Keynote speaker - Ben Linders

The Need for Continuous Improvement in Agile

For decades people have looked for the best way to develop software. Multiple methods and frameworks have been explored to guide organizations on how to develop software. Although we have, as a whole improved, organizations can still struggle. Delivering working software still seems to be hard.

Many organizations that have had success with agile, but there are also agile transformations that have not produced the  expected results. Better software development is not about implementing the the best framework or method throughout the organization. 

Agile takes a different approach by stating “We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it”. What matters is that people, teams and organizations adopt an agile mindset and learn how to deploy suitable practices effectively so that they can adapt to the situation at hand.

Agile isn't a silver bullet, and it’s not a one size fits all approach. Continuous improvement is what makes it work, it’s at the heart of agile. Ben will show why continuous improvement matters in agile and what you can do to help your teams and organization to be more agile.

Based in The Netherlands, Ben is a leading authority on agile retrospectives and is the author of Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives.

Ben is an active member of networks on Agile, Lean and Quality. He shares his experience in a bilingual blog (Dutch and English), as an editor for Agile at InfoQ and as an expert on TechTarget.

Ben will also be running workshops in Melbourne during his visit.

Susan Nottage - Business and IT stakeholders

From nought to Agile

Have you started using Agile but are unsure what the destination is or how much further there is to go?  This practical talk includes 'take aways’ that will resonate with Business or IT stakeholders who need to drive improvement in their own organization via Agile principles and practices.  Topics covered include moving from team-based Agile to scale, how Agile accelerates decision-making, taking Agile from IT to the Business, honoring our people, and linking Agile back to better business results.  Suzanne will draw on her own experiences working with Agile teams in the UK, US and Australia.

As an Agile Transformation Consultant Suzanne works with clients who want to sense and respond to change, so they can deliver real business value more quickly to their customers. She  works predominately in multi-national, highly regulated, risk-averse industries. Her business background means she focusses on delivering results across the organisation, not just in IT. Outside of work, she’s usually attached to a pair of running shoes, pedals or goggles, where she also applies agile principles to gain an advantage over fellow competitors.

Ben Hogan - Why Kanban?

Why Kanban?

What is Kanban and why does it work? This talk introduces the fundamentals of the Kanban method and provides plenty of examples for how to get started. We discuss when Kanban is a good choice and show how visualising work and limiting work in progress allows for continuous improvement for your team.

Ben has been working with teams and organisations to adopt agile methods since 2002. He supports clients through coaching, mentoring, training and facilitation across a wide range of methods including Lean, Kanban, Scrum, SAFe, LeSS and Extreme Programming principles and practices. He is also an experienced project leader having successfully delivered application development, operations and cloud computing initiatives.

Ben is a Certified Large Scale Scrum Practitioner, a Lean Kanban Coach and a Scaled Agile Framework Program Consultant. Ben is regular speaker at conferences including Agile Australia, LAST and 1st Conference. Ben is the organiser of the Melbourne Limited WIP Society.

Shawn Callahan - Business storytelling and agile

Influence and inspire with stories

Everyone needs to influence and inspire the people around them. This talk provides practical tips on how to find and tell good stories at work.

Shawn Callahan is the author of Putting Stories to Work and the Founder at Anecdote, the world’s largest business storytelling company.

Shawn started his career in technology with companies such as Oracle and IBM but realised, at the end of the day, it was the human factors that determined the success of any enterprise. 

In 2004 he founded Anecdote, a firm that helps leaders and sellers find and tell great oral stories.  He works with Global 1,000 companies such as Shell, Danone, Microsoft, TESCO, Allianz and Bayer all around the world. Anecdote licenses its business storytelling programs to companies that are delivered in 6 languages in over 20 countries.

Shawn is based in Melbourne, Australia and can be contacted at www.anecdote.com. His LinkedIn is au.linkedin.com/in/shawncallahan

Martin Kearns - Agile Contracting

Agile Contracts - the things we need to consider

SMS has been working with organisations over the last year to redesign how Product Delivery is managed within contracts  to provide greater resilience and staged opportunities to adapt ( Pivot / Pause / Preserve ) the way we deliver. To embed agile into the way you deliver projects requires the approach to be mirrored in the way you engage and govern. With example case studies we want to share our finding in how to create better outcomes through the manner and methods of how we engage via an agile contract.

