LAST Conference 2012 Notes

Last week I attended the LAST Conference (Lean, Agile, Systems Thinking) held at Swinburne University. The LAST Conference is a big departure from the Agile Australia 2012 conference I attended earlier this year. There was no fanfare, no big build up, little corporate advertising and significantly less people. It was also only $50 for the whole day but still contained lots of learning opportunities. It lived up to the advertised “low cost, grassroots mini-conference” message.

The conference schedule contained 5 parallel tracks so it was hard to attend all of it. I found myself at times wandering between sessions to get sound bites of what people where talking about. Being held at a uni one thing I definitely liked was the university lecture theatre style of some of the sessions – it felt right compared to sitting in a large conference center. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay for the last sessions as I needed to head back into work.

I didn’t take any detailed notes, but here are my takeaways (in no particular order):

Systems Thinking is the opposite of scientific thinking. Systems Thinking is not:
- Specialised
- Rocket Science
- Complex
Sea of Systems a handy guide to Systems Thinking

Systems Thinking – James Van Wood (visual recording @lynnecazaly)

Invention is the process of discovering something new or come up with an idea. Innovation is the act of of introducing that idea into the market and commercializing it

Organise for Innovation – Shoaib Shaukat(visual recording @lynnecazaly)

High Performance Scrum – Brett Maytom (visual recording @lynnecazaly)

Subject to Change – Frank Trindade (visual recording @lynnecazaly)

Design Thinking – Mark Richards (visual recording @lynnecazaly)

Played some neat games that help with agile learning.
Stages of learning:
- Unconscious incompetence
- Conscious incompetence
- Conscious competence
- Unconscious incompetence
I had lots of fun in the Visual Collaboration session fine tuning my sketching skills. Use Wong-Baker Faces to visually represent levels of pain.

My sketches from Visual Collaboration session with @lynnecazaly

A picture of friend and colleague Kim Ballestrin (@kb2bkb) presenting Cynefin and Agile

PMO Success – Traditional to Agile

Lots of interesting tidbits some of which I already knew but others just heard of in Edgy Agile things.

Here’s a selection of twitter posts on the conference (#LASTconf):

@RonicaRoth: #LASTconf motto: you are not an attendee. Excited to participate!
@lynnecazaly: Story structure: people + place + trouble …people want to know why, why this, why different #lastconf @unorder
@hwiputra: A good storyteller uses concrete words not abstract words #LASTconf
@hwiputra: Be comfortable with silence when getting stories out #LASTconf
@AgileRenee: #LASTconf how to measure value? IRACIS – improved revenue, avoid costs, improved service
@AgileRenee: #LASTconf my answer: the biggest waste in software dev today is doing the wrong work (benefits to cost don’t stack up)
@libodyssey: culture is the product of behaviour #lastconf
@ScrumMasterNZ: Work towards “Decision Meetings” and not “Status Meetings” #LASTConf #agile #lean
@jodiem: Eg this guy has 3 levels of backlog – team-product , release-quarterly and sprint… #confused #lastconf
@CEPitchford: The motivation for #offshore at REA was not cost it was talent! #win @hwiputra @frankmt #LASTconf
@CEPitchford: Standup with #offshore team via Skype was hard. We couldn’t understand each other @hwiputra @frankmt #LASTconf
@CEPitchford: Was hard for Chinese #offshore team to get visas to come to OZ @frankmt @hwiputra #LASTconf
@CEPitchford: The whole local OZ dev team went to china for 3 weeks to handover to the #offshore team #LASTconf
@AgileRenee: Find I’m mentally disagreeing with a lot said in the offshoring session in #LASTconf we have talent and should invest in building it locally
@jodiem: Self service test environments… Where QA env is exactly the same as production env. Cool #devops #lastconf
@antomarsh: Team rotation from Aus to China critical #LASTconf
@gusbalbontin: Words such as “framework” and “governance” should never be in the same sentence as the word innovation. #LASTconf
IrithWilliams: #Lastconf the real job at a standup is to ‘listen, inspect, adapt’
@magia3e: Too many context changes slows down the #scrum team. Focus on getting to-do done #LASTconf
@rooosterboy: How is #LASTconf different to #agileaus ? Seriously.
@magia3e: If u don’t have some sort of continuous integration toolset/capability it will limit your velocity #LASTconf
@c2reflexions: @AgileRenee doing a song and dance at #LASTconf
@magia3e: Document the right stuff, but don’t waffle it out. Cut to the essence of it. communicate it with the right collaborative tools #LASTconf
@CEPitchford: More control from management = less innovation from empowered teams #LASTconf @frankmt
@CEPitchford: It’s not about execution anymore. It is about learning. #organizationalchange #LASTconf @frankmt
@CEPitchford: Change programs: do we actually want to change? Or adapt, innovate and LEARN? #purpose #LASTconf @frankmt
@CEPitchford: The way we still run companies was invented by people who lived in the last century @frankmt #LASTconf
@CEPitchford: Project schedules and budgets are a work of fiction anyway @brown_note #LASTconf #fishbowl
@hwiputra: All good leaders believe in their teams. #LASTconf
@Drew_1609: Best value and most fun conference attended in a long time #lastconf
@njhoughton: MVP … what’s the minimum thing to go-live … hold this as a meta-frame as you sprint … my examples are #foresight and #Innovation #lastconf

The visual recordings by @lynnecazaly were done using the iPad Brushes app. I have downloaded the app and now I just need to brush up (no pun intended) my skills. Thanks Lynne for the inspiration to try visually recording my notes.

Thanks to the organisers, Craig and Ed for putting together this great event. Snaps!

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