Coming up

As we packed our desk and moved to an unprecedented uptake of WFH with varying degrees of enthusiasm, some were left with a nagging feeling that we might had left something behind. Among this concern is the loss of community and water-cooler innovation promoted by “analogue togetherness”.  As we rush to mimic those serendipitous interactions in virtual environments, we might overlook the advantages that being alone can bring to the individual and organisations, not to mention the downside of bad togetherness - you know the one, the “I'd rather not be at this try hard Zoom drinks” type of togetherness.

Join Dr. Agustin Chevez and Dr. Franz Wohlgezogen on a conversation about when to be alone, when to be together and what aspects of both are best supported by analogue and digital environments. 

If you change the way you look at someone, you can change the way they feel about themselves. 

We live in a world where leaders are predominantly disconnected from their employees. 75% of people left their jobs because of their manager, not the position itself (Gallup).

This talk is an opportunity to hear how to show up differently for people, how to become a truly relatable leader who facilitates the trajectory and wellbeing of others, not just through what you say, but through your mode of being.

Through adopting simple practices, we can instill a new level of calm confidence in others, enabling people to reach heights they never thought possible.

Ruth Farenga who will join us live from the UK, helps leaders create a calm, collaborative and productive workplace through executive coaching and facilitation.

Ruth is the author of a new book, Next Level Leadership: nine lessons from Conscious Leaders which is published by Rethink Press on 28th September 2022.

Benjamin Taylor offers five practices to build more Effective Organisations, built up from a base of multiple theories and over twenty-five years of practice, particularly in public service transformation, including introducing agile service transformation in public services.

The practices offer the potential to influence motivation, results, and evolving purpose will help beginners and battle-hardened veterans alike.

In this session, he will introduce :

• ways to work towards productive conversations
• ways to enhance clarity (of roles, tasks, programmes, relationships)
• ways to build triple loop learning
• ways to shape passionate culture
• and ways to shape good and clear intent.

These practices provide powerful organisational development interventions which really make a difference, and which, collectively, support lean, agile, and systems thinking in organisations of any kind.

Benjamin will be joining us live from the UK.

Why the PO role must transcend its humble Agile beginnings

As the Covid-19 pandemic moves into a new phase, companies are increasingly encouraging staff to return to physical offices, a hybrid mode of working is beginning to emerge. It's not like pre-pandemic distributed working but it's not fully remote either and we have come to the realisation that scrum events such as sprint reviews and daily standups need deliberate design and a rethink to factor in timezones and team context. In this session, we will explore how to apply scrum in a hybrid remote working world.

Key Take-aways:

• What to consider when applying scrum in a hybrid way of working
• Discussion on fit-for-purpose Agile Coaching approach in hybrid working
• Practical application of the scrum guide
  

About our Presenters:

Stephanie Ireland is an experienced Agile Delivery Leader, Facilitator & Coach who has worked across a range of industries and roles. She is passionate about successful project and product delivery, data driven decision making, building high performing teams, ensuring quality, as well as identifying and inspiring Agility change agents within Organisations.

With a passion for all things Product and Technology, Charlotte Bian has led impactful initiatives or built scalable products in organisations across a variety of industries, such as: Airline, Government, Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical, gaming, insurance in the past 9 years. Charlotte has been wearing different hats during her career- Scrum Master, Product Owner, Delivery Lead, Coach and Product Management.

Shelvia, Mei-Ling and Chris take an unaccredited peek at the most significant data project in Victoria for the past 2.5 years.

Join us as we survey the data and data disciplines that drove Victoria's covid response, and the effects when it stopped

Shelvia Loveridge and Mei-Ling Cadle are both Co-founders and Directors of MAEV&Co.
Together, they bring  decades of data experience to business and digital transformation projects. 

Chris Asistio has a lifetime of experience with all things Data and Analytics. He has over 11 years experience with Telstra, currently as a Data Science Chapter Lead.

Many coaches and scrum masters are concerned with developing and maintaining a high performing team. They often intervene when the team is not operating optimally by focusing on improving workflow strategies, increasing trust or psychological safety, and improving motivation. While these factors are important, a poorly designed team will never achieve greatness. This is where a knowledge of and expertise in structural coaching becomes a critical skill set. This session will introduce a model of structural coaching and provide opportunities for practice within the session.

