Only a fortnight to go!

Posted on May 16, 2012 by

There are only a few weeks left before Agile Australia 2012 kicks off! With 700 already registered to attend, this year’s conference is looking like it will be our biggest yet.

If you are looking for accommodation during the conference, we have organised a discount with our conference venue, Hilton on the Park Melbourne (subject to availability). Visit www.agileaustralia.com.au/venue.html for details on how to redeem the discount.

This year, you may notice boxes of Red or Green beads at the door to each session. These are for you to let us know how you felt about each presentation while it’s still fresh in your mind. We’re asking you to drop Red or Green beads into boxes (Green = Good! Red = Needs improvement) at the close of each session.

We’ll also have a Live Retro wall running in The Open Space. Simply add your thoughts under the headings ‘What was good’? ‘What can we improve’? and ‘New ideas’? using the cards and markers that will be provided and pin it to the wall. All your feedback is valuable to us and we look forward to your contributions!

One thing we are especially excited about at the conference (besides the amazing speaker line up, workshops, welcome reception, Open House, press gallery, lightning talks, games… you get the picture) is ACTIVATE AGILE!

Activate Agile is a forum especially for high school students with an interest in IT and those studying IT at university. They’ll be hearing from the likes of Steven Caddy – Senior Producer, realestate.com.au; Fiona Siseman – Project Manager, Lonely Planet; Nigel Dalton – Chief Information Officer, REA Group; Martin Kearns – National Capability Lead, SMS MT; and Andy Sheats – CEO, Health.com.au about  what Agile organisations are really like through a series of dynamic lightning talks. Our thanks go to IBM for sponsoring this event.

So if your niece or neighbour whips up apps on weekends, cuts code in their sleep, or you just really need help convincing your kid a career in IT is super groovy, then Activate Agile 2012 is the perfect event for them! Registration is free. There are even a few internships up for grabs, and an iPad will go to the person who asks the best question on the night, thanks to Luna Tractor.

All the details are available at www.agileaustralia.com.au/activate/ or find us on facebook and twitter (#ActivateAgile).

See you very soon!
Agile Alien

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Caption competition winner!

Posted on April 11, 2012 by

Well done everyone for a great collection of photo captions for the competition in the latest edition of the AgileTODAY magazine.

After chortling our way through the entries, we are ready to announce the winner of a hot 16GB Samsung Galaxy Tablet.

Congratulations Warren Head, Software Engineer at Suncorp for your winning caption:

When will people learn? If you don’t use Agile your projects can seize up like my fingers!

When will people learn? If you don’t use Agile your projects can seize up like my fingers!

Don’t forget, if you’ve got an article contribution for the next edition of AgileTODAY magazine you can submit it to agile@slatteryit.com.au.

Congrats again Warren!
Agile Alien

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Agile Workshops, Dinner, Morning Fitness Routine + caption comp closes

Posted on March 28, 2012 by

Well, isn’t the Agile Australia conference turning into a diverse event! This year, we’re offering everything from a dinner date to a morning fitness class, and all this on top of the most relevant Agile presentations, case studies, and workshops in Australia.

Our pre-conference workshops will be held on Tuesday 29 February 2012, with workshops on Lean, Kaizen, and Kanban; essential tips for Agile leaders, coaches, and thinking like an Agilist; AND technical workshops on NoSQL Databases, Pattern Languages, Continuous Integration and Delivery; there’s even a workshop on Agile for beginners! You can choose to register for a half-day of workshops (2 workshops); or a full day (4 workshops). Check out the workshop schedule for more info.

If you want to make the most of your trip to Melbourne, or spend more time with the new people you’ve met at the conference, we’ve got just the thing.  Dinner with a Stranger is an easy and informal way to organise a meal with other conference delegates like yourself. We’ve already booked tables for Wednesday 30 May 2012 at some of our most highly recommended eateries in Melbourne – modern Australian cuisine, Italian, Greek, Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese… You simply need to add your name to the sign up sheet that will be pinned to The Open Space wall in the conference networking area, and hey presto! Instant dinner party!

We’ve also made sure you won’t fall behind on your morning exercise routine. Enjoy an invigorating outdoor group fitness session exclusive to Agile Australia 2012 delegates on Thursday 31 May 2012 at 6.30am. Visit the conference special events page for more information.

There are heaps of other opportunities to network and socialise with the vibrant Agile Australia crowd, including Rally’s Welcome Reception and ThoughtWorks’ Open House, a conference cafe sponsored by Aconex and more.

