Talks and workshops

I have done quite a few different talks and workshops during my career and here are a few that have proven popular and appreciated.

Summary

Title	Type	Length
The Bungsu Story	Inspirational presentation how agile and lean saving a hospital in Indonesia	1 hour
Kanban in Action - a kanban introduction	This is an inspirational and educational presentation on how kanban can help you and your team to be even better	1-2 hours
Agile - principles over practices	I’ve found that many teams and organisations are doing agile practices but don’t get much out of it, because we don’t fully understand the principles it’s built on. This presentation dives into the principles behind agile (and lean)	1-2 hours
Kanban in Action - improve my kanban board	In this talk, we examine numerous ways that your board can be changed and improved to help you and improve your work	1-2 hours
Kanban in Action - process improvements now! And forever!	This is a workshop where we not only learn the basics of kanban and lean but also start to build out a board that we can start using tomorrow and then forevermore	3 hours
Kanban in Action - upstream work	In this workshop, we examine the earlier phases of development and see how lean principles and kanban can help us to improve flow.	2-3 hours
Serverless - What? Why? How?	In this presentation I will give you an overview of the next paradigm shift for developers - serverless. We will see how we can move faster with these capabilities. There will be demos	1-2 hours

The Bungsu Story - inspirational presentation

When you have no operational permit, no customers and the very building you are operating in falls in - most organisations give up. Not so with the Salvation Army hospital in Bandung Indonesia - they decided to try to save the hospital and I was very fortunate to help them in their journey.

Me?! A lean/agile coach. A westerner with little to no knowledge in hospital management and operation.

We started to apply the principles of kanban and in doing so turned the hospital around into something amazing. Transforming not only the organisation but also some lives among the people in the staff.

While working with the hospital in this way I gained deeper insight and knowledge about the principles of lean and kanban means and how they can be applied to make us more and more effective. And save us from disaster too…

This talk is now turned into a book that you can get here.

Outcomes

Inspiration through a story about hardship, perseverance, friendship, love and victory
Knowing the foundational principles of kanban and how they can help in any kind of process and situation
Some practical knowledge on how to set and work with kanban boards

Audience

This can be enjoyed by anyone in your organisation. It is a great way to introduce agile and lean, on a concept level to other parts of the organisation, than you normally talk agile in.

Length

This is a 30 min to a 1-hour presentation. Often I have a Q&A afterwards around the coffee-tables.

Kanban in Action - a kanban introduction

In my consultancy, I’ve come to realize that most clients/teams I’ve coached don’t care too much about the theory. This presentation, therefore, takes a standpoint in the practical parts. I will also mimic my experience with most teams I’ve introduced kanban too, and do the introduction in small iterations. This means that the presentation also is a template for anyone that will need to introduce kanban to others.

This is a one-hour presentation that suits any audience from 2 to 300. It is fun and engaging but ties strongly back to the foundational principles of kanban.

Outcomes

Overview of how kanban can help you improve your process to more effectively deliver value
Knowing the foundational principles of kanban and how they can help
Practical knowledge of how to build and manage boards for teams
Inspiration to go on and start your improvement journey - from now until better than you ever imagined!

Audience

This presentation is useful for almost anyone but most examples that we are using stems from system development and maintenance. It can easily be tweaked into something that suits your particular needs and situation.

Length

This is best as a 1-hour presentation - longer than that it is better to run as a workshop (see below)

Agile - principles over practices

I’ve found that many teams and organisations are doing agile practices but don’t get much out of it, because we don’t fully understand the principles it’s built on.

This leads to us following procedures that don’t make sense to us, not getting the most out of what agile can give and that we see no or little improvement over time.

This presentation dives into the principles behind agile (and lean) to help us understand how these principles can be turned into practices to support and help us in our search for practices that is suited for us.

Outcomes

Overview of how agile and lean can help you improve your process to more effectively deliver value
Knowing the foundational principles of agile and lean, and how they can help you where you are
Inspiration to go on and start your improvement journey - from now until better than you ever imagined!

Audience

This presentation is good for teams that of any kind (not only IT team, not only development) that just started their agile journey, or are just about to start using agile methods.

It can also be used as a conversation starter between an agile team and people around the team that needs help understanding the principles the team are working from.