About Josephine Palermo 
I help business leaders change processes, tools, people, and culture to achieve bigger dreams in their business. Together we find untapped potential in people and systems, freeing up resources that can be used to help businesses grow and thrive. The results are more time for business owners and managers, more value to customers, and more engaged staff.

Disciplined Agile (DA) is an agnostic, hybrid tool kit that binds many proven Agile, Lean, and conventional approaches together, allowing teams and organisations to choose their way of working (WoW). Because contexts differ for different teams and organisations, DA gives a team the opportunity of choice. This interactive session will cover a short overview of Disciplined agile toolkit and what makes the toolkit unique. In this session, attendees will get an introduction to agile, the freedom that Disciplined Agile offers and how they can begin their Disciplined Agile journey.

Pete Omotosho is an experienced Agile Coach, Trainer, and Consultant who understands the complex challenges facing contemporary organisations. He works with enterprises to co-create change and brings the best of Agile and Lean methods to clients. Pete has over 20 years of proven professional experience in Energy, Telecommunications, Information Technology, Financial Services, Education, Government, Consulting, Not-For-Profit and Manufacturing sectors.
Pete is passionate about mentoring, coaching, and working with new and existing agile teams, growing teams to maturity, and liaising with non-agile domains within enterprises in order to embrace agile processes.

Pete is the founder of Pete Lauren Consulting, an organisation sold out to solving business problems and imparting knowledge, enabling customers to thrive through innovative advisory solutions. Pete is passionate about developing the agile practice in Africa and he is actively working towards achieving this goal. Pete is a vibrant member of the Agile community both in Australia and Africa as a whole.

Data mesh, first defined by Zhamak Dehghani, is a powerful new approach to delivering value from data in organisations. Data mesh aims to move beyond traditional centralised data systems to bring data and processing capability to the people who need it and use it.

In this workshop, Ned and David from Thoughtworks, will introduce the core elements of data mesh from a LAST perspective - wastes addressed, building blocks of the mesh that create agility, and techniques to tune the system - followed by Q&A discussion.


Ned Letcher
Ned is a data specialist who has worked across a range of industries as a data scientist, data engineer, and software engineer. He has experience applying supervised and unsupervised machine learning, natural language processing, data visualisation, and dashboarding frameworks to business challenges and opportunities. Ned has used these experiences to develop strategies for making effective use of data and for identifying and framing the business value of data analytics and data science projects. 

David Colls 
David is an innovative technology leader, with over 20 years’ experience leading the strategic and technical delivery of data and AI, digital strategy and change solutions. David combines diverse experience delivering complex technology solutions with his passion for customer outcomes to develop high performing teams capable of solving our clients’ complex problems. 

As a Director of the Data and AI Practice at Thoughtworks, David oversees all facets of developing Data and AI capabilities service offerings. David’s technical background is in developing simulation software for training and manufacturing.

The future of business and product development is community-led. The trajectories of companies are increasingly being dictated by the communities they cultivate and the people they connect.

Barry will discuss:

• What is a Community-Led Business?

• Why Does Community Matter to Succeed in Business?

• How can you participate in this collaborative future?

Barry O’Reilly is an entrepreneur, business advisor and author who has pioneered the intersection of business model innovation, product development, organizational design, and culture transformation.

Barry is the co-founder of Nobody Studios, a crowd-infused, high-velocity venture studio with the mission to create 100 compelling companies over the next 5 years.

Barry is author of two international bestsellers, Unlearn: Let Go of Past Success to Achieve Extraordinary Results, and Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale—part of the Eric Ries series, and a HBR must read for CEOs and business leaders. He writes for The Economist, and is faculty at Singularity University.

It’s been 4 years since I began managing MYOB's innovative DevelopHer program and throughout this time there has been some valuable lessons that have helped accelerate a deeper understanding of how to support and grow females in software development. Join me as I share 4 game changing lessons that have contributed to the success of our DevelopHer program. 

