Coming up

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.

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 Outdated management approaches view employees as cogs in a machine, conducting simple, repetitive tasks to contribute to a greater whole.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.

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. 

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. 

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.

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!

From Posify, to Futurfy and Unify.

Of the brilliant young hearts and minds in Australia, 2 in 3 report anxiety about the future of work. Given the current messaging around our rapidly evolving workforce, the destabilisation and disruption to industries globally, and the stats that show it takes on average 6.7 years to secure full time work off the back of formal education, throw in a global pandemic and one could conclude their anxiety is a pretty justified response.

But we're not cool with that, and we're guessing you're not either. In this LAST Club session, hear how sister-duo Mariane and Jenna creatively fused their combined expertise in psychology, education and career development with their knowledge of design and systems thinking to found their socially conscious education company, the Posify Group. Driven by a belief that within every challenge lies an opportunity, they're on a mission to close the gap between education and employment by arming the next gen with a sense of purpose and the human capability skills they'll need to thrive today, and in the future of work.

Having helped hundreds of young people through face to face events and workshops, they used 2020 to apply agile and lean ways of working, and re-design their offerings. Hear how their decision to bootstrap their latest development led them embrace their creative potential and put their growth mindsets to the test, as they taught themselves basic software development skills that are now helping them to scale their evidence-based programs to youth around Australia.

Mariane and Jenna's founding story will leave you feeling optimistic, and inspired to uncover and deliver your own unique potential, to create positive impact. 

About The Posify Group

The Posify Group exists to inspire meaningful living, and help the next gen uncover and deliver their unique potential with confidence. Co-founders, sister-duo Mariane and Jenna, share a common mission to see an end to unnecessary human suffering, and an entry into a world in which everyone has access to the tools and support to help them feel well and do good. That's why they're designing and delivering scalable solutions that enable young people to access scientific strategies that increase their well-being, foster their purpose, and design a life of impact. To learn more about Posify, visit www.theposifygroup.com.au

Most people associate LeSS with a scaling framework perspective. However, when you deep dive into LeSS, the foundation principles become more evident. My own journey has proven that a LeSS practitioner would better know product development principles, better-thinking ability, and a strong continuous improvement mindset. During this talk, you would get a glimpse of the strong philosophies behind LeSS that would make you a better person and a better practitioner, in addition to a descaling expert. 

Venky will allow time for a short interactive discussion at the end! 

Venky Krishnamurthy has an 18-year track record of innovation and achievement in the software development field. He is a seasoned Agile Coach, trainer, author, and speaker with a talent for coaching high-performing teams to roll-out Agile methodology at a global level across the IT and business sectors.

Venky's passion lies in driving exceptional across-the-board performance by revitalising underperforming areas and seizing key opportunities for improvement. He is dedicated to guiding large-scale projects to completion.  Venky qualified as Australia’s first and only Certified LeSS Trainer, as well as a Certified Scrum Product Owner and Certified Scrum Master.

Due to time restrictions and the fact that Zach will be joining us from Colorado, we ask that you watch the recording of Zach's original talk in your own time, prior to this session. 

This is the link to the recording.

Zach will be joining us to briefly recap and have a live Q&A, interactive discussion and sharing of key learnings.

The Power and Practice of Purposeful Leadership in Turbulent Times

When we realize we matter and regularly think about our contribution to others, research finds we're more energized, innovative, resilient, and even live longer. In fact, meaningfulness is found to be a defining predictor of wellbeing and fulfillment in work and in life. But within our day-to-day lives and work, it can be hard to remember our significance and purpose amidst all the to-dos and take the time to empower others to experience meaningfulness. 

In this session, Zach makes purpose practical and draws on his research with both frontline workers and organizational leaders to share how we can forge a purposeful mindset, develop contribution-centered habits, align our strengths with the human needs around us, and craft a compelling vision and enduring legacy for ourselves and our organizations while empowering those around us to do the same.

Zach will also demonstrate why purposeful leadership that cultivates meaningfulness and mattering is an essential skill in times of turbulence, crisis, and change.  

Bio:
Zach helps leaders enable the daily experience of purpose, meaningfulness, and mattering.

