Sydney Workshops

Continuously Delivering Microservices using Docker and Friends

Full-day Workshop | 9:00am-5:00pm | $800

You’ve probably heard about the “Microservices” architectural style for building and deploying service-oriented software systems; perhaps you have even started creating Microservices. You’re also probably aware of how Docker has taken the DevOps world by storm. This one-day workshop will delve into the intersection of these concepts.

Learn how to achieve autonomy between delivery teams so they can safely build, test, and independently deploy Microservices to production.

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Sydney Workshop (full-day)

Continuously Delivering Microservices using Docker and Friends

with Clarence Bakirtzidis – Lead Consultant, ThoughtWorks

You’ve probably heard about the “Microservices” architectural style for building and deploying service-oriented software systems; perhaps you have even started creating Microservices. You’re also probably aware of how Docker has taken the DevOps world by storm. This one-day workshop will delve into the intersection of these concepts.

Learn how to achieve autonomy between delivery teams so they can safely build, test, and independently deploy Microservices to production.

This one-day technical workshop will provide a hands-on journey for participants around building, testing, and deploying Microservices with a Continuous Delivery focus. Docker will be used in the target environments for hosting Microservices in containers.

This workshop focuses more on the “How”, and less on the “What” and “Why” of Microservices.

What you will learn?
Attendees will gain an appreciation of the techniques involved to build, test, and deploy Microservices into production using Continuous Integration pipelines and container technologies. Suggested learning material will be provided for attendees with limited exposure to Microservices.

We will cover the following topics:

• Continuously building, testing, and deploying Microservices autonomously
• Testing Microservices and ensuring changes do not break dependent systems
• Deploying and scaling Microservices in a multi-host Docker environment
• Keeping different versions of Microservices running side-by-side
• Service discovery
• Operational concerns
• Future trends

Structure and audience
This workshop will be run as a series of hands-on exercises with a brief review of what Microservices are and their benefits. The target audience is Agile development teams including developers, architects, testers, operations, and anyone else involved in the implementation and deployment of service-oriented applications.

The training will be technical in nature and will require basic knowledge of programming (any high-level language, e.g. Java, Ruby, C#, JavaScript) to understand the Microservices code.

There will be some coverage of operational concerns of Microservices (e.g. logging, monitoring, metrics), but the focus will be on build, test and deploy pipeline.

All code and slides will be provided electronically to attendees after the training itself.

Prerequisites: A laptop where you have admin rights to install software and 10GB free disk space. Windows and Mac OS X are supported. Limited support for Linux distributions may be provided but we’ll assume you know how to get the necessary software installed yourself.

CLARENCE BAKIRTZDIS – Lead Consultant, ThoughtWorks
Clarence Bakirtzidis has over 15 years experience in development, across a variety of industries including telecommunications, finance, and healthcare. He has also has worked in both product oriented and consulting organisations. Currently, he is a Lead Consultant at ThoughtWorks where he specialises in driving organisations to achieve Continuous Delivery and embrace a DevOps culture.

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The Science of Great Teams – Using over 50 years of science to make great teams

Full-day Workshop | 9:00am-5:00pm | $800

Agile runs on teams, where we share our collective ability to create something that is greater than anything we could create as individuals. Having a functional and productive team can be the difference between loving what you do and a living hell. The factors that can help make a great team have been the subject of scientific research for over 50 years, and in this workshop we will explore some of the strongest findings on teams and how this can be applied to your team. We will work from the basics of teams and teamwork, and into some of the more interesting findings. The results will be based on peer-reviewed and validated results to help us get past opinion and into the best opportunity for you to create a great team.

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Sydney Workshop (full-day)

The Science of Great Teams – Using over 50 years of science to make great teams

with Lachlan Heasman – Agile Coach

Agile runs on teams, where we share our collective ability to create something that is greater than anything we could create as individuals. Having a functional and productive team can be the difference between loving what you do and a living hell. The factors that can help make a great team have been the subject of scientific research for over 50 years, and in this workshop we will explore some of the strongest findings on teams and how this can be applied to your team. We will work from the basics of teams and teamwork, and into some of the more interesting findings. The results will be based on peer-reviewed and validated results to help us get past opinion and into the best opportunity for you to create a great team.

