Conference takeaways: Agile Cambridge 2018

Thanks to Redgate, a few of us were fortunate enough to attend Agile Cambridge recently — a three-day agile conference which is held at Churchill College. It was full of great sessions. We learnt lots of new things, especially around psychological safety. Here are the key takeaways from the sessions I attended.

Keynote: Dynamic reteaming at fast-growing companies

Team changes are inevitable for various reasons, such as new opportunities, company strategy and people leaving or joining. So getting better at reteaming is key to any business succeeding.

The speaker spoke about five different problem-pattern pairs when reteaming happens and strategies to help deal with them.

Key learning: team changes are inevitable, so embrace this and get better at reteaming.

Suggested reading: Dynamic Reteaming by Heidi Helfard

Keynote: Does Agile make us less secure?

Every day we hear about data security breaches across the world. Security in its current form is not working. The criminal economy around data security breaches is predicted to be at least $1.5 trillion a year.

Any system can be classified into one of these categories — simple, complicated or complex systems. Simple systems are easy to secure. Aim to keep your system simple by using microservices architecture.

Security should be an enabler for teams, and it’s important for teams to be decision-makers in security decisions. Use threat actor personas and misuse cases to make security a part of your day to day development.

Key learning: security in its current form isn’t working; keep systems simple by using microservices architecture and letting teams own security decisions.

Suggested reading: Agile Application Security by Michael Brunton-Spall, Rich Smith, Laura Bell & Jim Bird; https://tinyletter.com/cyberweekly — weekly roundup of data security breaches.

Keynote: Beyond buzzwords — team performance through the eyes of psychologists

Psychological safety isn’t about comfort, harmony, fun or workplace safety. Psychological safety is a shared belief held by members of team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. It’s characterised by interpersonal trust and mutual respect, where people are comfortable being themselves.

There is a dark side to psychological safety. Teams with high levels of psychological safety can engage in unethical behaviour.

The speakers ran some games to encourage psychological safety in teams, and to acknowledge when harmony in teams is false.

Key learning: Are great teams something which happens by chance? Psychological safety is a key differentiator between good and great teams.

Keynote: Empathy is code deep

This session explored the idea that empathy for our coworkers in software development extends through the artefacts/code we share. Your code shows how empathetic you are!

It then explained different types of empathy:

• Technical Empathy is the ability to see the system from the point of view of the caller of your code, not just from the point of view of your code .
• Emotional empathy is when you feel other person’s emotions alongside them.
• Cognitive empathy is being able to put yourself into someone else’ place and see their perspective.

Key learning: Code is a way you interact with your coworkers. Empathy for our coworkers extends through the artefacts we share among us.

Suggested reading: Beautiful Code by Andy Oram & Greg Wilson; The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A Norman.

Case study: Establishing business agility at a bank

Any agile transformation is a mindset and cultural change. It cannot be limited just to the IT teams. This case study focused on how a big high street bank went through its agile transformation journey and the challenges involved.

This session emphasised the importance of vision & purpose for a team, and alignment with company strategy. It then added communication, transparency, visual ways of working and continuous improvement as key ingredients.

Key learning: Agile transformation cannot just be limited to IT team. Communication, transparency, vision & purpose, continuous improvement and visual ways of working are key ingredients.

Case study: Creating an environment for change at Cancer Research UK

The journey towards any transformation starts with building trust, safety and transparency. Have a clear vision & purpose, and focus on outcomes rather than output. Do small achievable changes at a time rather than a big bang!

Key learning: trust, safety and transparency are key factors for creating an environment for change.

Suggested reading: Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins; Innovation Games by Luke Hohmann; Gamestorming by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown & James Macanufo.

Workshops: Agile games & actions, and NoEstimates: forecasting with less effort and more accuracy

We played four different games in these two workshops, all focused on demonstrating following agile principles:

• Inspect and adapt
• Limit your WIP to start delivering/finishing before starting.
• Estimate in relative terms rather than absolute to make it easy, and to avoid confusing estimates with commitments.
• Stop command & control leadership and practise servant leadership, empowering people to create great self-organising teams.

Key learning: learning the agile principles via games.

Workshop: Wholehearted conversations for coaches and other humans

Why do we have conversations? The key elements to conversations are:

• Authenticity — learning to be okay with who you are.
• Empathy — listening for understanding by setting your own stuff aside.
• Fondness — liking for someone.

What’s your purpose in asking a question? Model listening by pausing and reflecting back what the other person said; be curious and listen for understanding. Replace judgement with curiosity.

Key learning: Practice active listening. Ask questions only to understand the situation. Replace judgement with curiosity.

If you’d like to know more about any of these sessions then do get in touch. I plan to run an agile games session internally at Redgate Open Space in the near future!