

Abstract

Many workplaces talk of the benefits of a Lean and Agile mindset. Yet the journey from theory to practice can often be anything but straightforward. We will share the story of Ericsson Finland’s 10-year journey to reshape company culture and provide a foundation for innovation. This journey is built on learning and strengthened by mindset.

We want to make learning a natural part of everyday life, make it a lifestyle, by supporting and inspiring people to find new opportunities for learning and sharing knowledge. Learning lifestyle is an attitude. It is about curiosity and passion. We grow as individuals and as an organization.

The learning lifestyle is based on active and open community. The community identifies the needs and provides the content. Coaches and leaders support the learning lifestyle by creating opportunities for learning and knowledge sharing, for example, through talks and hands-on sessions.

We have strengthened our Lean and Agile culture and mindset with an intensive internal coaching program, that was later named as E³ – enabling, empowering and emotional.  The aim is to create a culture that supports continuous change and empowers people to discover their full potential. E3 creates movement to accelerate progress towards results and towards working in a community which is self-directing.

We will offer people an engaging workshop to learn and experience some of the corner stones in growing our culture.

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Agile sans risk is risky Business

Raj Heda

Abstract

Did you know that one simple misstep can take away all the benefits from agile ways of working? Consider this – a bank’s agile software development team develops a tool to enable customers to open new accounts on their mobile devices. The tool is sent to the risk team for vetting, who identify that the tool is not in full compliance with Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements. The tool release was suspended, and the development wheels began rolling again, at the cost of time and resources.

Agile is all about speed and time to market. However, to unlock agile efficiencies, companies need to develop a concurrent risk assessment and compliance program. How should companies successfully deliver an agile framework in an environment of increasingly stringent compliance requirements and ever-changing regulatory framework? Are there other opportunities for osmosis between agile and risk practices? How should the risk and compliance teams be trained to adopt agile approaches?

Learning Outcomes
• Articulate need for agile teams to align with risk and compliance functions
• Talent plan for functions for risk-based coverage model
• Identify osmosis opportunities between agile and risk capabilities

This session is targeted at senior members of agile and risk/compliance teams, Leaders, Managers and Agile teams

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Understanding and applying different decision models for increasing organization agility

Ken Power (Independent) and Rebecca Wirfs-Brock (Wirfs-Brock Associates).

Abstract

Agility implies responding to change appropriately. Every response is a decision. Sometimes we choose among several competing options, sometimes not. Some decisions demand immediate action, others require us to step back and think and weigh our options. There are many decision models that can support how we respond. Often, our decisions are part of a series of inter-related decisions that influence each other. From this perspective, the agility of an organization can be viewed as an outcome of decisions made over time. In this workshop session, participants will learn and apply three specific decision styles and models that are useful in different circumstances.

Some of the models we use in this workshop come from the field of Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM), which has the goal of studying how people actually make decisions in a variety of real-world settings. Settings in which NDM is appropriate are characterized by time pressure, high stakes, experienced decision makers, inadequate information, ill-defined goals, poorly defined procedures, context, dynamic conditions, and team coordination. In this session we explore NDM in the context of organization agility.

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Creating in a Crowd: Mob Programming without programming

Karel Boekhout (Hedgefields).

Abstract

Mob Programming is slowly emerging from the basement lab of very experimental practises into a mainstream tool. Pair Programming for 3+ people has grown into a proven way to deliver high quality software, without delays or coordination overhead.

Join me to have fun in this version of Mob Programming, where we create something that is not code: a story! We’ll use the same format as a mob of developers, but there will be no technical skills required. As we build the story, line by line, we will also introduce different aspects of mobbing, and learn different ways of organising the mob.

I’ll share variations of mobbing as used with different development teams, from absolute beginners to serial mobbers with specialised alterations.

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No (Lab) Jacket Required: Designing Experiments for Learning

Matthew Philip (Accenture | SolutionsIQ).

Abstract

Hypothesis-Driven Development is thinking about the development of new ideas, products and services – even organizational change – as a series of experiments to determine whether an expected outcome will be achieved, so we need to know how to design and run experiments properly. This workshop session helps participants understand the importance of using experiments to help teams and organizations learn and improve, while giving hands-on practice in designing experiments to yield measurable evidence for that learning. We’ll even play a couple of inductive-logic games to get us in the mindset of how to write tests to validate — and invalidate — our hypotheses in order to acquire knowledge. Whether you’re in product development of organizational improvement, for those wanting to move from projects to experiments in the quest of continuous learning and evolutionary improvement, this session will provide the tools and mindset for going beyond simply calling something an experiment to conducting experiments with the proper rigor to maximize learning.

This 60-minute workshop session helps participants:

• understand the importance of using experiments to help teams and organizations learn and improve
• gain hands-on practice in designing experiments to yield measurable evidence for that learning
• understand how to properly measure outcomes without confirmation bias

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Insights from working with Flow-based product development: Why and how to achieve a continuous flow of value in your organization

Ken Power (Independent Consultant).

Abstract

Software development organizations operate in an environment of ever- increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. The pace of change is accelerating, business and technology complexity is growing, and organizations are struggling to keep pace. The software development industry has a $3 trillion productivity problem, according to one study. Value is not flowing as it should. Flow-based software development is part of the continued evolution of contemporary software development approaches contributing to addressing this problem. It builds on agile and lean software development approaches and incorporates lessons from Deming’s management method, the Toyota Production System, Lean Product Development, Theory of Constraints, Operations Management, and other influences. Flow-based development is foundational to modern systems approaches, including DevOps, Continuous Delivery, Site Reliability Engineering, and more. Creating and sustaining flow in organizations is a challenging problem. Drawing on insights developed over many years working with multiple global product development organizations, this session presents a framework for establishing, understanding, and sustaining flow in organizations.

This session will answer the following questions: • What is flow? • What is the relationship between flow, lean, and agile? • Why do organizations adopt flow? • Where to get started? • What contributes to flow happening? • How do we measure flow? • What makes flow difficult to achieve? • How can organizations overcome these impediments to flow? • What is the role of culture in determining how effective flow can be?

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Sensemaking in Organizations: How to create a practical process that leverages Cynefin and sensemaking

Ken Power (Independent Consultant) and Tony Quinlan (Narrate).

Abstract

The Cynefin sensemaking framework has grown in popularity in the agile community in recent years. Used to its full potential, sensemaking and the Cynefin framework are powerful and effective approaches to informing action in complex, dynamic, and uncertain situations. Ken and Tony will introduce a practical, effective approach based on their work applying complexity techniques in large global technology organisations. This workshop, based on years of experience with dozens of sensemaking projects, will teach you the fundamentals of using micronarrative-based sensemaking and the Cynefin framework to foster transformation, resilience and agility.

This session will focus on use of sensemkaing to support transformations. You will learn about sensemaking in organizaitons, the Cynefin framework, how to determine appropriate action in a given context, how to design experiments for navigating complex situations, how to tailor a sensemaking framework for a particular purpose, and how to integrate sensemaking into your organizaiton.

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