With over 18 years of industry experience, Martin is the National Capability Lead for Agile services at SMS Management & Technology. He is currently leading the development of an enterprise Agile capability within SMS to support the business strategies of a diverse set of clients.With Martin's efforts, SMS became the first IC Agile accredited organisation in the Asia Pacific.

Phil Gadzinski - A framework for Using User Stories

A framework for Using User Stories

Requirements? What Requirements? Heres your Backlog of User Stories INSTEAD.....

Clients are asking us to be more agile. They are asking us to achieve business value faster; to build in the capability to respond to market forces;  to create the environment to achieve the oppounity presented by innovation; and to reduce technical and development risk via continuous small batch changes over big bang end of program releases. The evolution of the API and Appliance economy is driving us to collaborate with existing support teams; to work within BI and Multi Modal IT Speed of Delivery models; where the cost to develop a new service is low. Digital and Mobile development demands continuous iterative cycles; to adopt Build Measure Learn paradigms which require fast feedback to ensure we are building the right product. Fast to experiment and fast to fail and Learn.  

But transitioning from Waterfall to Agile  is HARD. Its like Transitioning from playing Cricket to playing Baseball: There's still a bat, still a ball, you throw the ball, you hit the ball, you  run and keep score, plus a bunch of other similarities. BUT. Its a different filed, a different bat, a different way of bowling, gloves, you run to a different spot, even the field is a different layout. There is a different culture, different rules and a different way to be successful. And you need different tools.

Part of this is a transition to User Stories from Requirements. In many agile projects, clients are now presenting User stories as the basis of need over requirements. We are using Story Points as the primary sizing technique over man hours.  And for many people this is an entirely new way of working out WHAT they need to do to deliver on the vision of the product. And many businesses have started to use Story Points as the basis of comparison for performance, and to negotiate price with vendors.   

Yes Agile Values Individuals and Interactions OVER Tools and Processes - but within the distributed context, we NEED shared tools and we need to create shared processes to ensure success. As Ohno said " Where there is no standard, there can be no Kaizen".

We have developed a User Story Sizing Framework with multiple classes of models for our teams to baseline against to strip User Story sizing away from estimating to drive consistency in planning, estimating, budgeting and reporting The framework DOES NOT replace the current accepted team based sizing and estimation process - it provides a tool for those new to agile, new to the team, or new to the work quickly gel as a group and set a baseline early on that can be relied on for comparing performance against over time. The tool separates the Size (Volume and Complexity) out from the Delivery.  We believe this Framework creates a TEAM LEVEL Standard, which can be used by ANY TEAM in their context.

An unofficial advocate of servant leadering, because of his ‘slightly relaxed’ tendencies, extensive scarring from multi year multi million dollar transformation programs,  and internal abhorrence to micro managing, Phil's modus operandi has always been on giving his teams the time and space to work stuff out - an underlying fundamental principle of Agile.

Now working with Infosys to help people grow and adopt an Agile mindset across multiple Teams, Geographies  and Clients, and talk about a Scaling Challenge(!), and move from 'Doing Agile' to 'Being Agile', Phil is committed to helping take the complexity out of Agile philosophy and make it simple to implement and adopt by focusing on the People and the Principles. Phil takes an enthusiastic role in internal and  external community events aimed at improving the broader  Business (and IT!) Communities awareness and involvement in the Agile Revolution, specifically in the area of Program, Portfolio  and Enterprise Level Agility.

Erin McManus and Ryan Mckergow - Is there a future for business analysis?

Ground control to Major Tom: Is there a future for business analysis?

The introduction of agile has caused disruption throughout organisations. The role of a business analyst is no exception, but has it made business analysis redundant?

During this talk we will delve into how the different stages of agile adoption have transformed IT departments and where the role of business analysis fits. It has introduced cross functional teams as opposed to skill silos, which means we are looking for T shaped individuals to make up a great team. Do we still need business analysts in agile? People with analysis skills? Or we don’t need analysis at all?!

Erin and Ryan are both agile consultants at Elabor8. They’ve been working together for the past 6 months as business analysts on UniSuper’s largest agile and digital transformation program.

