Events
Tuesday 17th March: Gwen Diagram - Satisfaction with Abstraction, From Individual Contributor to Leadership plus Sophie Weston - Designing Teams
Unfortunatly we have to announce that this event will NOT NOW GO AHEAD on the 17th March. Due to the unfolding situation with COVID-19 Anaplan have taken the difficult decision to cancel all upcoming events in all offices globally. We will be reviewing the situation over the next few weeks and hopefully the event will be rescheduled at the earliest opportunity.
 Agile Yorkshire goes on tour. We’ve decided to reach out some of the amazing companies in our region and take Agile Yorkshire on the road. For March the Agile Yorkshire meetup has moved to York and will be hosted by our own regional unicorn Anaplan, from their super cool offices in The Bonding Warehouse, Terry Ave, York YO1 6FA
Anaplan started life 2006 on the kitchen table of York based Michael Gould and is now listed on the New York Stock Exchange, has operations in over 13 countries, has raised over $250 million in funding, has over one thousand employees and a valuation of well over the billion dollars giving it true “unicorn” status.
What are the attributes of a great leader? An image that often comes to mind is JFK and his speech about the moon landing. Someone who can bring others along with their ideas. However, there is a lot more to being a great leader than just selling ideas. Leadership should also focus on caring for others and helping them to become the best that they can be.
Gwen moved from being an individual contributor to a leadership role a few years ago. Moving from being an individual contributor on a team to being in more of a support function is hard. It’s easy to put pressure on yourself to be the superhero and as with the superheroes in comics, it's tolling on your mental health. Most people get energy and satisfaction from working together in a team or completing tasks but, when the team is taken away and the tasks are abstract, how can you continue to get satisfaction?
Bio: Gwen Diagram is a technology professional from Leeds who specialises in testing. She is an avid automation evangelist with a focus on testing complemented by repeatable build processes with monitoring. She has had varied roles throughout her career including Scrum Master at a Start Up, Engineering Manager at a bank and DevOps kid at a large Financial Services organisation.
As a strong believer in making the tech industry as open and punk as possible, she co-organises a twice yearly free day long testing conference called the Leeds Testing Atelier. She speaks regularly at local meet-up groups, Agile Yorkshire and Leeds DevOps, duels with creative types at events like the Tech Off, speaks internationally at conferences such as Nordic Testing Days in Tallinn and was the closing keynote at Agile on the Beach in Falmouth, UK in 2018.
Outside of work, you will usually find her hanging around a Natural History Museum somewhere in the world marvelling at how incredibly excellent dinosaurs are, feeding pigeons or ducks or obsessing over transport."
Sophie has spent over twenty years working in technology as a software engineer and DevOps advocate. Also active in the wider tech community, she is an Ambassador for Women in Tech York and a co-organiser of the DevOpsDays London conference.
Bio: Creating and running software is a team sport and yet all too often the way that technology teams themselves are created and run is left too much to chance. In this talk, Sophie will look at some of the ways that we can make our technology teams better by design.
Twitter: @srwestons |
Tue 3rd Dec: Kev McCabe - 1, 2, 3 Transformations More plus Malcolm South - Do estimates make us safer?
Agile Yorkshire is back. We've had a few months off to recharge the batteries with everything in standby, but the boot loader has been re-invoked and we've spun up with a December event to round off the year. There's plenty of work going on behind the scenes to bring a great program of speakers for 2020 and we'll have more announcements to make soon.
We have two great presentations from two great speakers to top off the year and a great new venue in the William Hill offices in the St. John's Centre on Merrion Street in Leeds (see the Eventbrite page for details) - register a place now, space is limited.
In this talk Kev will cover the journey of Transformation from not only current places of work but also former. Looking at why they fail, and what the common themes are. There will be areas that you will see in your own organisation and this will be a change for people to share their views on the transformations they are on or have been on. How many transformations does one company need to become a continuous improvement organisation where the normal is transformation all the time, and not just BIG BANG FLOPs
Bio: Kev McCabe has been working as an agile coach at William Hill since March 2018. Working on multiple transformation initiatives over this time. Kev works with multiple teams and helps them improve their ways of working by listening to the team and being a servant leader to help them self organise and find the solutions for their selves. Focusing on technical and business metrics to drive the right mindsets to delight our customers.
