Should we retire Accountability & Commitment and choose a better alternative?

In most organisations, the current practice of Accountability & Commitment is tied hand in glove with the iron triangle of traditional project management.
Such practice is of no help when dealing with complex problems, and its results fall short of expectations, and even when everyone believes they have done a good job it can leave teams, managers, and customers disappointed, confused and cornered.
To bring Accountability & Commitment into the 3rd millennium and make them fit for the complexity of modern challenges we need to cross a philosophical schism, embrace new thinking, and adopt a different approach.
With insights from Human Complexity and the Promise Theory, this session reveals the root of the limitations of the current practice of Accountability & Commitment and explores a modern alternative better suited for the 3rd millennium.

How to make Cross-team Collaboration really work for you

Software and digital products development often require collaboration across multiple teams. But how to collaborate ensuring a fast flow of work across teams and a frictionless and enjoyable collaboration?

Many searched the solution in scaled frameworks, but they tend to scale the processes instead of the effectiveness.
While the two most effective techniques and organizational designs for this goal, Teams Topologies and Feature Teams, both claim to be the best and only solution regardless of your specific context and circumstances.

Based on my hands-on experience of over 20 years I will present the pros and cons of both, with a list of criteria that allow you to decide what to do when, based on your context and circumstances.

How F1 teams crack technical debt. How technical debt can kill your business.

Formula One is a multibillion-dollar business, an entertainment, and the pinnacle of the motorsport competition. F1 teams face incredible pressure to deliver. Nonetheless, at every race they manage to deliver and improve at the same time, cracking the technical debt and pursuing technical excellence.

Whereas many organisations struggle to find the time to do the same under the pressure of their delivery commitments.

This session presents 4 real-life scenarios and for each one, an epic-fail story detrimental to the business and a success story from an F1 team, with lessons learned.

From the Pit Lane to Project Lane: what businesses can learn from sport

In a world of constant change and uncertainty, organisations and teams often struggle to deliver on promises based on upfront estimates and plans.
Sports like Formula One and Team Table Tennis leverage historical and real-time data to shape a race strategy or to find the best team formation.

In this session, we will discover how sports can bridge the gap between upfront estimates and planning and no estimates. We will discover how organisations and teams can use sport-inspired approaches, like real-time projections, to manage the work to do, keep customers informed, and manage up the expectations on the plans, estimates and status reports.

Target audience:
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Tech leads, project and programme managers, delivery managers, product and business managers, and everyone asking for or making or delivering promises on the work to do.

Level:
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practitioners to experts

Learning Objectives:
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In this session, we will discover
a) how sports like Formula One and Team Table Tennis can bridge the gap between upfront estimates and planning and no estimates leveraging historical and real-time data
b) how organisations and teams can use sport-inspired approaches, like real-time projections, to manage the work to do, keep customers informed, and manage up the expectations on the plans, estimates and status reports.

This is important when the team or the organisation is facing the unexpected or is navigating in uncharted waters

Format and length
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60 minutes. Frontal presentation with Q&A

Keywords:
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estimates, planning, promises, uncertainty, change, real-time projections

Session history:
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Content and examples are well-experienced, known, and understood by the presenter. This session has not been presented before.

Navigating Uncertainty: keeping customer promises in a volatile world

How can teams make and keep meaningful promises to customers, in the presence of uncertainties, unknowns and unforeseeable change?
As individuals every day we manage to successfully live our lives forward, deciding, acting, and doing, without knowing the future.
But at work, we often find ourselves trapped by the dependency on forecasts and control, following approaches rooted in a distant past we don’t question anymore.
By leveraging insights from Complexity Science and the Promise Theory, I will present an alternative set of practices to help teams consistently deliver on their promises to customers in a world marked by constant change and uncertainty.

Learning objectives
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The attendees of this session will learn:
a) the limits of the current approaches for delivering on promises to customers in a world marked by constant change and uncertainty.
b) the key practices and elements of the paradigm shift that allow teams to deliver on their promises to customers in a world marked by constant change and uncertainty.
c) the underlying theory from Complexity Science and Promise Theory.

All this marks the shift from predictive and prescriptive approaches to an empirical and invitation-based approach

Target Audience: Technical and Team Leaders/Managers, Team members, delivery orchestrators, facilitators, change agents (tech/agile coaches, scrum masters, etc), PMOs

Keywords: Risk, Uncertainty, VUCA, Complexity, Collaboration, Trust, Invitation, Promise theory.

Level:
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novice, practitioner

Session length and format:
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It is a 60 to 90-minute session.
This session is a frontal presentation that includes a Q&A and conversations facilitated by the presenter.

