Jurgen’s all new talk is built upon what he’s learned from running his three businesses, and researching and writing his latest book, Startup, Scaleup, Screwup. He’s seen how top companies in Europe innovate, even in the face of rapid growth.

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 examine some of 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.

Jurgen was rated #40 management & leadership expert in the world, one of the Top 100 leadership speakers, and #6 most influential person in Agile; his blog was rated #3 most popular Agile blog in the world; and his books are considered best-sellers.

With his company Agility Scales, Jurgen is inventing the future of organizational agility. You may know one of his books: Management 3.0, which describes the role of the manager in agile organizations; How to Change the World, which describes a supermodel for change management; Managing for Happiness, which offers you practical ideas to engage workers, improve work, and delight clients.

Since he last visited 1st Conference, he has written Startup, Scaleup, Screwup. It contains an equal mix of observations collected from some of the best companies in the world, as well as practices that help business leaders and entrepreneurs navigate innovation as their companies grow and scale. Jurgen will also discuss how this ties into the Heart of Agile.

Jurgen will also be teaching his 2 day Shiftup workshop in Melbourne on 2-3 March. This will be one of only 2 times ever that Jurgen will teach this course in Australia. So don’t miss this opportunity!

Heart of Agile was a response to the “over decoration” of the principles of agility, and was developed when Dr Alistair Cockburn was in Australia in 2016. Since then it’s grown across continents, with major companies such as the Royal Bank or Scotland using HoA as a basis for transformation to working with greater agility.

Even though it helps those new to agility and those in roles not in software, it’s not just for beginners!

“I heard Alistair Cockburn talking about going back to the basics, that Heart with those four powerful words: Collaborate, Deliver, Reflect, Improve. That provided me with a big aha moment. It challenged the way I was teaching, applying and living agility. Since then, the Heart of Agile has become my driver at a personal and professional level. It is a great way of explaining agile values to teams in all environments, as well as bringing it to executives”.

Soledad will share her insights and latest developments with the Heart of Agile. She will also be involved with the Deeper Learning Sessions at 1st Conference, as well as running a Heart of Agile course in Melbourne on 26-27 February.

Soledad is the Managing Director of Heart of Agile Europe and Director Global Operations for Heart of Agile. She’s also an agile consultant, coach and trainer with more than 20 years of experience. She has given keynotes and orientations on the Heart of Agile on several continents, using an informal and interactive presentation style. Originally from Argentina, she is currently based in Belgium. Sole is driven by her passion for helping organizations, teams and people to become better at their every day work.

Josephine will talk about the key conditions that underpin all effective teams and how you can build and strengthen them. She will share what she has learnt about building brilliant teams from her experience in leading them as well as drawing on decades of research in psychological science about what makes teams thrive and what makes them die. She will talk about how she has applied these principles in her own large scale transformation work at Telstra and other organisations and will answer questions about how to best coach teams to achieve amazing results. Importantly she will cover how we can measure effectiveness in teams in tangible ways, so that team members themselves can track progress and improve their team performance

Josephine is the Director of her business Doctor of Culture.

She helps businesses and entrepreneurs achieve greater revenue by creating business systems that are geared for growth. She helps clients identify which business systems are not geared for growth and shows them how to change them. She helps them change processes, tools, people and strategies to achieve bigger dreams in their business. By helping businesses find untapped potential in their people and systems, they are able to free up resources that can be used to help them grow and thrive. The results are more time for business owners, more value to customers and more engaged staff.

Cameron has channelled his deep experience in CEO leadership in the AFL, a thirty-year journey, having taken on some of the game's most difficult and daunting challenges. He has bounced back from personal and professional setbacks. In this closing address, he will share his system of resilience, a means of 'being brave'.

Cameron is the founder of Design CEO and has been helping leaders and aspiring leaders to realise their potential from his base, right here in Melbourne.

As coach, mentor and teacher, his approach is built on the empathy of someone who has deep experience with leadership, including the wisdom that can only come from the need to give of yourself as a leader.

He wants people to reach for their pens, writing down quotes, taking photos of the slides and models that are presented, and telling the stories and learnings to friends and families.

As a coach, mentor and teacher, my approach is built on the empathy of someone who has deep experience with leadership, including the wisdom that can only come from the need to give of yourself as a leader.

Our revised format for 2020 centres on facilitated sessions focused on the 4 parts of Dr Alistair Cockburn’s Heart of Agile.

• Collaborate - Collaboration Cards, Jordan Patterson and Richard Parton.

• Deliver - Goals and Measures, Phil Gadzinski and Carla Khoo.

• Reflect - Coaching Questions, Emily Jaksch and Sue Hgg.

• Improve - Solutions Focus, Daamon Parker and Alejandra Barbosa Durand.

Curated by Craig Brown, Soledad Pinter and the facilitators, each of the 4 x 45 minute, deeper learning workshops, will be led by experienced practitioners in lean and agile thinking and practice.

