We live in a competitive world. That competition forces change. It has always forced change. Change is normal. The question is not whether our organisations will change, that’s a given, but can we see this change before it hits us, do we know where we’re heading or are we simply floating aimlessly being carried by a river? It certainly feels that way sometimes.

To answer the question we need to understand our landscape, the economic forces at play, the context we operate within and our situational awareness of this. Can we navigate the waters, can we see a storm coming or are we being battered by rocks because we refuse to look?

During this talk we will examine the level of situational awareness within business, why it matters and whether we can anticipate and exploit change before it hits us. We will explore how we can manage our economic environment by, as Deng Xiaoping would say, “crossing the river by feeling the stones”.

In a world of rapid changes and increasing uncertainties, organizations have to continuously adapt and evolve to remain competitive and excel in the market.

In such a dynamic business landscape organizations need to design for adaptability. Designing for adaptability requires understanding the landscape organizations are operating in, identifying patterns of change, applying principles for organizational fitness, and making mindful strategic decisions to adapt change.

Organizations need to aim for building systems and team organizations aligned to the business needs and business strategy and evolving them for adaptability to new changes and unknown environments.

This talk brings different perspectives and techniques together from business strategy (Wardley Mapping), software architecture (Domain-Driven Design), and team organization (Team Topologies) as a powerful toolset to design, build and evolve adaptive systems and team structures for a fast flow of change.

The success of projects and what we do in Tech relies on the skills of individuals, how teams are put together using these diverse skills and how the team members interact and work together.

In order for teams to become self-organised and more effective in achieving project goals, it’s important for the individual members to efficiently interact, collaborate and problem solve.

Team dynamics are important to create an environment where diverse skills are in balance and work flows fluidly.

Efficiency will be greatly improved when greater value is placed on helping individuals develop how they interact with team members, resulting in a stronger more cohesive self-organised team, enabling fluid movement through project cycles.

This session will cover why valuing individuals and interactions helps produce environments that are more conducive to build, collaborate and innovate, alongside providing practical tools for attendees.

Humans are wired to connect; our relationships with other people help us through bad times and celebrate the good. We get inspired by conversations with other people, benefit from learning about how others see the world and find magic when we join up ideas and collaborate on solutions.

The pandemic has taken some of this away from us. We’ve gone into a survival holding pattern that has left people lonely and lacking the social connections they need.

In this talk, we will celebrate connecting people, the power of communities and the magic of serendipity, then look at ways to bring these back into our lives.

After years of sending chills down corporate spines, Agile is the new buzz word.

Everybody’s agile nowadays, surely helped by the rise of more corporate-friendly methodologies, such as Scrum and SAFe. Unfortunately, it takes more than adopting a framework to become Agile.

We discuss how automation needs to be at the centre of any Agile approach, to shape new behaviours and new mindsets - both in people and corporations.

Companies like Zoom, Slack, and Amplitude aren’t overnight successes. These companies are surviving and thriving during the pandemic because they prioritized investing in their products during the rapid acceleration of digital transformation. By putting their product first, these tech underdogs have established market leadership in categories where the tech giants FAANG—Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google/Alphabet—have unfair advantages, such as massive distribution, virtually free offerings, and room for growth. Product visionary and Silicon Valley investor SC Moatti shares how these companies are winning against FAANG by building more innovative products and elevating product leaders to the C-suite, turning their product teams into a competitive advantage.

Has the “people problem” around you become unbearable? Are good people acting badly? Are teams displaying apathy, aggression or despair? Is it hard to motivate and inspire? If so, you are definitely not alone. Since lockdown these are common themes overwhelming our work environments and it can feel overwhelming.

Katherine has spent the whole of the pandemic successfully training and coaching leaders, teams and critical change agents on how to bring themselves, others and their teams out of hell and into being effective, despite their challenging context.

In this talk Katherine will share 2 diagnostic tools that she uses to help those she coaches to find practical, useful ways forward - that highlight ways to overcome burnout and stress and begin the process of becoming engaged and inspired again.

I have found that I can use Jobs to be Done to help me focus testing on the jobs our customers are hiring our product for. This presentation will describe Jobs to be Done and how it can be used to focus the testing of your products on your customers

Despite having so much uncertainty around us, we are continually pressured to commit to delivery dates. Let’s face it. That pressure is going nowhere. Now is the time to put away the dread and learn how to not only accept uncertainty, but operate, and even thrive, within it.

This talk helps you understand why uncertainty is here to stay and how you can make sense of it with your data to make informed and risk-aware forecasts. You’ll also take away a few simple steps you can take regularly to stabilize your system, become more predictable and make those forecasts even better.

According to the Health and Safety Executives Labour Force Study, 54% of all working days lost in the UK were attributed to work-related stress.

In a 2020 UK workplace stress survey conducted by Perkbox, 79% of British adults in employment reported that they commonly experience workplace stress, citing ‘work-related office politics’ (37%) as the most common cause.

For organisations and their employees to flourish, it’s vital that individuals feel connected, supported and have high quality social relationships.  To achieve this, we must remove psychological hazards and promote empathy and compassion in the workplace

Nonviolent communication helps us foster greater connection, understanding and compassion, enabling us to find strategies to meet each other's needs.  It’s founded on language and communication skills that strengthen our ability to remain human, even under trying circumstances.

Join Jenny in this talk to explore the practice of nonviolent communication, and how you can use it to build trust, develop better quality relationships and resolve conflicts.

Anti-Patterns are like patterns, only more informative. With anti-patterns, you will first see what patterns recur in “bad” retrospectives and then you will see how to avoid, or remedy, the situation. Based on her experience with facilitating retrospectives, join Aino for an entertaining and informative presentation on the challenges she has seen and how to overcome them.

This talk will be interesting for everyone facilitating meetings in general, and retrospectives in particular. Her latest book “Retrospective Anti-Patterns” will give you more info than she is able to convey in this talk.