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Agile Australia 2012 - Day 2
Breakfast at Laurent Bakery, a fantastic cafe which does salmon quiche *love*
This morning's keynote was going to be Mark Thompson from Essendon (which means something to Melbournians and people who love Aussie Rules Football) called Empowering Teams but he was unavoidably detailed so they bumped up Roy Singham - ThoughtWorks talk Software for Humanity which was amazing. RapidSMS for reporting malnutrition in low tech low electricity areas with cell phone coverage. Jugaad: work-around, creative idea. Moral questions AND design questions. This is the 'OK I'm getting paid, now why am I getting out of bed in the morning?' space. Failures of agile: failed in innovation - doing more with less; failed in corporate social responsibility - solving certain types of problems (e.g. reducing counterfeit medicine distribution in Ghana) OpenSource Health project launching in Sydney and Melbourne and hopefully Perth.
James Hird from Essendon came in place of Mark Thompson and talked about leadership - staying on track when you're doing well is a lot easier than when you're not. Plan for handling adversity. Says wife is strong, loving and intelligent - a mentor and source of insight. Says rituals much more inclusive than when he grew up. Says egos out of control are damaging, need to identify and talk about, try to engage empathy, penalize if not responsive. Says succession planning is hard - poaching common - promotion from within preferred, identify promise early, take them young and train them up, always have someone ready to step up. Power of football culture is amazing.
Break
Colin McCririck - Suncorp talked on Leadership Secrets for Agile Adoption: drive change, keep driving... Don't let your superheroes be the single point of failure... Addicted to velocity, price you pay is Quality. Rehab = technical debt. Go to a lot of things, ask 'dumb' questions. I love the points made about superheroes.
Ed Cortis - Lonely Planet talked about How Lonely Planet Used Agile With SAP and Delighted Customers - which should be an oxymoron. It sounds like they rebuilt the customer relationship if not SAP and that made a huge difference. Rank everything and use it to prioritise - value to business and estimated time to do - theatre / physicality benefit.
Patrick Eltridge - Telstra talked about introducing Agile at Telstra. Changing methods is easy, changing culture is hard: Bravery, accountability and self direction are values worth developing. Must address existing culture and build a case for change, visibly dismantle evil, develop trust, take time. This felt like a PR talk, very sort of soaring and visionary and like an add.
Lunch
Keith Dodds - ThoughtWorks talked on Innovation and Adaptive Leadership: - economic environment more volatile, more change - business models changing rapidly - much bombastic stuff - contrast of east-west business and management practices
Kristan Vingrys - ThoughtWorks talked on Emerging approaches in testing: testing does not create quality, quality was already there (or not). Automate testing at various levels, run early and often. Testing != Testers. Release testing = scattergun approach? More targeted testing adds more value. This was my homework panel, I figured given how much testing I'm involved in I should make sure I attended.
...and then I stopped taking notes.. I did go to more talks, and some of the lightning talks which were cool - 5 mins to tell people something cool.
All in all, well organised and interesting. Opportunity to hear what people were doing and compare it to our own practices was valuable.
This morning's keynote was going to be Mark Thompson from Essendon (which means something to Melbournians and people who love Aussie Rules Football) called Empowering Teams but he was unavoidably detailed so they bumped up Roy Singham - ThoughtWorks talk Software for Humanity which was amazing. RapidSMS for reporting malnutrition in low tech low electricity areas with cell phone coverage. Jugaad: work-around, creative idea. Moral questions AND design questions. This is the 'OK I'm getting paid, now why am I getting out of bed in the morning?' space. Failures of agile: failed in innovation - doing more with less; failed in corporate social responsibility - solving certain types of problems (e.g. reducing counterfeit medicine distribution in Ghana) OpenSource Health project launching in Sydney and Melbourne and hopefully Perth.
James Hird from Essendon came in place of Mark Thompson and talked about leadership - staying on track when you're doing well is a lot easier than when you're not. Plan for handling adversity. Says wife is strong, loving and intelligent - a mentor and source of insight. Says rituals much more inclusive than when he grew up. Says egos out of control are damaging, need to identify and talk about, try to engage empathy, penalize if not responsive. Says succession planning is hard - poaching common - promotion from within preferred, identify promise early, take them young and train them up, always have someone ready to step up. Power of football culture is amazing.
Break
Colin McCririck - Suncorp talked on Leadership Secrets for Agile Adoption: drive change, keep driving... Don't let your superheroes be the single point of failure... Addicted to velocity, price you pay is Quality. Rehab = technical debt. Go to a lot of things, ask 'dumb' questions. I love the points made about superheroes.
Ed Cortis - Lonely Planet talked about How Lonely Planet Used Agile With SAP and Delighted Customers - which should be an oxymoron. It sounds like they rebuilt the customer relationship if not SAP and that made a huge difference. Rank everything and use it to prioritise - value to business and estimated time to do - theatre / physicality benefit.
Patrick Eltridge - Telstra talked about introducing Agile at Telstra. Changing methods is easy, changing culture is hard: Bravery, accountability and self direction are values worth developing. Must address existing culture and build a case for change, visibly dismantle evil, develop trust, take time. This felt like a PR talk, very sort of soaring and visionary and like an add.
Lunch
Keith Dodds - ThoughtWorks talked on Innovation and Adaptive Leadership: - economic environment more volatile, more change - business models changing rapidly - much bombastic stuff - contrast of east-west business and management practices
Kristan Vingrys - ThoughtWorks talked on Emerging approaches in testing: testing does not create quality, quality was already there (or not). Automate testing at various levels, run early and often. Testing != Testers. Release testing = scattergun approach? More targeted testing adds more value. This was my homework panel, I figured given how much testing I'm involved in I should make sure I attended.
...and then I stopped taking notes.. I did go to more talks, and some of the lightning talks which were cool - 5 mins to tell people something cool.
All in all, well organised and interesting. Opportunity to hear what people were doing and compare it to our own practices was valuable.