Lessons learnt: 
 

• Let go of the “software developer” persona: to make a world of change and live in true diversity we need to be pushing the dial around what it means to be software developer, especially for a women. 
• Raising a developer takes a village, regardless of whether you are female or male: When the community is strong, inclusivity is heightened, when inclusivity is high, we increase the chance that a women will stay in our field. 
• Be mindful of Glue work; often women get tasked with the organising, the administration, the pulling people together, the performance conversations and while you may think that your female colleague will be a "natural" in this, you may be robbing them from gaining growth in the field that they’re interested in and that is, coding. 
• Be aware of the stigma of a female software developer and the burden that it holds.

About Chanh

Chanh is Program Advisor for MYOB's Graduate Program, The Future Makers Academy and Developer Program.

Darren will show us how he makes use of data analytics tools to give the Aboriginal people the skills to to govern the collection, ownership and application of data about Indigenous communities, peoples, lands, and resources. This concept of Indigenous Data Sovereignty  promotes the rights of Indigenous nations over data about them, regardless of where it is held and by whom.

Darren is a Badimia man from Yamatji country in the mid-west of Western Australia. He is the Director at Notitia Consulting, a leading data analytics & digital transformation firm that solves real world problems by building conceptual information models that align any analytical output to the right user. This is an extension of commonly used information access models, and they feed this into any of their outputs. 

Lean branding is a lite, user centric approach to branding perfect for startups and agile environments. Is formulated from the product strategy perspective, includes audience resonance tests and allows room to grow and evolve as the product and industry changes.

In this session, Pilar will take us through the lean branding methodology that she has stress tested in startups all over the world.

Pilar is a product and strategy designer with Everest Engineering. She is passionate about solving problems, designing great experiences, making technology more human and inventing the future.  Pilar has worked in a wide range of design projects across industries and countries for the last 20 years. Before joining Everest as Director of Design, she spent 4 years building innovative startups across Australia and Asia as a part of BCG Digital Ventures.

In an ideal world a product team (engineers, product & design) would be involved in Discovery, Describe, Design, Develop & Deploy (5Ds) efforts to get their product to their customer. But it's not easy to fit it all in. And it's harder in a large organisation.
I'll share what that approach and framework is and how to get started if you're not there today. I've got experience doing team change using this approach. I'll share my experiences of moving teams to better flow for continuous discovery and customer input within their delivery sprints.
You'll walk away with some tips on how to hear from your customer on a more regular basis than you do today, hopefully help you shift from feeling like a feature factory, and feel more empowered to create value for your customers :-)

Liz Blink is a Lead Product Manager at Cogent.
Liz needs to chat with other product managers to stay sane! She founded the Product Anonymous community to create an opportunity for Melbourne folk to get together and discuss product management topics and meet others in the industry – or related industries like UX.

A born and bred academic who asks why at every opportunity. Liz has fallen in love with product management because it challenges the individual in the role and the company when they choose the right individual. It is neither a place for complacency or acceptance. It is a place for dreaming the dream and understanding where the day-to-day can take you… and then it is rising above and asking for the dream anyway.

Kanban principles have been applied to IT and software development for some time. What happens when finance, IT, legal, sales, marketing and others want to gain benefits from applying kanban, too. Dan will share some experiences and give practical ideas that can be applied when all parts of a business want to start using kanban.

You can preview free content available on Dan's site here: https://evogility.com.au/content/

Daniel Ploeg is the first Australian to become an Accredited Kanban Consultant (AKC) and Accredited Kanban Trainer (AKT). As such, he is passionate about helping teams become “Fit for Purpose” using Kanban to help them. Helping the teams unburden themselves from being overloaded with work as well as helping managers make better commitments and expectations is part of what he does. 

Contrary to popular belief, many organizations do not exist. Or rather, to the extent that they claim to exist, they are “Organizations in Name, Convenience Only” (or OiNCOs for short). 

Organization requires two key ingredients: people and purpose. Everything else is either a more advanced version of those key ingredients or fluff. OiNCOs are big on fluff. They have the outward appearance of organization — the company name, the flashy website, fancy office, etc. They even have the people (in the sense that people continue to show up because it’s the most convenient thing to do). But the second key ingredient, purpose, is missing!

Organizations stop existing and become OiNCOs when they forget to create purpose. 

Your organization might be an OiNCO if it:

• Ravenously consumes labor but spreads it haphazardly across unconnected targets.

• Encourages overcommitment and multitasking while impoverishing attention.

• Defaults to short term fixes, without investment in sustainment.

