FLOWCON '19

Speaker pitch
The problem with many agile transformations is that existing methods and frameworks treat
everyone the same. They make no distinction between startups and scaleups, between
disruptive innovative ideas versus existing successful products. But starting new teams and
scaling up innovation is more important than ever. The key to a successful agile transformation
is applying different practices in different stages of the business lifecycle. What works for a new
product does not work for a mature one, and vice versa. In this talk, we will nosedive into the
major good practices for business leaders and product teams, from the moment they have an
innovative idea to the day they will scale it up (or screw it up). Your agile transformation
depends on product lifecycles, the innovation vortex, and the innovation funnel.

The topics include the Business Lifecycle, Problem/Solution Fit, Product/Market Fit, Minimum
Viable Products, Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, Growth Hacking, Lean Experiments,
OKRs, North Star Metric, Innovation Vortex, Empathy Maps, Lean Personas, Jobs To Be Done,
Journey Mapping, Innovation Funnels, and more.

Why did we choose it ?
To be honest, we didn't choose it, but we did choose to welcome Jurgen at Flowcon. We like the way Jurgen talk about what happen or can happen in the real life. He doesn't talk about shinny things that you can't really do, but you will be able to apply a few options, may be not on December 13th, but clearly not in 2021.

Speaker pitch
As a software engineering team, we want to solve complex business problems in the most efficient way possible. We invest a lot in technology to improve our team flow and try to make our technology process sustainable. We’ve got quite compulsive about automation and autonomy in achieving this. However, we are still tribal creatures that require tribal safety. Which means that if we want to make our technology process sustainable, we must also invest in people. For that, we need to tackle social-technical complexity in the heart of our team.
In this session, Evelyn and Kenny will introduce you to the concept of social-technical systems. We will explain what social-technical complexity we are facing when building software to improve our team flow. How you can get a sense of the type of complexity you’re dealing with by using the Cynefin framework. Cynefin can aid your decision making process by helping you make less biased decisions on how to approach your software development flow with your team. Finally, we’ll show you how visual collaboration tools like EventStorming and many others that can help you visualise complexity. You will leave this session knowing how to start tackling social-technical complexity in your team. Making sure you create a sustainable technology process for your team flow!
Why did we choose it ?
We like Conway's law as we like social-technical complexity. It's about creating bridges between practices like organization and craftswomanship.

Speaker pitch
As Agile becomes more mainstream, leaders and managers are increasingly deciding to establish Agile Transformations to deliver organisational improvement. However, the imposition of Agile methods and practices as ready-made solutions is like putting a new patch on an old garment - a superficial fix which will ultimately make things worse. Instead, leaders and managers should be choosing Engagement Models, with which they can align people to discovering what changes need to be made. In this way, organisational improvement can become outcome-oriented, continuous and fully participatory.

Why did we choose it ?
Because this session will give you a good overview of what change can be with a kanban thinking approach. Karl will also highlight a few models/practices to further deep dive.

Speaker pitch
Where we are seeing more and more individual and team level learning and continuous improvement in organizations, improvements at the higher levels still tend to pose significant challenges. We learn as a team and learn how to be a team, but when we reach the borders of our team and have to deal with more complex systems involving people from our ecosystem and even sometimes from people outside our ecosystem, many improvement practices break down and don't lead to sustainable results. At the same time, the bigger and more complex our solutions become, the more we need to be able to secure improvement at all levels in the organization.
In this talk, Ben Linders will explore what we can do to increase our understanding of systematic problems at higher levels in organizations, and how to use that to improve the performance and agility of organizations. He will show how we can apply techniques like system/multi-team retrospectives and systems thinking to get improvement going at a level of two higher than the team, and present the benefits that this can bring to teams and organizations as a whole.

Why did whe choose it ?
Because continuous improvment often means retrospective at team level. More and more, we think that we need to figure out how to get continuous improvment at an organisation level. That's why we asked Ben to raise the flag and explain what is his vision about learning at scale.

Speaker pitch
I'm hosting a collaborative workshop to get different points of view about this question (introduction talk 25 mn + collaborative workshop 25mn).

Why did we choose it ?
Because "Business agility" is a new trend used with different meaning in different context. We'd like to understand if we should focus more on it aka learn more, or if we should better forget about it. Christophe will be your host leader because he won't tell you what to think, he will more facilitate an open discussion.

This workshop is more an advanced session for people already aware about business agility.

Speaker pitch
Laurent Morisseau et Pablo Pernot (aussi auteurs de Kanban, l'approche en flux pour l'entreprise agile, chez Dunod), animeront un atelier sur l'entreprise agile, la culture et l'alignement.

Au travers d'un regard sur des archétypes d'organisation et leurs caractéristiques, ils nous proposeront dans un premier temps une grille de lecture pour identifier ceux qui sont dysfonctionnels et à quel niveau.

Sur la base de cette analyse, nous allons nous projeter dans un deuxième temps sur la dynamique que nous pourrions accompagner. Deux types de solutions seront évoquées pour une entreprise dysfonctionnelle : une revitalisation, lorsqu’il s’agit de ne pas changer sa nature (sa mission, son identité, ses convictions), mais de redevenir fonctionnelle ; Une reforme, un changement de nature, quand il s’agit de se repenser. projetons-nous sur la dynamique que nous pourrions accompagner.

Pourquoi nous l'avons choisi ?
Parce que nous souhaitions une session de type intimiste avec Laurent et Pablo. Le format petite salle vous permettra d’interagir facilement et de creuser un des thèmes de leur livre à savoir l'entreprise agile et ses archétypes. La lecture du livre n'est pas un préalable à la participation à cette session.