Erin has a diverse background that helps her excel as an enthusiastic agile practitioner. She has spent many years working in and leading agile teams at the likes of Lonely Planet and Sensis. She is passionate about working with agile software development teams and coaching them on agile practices and continuous improvement.

Ryan is passionate about agile and changing things up. With over 6 years of agile experience, he has worked with many agile teams at the Suncorp group, SEEK, and realestate.com.au. He has a passion for retrospectives and continuous improvement and looks to instil this ethos with all of his teams.

Maria Muir - Hybrid Methods

"It's ok to be Hybrid" - A constant tug of war or accepted end state?

There is a constant tug of war between wanting to achieve agile in all of its glory and constraints that impede on being able to move away from traditional ways of working. As organisations and teams progress in their maturity to 'true agile glory' there will be a period of transition from waterfall to agile with a Hybrid approach, as constraints are challenged and removed. Or, a decision is made that it is ok to strive and stop at a Hybrid approach as enough tangible benefits have been achieved and no further significant outcomes will be realised.

Maria will share insights and lessons learned from working with teams and organisations on how to navigate the 'spectrum of Agile' and to decide

- when 'enough is enough' agile adoption. Specifically, I will discuss: 
- When to 'really' use agile - key foundations required prior to starting the journey
- Key constraints that will dictate/drive how far you can go
- How to go agile within those constraints with a Hybrid approach
- Key benefits from a Hybrid approach

Maria is a Director in the Enterprise Information Management (EIM) team within Deloitte’s Consulting practise.  She is an Agile leader within Deloitte, representing a team of experts in Scrum, Lean, Kanban, scaled Agile frameworks and Continuous Delivery. 

Maria has over 10 years of experience focused on Agile, IT transformation, IT program delivery, Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing, in particular in the Telecommunications and Financial Services industry. She is a certified Scrum Master and has experience with Agile at Scale and Continuous Delivery.

Brad Bennett - 
How much agility can your organisational handle?

How much agility can your organisational handle?

With the amazing benefits gained by implementing agility, companies have adopted agile teams as the norm for software delivery, not the exception.

The question is no longer does agile work, it is how do we scale agility throughout the enterprise (without losing control).  In this discussion, Brad reviews the latest industry trends with organisational agile adoption. 

• How companies are approaching adopting agility

• What challenges are encountered along the journey, and

• What options companies have when resistance arises.

Brad is passionate about supporting organisations to be agile, rather than just do agile.

In this talk, Brad uses industry best practices to provide the big picture when attempting to implement business agility.  By the end of the talk you will be able to:

• Self identify where you are on your agile adoption journey,

• Gain insights into potential upcoming organisational challenges, and

• Have concrete options for your next steps in organisational maturity.

Brad is an experienced lean agile change agent, with a track record of leading change and supporting lean agile adoption in the enterprise.  As a high energy enthusiastic coach with over 20 years experience in technical delivery, Brad has been coaching teams to commercial outcomes across Australia for over 10 years.            

Brad founded EPiC Agile, an agile transformation partnering business, which supports organisations to inject lean agile practices & behaviours into all levels of enterprises.

Mirco Hering - Adding DevOps to your Agile methods

Achieving speed to market by adding DevOps to your Agile methods

Achieving speed to market by adding DevOps to your Agile methods
Description: Agile promises you to achieve a shorter time to market. Yet many Agile projects find that the time to market does not reduce as much as expected initially unless they include XP and DevOps practices as well. In this talk we will explore the reason for this and provide practical guidance on how you can get started and how to make sure you keep the momentum to achieve the speed to aspire to.

Mirco leads Accenture’s DevOps & Agile practice in Asia-Pacific, with focus on Agile, DevOps and Continuous Delivery to establish lean IT organisations. He has over 10 years experience in accelerating software delivery through innovative approaches. In the last few years Mirco has focused on scaling these approaches to large complex environments. Mirco is a regular speaker at conferences and shares his insights on his blog http://notafactoryanymore.com.

Tarcio Saraiva & Adam Crough - Crafting Quality Software

Crafting Quality Software

Agile has redefined how we interact. There’s no developer team or testing team anymore, it’s all about the team; a collaborative effort of individuals that share the same vision to build a product or deliver new features. But building a product or implementing new features can be tough due to a variety of internal and external factors.