• Prioritizes profit alone, instead of balancing it with other concerns.

While OiNCOs are self-destructive and unsustainable, the path to recovery is surprisingly accessible. All it takes to turn an OiNCO back into an organization is for two or more people, whoever and wherever they are, to get together and start creating a little bit more purpose, every day.

In this participatory experience, strategy educator and principal consultant Ben Mosior will introduce you to Wardley Mapping, a visual conversation starter that just about anyone can use to start creating renewed purpose.

What we will cover:

• The what and why of organization

• What makes something purposeful (or not)

• Diagnosing purpose problems with a Wardley Map

• What to do about it?

• Purposeful transitions and a theory of change

Ben Mosior is a curator of strange and interesting methods for people who give a damn. He integrates transition design, systems modeling, and conditions-consequences philosophy into powerful, practical approaches to change management and strategy. He also facilitates decision- and sense-making experiences for teams, with an eye towards situational awareness and collective knowledge creation. Outside of his organizational work, he operates the leading web resource for Wardley Mapping and develops courses and content to uplift new practitioners. You can find him on Twitter @HiredThought.

We love getting customer feedback – and there are sometimes we don’t love getting customer feedback! Dipa Rao will share her experiences of dealing with both solicited AND unsolicited customer feedback. 

Dipa will discuss:

• setting the right expectations for getting feedback
• how to manage responses
• how to prepare for managing everything that comes your way including HiPPOs & distressed customers!

About Dipa
Dipa currently works at Australia Post as Product Experience Manager. Once called the 'Queen of Surveys', a title she relishes and strives to live up to, she's worked as a BA, Iteration Manager and Agile Coach through her career. She got a taste for product management during her consultant days in 2016 and hasn't looked back since. Her previous job saw her sift through tonnes of positive, negative, overwhelming, alarming and in equal measure, hilarious customer feedback where customers sometimes advocated for her sacking. Luckily, she doesn't always act on customer feedback, and neither should you. 

Dipa is passionate about gender and equity, and you will occasionally find her tweeting about it. Alternately you'll find her in a nursery or Bunnings. She is currently a plant collector and a wood-working enthusiast, two hobbies that - oh look! - come together to make a self fulfilling positive loop.

Twitter: @dipanjali

Sensei Shingo will be joining from Japan for a session where he will cover topics from the famed Toyota Production System with knowledge gained from his many years working for Toyota. These will be drawn from:

• Genchi Genbutsu, Gembaism
• Built in Quality
• Total Participation (Kaizen)
• Toyota culture
• Leading by example.

There will also be a chance to have Q&A with Sensei Shingo.

He will also cover what he is doing with the NK (Norman Bodek & Kazuyoshi Hisano) Institute of Human Advancement.

Ritsuo Shingo graduated from Waseda University, considered one of Japan’s “Ivy League” schools, with a degree in law in 1970, and joined Toyota Motors right after graduation.

After more than ten years working in various positions at Toyota in Japan, Mr. Shingo was transferred to Detroit, Michigan, USA, where he worked as a purchasing manager for a few years. He was then asked to help with the startup of the Toyota plant in Georgetown, Kentucky, USA.

After a few years in Kentucky, Mr. Shingo helped with the startup of the Toyota plant in the United Kingdom. 

Later, he joined the China office in Japan where he worked on setting up potential ventures in China. In 1990, he was appointed president of Toyota’s joint venture operation in Chengdu, Sichuan Province.  After three years he moved to Beijing to join Toyota’s China office.

Two years later, Mr. Shingo was appointed president of Hino Motors in China, including the joint venture production facility in Guangzhou, China.

Mr. Shingo’s final assignment in China was president of the Toyota Research and Service Center, also located in Guangzhou.

He is currently leading the Institute of Management Improvement founded by his father TPS pioneer Dr Shigeo Shingo and works with the NK Institute of Human Advancement.

Developed by Ani, PIPOW is a framework for communicating project issues to clients and stakeholders.

PIPOW is an onomatopoeic, action-packed acronym designed to help you be the superhero (problem solver) who defeats the villain (the issue)!