What you will learn
During the workshop we will explore how various factors aid or hamper team development and performance. Using exercises, we experience how these factors work before exploring how to use this knowledge in other situations you are working in. The overall goal is to help you understand some of the most important factors in teams and teamwork and how you can use these to help teams you are working with.

What is the science?
There have been thousands of articles published in peer reviewed journals on teams and teamwork. From expert opinions, through case studies and experiments to systematic reviews and meta analysis. This is a rich source of information on how teams perform or fail to perform. The research and peer review process can help us develop a better understanding of teams that is based on more than our personal experience, as well as letting us understand in different ways leading to new ways to help teams improve.

Topics

• Teams and workgroups
• Team and group development models
• Team mental models
• Cohesion
• Leadership
• Climate

LACHLAN HEASMAN – Agile Coach
Lachlan Heasman is an independent coach and trainer. He has wide experience and knowledge from working on several major and many small Agile change programs in Australia. He also has all the requisite certifications to boot. He has deep experience in all facets of Agile practice but in the interest of quality leaves the development work to people who do it well. Lachlan has a Masters in Coaching Psychology from the University of Sydney which gives him a unique (and often annoying) perspective on coaching, leadership and change in the Agile community (which he often shares without being asked). His industry experience includes retail and online banking, insurance, telecoms, media, retail, legal and government.

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Organisational Improvement: Design-inspired Problem Solving

Half-day Workshop | 9:00am-12:30pm | $450

Every organisation faces its own distinctive challenges. Finding solutions to these challenges requires a good systematic understanding of the whole organisation – and implementing the solutions can be even harder. It’s hard to foresee how changes will affect the system, and whether they will actually solve the challenges in the first place.

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Sydney Workshop (half-day)

Organizational Improvement: Design-inspired Problem Solving Workshop

with Anders Ivarsson – Agile Coach, Spotify & Jimmy Janlén – Agile Coach

Every organisation faces its own distinctive challenges. Finding solutions to these challenges requires a good systematic understanding of the whole organisation – and implementing the solutions can be even harder. It’s hard to foresee how changes will affect the system, and whether they will actually solve the challenges in the first place.

In this workshop we will apply a design-inspired technique (based on Design Studio) together with lean problem-solving techniques (like A3 thinking) to work through an example of organisational challenges and how to design improvements and implement them. Participants will be facilitated through the iterative problem-solving process, learning rapid ideation techniques, constructive feedback patterns and group collaboration skills that will work for both small and large groups.

ANDERS IVARSSON | Agile Coach, Spotify
Anders Ivarsson is working as an Agile Coach at Spotify. He has been working with individual and team coaching, but also larger organisational improvement efforts and has been involved in some of the larger development initiatives. Anders is passionate about growing an organisation that continuously improves and adapts to changes. Anders has written articles and presented at numerous conferences.

JIMMY JANLEN | Agile Coach
Jimmy Janlén is an Agile coach and teacher at Crisp in Stockholm. He is currently working as an Agile enterprise coach at Plain Vanilla in Reykjavik Iceland. Before that he worked as an Agile coach for 1.5 years at Spotify. In addition to coaching, Jimmy holds courses and seminars about various things Agile and lean such as Agile leadership, Agile adaptations, large scale Agile, team dynamics and training from the back of the room.

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Foundations of the Scaled Agile Framework (Afternoon Session)

Half-day Workshop | 1:30pm-5:00pm | $450

In this half-day workshop, attendees will learn the foundations of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), its values and underlying principles of Agile, Lean and Product Development Flow. This course will enable you to leave with an understanding of how the principles and practices of SAFe support Lean-Agile Programs, Program Portfolio Management, and Leadership.

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Sydney Workshop (half-day)

Foundations of the Scaled Agile Framework

with Dean Leffingwell

In this half-day workshop, attendees will learn the foundations of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), its values and underlying principles of Agile, Lean and Product Development Flow. This course will enable you to leave with an understanding of how the principles and practices of SAFe support Lean-Agile Programs, Program Portfolio Management, and Leadership.