Twitter: @bigmadkev Website: Kev McCabe
Many teams estimate work to make development safer - to avoid committing to more than they can deliver. But safety features can be dangerous if not used correctly. I'll be looking at some of the ways estimates can be misused and what you can do about it.
Bio: Malcolm is a Product Owner specialising in fintech at Equiniti Credit Services
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Wed 12th June: Tom Hoyland - Building and Growing an Agile Team plus Jon Fulton - The Art of The Possible
How would you build a team from scratch? What techniques would you use? What metrics should you respond to? In this talk you’ll see how we assembled a team, embedded agile values, a DevOps mindset and a clear purpose to create a squad with an infectious, high performing culture. We’ll demonstrate the coaching and visualisation techniques we used to reduce batch size and improve quality. You’ll see how to reveal ‘hidden’ product backlogs, make the invisible visible, and use domain driven design, theory of constraints and language to optimise team resilience. |
Wed 24th April - Royd Brayshay: Product Development Leverage - Using Technical Experience and Judgement to Commercial Effect plus Jason Simpson: Agile Puts Customers First, Why Don’t You?
Wed 20th March - Andy Butcher: Autonomy and choreography - using Conway's Law to tackle the company scaling problem plus Matt Skelton: Beyond the Spotify Model: using team topologies for fast flow and organisation evolution
Andy Butcher: Autonomy and choreography - using Conway's Law to tackle the company scaling problem This talk is based on the challenges we've faced at Sky Betting & Gaming, which has tripled in engineering headcount over the last 3 years as we've become the number one sports betting company in the UK by customer volume. I'll explain why the concepts of choreography and orchestration apply to horizontally scaling an IT driven organisation, and how splitting into autonomous teams (with the right alignment and accountability) can create a workplace where you can get things done, and people feel excited and passionate about what they do.
Bio: Andy is an architect at Sky Betting & Gaming, working on the SkyBet website and app, which handle the equivalent of Black Friday every Saturday afternoon. He's a passionate advocate of agile practices, and believes that software engineering is about people.
Twitter: @MrAndyButcher
Website: Andy Butcher's Blog
Matt Skelton: Beyond the Spotify Model: using team topologies for fast flow and organisation evolution This talk will cover the basics of organization design using Team Topologies, exploring a selection of key team types and how and when to use them in order to make the development and operation of your software systems as effective as possible. The talk is based on the forthcoming 2019 book Team Topologies and first-hand experience helping companies around the world with the design of their technology teams. Key takeaways: 1. Why using the “Spotify Model” of team design is not enough 2. The four fundamental team topologies needed for modern software delivery 3. The three team interaction modes that enable fast flow and rapid learning 4. How to address Conway’s Law, cognitive load, and team evolution with Team Topologies Bio: Matt is the Founder and Head of Consulting at Conflux. He has been building, deploying, and operating commercial software systems since 1998. As Head of Consulting at Conflux, he specialises in Continuous Delivery, operability and organisation dynamics for software in manufacturing, ecommerce, and online services, including cloud, IoT, and embedded software. Recognised by TechBeacon in 2018 as one of the top 100 people to follow in DevOps, Matthew curates the well-known DevOps team topologies patterns at devopstopologies.com and is co-author of the books Continuous Delivery with Windows and .NET (O’Reilly, 2016), Team Guide to Software Operability (Skelton Thatcher Publications, 2016), and Team Topologies (IT Revolution Press, 2019). Matthew founded Conflux in 2017 to offer training and consulting to organisations building and running software systems. Twitter: @matthewpskelton LinkedIn: matthewskelton Slideshare: matthewskelton
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Wed 13th Feb: Mark Kirschstein - Collaborative, Logic Based Retrospectives plus Steve Trapps - Dear Mr Scrum Master, I think you're...
Much of the value of our meetups not to learn about the theory of lean / agile product development but to hear from practitioners talk about their experiences putting theory into practice. Much of the value of experienced agile coaches come from their knowledge of what can work when and help an organisation see when something is likely to fail, saving time, disruption and ultimately money. Both our speakers this month fall squarely under the banner of experienced practitioners and both will be passing on their real world experience. As Peter Drucker said - Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. Mark Kirschstein - Collaborative, Logic Based Retrospectives Far too often team retrospectives suffer from classic anti patterns, including but not limited to:1. Unproductive/circular debate
2. Following the ideas of persuasive but incorrect team member 3. Implementing solutions that address symptoms not causes This talk aims to improve your retrospective effectiveness by introducing thinking tools to combat these anti patterns.
