Make Work Interesting!

Do you really use your visual controls? Probably not.

Visual management systems like Kanban boards or Jira are powerful tools, but they often fall short in providing a holistic view of a team's work and enabling effective collaboration. In other words, they don’t give people the information, guidance, or direction they need. So…they don’t use them.

Your visualizations need to show you what you need to know (not a preformed visualization from someone else’s needs). Self organization requires self visualization.

In this talk, Jim Benson will introduce seven essential elements that every visual management system should incorporate to be truly effective and drive continuous improvement. Jim will show (using interesting case studies from all types of projects) how visual controls should start with direction (plans and assumptions), then represent the current state of work, highlight triggers for action, capture the narrative of changes and pivots, and ultimately reinforce the team's identity, professionalism, and culture.

He'll share practical techniques for designing visual systems that go beyond simply tracking work items, enabling teams to visualize their entire workflow, respond to changes seamlessly, and foster an environment of learning, quality, and human support.

Attendees will gain insights into building visual management systems that people actually use and update, creating a shared understanding of the work, surfacing opportunities for improvement, and empowering teams to embrace change and deliver value iteratively. Whether you're already using Kanban, any other flavor of Lean/Agile, or exploring visual management for the first time, this talk will provide a comprehensive framework for creating your own visualizations that you, your team, and your stakeholders will love.

Are you eager to constantly learn and develop yourself? Do you long to enable change and transformation in your daily life with more verve and joy? Or perhaps you’re looking for answers to deeper life questions so you can make your next big leap.

According to Systemic Coaching, the first system to work on is our own. It is from this place that our gifts flow so we can soar or our blocks emerge which prevent us from taking flight.

In this playful and experiential talk, you’ll learn about the latest research on developmental play science alongside the secrets to creating happy and life-supporting systems so that you, as well as those you serve, can merrily thrive and belong.

This session explains the fundamentals of how change happens and what we need to do so systems, including the people in them, can thrive now and for many years to come.

"Build quality into the process from start to finish. Don't just find what you did wrong – eliminate the "wrongs" altogether." - W. E. Deming

We may not have the statistical basis Deming presented for factory work, but we do have the ability to eliminate defects and, in so doing, speed higher quality code to production more often. This all happens in the editing session.

We will discuss "working clean" turned up to 11. What is the "technology of quality" these days? How can we leverage it for our needs?

Patterns can help us to understand how things work and how cultures develop. The behaviour and disposition of an organisation are revealed in its patterns. The game in an organisational system is about recognizing patterns and anti-patterns. By exploring patterns we can understand more about what a system is disposed to and then create thoughtful action once we’ve gained that awareness.

Jeni unravels the intricacies and complexities of cultural change at leadership level, when shifting from traditional project practices to agile ways of working within large organizations.

In this practical and gently interactive session, we'll walk through the evolutionary, psychological and neuroscientific factors that have made teamwork during a pandemic so challenging.

Neatly sidestepping pseudoscience and pop psych, we'll explore what actually happens in our brains and bodies (and why) when we experience extremely challenging events – and how this affects our ability to stop, collaborate and listen. And, without a squeezy ball in sight, we'll look at real steps and activities to help your team(s) to pull through and work together more effectively when things get tough.

Participant Takeaways:
* Participants walk away feeling optimistic and enthused, and with a pocketful of insights including:
* Understanding where our reactions come from, and what extreme emotion is good for.
* The ability to identify how this impacts teamwork in a face-to-face, online and hybrid setting, and how to support this.
* Clarity around the immediate and wider impact of workplace drama in communication, conflict and feedback.
* Tools, activities and practices to help teams working through stress, overwhelm and unhealthy conflict (with or without the added influence of a pandemic.)
* Explanations that help you understand what happens in your brain (it's got nothing to do with lizards).
* The ability to identify who might need extra support before it's critical.

Lean Startup was published 13 years ago. It spurred a revolution in our thinking about product development. Or did it?

Despite the rich body of knowledge we developed over more than a decade, actual success stories are few and far between. We still largely approach product development as if the Lean Startup never happened. Heck, as if Agile and Lean have never happened.

In this lightweight presentation, I will challenge some common assumptions that any product people face in their work at the early stage of their products' life cycle.

Let's face it. Our success rate is appalling, so we must be doing something wrong. And it's not for the lack of knowledge. It's for not using the knowledge we have at hand.