Length

I usually do this as a 1-2 hour presentation, but very frequently follow up with a discussion / open space or hands-on coaching around a team board.

Kanban in Action - improve my kanban board

Through my consultancy, I’ve met many companies in different fields of work (from internet startup, through big banks and even hospitals in Indonesia). In each of these settings, I have seen some similarities and common challenges.

I have therefore collected a long list (36 and growing) of practices that I keep coming back to in my recommendations and while helping teams and organisations.

This session is very practical but ties back to the theories behind kanban, lean and agile as the need arises. Most of the tips focus on one team / one board, some of the practices have implications and benefits for the larger organisation.

The session can be run in several different modes:

As a pure presentation where I pick my own favourites (most boring)
As an interactive big room presentation where audience votes for the items they like the most (require access to www.heroku.comm, interactive and interest-driven)
As a master class where I coach one team around their board and other people listen in / watches us go through some of the items on the list that the team likes the best. (great for that one team and might be the things that the others doesn’t really want to see)

Outcomes

A lot of practical tips on how to make the board and the practices around it ever better
Ideas and inspiration by learning from examples of how we could do our work differently
A wide range of the problem, situation and solutions to common challenges for the kanban team
Through the example a solid understanding of what the principles of kanban, lean and agile means in practices.

Audience

This presentation is intended for teams that already are using agile methods and wants some inspiration to take it to the next level. Since the content is audience driven we can adjust it to the level that benefits the team the most.

Length

1 to 3 hours - depending on the audience input.

Kanban in Action - process improvements now! And forever

This workshop will teach you the foundations of kanban in a very practical and entertaining way. Kanban can help you improve your process to more effectively deliver value - no matter what process you are working with now, or how good you are in doing it.

Kanban is just a few basic principles and practices - but the implications of them are hugely powerful, and can change not only your team but in the long run help and improve the entire organisation around you. You will learn how to discover, little by little, how to improve your ways of working to something better than you could imagine, through the evolutionary approach to process improvements.

Kanban is “just” our guide - not a framework that tells you details on how and what. For this reason, much of the content of the workshop will be driven by your needs, questions and context. This is better than me giving you a rigid framework that most likely will not suit your particular need.

Come with an open mind and any kind of process - leave with practical tips, know-how and ideas that will help you improve. Tomorrow, and forever!

Outcomes

Overview of how kanban can help you improve your process to more effectively deliver value
Knowing the foundational principles of kanban and how they can help
Practical knowledge of how to build and manage boards for teams
Practical knowledge in how to handle up/downstream processes such as ideas etc. And how to organise that
Inspiration to go on and start your improvement journey - from now until better than you ever imagined!

Audience

This workshop is a great kick-off for your team that is just starting using agile methods or can also be used to reboot your work after reorgs, new projects etc. It is fun, inclusive and interactive.

Length

At least 3 hours, I have done it full days as well

Kanban in Action - upstream work

This workshop focuses on some of the practices that happen before work hits a development team. Often these parts are left out to some poor product owner to just figure out and keep track of. But in true lean spirit, we should consider the entire workflow from idea to production, from a customer perspective.

I have gathered a few of the practices that I’ve come to appreciate and got great value from during my agile consultancy since 2005. I draw experiences from many different clients in many different fields - ranging from startups, via banks all the way to hospitals in Indonesia.

Outcomes

Overview of how kanban can help you improve your process to more effectively deliver value
Knowing the foundational principles of kanban and how they can help
Practical knowledge of how to build and manage boards for teams
Practical knowledge in how to handle up/downstream processes such as ideas etc. And how to organise that

Audience

This workshop is useful to connect the product team (product owner etc) closer to a development team, or for a product team by themselves.

Length

1 to 3 hours

Serverless - Why?! What?! How?

Serverless is the new superpower in IT. In this talk, we will take a look at why serverless give us superpowers. We will check out, briefly, how to wield this new power. But with great powers comes some responsibility and we will briefly checkout how might we need to change our ways and our code to get the most out of the serverless superpower.

Outcomes

Understanding of what serverless is
Understanding of how it can help us to move faster
An orientation of the AWS platform, 10000 feets
Some demos with Claudia Js

Audience

This is an overview of what serverless is but there will be code as well, nothing too complicated though.

Length

1 - 2 hours