Bio: Mark Kirschstein is an independent developer, trainer and software coach living and working in Manchester.
Twitter: @markkirschstein
Steve Trapps - Dear Mr Scrum Master, I think you're...
 Working as a coach, Steve has worked in Finance, Leisure, Entertainment and Health sectors; helping numerous companies, from start ups, small / medium to multi nationals to experience the value that Scrum can deliver.Whilst working as a consultant scrum master, I received an email that questioned my worth to the organisation and, more worryingly, the value a scrum master brings to the scrum team in that role. How should I respond - be outraged, ignore them or something else? How would you respond? In the session I'll take you through their comments, my reaction and my response to the email.
We will consider:
- Why does this person view the scrum master role as not important?
- What can I do to change their mind?
- Why is it that you can go from one company to another and have different experiences of what a scrum master is responsible for?
I'll look at the different scrum master types I've experienced whilst working in different organisations and then compare the scrum master role to the Scrum Guide and what it says the role should do. The session will also cover my personal journey through the process of becoming a professional scrum trainer for scrum.org and how that experience helped me in responding to the email.
Bio: Steve is an experienced Scrum Master and Professional Scrum Trainer with Scrum.org. Steve started his career as a developer, working for Nestle before moving on to work for Sky build applications & websites for many of the English Premier League football teams. Progressing, Steve moved into senior positions all the time being exposed to Scrum, starting his journey into becoming a Professional Scrum Trainer.
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Wed 12th Dec: The 2018 Xmas Lightning Talks Competition
Wed 14th Nov: David Harper - It's Alright for You....You've Had Cancer! plus Sharon Dale - How might we involve and unleash everyone?
We're back after two months off with two great speakers and two great topics. David Harper reflects on his former role as CIO to give a sneak peek into boardroom IT decision making and Sharon Dale will throw some light onto the Liberation Structures body of knowledge. Plus the venue is back at the Platform office above Leeds train station.
Also its that time of year where we start thinking about our annual Lightning Talks Competition that we have held as our December meetup for a good number of years now. We'll be announcing the CALL FOR SPEAKERS in the next few days, so get your thinking caps on!
An engaging, witty and at times irreverent look at why ‘the Grown-Ups’ in Board Meetings and Steering Groups make the decisions they do. And how they all love Agile – until it requires a big decision! By taking us on his own unique journey from IT Coder to CIO, David shares his own techniques on how to survive in the Boardroom as the ‘IT Guy’ representing Agile projects, and how his own adversity has unlocked a fear he has held since childhood.
For anyone frustrated by the apparent lack of understanding of Agile in the Boardroom or mystified by the Waterfall or Fragile decisions that often come back – this is the session for you!
Bio: David has over 20 years experience of delivering major projects and programmes of change in Financial Services and 30 years IT experience. Most recently he was CIO for a £4bn business, collaborating closely with a number outsourcing partners and suppliers to deliver game changing outcomes. He is a strong advocate of Systems Thinking and has employed ST techniques to significantly reduce the cost of change programmes. David’s exposure to Agile has been through his leadership and mentoring of a number of Agile teams delivering both short term outcomes and multi million pound whole system replacements. Consistently David has been the bridge between the Scrum Teams and the Board Room, making sense of the illogical and managing the unreasonable. His mentees describe him as an “outstanding mentor” with an “engaging and inspiring” style. “He has a calm air but an acute sense of timing when things need to be shaken up or difficult questions asked” was a recent quote from a Programme Sponsor of a major Agile undertaking.
In 2017 David formed HARPER360, a consultancy dedicated to coaching individuals and teams in Project and Change Management, particularly in the IT Domain. HARPER360 can already count a number of bluechip brands within its client base.
Twitter: @harper_360 or website: www.harper360.com
A treasure trove of simple, practical methods to stimulate critical conversations and liberate the full potential of any group, from the frontline to the C- suite.""Cheryl M Scott – Global Programs Senior Advisor, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
What would be made possible if you could unleash the intelligence and creativity of everyone? Liberating Structures are a collection of easy-to-learn facilitation patterns that make this possible. They're field tested, rooted in complexity science and freely shared under a creative commons licence.
In this short session, participants will gain practical hands-on experience of at leas one Structure, and an appreciation of some of the possibilities offered.