Part tutorial, part hands on exercises, the workshop will cover the following topics:

• Lean Thinking and Agile Development. This section provides an Overview of the house of Lean, Principles of Product Development Flow, team Agile and the benefits of Agile Development at enterprise scale.
• Agile Release Train. Outlines the building block of a SAFe enterprise – the self-organised team-of-agile-teams that delivers solutions. This section describes the structure and operating metaphor of the Agile Release Train and illustrates the key practices for economic decision making, achieving alignment and delivering value to the business.
• Portfolio. Describes how to organise Agile Release Trains around value delivery, applying Lean-Agile budgeting and providing visibility into the work-in-process and establishing the flow of enterprise-level initiatives.
• Scaling Leadership. This section describes the leadership principles for those whose role is to enable the teams in achieving their mission.

The workshop is intended for executives, managers, leaders, consultants, Lean-Agile Leaders, and Agile change agents.

DEAN LEFFINGWELL
Widely recognised as a leading authority on software development, Dean Leffingwell is an author, entrepreneur, and software development methodologist. His most recent books, Agile Software Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise, and Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises, form much of the basis of modern thinking on Lean-Agile software development principles and practices. Founder of several successful startups, including Requisite, Inc., makers of RequisitePro (acquired by Rational), Dean also served as Chief Methodologist to Rally Software, and prior to that, as a Sr. Vice President at Rational Software (now part of IBM). He currently serves as Chief Methodologist and member of the leadership team at Scaled Agile, Inc., which he co-founded in 2011.

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Starting with Kanban: A practical workshop on Value Stream Mapping and WIP

Full-day Workshop | 9:00am-5:00pm | $800

So you’ve heard about this Kanban thing and want to know where to start, or maybe you’ve been using it for a while and you want to know where to go. In this hands-on workshop, we’ll start at the very beginning and teach you how to build a Value Stream Map and use that to define your initial Kanban and WIP limits. If these terms don’t make sense to you, then you need to come along for a fun interactive workshop.

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Sydney Workshop (full-day)

Starting with Kanban: A practical workshop on Value Stream Mapping and WIP

with Evan Leybourn – Author, Directing the Agile Organisation

So you’ve heard about this Kanban thing and want to know where to start, or maybe you’ve been using it for a while and you want to know where to go. In this hands-on workshop, we’ll start at the very beginning and teach you how to build a Value Stream Map and use that to define your initial Kanban and WIP limits. If these terms don’t make sense to you, then you need to come along for a fun interactive workshop.

Learning Outcomes:

• Value Stream Mapping (VSM): VSM is the (often overlooked) practice of defining the functional steps in common business processes and can be anything from IT to sales & marketing; it doesn’t matter. Attendees will learn how to model their business processes and create VSMs.
• Process efficiencies: How to calculate your process efficiency, Value Add (VA) and Non-Value Add (NVA) time and why that’s important. In brief, your VA time is defined as the average time spent actively working on a task in the process, NVA is the average time spent between each process step and you can calculate your process efficiency by dividing your VA with your total time (that is VA+NVA).
• Align your VSM to your Kanban: Track the flow of work through your VSM on your Kanban wall
• Learn how to use your VSM, team size and process efficiency to calculate your initial WIP
• Learn how to embed a culture of continuous improvement (Kaizen) through the use of retrospectives and common lean metrics

EVAN LEYBOURN – Author, Directing the Agile Organisation
Evan Leybourn pioneered the field of Agile Business Management; applying the successful concepts and practices from the Lean and Agile movements to corporate management. He keeps busy as a senior IT executive, business management consultant, non-executive director, conference speaker, internationally published author and father. Evan is known for getting things done by bringing enthusiasm, energy and humour to motivate people and drive his clients’ corporate objectives. He has a passion for building effective and productive organisations, filled with actively engaged and committed staff while ensuring high-levels of customer satisfaction. Evan’s experiences when holding executive and board positions in both private industry and government has driven his passion for lean business management and he regularly speaks on these topics at local and international industry conferences. As well as writing Directing the Agile Organisation, Evan currently consults to organisations around Australia and SE Asia on Agile management and governance.