During this talk, Adam and Tarcio will explore techniques that can assist you in building quality software. They will look at the evolution of quality in software development and how it’s applied to a fast paced industry that is constantly reshaping itself.

Tarcio is a Software Engineer with a passion for web development. With over 10 years experience, Tarcio thrives on the ever changing nature of the industry. He always remains at the forefront of technology trends and ensures he is testing, upskilling and pushing the boundaries. Having worked across many industries, in and out of Australia, Tarcio values the collaboration and learnings from every project and firmly believes that quality is a mindset that can be taught and applied.

Adam is a Business Analyst with over 9 years experience helping business and technology teams work together. Having worked across a number of diverse industries, he believes that the key to any successful business or project is it’s people. Passionate about collaboration, Adam is constantly looking for ways to improve team cohesion to ensure that the best outcome is delivered for all stakeholders.

Tom Sommer - Goals on Every Level

Goals on Every Level - The art of setting goals throughout the organisation

Almost every organisation uses goals one or the other way nowadays. Most of the time though, it's only used on the business level. I'll be exploring how goals on every level - even down to individuals - can help create a more engaged and productive team.

Tom will be exploring how to set a hierarchy of meaningful goals and how it can be applied across all levels of the company.

Tom is a Lead Engineer at Redbubble. He's passionate about People Management, Front End and User Research

Eduardo Nofuentes - Agile beyond software

Agile beyond software

Since the publication of the Agile Manifesto in 2001, Agile has grown to be the standard practice for the software development industry and teams around the globe. Seeing the success of this approach, other areas of the business are looking to adopt it; but…how do you “run agile” in non-software development teams? How do you apply the Agile principles and tools to an Operations, Sales or an HR team? And more importantly, how does your business achieve Business Agility as a whole?

Eduardo will answer some of those questions and will provide real examples of non-software development teams that have successfully adopted this approach.

Eduardo is the founder of The Agile Contact Centre, a consultancy focused on transforming Operations and Contact Centre teams through really innovative thinking; and using people centred practices and methodologies.
Prior to founding The Agile Contact Centre, Eduardo was with the REA Group (realestate.com.au) and transformed their Contact Centre Operations using a Systems Thinking approach and applying Lean and Agile practices.

Nadia Smith - Recruiting: Agile or Agility

Recruiting for Agile vs Agility

You’re on your Agile transformation journey, change is flourishing across the organisation, there are visual tools everywhere and everyone is onboard.
Except, we’re still using the traditional recruitment process, which is ultimately flawed. Considering resumes & keyword searches could veto candidates that may not have the accreditations, but instead have the ‘mindset’ you need in your team. This mindset may be the difference between transition success or struggle.   
 
Defining Agile and agility for the purpose of this session, we’ll look at the standard recruitment approach, the pros and cons. Furthermore, suggest what can be done to attract and employ the people you need to create high performing teams and progress your Agile journey.
 
Using the learnings we’ve had at Sportsbet over the last 14 months of our Agile transformation, this talk focuses on our recruitment, development and support of delivery teams, and the importance of having the right mix of capability, personality and synergy to deliver product to our customers, and have fun while we are at it.

Nadia is an experienced leader with a diverse background including management, consulting, sales, marketing and entrepreneurship.
Nadia is passionate about leadership, building and enabling high performing & happy teams.

Combined with a strong sporting background (a long time ago!) this brings an interesting perspective to tackle each new challenge.
Nadia’s current focus is people and process in software development & product delivery at Sportsbet.

Ed O'Shaughnessy - My journey in progressing an Agile revolution

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times: my journey in progressing an Agile revolution

Are you on an Agile transformation journey in a large organisation, or looking at mobilising for one? The challenges are many and great, it can feel daunting at times and the end very far over the horizon. What can you expect along the way and how can you deal with the many stresses and strains that will inevitably arise? And most especially, how can you bring others along on the journey with you?
 
I’ll relay what it’s like working within an international financial services company to help transform our software development approach from a very traditional model to one of greater agility more suited to 21st century economics and the growing threat of market disruption.
 