The PIPOW framework can also help when:

• writing emails to communicate an issue
• detailing current project problems in a status report
• documenting risk and issues in your RAID log
• structuring the order of how you will speak about a problem in a meeting, especially a status/WIP or steering committee meeting
• breaking down a complex issue and brainstorming what you need to communicate
• collaboratively workshopping a complex issue with your project team and/or stakeholders and agree a plan to move forward.

Read more about Ani's PIPOW Framework here.

Ani Møllek is the Executive Director of Delivery at Merkle Australia (rebranded from Isobar Aust). 
Since building her first website in the 90's, Ani has over 20 years’ experience delivering digital projects, from large corporate platforms to business transformation to mobile apps to marketing campaigns. Ani's specialty is the intersection of design, technology, agile and lean ways of working, and organisational culture.

Personal agility allows us to easily and consciously respond to change in a direction of intention.

This session is especially beneficial for trail blazing leaders and aspiring leaders within an agile organisation, including people leaders, managers and coaches of agile teams/organisations.

Joining us from New Zealand, Cheryl will provide us with an overview of the six skills required to be a personal agility practitioner.

Cheryl Tansey is the Founder of the Personal Agility Collective and the Chief Innovator at the Ministry of People.

As an international agility coach, leading teams across eleven countries, Cheryl brings a unique perspective to change and transformation. From Canadian tech start-ups to Singapore’s largest mining company, Cheryl’s focus is in supporting leaders to align their operational, digital and cultural strategies. 

Join Adel in this presentation about her approach to authoring Job Architectures at Zendesk Engineering. Adel will explain how creating a true job architecture includes the whole professional person i.e the technical requirements as well as  human attributes such as communication skills, relationships and empathy. 

Job Architectures should have a general section that applies to all jobs and then a specific section for each job level. The general sections are those attributes that all employees at any level are expected to demonstrate whereas the specific job level sections describe the technical expectations at that level.

Adel will explain how good job architectures include all the attributes that management value and factor when considering a person for promotion.

There will be opportunities for questions throughout the session and an open discussion at the end. 

Adel Smee is an Engineering Manager at Zendesk.

For the last four years at Zendesk, Adel has led innovation projects across a variety of technologies. Adel's career in tech started with teaching people to code, before she decided to break out and get paid to do it commercially at a startup, followed by Lonely Planet and now at Zendesk. 

Ever wondered where to start with an agile transformation? Sometimes we don't know where to start or how to help teams move through their transformation journey. This approach to transformation helps teams learn practices and move up through levels of fluency. Based on the concept of video games, the team is in full control of their journey at each level and as they develop fluency they move through the levels. The approach focuses not only on practice mechanics but also helps teams understand the behaviors associated with each practice. Good fun for teams and creates a proactive coaching approach for transformation leaders. 

Teri Christian is the president and founder of Digital Solutions, a digital marketing company with a singular mission: to create market leaders. Outdated management approaches view employees as cogs in a machine, conducting simple, repetitive tasks to contribute to a greater whole. This model no longer suffices in an Industry 4.0 economy in which organizations must be flexible enough to keep up with the latest digital advancements and adapt to rapidly changing customer needs. Instead, Teri has conceived of a new management approach, the Digital Operating Model, in which organizations can harness their collective talent and focus on adaptability, innovation, and relationship-building as the cornerstones of management to establish themselves as market leaders. At the core of this model is the inherent need to create diverse, equitable environments in which high-performing teams can flourish.

Anna believes in a future where every leader and organisation is committed to creating a sustainable world of equality and opportunity for everyone.

Anna is the founder and CEO of Bambuddha Group a social enterprise that provides leadership coaching and CSR programs. Anna has added value to thousands of companies and inspirational leaders by showing them how to 'work kinder’ for People, Community, Customers & Environment.

Anna is the founder of several other major initiatives including The Corporate Kindness Project, which is an Australian based research study focusing on the business benefits of working kind. The first white paper was released in 2019 and is now a new and feel-good podcast show called ‘Project Good Boss’. Members get access to events, learning and like-minded leaders including the Corporate Kindness Conference and Awards which brings together businesses each year to celebrate those working hard and working kind.

Throughout her career, Anna has raised millions in funds for charities via mutual partnerships, created for social and environmental impact.

Anna’s storytelling is relatable, down to earth and fun. She is a real powerhouse who is optimistic and engaging. Anna uses the power of her own heart-warming and inspirational story to join the dots between the power of brand, people and social responsibility.

