Session “How Agile and Lean Changed My Organization” at OOP Conference

At the OOP Conference 2012 in Munich I presented another version of my session “How Agile and Lean Changed My Organization” (in German, called “Wie Agil und Lean meine Organisation veränderte“). This was actually the outcome of the 2nd iteration of a previous version.

Here are the slides (in German):

I got lots of feedback regarding my previous version, which led to several changes:

I used slides, instead of tickets. In the last version, I tried to figure out what content would work out. With the feedback I received, I refined my selection of content, and finally decided to boost the message by supporting it with images on slides.

I said more about it-agile, less about other companies. In the last version, I introduced Agile Management Innovations like pull principle, slack, open space, etc. with examples in companies like Google, Gore, Semco, etc. The feedback I got was: “I thought you were talking about your company, your experiences?” Guilty as charged. So I told more about it-agile and how they used Agile Management Innovations.

I named the techniques Agile Management Innovations, instead of just management innovations. It seems to be a more appropriate name, since those techniques are management innovations derived from Agile contexts. (Well, actually they are derived from Agile and Lean contexts, but Agile and Lean Management Innovations is just too long.) I’ll describe the name and what it stands for in detail in a dedicated blog post in the near future.

I refined the list of Agile Management Innovations I talked about. Those were

  • pull principle
  • mentorship
  • peergroups
  • employees as shareholders
  • teams
  • selforganization
  • konsent
  • open space
  • slack

I hope to write about each of them more in this blog over time, like I did with slack.

I described my personal connection to the topic. Hence there’s slide 3 where you can see me as a German navy maat (a military rank, equivalent to a petty officer in most other navies) :)

Here are the books I recommended in this session:

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Read on the reasons, why Semco’s management innovations are actually working.

The Future of Management
Find out why management innovations kick ass and are the future. With case studies of Whole Foods, Gore, and Google.

[Update: Participants’ feedback was a 1.8 (on a scale from 1 to 5). That’s a ‘very good’ with a tendency towards ‘excellent’. 35 out of 38 would recommend this session.]
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About Bernd Schiffer

Bernd Schiffer is consultant, trainer and coach for Agile Software Development in Melbourne, Australia. Learn more about him on his personal homepage, have a look at his company Bold Mover, or contact him on Twitter, Google+, Facebook, XING or LinkedIn.

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