He is a researcher and Honorary Fellow of Psychology in the Center for Meaning and Purpose at Colorado State University and author of " The Invisible Leader: Transform Your Life, Work, and Organization with the Power of Authentic Purpose."

Zach also advises leaders in companies, non-profits, and schools around the world on the practices of positive and purposeful leadership, mattering, and meaningful work.

Some of his clients have included Hewlett-Packard, The National Park Service, the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company, Crocs, and The Alzheimer's Association. His work is featured internationally in outlets such as Forbes, Psychology Today, The Huffington Post, and Thrive Global.
Zach lives in Fort Collins, CO with his wife, two sons, and two adopted dogs.   

In this talk Laurence will share the inspiring story of how The Happy Startup School came about, what they've learnt on this journey over the last decade and how, by embracing their unique approach to building products and companies, you can bring your own ideas to life, make your mark and find true fulfilment at work.

Laurence McCahill is a designer, coach and entrepreneur from the UK. Back in 2012 he co-founded The Happy Startup School with his old school friend Carlos Saba, as an antidote to the conventional startup narrative of fast growth and even faster burnouts. 
After becoming frustrated with business as usual, they felt compelled to do something. So after exploring it as a side project, 2 years later they closed their digital product studio of 10 years while it was thriving to pursue their dream of creating an alternative business school fit for the purpose economy.
Since then they've been on a mission to inspire, empower and connect entrepreneurs and leaders that want to make a positive dent in the world. They have built a reputation for legendary online programs and off-grid gatherings that have kickstarted thousands of impactful new businesses and projects worldwide, underpinned by a tight-knit global tribe.

Watch David's 1 min promo video

In this session, David will share 7 steps to take at work to build individual confidence or self-efficacy.  He’ll show you how to build a visual system that will give autonomy to your teams while preserving your sense of control.  And he'll show you how 1 small change in the way we solve problems will result in more confidence and more creativity.  

David Veech is the Founder & CEO of Leadersights.

David has been a lean teacher, coach, and consultant for over 20 years. He is an energetic entrepreneur, published author, effective coach, and engaging speaker. 
David's mission is to develop leaders who can create work systems that engage the creative power of their people to obliterate obstacles, accelerate innovation, and elevate performance. 

The Solution Focused (SF) approach is an incisive way to build positive change in tough and often complex, situations. It is a rich and multi-dimensional approach delivering breakthrough results in many contexts including organisational change, conflict resolution, coaching and leadership.

In this session, I'll share a great SF tool that helps to shift the conversation from problem to solution while respecting the useful stuff that exists in the past.

We all have data to share. How do you share data so people remember it, understand it and are inspired to take action. I’ll share 6 story based tactics to bring your data to life.

Shawn Callahan is the Founding Director of Anecdote International. Shawn is an award-winning author, business storytelling specialist and podcast host. 

The DNA Of Purpose is a process that draws on scientific thinking to provide a framework for an individual to align more deeply with their life purpose. A purpose that is less focussed on a statement of why, and more focused on who we are in the world. It addresses how we show up in every interaction in a purposeful way, by simply living in our truth. On one hand, the DNA Of Purpose concept has been inspired by the study of genetics, the process itself is presented as a daily practice that inspires a deeper connection to our inner selves, enabling us to let go of what is no longer serving our growth as a human being. This is where science meets the soul with a focus on deep reflection and self-awareness. At the heart of this 'purpose practice' is the idea that purpose exists inside of us, and thus the focus is to journey inwards so that we can connect more deeply with our innermost truth. That journey inwards starts with a reflection of the past, has a focus on our perceptions in the present moment, and from there provides the blueprint to create a deeply meaningful life by design.

Rebecca Tapp is the CEO of Future Crunch who are a group of scientists, artists, technologists and entrepreneurs who think there are new and better ways of doing things in the 21st century. The Future Crunch mission is to foster intelligent, optimistic thinking about the future, and to empower people to contribute to it. She is also an internationally recognised coach and consultant working in Australia and the Asia Pacific to help industry leaders, entrepreneurs and media personalities activate purpose-driven influence. With over 15 years of experience working with globally acclaimed speakers, activists, authors and influencers, she is a master at understanding how to translate individual purpose into genuine impact. She is the host of the DNA Of Purpose Podcast, which unlocks stories of purpose driven influence from the world's most inspiring thought leaders.