Unlike previous years, you will stay together with a group and move together through sessions on Collaboration, Delivery, Reflection and Improvement. They will allow you to think and understand more deeply, the most important principles about how agility and lean thinking is useful in work.

The sessions are not about listening to someone talk at the front of the room, but rather that the participants co-create meaning through interaction and communication with each other.

Session Material:

Craig is curating the facilitated sessions for 1st Conference, developing them in collaboration wit the facilitators.

His roles over the past 15 years have involved leading project management teams, projects and programs, consulting, training and coaching in a variety of aspects of project delivery. Most recently Craig was a program manager on Telstra’s Customer Advocacy journey, working with culture change, Net Promoter Scores, and lean-style customer centred process improvements. Until recently, he was the Vice President of Collaboration with Aconex.

Apart from the disciplines of project and portfolio management Craig is also an Agile and Lean enthusiast with a focus on the collaboration and cultivation aspects of agile practices and methods. Craig runs the Melbourne Scrum User group and also runs meetup groups for Agile business analysis and agile project managers where he helps people navigate their way from traditional roles and thinking to modern ones.

Craig also co-created the LAST conferences, community driven events focusing on lean, agile and systems thinking.

After her wonderful talk at 1st Conference 2019, Jordana Patterson will be back to facilitate a Deeper Learning session. Ask her for her insights into how the principles of agility apply to fields outside the world of Software and IT.

Jordana has championed the adoption of Agile principles and mindsets in World Vision Australia’s Marketing Department over the last two years. Relatively new to Agile, she is continually learning new ways to help creative teams deliver better work and is passionate about helping teams discover better ways of working together.

As Marketing Operations Manager, Jordana has a broad and challenging remit. Her role is part process design, part operations, part budget management, part portfolio management and part team coach! In addition to being ‘all things Agile’ at World Vision, she can often be found chasing two mini monsters around the house, baking up a storm or barracking for her beloved St Kilda football club. She has worked at World Vision Australia for seven years.

Richard brings nearly twenty years’ experience in creating, delivering and supporting organisational transformation in a variety of sectors. He is the founder and organiser of the long-running Organisational Agility & Positive Psychology meetup group at the University of Melbourne – all about how people can apply the emerging science of Positive Psychology to create thriving, human-friendly workplaces. 

A background in HR, gives Emily a interesting viewpoint on the increase agility in the workplace. She also specialises in understanding a demographic of Australian society that will soon be the largest percentage of people in the workplace; The Millenials. Her speaking and coaching skills mean that she will be a great guide for you to navigate the topics that make up the Heart of Agile.

Sue has worked in roles in some of the most innovative companies in Melbourne. She’s also worked in one of the largest companies in Australia, helping them to embed agile principles in the organisation. This means that she is well versed in helping companies move from small to medium start-up size to bigger things, as well as helping more traditional organisations realise the value of agility via practice.

Daamon is currently an Agile Coach for the NBN. He describes himself as an Agile Coach, Mentor, Trainer, Listener, Gardener and Proud Dad! He has completed the Agile Master Class with Alistair Cockburn (twice) and runs the Melbourne Community Heart of Agile Meetup.

Phil is the Head of Business Advisory Southern at Elabor8 and is a Heart of Agile Method Guide

I hold deeply that agility requires a human centred, system wide approach where the ultimate goal is to make work better for people. To do this you need to understand why and how work happens in an organisation and plan, contextually, on how to enable leaders to create the space for people to work differently.

Enabled by uplifting peoples capability and remodelling the workforce for the modern digital age. My passion is helping people realise change starts with them and giving them the advice and support needed to make it happen at scale.

Carla is a Senior Project Manager at State Trustees. She is a certified ScrumMaster.

Carla is an empathetic, confident and results focused leader with over 18 years’ experience in finance, insurance and hospitality. Her skills include team leadership, strategic engagement, communications, project delivery, problem solving and Experience Design.

Alejandra is a passionate agilist with extensive experience driving Scrum, SAFe, Kanban, Squads and Lean in teams and organisations. With around 7 years of experience in IT,  and different business areas, she has had exposure to multiple agile implementations and large scale agility solutions in banking, telecommunications, consultancy and the not-for-profit sector. Alejandra is currently using her passion and experience to grow organisational capability in agile at Australian Red Cross.
When she is not working with teams you can find her walking along the beach, playing table tennis or travelling around.

Andy will be introducing speakers in the main Auditorium. He was a speaker at 1st Conference in 2016, and at several editions of LAST Conference in Melbourne, as well as organising the inaugural LAST Conference Sydney.

He is the Chief Technology Officer at Marketplacer – a global provider of marketplace platforms. With a background in digital businesses, Andy combines strong technology knowledge with commercial understanding. Andy has previously worked for News Corp, REA Group, iProperty Group and Australia Post leading product and technology development. He works in Agile environments and is passionate about developing and mentoring teams to build great products.