Earlybird registration for the conference closes this Friday, 30 March 2012 so be sure to get your registration in.

Lastly, don’t forget that the caption comp for the latest edition of the AgileTODAY magazine closes this Friday!

Regards,
Agile Alien

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Inspirational keynotes at Agile Australia 2012

Posted on March 15, 2012 by

Guess what? The program for this year’s Agile Australia conference is now ready for you to view!

It has taken a little longer than we’d hoped to get it all ready, but we’re confident we’ve got a stellar program which you’ll get a lot out of. We spent extra time on refining all the presentations, asking speakers to pair up with a buddy and take on some feedback and advice in order to bring you the very best content on Agile in Australia. The result is that every session at Agile Australia will be interesting, focused, clear, and full of great takeaways.

We have also got some amazing keynote speakers. We can’t wait to hear what our home-grown leadership experts have to say. Fiona Wood, Director of the WA Burns Unit and Former Australian of the Year will be speaking on how to lead in a crisis situation, drawing on her experiences on the ground during the 2005 Bali Bombings.

Mark Thompson, former AFL coach and star of the Essendon Bombers will also be joining to speak on empowering teams to succeed. These inspirational Aussie speakers will showcase the best thought-leadership Australia has to offer and we are very proud to have them speak at our conference.

There are over 50 sessions to choose from at Agile Australia 2012, plus loads more special events happening around the conference which we will be letting you know about over the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

Yours in great excitement,
Agile Alien

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Posted on January 12, 2012 by
Craig Smith

Craig Smith, Delivery Coach, Suncorp

Guest Blogger: Craig Smith – Delivery Coach, Suncorp

Helping To Shape Agile Australia 2012: Tips for Submitters and Reviewers
Part of the feedback we received from last year’s Agile Australia conference was that the community was keen to have a more transparent submission system and review process. As a result, this year we have implemented an online submission system that allows the community to provide feedback; and submitters to tune their presentation to the needs of the Australian Agile community.

Tips for Submitting a Proposal
We are welcoming submissions from the community until the end of January across five different topic streams (umbrellas). If you are looking to submit a proposal or perhaps amend a proposal based on feedback, here are some tips to help the reviewers and advisors:

  • Make sure you have read the submission guidelines as well as the stream descriptions on the website as they give a lot of good background to the topics we are looking for submissions on
  • Take a look at other submissions in the system and, more importantly, the reviews provided by the community to help you better craft your proposal. Also talk to your colleagues and previous presenters about your submission.
  • Ensure you give a good amount of detail in your proposal to assist the reviewers and advisors to understand your proposal and how you expect it to run. Some things to consider:
    • The summary should give a concise overview of your topic and grab the attention of a reader or a potential attendee. Ultimately, this summary will be what appears in the conference programme, so it needs to give the reader a good overview of your session
    • Learning outcomes should detail the key points that you believe an attendee will learn by attending your session
    • Mechanics is a breakdown of the mechanics of your session, detailing the key topics and exercises you plan to run in your session and some high level time estimates. This section should give a reviewer a good understanding of how your presentation will flow and the key topics that will be covered
  • Remember that all feedback is good feedback, so the advisors will look favourably on submitters who take the time to respond to feedback by updating your proposal.

Tips for Reviewing / Commenting On Proposals
We welcome comments from community on proposals in the system. Public comments will help the advisors gauge the excitement and demand around particular topics and proposals, and will also help submitters refine their proposal based on feedback. If commenting on proposals, remember:

  • The aim of open commenting is to ask questions and give useful feedback to submitters and the conference advisors and to help build the best conference we can. So review with an aim to make all of the proposals better.
  • Remember the commenting system is open for all to see, so ensure comments are critical and constructive, but fair.

Submissions close on 31 January 2011, after which the conference advisors will reflect on the submissions and feedback and assemble the final programme. We look forward to your submissions and comments, and look forward to joining us in May in Melbourne for this years conference.

Cheers,
Craig

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Umbrella Update – Adoption and Approaches

Posted on December 21, 2011 by
Martin Kearns Photo

Martin Kearns, National Capability Lead, SMS MT

Guest Blogger: Martin Kearns – National Capability Lead, SMS MT

Hello everyone,

In this blog post I want to share with you what we are aiming to achieve at Agile Australia 2012. Of course we want this to be the best conference to date.

The advisors and SlatteryIT are taking an Agile approach to the setup of the conference. We have had our retrospective and really thought about what we are looking to achieve over the next three years for the adoption of Agile.

