How to measure Business Value - a pragmatic approach to metrics in a complex environment

With Agile the focus is always on Value, but how to measure it? Simple metrics like lead time and the like are easy to measure but unreliable approximations, so instead we turn to more and more complex metrics like NPS, but are these truly more effective?

In this talk we will discuss the huge caveat when using empiricism that nobody seems to notice. We will explore the consequences it has and how being aware of it makes us better at measuring stuff, the right way.
I will show how, by applying an Agile approach, we can radically reconsider the way we measure things, something which presents a huge opportunity for your organisation.

Takeaways:
- why empiricism is not the superpower it is made out to be.
- why grand metrics are a terrible idea in a complex system.
- a new approach to measuring value effectively.

A Systemic Approach to Organisation Design and Change Management

130 years since Taylor took the first steps in our quest to figure out how to design organisations and we are still struggling. It is time for us all to take the lead - no more excuses! The world is waiting.

In this talk, I will describe how we need to stop talking about frameworks, manifestos and the newest fad. Together we will explore the basic principles that are the foundation of all those frameworks and methodologies we are so much in awe of.

We will discover how to use them and how to start developing our own frameworks and methodologies rooted in our own particular context.

Join me in discovering what Agile was always supposed to be: an extremely effective approach that is liberating and lots of fun!

Takeaways:
- getting back to basics - what are the essential principles of Agile.
- how to use these principles effectively, at both the team and organisation level.
- how understanding these principles allows you to break out of frameworks and create your own.
- how Agile is not about of-the-shelve solutions but about learning!

Leadership in an Agile World and the need to rethink how we learn

Did you know a Scrum Master is an Agile leader? That change agents are that too? But what is a leader - any leader - really?

In this talk, we will discuss why learning to become a leader is such a challenge. We will discuss how the result is that our leaders are often winging it and how this results in rampant impostor syndrome.

We will explore how this struggle stems from the way we learn and how by adopting a different kind of learning, we can recover the lost art of leadership.

Takeaways:
- how our current perspective on learning is a product of scientific management - precisely the thing that Agile is trying to change.
- how management skills have nothing to do with leadership. And how understanding this fact helps to involve managers more effectively.
- how the way we learn is the first step towards empiricism and an Agile approach.
- how leadership is really about helping others.

The Mental State of Flow - Our Evolutionary Superskill To Deal With Complexity

Have you ever done something where you felt like you were in a higher state of awareness,
your focus sharp like a knife, and time seemed to stand still? Imagine you could harness that
same feeling in your work, working with your Scrum Team?
Even cooler, imagine you could measure that feeling, and use it to guide you in just about all the organisational choices you make at work?
That feeling is the Mental State of Flow. Using insights from my work as an ecologist I will show you how over millions of years we humans have evolved an instinctive feeling for Flow, as a way to deal with complexity.
We will discuss how this makes Flow the perfect alternative for our struggles with
dashboards, assessments, metrics and the like. And how Flow is an example of the new kind of tools we need to make sense of complexity and find our way as change agents.
Using examples from my experience as a change agent, I will show you how to use Flow at all levels of the organisation, providing you with a step-by-step approach to start using Flow in your work, and a sense-making matrix to help you make choices using Flow.
I hope to inspire you to join me in finding other patterns in nature to help us deal with
complexity!

I've done this talk at Agile Cambridge, Agile Tour Vilnius and Scrum Day Europe. Every iteration is different as I integrate feedback and learnings.

How to Cultivate a Mental State of Flow

Last year I introduced the idea of the mental state of Flow as our superpower to deal with complexity. Building on that idea, in this talk I will take you deeper into what the mental state of Flow is.

We will explore the chemistry and psychology of Flow and how many of the techniques we use in Agile promote Flow.

Finally, using my own experience with Flow, I will show you how you yourself together with your team can also start wielding Flow so you too can too become Flow Masters!

Takeaways:
- a deeper understanding of the mental state of flow,
- Flow in Agile,
- steps to discover flow for yourself.
- how to use Flow with your team.

Deep Work - our Secret Weapon to Defeat AI

AI seems to be taking over the world and many people, even developers, are worried about their future.
I am here to tell you we humans all have an ability that AI cannot match - Deep Work.
In this talk, we will discuss what Deep Work is and how to cultivate it. We will see how in our linear world, where everything happens along a line of logic, Deep Work allows us to make creative leaps which seem to defy logic.
Together we will also discover how Deep Work and Agile go hand in hand.

Takeaways:
- what is Deep Work and how to develop it,
- using Deep Work to make you better at your work.
- how Deep Work is essential for an Agile approach.