Previous session presentation (it had a different tile)
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- 2024: FlowCon France, Paris
- 2023: Agile Cambridge
- 2023: Agile 2023 (Scotland)
- 2023: Strategic Project and Portfolio Management (Prague)
- 2023: DevDays Europe & DevOps Pro Europe 2023 (Vilnius, Online)

From cosmos to chaos & Complexity-thinking: Why it's harder to predict projects than planets?

Innovation is once again accelerating as no other generation has experienced before, rendering the old playbook ineffective and invalidating the assumptions of the iron triangle and traditional Project Management.
Despite this, many companies and leaders remain trapped in an outdated paradigm.
Therefore while we can accurately predict the position of a planet in the sky 400 years from now, we cannot predict if and when certain projects will be completed.
Hadn't we already tackled this challenge in software development around 2000?

This session will explore what is Complexity, its origins, what can be done about it, and why many organisations are still refractory to Complexity-Thinking.
By the end of this session, you will be able to discriminate between Complex problems and ordered linear problems.
You will be equipped with heuristics, behaviours and principles of Complexity-Thinking to break free from the anxiety of control, intolerance of ambiguity and uncertainty, and desire for simple narratives and alluring promises, to tackle and thrive in everyday Complexity.

Target Audience:
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- business owners, tech and product leaders tackling the complexities of ever-accelerating change and exponential innovation, and
- team members, facilitators, managers, leaders
- those who got into Agile post-2010 and missed out on the real paradigm shift
- anyone having to make and keep promises to their customers in the presence of uncertainties, unknowns and unforeseeable change.

Level:
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novice with working experience on projects/product development initiatives.

Learning objectives
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By the end of this session, you will
a) have an overview of Complexity, its origins, and the reasons why many organisations are still refractory to Complexity-Thinking
b) be able to discriminate between Complex problems and ordered linear problems.
c) be equipped with heuristics, behaviours and principles of Complexity-Thinking to break free from the old paradigm to tackle and thrive in everyday Complexity

Keywords:
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Wicked Problems, VUCA, Complexity, Complexity-Thinking, Complexity Science, Human Complexity , System-Thinking, Agility, Resilience, Adaptability

Presentation length & format
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60/75 minutes

Storytelling accompanied by a limited number of supporting slides, followed by group activities, open conversations and Q&A with the audience.
For larger crowds, questions posting and voting will be used to prioritise questions and topics that interest the largest portion of the audience.

Previous presentation iterations
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- Two dry-runs
- One presentation to company leaders, managers and sr team members

Based on my work with these two books: https://leanpub.com/b/tackleelusiveproblemsandthriveinthebleeding-edgetechindustry

Team Topologies Vs Feature Teams? A pragmatic approach that bridges the divide

A fast flow of work and seamless collaboration across multiple teams are essential for software and digital product development.
Team Topologies and Feature Teams have emerged as popular approaches, each capable of ensuring a frictionless enjoyable collaboration and a fast flow of work.
Each claims universal applicability.
This session delves beyond sales pitches and hype, and offers a pragmatic comparison of both models, based on over 20 years of real-world experience.
You'll gain insights into the trade-offs and the criteria to decide your approach based on your specific context and circumstances.

Target Audience:
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Technical and Team Leaders/Managers, Team members, delivery orchestrators, facilitators, change agents (tech/agile coaches, scrum masters, etc.)

Learning objectives
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a) a pragmatic comparison of both models, Team Topologies and Feature Teams
b) the Feature Teams approach transcending Conway's Law, its pros and cons
c) the Team Topologies approach embracing Conway's Law, its pros and cons
d) a set of trade-offs and criteria to choose, mix and match the two approaches based on your specific context and circumstances

Level: expert
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Prerequisites:
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- experience working in a cross-functional team under multiple different settings
- experience and some awareness of the impacts of different settings on the planning and coordination of the work and on the effectiveness of the collaboration

Session length and format:
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75 minutes

This session is a short frontal presentation with several Q&A and inclusive conversations facilitated by the presenter.

Keywords:
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Cross-team Collaboration, Cross-team dependencies, Conway's Law, Team Topologies, Feature Teams, Shared work, flow, delays, hand-offs

Previous presentation iterations
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- 2023: Agile Manchester
- 2023: DevDays Europe & DevOps Pro Europe, Day-1 Closing Keynote

Reference material
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The content of the session has been discussed at length with Bas Vodde co-author of Feature Teams, with Matthew Skelton co-author of Team, with Jon Kern co-author of the Agile Manifesto and many other experienced tech leads.
The content of the session has also been discussed in this series of long posts:

- https://www.smharter.com/blog/2022/08/08/agile-cross-team-collaboration-how-tos-long/
- https://www.smharter.com/blog/2022/11/21/transcending-agile-cross-team-collaboration-with-shared-work/
- https://www.smharter.com/blog/2024/01/01/when-how-to-move-effectively-tasks-responsibilities-outside-the-team/