Exploring the dimensions of an Agile transformation, I’ll share my experiences (the best and the worst) helping AU and US based teams at different stages on their journeys and provide practical suggestions to smooth the path ahead at whatever level you are in the organisation. We will have some time at the end to explore a few of your real-world challenges and questions too. 

Ed is an Agile Coach in the DevOps group at Computershare. His path to agility started many years ago in defence R&D looking for better ways of developing software, eventually arriving in enterprise IT as a project manager still interested in how to deliver software better. This resulted in leading his department’s Agile transformation and an on-going passion for helping people work together more effectively.

Matthew Hodgson - Lean UX and Product Ownership

Lean UX and Product Ownership

Where does the UX practitioner fit into agile processes? Don’t we need to design the whole product up front or design a Sprint ahead so we know what we’re building? Is Lean UX the key?
These are the questions we all ask when we’re embarking on an agile journey. Over the last 10 years, agility has focussed on software development but not necessarily the UX process of discovery, experimentation and creation – the art and science of human interaction with our products. 
In this presentation you’ll learn about UX and Lean and understanding the user as part of product ownership. We’ll look at the role of the UX specialist in the Scrum team, patterns and anti-patterns, and how Scrum can be Lean with the introduction of Lean UX.
Participants will come away with a model for Lean UX at scale – one that looks at user research, prototyping and experimentation as part of the discovery of “building the right thing”.

Matt is an enterprise agile coach and organisational psychologist. He leverages two decades of UX product development to help lead digital and agile transformations in both corporates and government to create products and services that people love. He is highly respected in the Australian Scrum community for his unique, pragmatic coaching style that combines Lean with behavioural psychology to tackle aspects of change and adoption in both software and non-software environments. 
Matt is a firm believer of chocolate at key meetings, and a drink after Retrospectives with the team.

Andy Kelk - Gardening good culture

Culture gardening: How to find the right people

So you're on board with agile; you see the value in delivering incrementally, of focusing on craftsmanship, of shipping early and often. But do you have the right people to be successful? You look at all the companies who are experts in the field and you sense that they're different. They have a special aura, something that your team doesn't have. What can you do?

In this talk, Andy will show you that you already have most of the right people already. He'll describe how to nurture and grow the teams you have to conquer the problems you want to solve. I'll also show how to augment your existing teams and what to look out for on your journey to building an agile team.

Andy is the Head of Engineering for News Corp Australia and has over 15 years of experience in the industry. With a background in digital businesses, Andy combines strong technology knowledge with commercial understanding. 

Andy has previously worked for REA Group, iProperty Group and Australia Post leading product and technology development. Andy has 8 years experience working in agile environments and is passionate about developing and mentoring teams to work more effectively. 

Bernd Schiffer - Proactive Teams ­ How to Deal with Reluctance

Proactive Teams ­ How to Deal with Reluctance

Principles and techniques to let teams become proactive, i.e. being able to take action in a truly responsible way.
Management is thrilled about Agile and has the organisation entirely convinced to adopt this fascinating new mindset. Well, not entirely... One small team of indomitable developers still holds out against any change.

This team just can’t be motivated. Team members are reserved and hold back wherever they can. Why improve? Why do more than absolutely necessary?

When a team is only reactive, management’s expectations of the potential that can be achieved are falling apart. Management wishes that this team is proactive and does take on responsibilities.

This session points out that there is a lot that both, teams and management, can do to become truly proactive, such as creating an emotional bank account, visualising a circle of influence, or by focussing on a growth rather than a fixed mindset.

Bernd Schiffer is an Agile coach, trainer and consultant in Melbourne, Australia. He founded his own Agile company called Bold Mover, and he's been developing an Agile and Lean mindset for about 15 years. He often works at the client's introducing Scrum and Kanban at team and management level. He deeply cares about his work, and he's passionate about running long distances

Katrina Kolt - Effective Agile Leadership: A practical model for Agile Managers

Effective Agile Leadership: A practical model for Agile Managers

Some Agile folk have a perception that good managers are those that simply "get out of the way". However effective Agile leadership is critical to an organisation achieving sustainably faster delivery of customer focused solutions.

Drawing on thought leaders such as Deming, Marquet, Denning and Appelo, Katrina has developed a practical model for leaders that sees them support delivery as facilitators of improvement and drivers for innovation.