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Intent-based leadership

Full-day Workshop | 9:00am-5:00pm | $800

Turn followers into leaders with this workshop that helps make leadership simple and actionable, filled with practical advice and tools for any work environment.

Creating organisations with Intent-Based Leadership results in a workplace where everyone engages and contributes their full intellectual capacity. A place where people are healthier and happier because they have more control over their work – a place where everyone is a leader.

Check out this sneak peek of David Marquet’s workshop: https://youtu.be/mtjNN0fjTB4
Download David Marquet’s ‘Turn the Ship Around’ brochure here.

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Sydney Workshop (full-day)

Intent-based leadership

with David Marquet – Author, ‘Turn the Ship Around’

Turn followers into leaders with this workshop that helps make leadership simple and actionable, filled with practical advice and tools for any work environment.

Creating organisations with Intent-Based Leadership results in a workplace where everyone engages and contributes their full intellectual capacity. A place where people are healthier and happier because they have more control over their work – a place where everyone is a leader.

Intent-Based Leadership organisations create an environment for people to contribute so that they feel valued. They set clear goals so their people know how to do their jobs. They push control and decision making down the organisation so people take responsibility and rise to the occasion. They maintain unity of effort by ensuring the supporting pillars of technical competence and organisational clarity are in place.

Practical Empowerment:
When we give our people control, we create more effective leaders.

Technical Competence:
When we engage our minds in what we are doing, we perform with better results.

Organisational Clarity:
When we understand our purpose, we can distribute decision-making and keep unity of effort.

What you will learn from attending:

• How to create an environment where people actively engage and think.
• How to talk with to your co-workers/teams in an empowering way so that you create leaders at every level in the organisation.
• Implement the idea of leadership as creating more leaders – not more followers.
• Implement the idea of leadership as giving control – not taking control.

Check out this sneak peek of David Marquet’s workshop: https://youtu.be/mtjNN0fjTB4

DAVID MARQUET | Author, ‘Turn the Ship Around’

David Marquet is the author of the award-winning book Turn the Ship Around. In 2012Fortune Magazine called it the “best how-to manual anywhere for managers on delegating, training, and driving flawless execution.”

A 1981 U.S. Naval Academy graduate, David Marquet served in the U.S. submarine force for 28 years. He commanded the nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine USS Santa Fe. Captain Marquet completely turned around Santa Fe, where the crew went from being “worst to first.”

Captain Marquet retired from the Navy in 2009, and speaks to those who want to create empowering work environments that release the passion, initiative and intellect of each person. His bold and highly effective framework is summarised as “give control, create leaders.”

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Using Design Thinking to Drive Agile Planning

Full-day Workshop | 9:00am-5:00pm | $800

Learn how to take the lead, using Design Thinking skills to facilitate the creation of a product vision and roadmap.

The role of designers is changing. The growing adoption of Agile development practices has created an opportunity for designers to take the lead. Design thinking skills allow us to take ideas and quickly turn them into clear product visions that put users first. By stepping up as project kick-off facilitators, designers can drive rapid, customer-centric product development and make stakeholder management far easier.

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Fearless Change: Patterns for introducing new ideas

Half-day Workshop | 9:00am-12:30pm | $450

We attend conferences or read books and articles discover new ideas we want to bring into our organisations – but we often struggle trying to implement those changes. Unfortunately, those introducing change are not always welcomed with open arms. Linda Rising offers proven change management strategies to help you become a more successful agent of change in your organisation. Learn how to plant effective seeds of change, and what forces in your organisation drive or block change. In addition to using these approaches to change your organisation, you can use them to become a more effective person. These strategies or patterns are useful in many different settings. Come and discuss your organisational and personal change challenges. Linda shares lessons from her book, Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas and a forthcoming More Fearless Change. Learn how to overcome adversity to change and to celebrate your improvement successes along with your organisation’s newfound practices.