One thing that we all felt very sure about was that we didn’t want the conference to degenerate into ‘another’ Agile conference. We have been thinking really hard at what we have failed to achieve in the past conferences and how we can improve.

This year in the Agile Adoption and Approaches stream we want to assist organisations and individuals to appreciate the complexities of an Agile approach and what is required to be successful. Rather than having another inspirational speech where speakers talk about the ‘great’ and ‘silver bullets’ to Agile adoption, we want to be a little more down-to-earth, where our speakers resonate with audiences on the pain they have felt and provide new ways of thinking and working, what they would have done differently, or what they will do next.

Our aim is to have presentations that provide a coherent and concise methodology or conceptual approach.We are not looking for case study presentations alone, although this may be useful to re-enforce a particular learning.

The dream for me is, when I see individuals leaving a talk in our stream, people are conversing on a key ‘aha moment’ they got, and enthusiastically talk about how it can be can brought back to their team or organisation. Our goal for the conference is to encourage feedback to your place of employment and be a catalyst for continuous improvement.

We are also realistic that not all experiences should be of the great and wonderful type. We truly believe that sometimes more value is achieved through identifying with failures. This will not be a conference of back clapping and everyone reminding one another how great our cult followers are(!!). This stream will be pragmatic and realistic to help your team in their next level of evolution.

I am excited!! Are you?

Please have a look at the learning objectives, and I am keen to see more submissions to review!!!

Yours in inspection and adaption,
Martin

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Calling for Leadership and Teams Presentations for Agile Australia 2012

Posted on December 16, 2011 by
Nigel Dalton Photo

Nigel Dalton, Partner, Luna Tractor

Guest Blogger: Nigel Dalton – Partner, Luna Tractor

Establishing an Agile way of working within an organisation was always destined to upset an old regime. As a result, social scientists love Agile and lean – the way in which the new Agile tribe’s habits and cultures, roles, rituals, spatial organisation and language impact a long-standing (Henry Ford and FW Taylor were over a century ago now!) traditional way of life and work make Agile transformations worthy of extensive study and observation. What have we learned in the last decade or so?

  1. That leadership is the vital part of the change to Agile, but with lean and Agile adoption, leadership takes many ‘small l’ dimensions (from thought leadership to opinion leadership) as well as the more recognisable ‘big L’ managers, product owners and team leads. Who is in charge around here?
  2. That a culture of ‘team first’ does not prosper in a command and control hierarchical organisation. People revert to their old alliances easily, and those old alliances (“I’m a developer on this Agile project and I’m okay”) often provide the security people seek when under pressure.
  3. That the incumbent organisation and culture will fight back to retain the status quo, whispering in the ears of executives and sponsors that things are a bit loose, governance is questionable, things are changing too quickly and there is minimal commitment to deliver full scope on time and budget.
  4. That newly-Agile teams are often incompatible with traditional organisation hierarchies, leaving individual career paths vague and uncertain, and often causing PMOs and Human Resources to intervene by reaching for traditional change management tools such as RACI matrixes and new job descriptions to keep the peace.
Photo Credit: Luna Tractor

Teams at work at Lonely Planet || © Photo credit: Luna Tractor

This conference stream aims to attract submissions from experts and practitioners alike, which tackle, provide insight about and comment on problems like these:

  • What do Agile teams need to perform at their very best?
  • How do performance measures and incentives need to evolve?
  • What does great leadership need to look like?
  • How do you grow the team?
  • Is culture measurable and manageable?
  • How does the inevitable plan-do mindset connect with Agile’s envision-explore mantra?
  • How can enterprises extract further benefit from Agile practices, beyond IT?
  • Establishing an Agile way of working within an organisation that still has ‘an old regime’
  • Scientific proof that the collection of habits and behaviours that make up Scrum, XP, Kanban and Agile in general are actually more effective at delivering business outcomes
  • Why leadership is the vital part of the change to Agile, from thought leadership to opinion leadership as well as the more recognisable ‘big L’ Managers, product owners and team leads
Photo credit: Luna Tractor

Teams at work at Lonely Planet || © Photo credit: Luna Tractor

Whilst Agile community members may not feel the confidence to present on process and technical topics, everyone who has worked in an Agile team, with positive and negative experiences is qualified to put forward a paper for this stream of the conference.

We are particularly interested in the ways leaders and teams reacted to situations, and what the outcomes were, and enabling others to learn from those experiences.

Read more about this stream and all the conference streams here.

Cheers,
Nigel

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