She gets down to the nitty gritty of transforming traditional managers into Agile leaders by changing the following mindsets and behaviors: decision making, problem solving, communication, learning, acknowledging success, innovation and of course delivery.

Katrina is an energetic change management professional, with more than 20 years’ IT Project leadership experience, most recently as a Scrum Master, Product Owner and Agile Coach. Katrina has been at the heart of Agile inception at Telstra Digital, Australia Post's Digital Fast track team and Deakin University. She is now Enterprise Agile Coach at Latitude Financial Services (formely GE Capital), taking the lead on defining a right fit Agile framework, coaching to build Agility and supporting leaders through change.

Paul Jenkinson - Lean Change

Lean Change

Uber, Google Pay, AirBNB etc. etc. - we all get that the pace of change today is almost exponential as digital capabilities and nimble, agile competitors come online faster and faster.   If you are struggling with the implications of what this means for your people, practices and technology you are not alone, most organisations are now facing into this challenge.  Moving towards agile ways of working is as much about mindset and behaviours as it is about process or methodology.  Lean change is a unique approach providing a way to manage this journey that will arm you with a range of tools and options that address both the cultural and process aspects.

Paul has been consulting now for around 20 years, in that time he has worn many hats: advisory, strategy, delivery and training, and played roles from analyst to program management level predominantly across change management and project management disciplines.  His passion and deepest area of expertise is managing change and assisting organisations to deliver sustainable outcomes including realisation of benefits and ROI.  Over the last 5 years he has been increasingly immersed in the digital and agile worlds and have become particularly interested in the question of “how do you manage change well in agile / disrupted environments?”
 
Potential options and solutions to this question are emerging and will continue to emerge, it is an exciting time to be working in this field helping clients navigate todays unique challenges.  
 
Last year Paul became Lean Change accredited and I am now collaborating closely with clients in Australia on using Lean Change tools and underlying principles to address this challenge.

Kelsey van Haaster - Road Mapping your way to Agile Fluency

Road Mapping your way to Agile Fluency

This session will provide attendees with an understanding of the Agile Fluency model as it applies to technology teams and their business partners. Learn how to assess where you are now and how to develop a road map to Agile Fluency for your team or your organisation.  
The session will include a brief background to the model and will then provide practical "how to" information for attendees wishing to complete their own fluency assessments and develop their own roadmap. 

Kelsey van Haaster is a Lead Consultant - Business Analysis with Thoughtworks inc. She has a strong interest in organisational Agility and spends her time working with teams and businesses to support them on their Agile journey. In her spare time, she is writing a PhD at Charles Sturt University investigating organisational approaches to Business Agility and their consequences.

Rod Sherwin - How to Host a Successful Stand-Up Meeting

How to Host a Successful Stand-Up Meeting

The stand-up meeting is considered an important agile practice but why is it so important and how to you get started with this unusual meeting format? When you watch experienced teams run a stand-up, it seems so easy but what are the secret ingredients to hosting a great stand-up meeting? How do you move from the usual 1 hour snore-fest to a short, sharp, engaged, active and valuable ritual? I'll present the key factors that will help you plan and run a successful stand-up and explore how to continuously evolve the process to suit your team.

Rod is a team catalyst who is focused on continuous improvement, solutions-focused change, optimising delivery, and doing it in a sustainable way. Over 20 years experience in IT as a software engineer, trainer, facilitator, team leader, coach and business analyst. Rod has strong experience in complex industries such as telecommunications, government and digital. Keen to explore how agile, lean and systems thinking can positively influence the organisation beyond IT delivery.

Mark Richards - Under what conditions is SAFe a good place to start?

Under what conditions is SAFe a good place to start?

Starting down the Agile adoption path poses an awful lot of questions.  "Should we do Agile?" morphs into decisions about Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming, Design Thinking, Lean Startup and many others.  Amongst those decisions come some almost inevitable questions about scaling.   Do we need to scale?  Should we use SAFe, LESS or DAD?  What about the consultant who told us they'd invented their own approach?

As SAFe specialists, we tend to talk to a lot of people asking these questions.  Many look at the famous "big picture" from SAFe and say "Wow, that looks almost as complicated as our organisation - maybe it's the one!"  For at least 1 in 3 organisations who contact me about SAFe, the conversation ends with me suggesting they just focus on team-level adoption or look at a lighter-weight alternative.