Bio: Sharon is an independent consultant based in Leeds, UK. She is most interested in creating the conditions for participation and unleashing talent in your teams. She runs the Liberating Structures practice group in Leeds and is part of the team who run the worldwide virtual user group.
Twitter: @pixlz or website: medium.com/21st-century-mindset
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Wed 8th Aug: Adam Mitchell - We Lost How Much Money? plus Chris Warren - To the Left to the Left, Everything I Test in a Box to the Left...
Software product design and engineering is an area rich in opinions and historic working practice. Also the modern agile methods prescribe many practices which may work for you if followed carefully but can just as easily lead to "cargo cult" activities that deliver no real business benefit. Going back to first principles and understanding some of the economics of software product development and understanding HOW Scrum, Kanban or <insert favourite method here> can deliver more value for the same cost is liberating. It unlocks a new ability to adapt popular practices to any circumstance and ensure the business benefits in the way expected. Adam Mitchell brings his knowledge and experience to this months meetup to explain some of the mysteries of product development economics. Chris Warren will also share his experience of shifting focus to the "left of the board" when building a top performing test strategy.
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Mon 16th July - Tony Heap on Options Engineering and James Sheasby Thomas with QA and Testing - a Retrospective
In a fight (for attention) between Agile Yorkshire and the England World Cup semi final match we expected Agile Yorkshire to come of worst. Obviously the Agile Yorkshire community is full of dedicated and passionate lean / agile practitioners but we figured we should move aside for this "once in a generation" moment and reschedule our meetup from the normal second Wednesday. Hopefully that's OK with most. *** Attention (read carefully) - The Venue for this Month Has Changed *** Tony Heap: Options EngineeringThere are always options. But when making business and IT change, we often forget to consider them, to the detriment of the overall outcome. The reason for this is the way the human mind processes ideas, and dates back to the cognitive revolution around 70,000 years ago.
In this session you will learn:
- How humans have ideas and make decisions
- Why considering options is so powerful, and yet so hard
- How to overcome these difficulties - a structured, yet lightweight, approach that I like so much I decided to give it a name
Bio: Tony Heap is a freelance agile coach / trainer / scrum master / business analyst designer based in Yorkshire. He has worked for all sorts of clients including HMRC, YBS Group, ASDA, Morrisons, NHS, DoH, RWE nPower, Arcadia, BT, BarclayCard and Egg, in some cases partnering with consultancies such as Equal Experts, BJSS and Answer Consulting. In his spare time he likes to share his experiences and ideas on his blog www.its-all-design.com. He is particularly interested in agile approaches and how they apply to business analysis. He is a requirements denier. Twitter: @tonyheapuk Website: www.its-all-design.com
James Sheasby Thomas: QA and Testing - a RetrospectiveThe term 'Quality Assurance' has a controversial reputation within the testing community - quality is subjective, so it cannot be assured, although it can be assessed, analysed, advocated for, questioned or improved. However it's also arguable that 'Testing' does not fully describe what modern testers do and the impact they can have on project success. Could there be a better label for the role that QA/Testing professionals perform in an agile context?
In this talk, James will discuss the limitations of both 'QA' and 'Testing' as labels, as well as previous attempts to define them. He will also explore the many ways that QAs/Testers in agile teams use their time and skills to help ensure project success and meaningful quality, and situations where our role overlaps with others. Attendees will be invited to contribute to the discussion and suggest possible alternative labels to 'QA' and 'Testing'.
Bio: James Sheasby Thomas is currently a Test Analyst for Inviqa, an established technical partner company based in the UK and Germany. His most popular talk is `Accessibility Testing Crash Course', which he presented at TestBash Manchester 2017, Leeds Test Atelier, Leeds Tester Gathering and Liverpool Tester Gathering. Twitter: @RightSaidJames
Venue for JulyWe've lost our space at Platform so we're trying our a new venue. For July Agile Yorkshire will take place on the 1st Floor of what was the White Cloth Gallery behind Leeds train station. The address is given below and there is a picture of the building and front door also.
 1st floor, Aireside House
24-26 Aire Street
Leeds
West Yorkshire
LS1 4HT
Travelling by TrainThe venue is 1 minutes walk when exiting the station at the door next to Wetherspoons
Travelling by CarThere is parking very close by in the station or cheaper parking further down Whitehall Road.
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