Tapping into the talents of your people isn't a free-for-all. Giving employees freedom requires a well designed system of management because the more freedom they have the clearer the boundaries need to be -- a less than intuitive reality of organizational life. Which comes first, order or freedom? How do you strike the balance? What are the critical elements of order?

John M. Bernard started in the Lean world before the term Lean was coined. In 1981 the U.S. company he was at started studying the Japanese, and John went on to write highly respected books on Lean's application for both business and government. Business at the Speed of Now became an immediate bestseller and his book Government That Works, The Results Revolution in the States is issued to every new governor in the U.S. 

About Chris Ward 

A tech writer currently for Chronosphere, but with a long experience of explaining highly technical concepts in documentation, blog posts, videos, books and more. Also a podcaster, video maker, writer of interactive fiction, and games.

Fabian is the DevOps Champion at 460degrees' - the World’s First Expert Management Agency. Fabian is a well-known and respected member of the Australian DevOps community. He will share insights about the state of DevOps within organisations, techniques to overcome blockers, and ways to innovate.

Fabian has led and built teams that have undertaken entire operations and delivery transformations across the financial and university sectors. He recently led the infrastructure transformation at one of Australia's largest superannuation companies, enabling rapid scaling of the master platform to 220+ micro-services across multiple environments.

When he is not immersed in DevOps, Fabian loves tinkering with all things electronic, including the restoration of arcade and pinball machines. He also has a keen interest in music, paired with a large vinyl collection upwards of 5,000 records.

Mathew Dawe 

As Senior Engineer at 460degrees, Mathew advocates for the benefits of DevOps practices. Leading by example he upskills and mentors colleagues and team members, and demonstrates the value of alternative ways of working.

Mathew has always been interested in discovering how things work. He started his career as a web developer, and quickly found himself working on operations tasks, database management and infrastructure programming. From ExtraCorp/footytips.com.au to ESPN he worked his way to full stack developer, taking on a technical lead role in a fast-paced, high user traffic environment. IOOF provided the opportunity to contribute to a cutting-edge infrastructure automation system and development of a bespoke containerised platform for delivering business focused applications in a highly regulated environment.

At 460degrees, a great result for Mathew is delivering a quality product or service to our client that provides immediate value and exceeds their expectations. He has embraced the DevOps movement, and feels it perfectly sums up his career and ambitions, his passion and focus.

Mathew is a self-confessed ‘gadget geek’ who loves all forms of technology, from computers to micro-controllers like Arduino and Raspberry Pi. He has enjoyed what IoT (Internet of Things) has brought us and is forever attempting to automate things around the house. A father of two young boys, Mathew loves spending time with friends and family and watching his boys grow up. He also watches motorsport and Aussie Rules football, and when the opportunity arises, gets out for a game of golf.

Vicki Young, Director of Curation, Spark the Change, will conduct this Fireside chat with Dr Elise Bialylew.

"I had heard of Mindful in May, but it wasn’t until my GP sister started raving about the program that I had a closer look. I have now participated in Mindful in May and am a HUGE fan of Elise Bialylew and her amazing and very special story".

Elise is a doctor trained in psychiatry, author of the book The Happiness Plan and her work has featured in the Huffington Post, New York Times, and on Australian Television. She founded Mindful in May in 2012, now the world's largest online global mindfulness campaign, raising funds for global poverty. Since inception the program has taught over 40,000 people to meditate and build mindfulness habits, whilst raising over $800,000 in funds to build clean water projects in the developing world. She's passionate about supporting individuals and organisations to develop inner tools to flourish and offers workshops and training at The Mind Life Project and Power of Presence online mindfulness program.

Some of the things you can expect in this chat:

• Elise’s ‘why’, her journey from psychiatrist to social entrepreneur and mindfulness expert, and the lessons she learnt along the way
• The science behind meditation and the positive impact on well-being
• What’s the minimum amount of meditation you need to do each day and what benefits can you expect?
• How to embed regular daily habits and how to maintain a healthy routine during times of stress.