You will leave this talk better informed about the type of challenges SAFe was designed to address and how to recognise whether you should be adopting it, borrowing from it, or avoiding it like the plague!

Whilst coaching Australia’s first Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) implementation at Telstra, Mark was invited to join the first class to be certified as SAFe Program Consultants when the framework launched in 2012. Since then, he has both trained and consulted on the implementation of SAFe in the government, insurance, finance and education sectors. In late 2013, his contributions to the framework’s evolution and success with implementation led to him becoming the first person worldwide to be certified as a SAFe Program Consultant Trainer (SPCT).

Prior to entering the world of coaching, Mark spent many years in technical delivery roles ranging from hands-on development to solution architecture. He combines deep knowledge of theory and principle with the practical insights only years of application can provide.

Whether working with senior executives or delivery team members he is both passionate and pragmatic in pursuing his mission of facilitating sustainable movement towards true business agility and a culture of collaboration.

Haydn Thomas - Stacking the odds for Agile Project Success

Stacking the odds for Agile Project Success

“All we need is just a …” How many times have you heard those words at the start of a project? Or what about, “It’s just a project to do X and Y”. And then there’s the classic, “Can you just get on with it?” So you have attended some Agile training to handle this, so why are you not seeing the results you were hoping for and your stakeholders are questioning when they will get it. Sometimes no matter what you do, you can't seem to win. 
This presentation focuses on stacking the odds in your favor in achieving successful outcomes. We will discover how to predetermine success by increasing your toolkit, mapping out and visualize the workflow, determine when things are likely to get done and turning those principles, tools and approaches into real ability to deliver successful Agile projects. 

Haydn Thomas is a proud Director of Mindavation Pty Ltd in Australia and Vice-President of Mindavation, Inc. in the United States. Both of these consultancy organisations focus on increasing business’ capabilities in the portfolio management, program and project management and Business Analysis space by providing delivery consultants, basic through advanced training workshops and coaching.  

Haydn’s pragmatic approaches, through negotiating and delivering desired outcomes, are based on his excellent creative direction, passion for engagement, delivering the results and professional approach. Coupled with outstanding communication skills and the ability to influence decisions, these have provided the basis to successfully delivering outcomes in many organisations worldwide. 

Mike Breeze, Abdul Salam & Bruce Taylor - Remote teams

Working with remote teams

Mike Breeze (REA) and Bruce Taylor (Aconex) have been sent by their respective employers to foreign lands to help remote software engineering teams collaborate with their Melbourne Head office teams.  Abdul Salam was recruited as the Engineering Manager for Aconex Bangalore. Over several years and many flights these guys have made and learned from many mistakes and successes. The journey isn’ over. There are still frustrations and challenges, but overall, things are working.

They are here today to share their thinking, experiences and stories. They will also have time to answer your questions in a panel discussion. Come learn from people who have gone and successfully made remote working work.

Mike Breeze - drives great distributed agile practices and behaviours across all of REA Group's teams in the Xi'an Delivery Centre. Removing blockers and making sure that every team has what they need to be productive, happy and successful. REA's distributed teams continue to push the envelope on efficient Delivery while nurturing and enjoying a culture which is second to none and truly unique.

Abdul Salam -  was a consultant working for Thoughtworks across the world before settling in for the long haul as Aconex’ first Engineering manager in Bangalore. Abdul has faced the challenge of growing a world class engineering team in a highly competitive labour market, has led and coached teams working in two countries, and is now Head of Engineering and Aconex Bangalore. Abdul provides a counterpoint to the usual perspective of working with people from ‘over there’ and talks about what it is like working with ‘those Australians.’

Bruce Taylor - is a passionate advocate of agile methods, with Scrum, Lean and Kanban my particular fields of experience. He is a culturally aware globalist with experience working across multiple cultures (India, UK, Australia) with a strong focus on forming successful onshore/offshore partnerships in technology. Bruce has worked with both in-house and outsourced offshore models, learning valuable lessons, especially around the importance of developing strong local company culture. This involves not just ensuring local decision making capability, but also, ensuring an equal partnership between the regional and head offices as well. .