Events
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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Wed 13th June: Prototyping Public Services - Dennis Vergne plus Blending Agile Delivery - Glenn Crossley & Austen Bell
The variety and depth of topics covered by speakers is ever expanding. We all know the value and savings made though gaining feedback from users of a system early and often and this month Dennis Vergne shares an approach to system building in the public sector that he's dubbed "whole system prototyping" as a model for doing just that. Plus Austen Bell and Glen Crossley are here to talk about the open source Blended Agile Delivery (BAD) toolkit that has recently emerged from work right here in Leeds.
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Wed 9th May: Simon Cookson - Stakeholder Engagement, Sales Thinking and Should We All Be Product Owners? plus Simeon Smith - Business Analyst, Product Owner or Product Manager?
Building the right thing and having a good outcome from a software project requires all sides to be wilfully collaborating in a creative and enthusiastic fashion. That may seem obvious and easy but the IT industry has a legacy culture to deal with. It's not uncommon for both sides to be evaluated on meeting deadlines and budget constraints but not always on costs saved or revenue generated by the outcome of a software project. Of course measuring outcomes isn't always easy and bringing people together to collaborate meaningfully when they may also have other day to day tasks to get done is a similar challenge. However in the world of software product development it's people working together that often transforms the outcome and this month our two speakers Simon Cookson and Simeon Smith are both drilling into upstream end of the product development pipeline.
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