The talk will focus on the journey an agile practitioner progresses through from when they first become interested in agile through to advising at the highest levels within an organisation and contributing to the industry body of knowledge. The talk will highlight the risk of having false confidence in your skills/knowledge and how to best avoid the Dunning-Kruger bias. I'll bring in topics from my book such as learning to notice your own coaching style (even if you're not a coach) and how to moderate your behaviour to better serve those you support/work with. In the talk I'll discuss what it means to BE agile and work with the principles of agility as opposed to the processes and practice playbooks. I'll conclude by showing how an agilists personal and professional development start to merge when playing the role of senior agile coach; these will be some personal reflections.

Niall works as an agent of change, promoting agility through education, coaching and modelling of new behaviours.
As a professionally certified coach with the International Coaching Federation he blends mindset/behavioural coaching into all his work with executives, teams and individuals.

Specialties:
- Coaching Capability development
- Scaled Agile transformation advisory
- Business agility and digitisation
- Agile coaching /consulting /delivery 

To be successful in the new age of uncertainty, organisations must make the right decisions. The margins of error are narrowing, and the wisdom of those decisions will determine their future. The Wise Enterprise brings together a set of capabilities essential for professionals who want to contribute to the wisdom of their organisations. He'll be covering a few aspects from the book in this session

The book covers:

• Systems thinking and emotional intelligence
• The real meaning of leadership and the role of a leader
• How to define and measure success
• How to facilitate a successful business transformation
• How to build a wise enterprise.

About Arash

Arash is a long-standing member of the LAST community, as well as a consultant, speaker, entrepreneur, and Taekwondo practitioner. Find out more about him at Sprint Agile.

Arash is the author of The Wise Enterprise: Reshape your organisation for the age of uncertainty. Get the book here. https://sprintagile.com.au/the-book/

How do you know if you're really agile?

Numerous industry surveys have shown organisations receive a number of benefits from being agile. Unfortunately, the collection and analysis of empirical evidence is rarely conducted. Without robust empirical measures, many turn to the symbols they can see - measuring velocity, team happiness, and getting teams to "self assess" their capability.

This talk will give you a playbook to measure agility based on:

• The empirical evidence and data on what makes an enterprise agile.
• How you measure an agile culture.
• The antecedents of agile leadership.
• How to grow and sustain an agile culture across the enterprise.

Matthew Hodgson
CEO. Executive Agile Coach and Partner for Enterprise Agile Transformation, Zen Ex Machina.

Matthew is a highly regarded international speaker and Enterprise Agile Coach. 

He is a contributing author to the books The Emergence of the Relationship Economy and The Psychology of Aid and continues to publish in international journals in the fields of org psych on the pragmatic aspects of organisational culture, learning, teamwork and motivation.

Mia Horrigan
Founding Partner Zen Ex Machina - VP of Agile Program Delivery, Zen Ex Machina

Mia is a Professional Scrum Trainer and Enterprise Agile Coach. She is a Founding Partner in Zen Ex Machina and has Product Management, Program Management and large scale Scrum Implementation experience in Government, and Commercial organisations. her clients include the Australian Taxation office, Dept of Industry and Innovation, Nestle and Australian Bureau of Statistics. Mia has over 15 years senior management experience leading service delivery teams and implementing ICT programs from planning through to implementation. Mia leverages her extensive experience in product and project management capability to deliver programs using PRINCE2 and Scrum to introduce the efficiency, process improvement and planning. Mia has a Master of Business Administration (MBA), a Post Graduate Diploma in Management and a Bachelor of Commerce. Mia is a PST and has CSM, CAL-1, CSP0, SPC4, SA, PSM I, PSM II and PSM III, PSK and PRINCE2 certification.

This is a semi-interactive talk on the many ways we can unpack career development conversations. We'll sit down, chat, and create a career development plan that is mapped out for a specific person - and perhaps even ourselves! All you need is a pen, a piece of paper, and a curiosity to unpack what could be in store for the next chapters of our careers.

In this session, we'll discuss the GROW model, learning styles, the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition - and much more - and how to ask these questions in a way that asks for an honest, sincere inventory of ourselves at a certain point in time. Where do you want to be? How do you learn? What are you motivated by? By the end of the session, you'll (hopefully) develop a clearer picture.

John has a humanistic approach to engineering management - which he has used to run autonomous, mission-driven teams all the way from infrastructure to application development. In his spare time, he organizes DevOps Girls - a non-profit educational group that aims to empower women coming into DevOps roles.