“First day back to work after the conference and so many highs from #Agile2019, so much learning my head is spinning, but in a good way. Where do I start on recalling and applying the amazing lessons learned? How do I chart my way forward? The journey continues..."
This was my post the first day back to work after the Agile Conference. I had been on a high from the fact that the event was being hosted in one of my favourite cities, Washington D.C. but that, in no way, compared to the highs that awaited me.
During this five-day conference, I felt fully immersed in a community of thought leaders and like-minded thinkers and I was as comfortable engaging full on in deep and insightful conversations, as I was just observing, listening and taking it all in. It was quite humbling to listen to some of the world’s best Agilists, and mentally, on my first day back, ‘to my reality’, I was still reeling from the experience.
But…let’s backtrack a little.
Pre-Conference Preparations
After learning I was selected to attend this conference, I immediately went into preparation mode. What did that mean? For this trip, it was not to pick outfits or pack my bags, but instead to carefully review the long list of sessions available and the content being covered by each. After all, I had to be strategic because quite frankly, everything looked great. I wanted to hear from everyone. But, knowing that it wasn’t realistic, I had to think about what I really wanted to leave the conference with and that’s what guided my selections.
Conference Starts…Time to Jump in
As soon as I stepped into the hall, I quickly caught the infectious energy in the room. Registration was quick, and as I made my way to breakfast, I couldn’t help but marvel at the planning, organisation and level of detail that went into making the event a success.
There were over 20 tracks (themes) covering a multitude of insightful topics, touching all the different sides of Agile – the people, the technical know-hows, even Agile at scale. It was all arranged in such a way that you didn’t feel you were sacrificing one session or track for another, when you selected your sessions. It was certainly a feat, which gave me many lessons, but I’ll share my top 5 highlights with you.
My 5 Most Memorable Moments
1. The first keynote, “How to Manage your attention in a world of distraction?”, was a fitting introduction for the week. Research on how to increase productivity centred around better management of our time, energy and attention. As participants, we were challenged to identify the three things we wanted to accomplish by attending the Conference and these were my goals:
- Better understanding of undertaking a digital transformation using an Agile approach
- Working knowledge of DevOps
- My next steps with Agile
2. “The Power of Design Sprints for Product Teams” was an interactive session, where we worked in groups, simulating a sprint, to design a product to alleviate back pain. The activity was both entertaining and informative and it got my creative juice flowing. The instructor gave us some guiding principles, like: getting started is better than getting it right; individual brainstorming over group brainstorming; and, questions to consider upfront, such as “How will this idea fail?”, forcing us to think about the important aspects to cover to increase the chances of a successful delivery. I came away with a much better appreciation for a design sprint and how it can be used to solve complex problems iteratively.
3. The session on DevOps was eye opening and insightful. I used to think that DevOps was just automating the development pipeline so that releasing code to production was a smoother process, with less room for errors. Turns out, it’s that and so much more. DevOps entails not just that technical piece but all the activities the business should be doing to get ready for the release of a feature or product. This can include your marketing team, supply and logistics team, legal team, distribution team… just about anyone in your organisation that has a role to play in your product or service. DevOps is, simply, ensuring that from the code to the final delivery to the customer is a smoother process.
4. The sponsors’ booths were great –free stuff is awesome but learning how other companies like BP and Lockhead Martin, who may not be considered as typical “Agile Conference” sponsors, scaled Agile, it gave me a whole new perspective. The latter had over 3,000 employees on Agile teams and has no intention of slowing down.
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| From Left: Tricia Broderick and Malikah Peart at Agile 2019 |
One of the things she reinforced for me was the need to be gentle with yourself and your organisation. Transformation is not easy and being the leaders to bring the level of change needed for an agile transformation is a hard, frustrating and oftentimes, it can feel like an impossible task. But on the other side of that is the opportunity to help an organisation achieve great things.
My 1 Let Down
With every experience, there are highs and lows.
The biggest pain point I had for the entire conference was that the description of the sessions did not always translate to what was presented in the session. Some sessions were plugs for the presenters and their companies and at other times, they were just completely different from how it was described. I found myself leaving some of the sessions I selected, when they didn’t meet my expectation, to hurriedly join another.
All in all…
Overall, #Agile2019 was a tremendously memorable experience. It allowed me to accomplish each of the three objectives I had from the first day and then some. It gave me an opportunity to learn more about myself, my colleagues and reinforced and validated the next steps of my journey. I left excited and reinvigorated yearning to not just learn more but help the teams I support to learn more.
How do you seek information to grow more in your knowledge of Agile and its applications? Share your responses in the comments.
ABOUT MALIKAH
Malikah is a Senior Project Lead at Jamaica’s largest financial group. She works primarily to enable and support self-managing agile teams. She is a graduate of Nova Southeastern University (MBA) and the University of the West Indies Mona (BA). She enjoys reading and is currently on book 44 of 50 for 2019.
To connect with Malikah, follow her on LinkedIn.
I had to do a search of myself online. Typically, that is not an enjoyable experience but I came across this post. Despite feeling like a lifetime ago, my heart needed this so much. I truly hope you are doing well.
ReplyDeleteThank you!