Adaptive/Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) is key to effectively becoming an agile organisation and can be considered one of the pillars of business agility.  In this talk Shane introduces the key ideas around LPM, discusses the underlying principles, how they translate into an adaptive strategy and from there into effective execution and some common pitfalls to avoid when shifting to an adaptive portfolio. 

There will be opportunities for questions throughout the session and an open discussion at the end. 

Shane Hastie is the Director of Community Development at ICAgile.

Over the last 30+ years Shane has been a practitioner and leader of developers, testers, trainers, project managers and business analysts; helping teams to deliver results that align with overall business objectives. He spent 15 years as a professional trainer and consultant specialising in Agile practices, business analysis, project management, requirements, testing and methodologies for SoftEd in Australia, New Zealand and around the world.

In highly complex and uncertain systems, an answer has a short-shelf life and a good question can last you forever. If you are in an environment with increasing levels of uncertainty and rapid pace of change, you would benefit from understanding the language of complexity. Human Systems Dynamics is an emergent field that helps you build capacity and build confidence in these environments. If you have ever faced the challenge of influencing positive change and creating a future that you cannot control or predict, and if you ever wanted to see how standing in inquiry can create a whole new world of possibility, this session is for you.

There will be opportunities for questions throughout the session and an open discussion at the end. 

Ahmed Avais is an Agile Coach and a Human Systems Dynamics Professional. He uses curiosity to invite people into his teaching and learning. He starts where you are, with the team or the individual. Ahmed uses a variety of tools, all focused on helping you see your system, so you can chart your path to high performance.
Ahmed posts insights on agility on his youtube channel and is engaged in coaching coaches and leaders on unleashing their potential.

Teri is returning to the LAST Club following her introductory session in July where she walked us through the principles of the Game. To hear the recording of her July session and gain valuable background information please visit your Member Library.

This time Teri will actually play the game live with 3 active players, with observations and open questions from all other session participants.

Description:
Want to learn Product Management from vision to execution? Ever get confused about who should do what when? What does a good product management ecosystem look like? What are the levels of Agile planning and product management? This game is based on the five levels of Agile Product Planning, the Critical Success Factors, Skills, Events, and Behaviors at each level.  It is a fun way to help everyone from Product Managers, Product Owners, Leaders, and Delivery Team members understand how they fit into the overall product ecosystem.

There is also supplemental reading material to help facilitators promote meaningful discussions.

Come see how we play it and learn!

Teri Christian is the president and founder of Digital Solutions, a digital marketing company with a singular mission: to create market leaders. Outdated management approaches view employees as cogs in a machine, conducting simple, repetitive tasks to contribute to a greater whole. This model no longer suffices in an Industry 4.0 economy in which organizations must be flexible enough to keep up with the latest digital advancements and adapt to rapidly changing customer needs. Instead, Teri has conceived of a new management approach, the Digital Operating Model, in which organizations can harness their collective talent and focus on adaptability, innovation, and relationship-building as the cornerstones of management to establish themselves as market leaders. At the core of this model is the inherent need to create diverse, equitable environments in which high-performing teams can flourish.

Join Murray in a no-nonsense agile discussion. Murray will talk about his experience with planning agile initiatives. How to do just enough planning, just in time. He will discuss the team you need, user stories, UX concepts and technical architecture, how to develop a release plan and estimate time and cost in a 2 to 4-week timebox. Murray will also talk about the common traps, pitfalls and bad patterns we see in planning agile initiatives.

There will be opportunities for questions throughout the session and an open discussion at the end. 

Murray Robinson is the Founder of Ev0lve.co.

Murray is an expert in Agile Product and Capability Development with more than 20 years of practical experience building and leading large digital teams that design and deliver large digital programs using the best new ways of working. He is a recognised international consultant and coach in Agile Product Development with hundreds of published articles and a new book on Agile 2 - the next Iteration of Agile.

All you need to know to set up a rigorous Product Management practice. Understand the five levels of planning and the Critical Success Factors, Skills, Events, and Behaviors to take your products from strategy to execution.

For organizations to understand and improve their Product Management practices. Have fun and learn the Five Levels of Agile Planning. Lots of ways to play, no limit on teams, games, and players!