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Sydney Workshop (half-day 9:00am-12:30pm)

Fearless Change: Patterns for introducing new ideas

with Linda Rising

We attend conferences or read books and articles discover new ideas we want to bring into our organisations – but we often struggle trying to implement those changes. Unfortunately, those introducing change are not always welcomed with open arms. Linda Rising offers proven change management strategies to help you become a more successful agent of change in your organisation. Learn how to plant effective seeds of change, and what forces in your organisation drive or block change. In addition to using these approaches to change your organisation, you can use them to become a more effective person. These strategies or patterns are useful in many different settings. Come and discuss your organisational and personal change challenges. Linda shares lessons from her book, Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas and a forthcoming More Fearless Change. Learn how to overcome adversity to change and to celebrate your improvement successes along with your organisation’s newfound practices.

LINDA RISING

Linda Rising has authored four books and numerous articles and is an internationally known presenter on topics related to patterns, retrospectives, influence strategies, Agile development, and the change process.

Linda Rising has a PhD from Arizona State University in the field of object-based design metrics and a background that includes university teaching and industry work in telecommunications, avionics, and strategic weapons systems.

Linda is an expert in helping people make changes in their organisations, with proven change management strategies to enable you to be a more successful change agent in your organisation.

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Patterns for Improved Customer Interaction

Half-day Workshop | 1:30pm-5:00pm | $450

With the emphasis on in-depth customer interaction during development, Agile team members are being asked to take an active role in working with customers. This evolving role poses a big challenge for many who, in the past, rarely met “real” customers. Linda Rising presents patterns she has used successfully to help software professionals in their direct, face-to-face interactions with customers. These patterns describe solutions to common problems that occur again and again when dealing with customers and users. The patterns Linda discusses have memorable names such as It’s A Relationship Not A Sale, Be Responsive, Show Personal Integrity, Build Trust, and Take Your Licks. Pattern names build a vocabulary that allows you and your development team to have meaningful conversations about – and to ultimately improve – customer relationships and the software you deliver.

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Sydney Workshop (half-day 1:30pm-5:00pm)

Patterns for Improved Customer Interaction

with Linda Rising

With the emphasis on in-depth customer interaction during development, Agile team members are being asked to take an active role in working with customers. This evolving role poses a big challenge for many who, in the past, rarely met “real” customers. Linda Rising presents patterns she has used successfully to help software professionals in their direct, face-to-face interactions with customers. These patterns describe solutions to common problems that occur again and again when dealing with customers and users. The patterns Linda discusses have memorable names such as It’s A Relationship Not A Sale, Be Responsive, Show Personal Integrity, Build Trust, and Take Your Licks. Pattern names build a vocabulary that allows you and your development team to have meaningful conversations about – and to ultimately improve – customer relationships and the software you deliver.

Benefits from this tutorial:

• A vocabulary based on patterns to improve communication with customers
• Simple and powerful ways to improve your own personal interactions
• How to focus on what is best for both you and your customers

LINDA RISING

Linda Rising has authored four books and numerous articles and is an internationally known presenter on topics related to patterns, retrospectives, influence strategies, Agile development, and the change process.

Linda Rising has a PhD from Arizona State University in the field of object-based design metrics and a background that includes university teaching and industry work in telecommunications, avionics, and strategic weapons systems.

Linda is an expert in helping people make changes in their organisations, with proven change management strategies to enable you to be a more successful change agent in your organisation.

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Bringing Fluency to your Agile teams: Coaching for Best-Fit Agile

Full-day Workshop | 9:00am-5:00pm | $800

Learn how to tailor your Agile coaching efforts to best fit the needs of your teams and organisation. As teams grow in their understanding of Agile, their perspective of Agile shifts and changes, and so do the challenges they must overcome. Whether it’s team cohesion, technical skills, or organisational politics, the right investment to make in your teams depends on where they’re at, what they need, and what your organisation is willing to provide.

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Sydney Workshop (full-day)

Bringing Fluency to your Agile teams: Coaching for Best-Fit Agile

with James Shore

Learn how to tailor your Agile coaching efforts to best fit the needs of your teams and organisation. As teams grow in their understanding of Agile, their perspective of Agile shifts and changes, and so do the challenges they must overcome. Whether it’s team cohesion, technical skills, or organisational politics, the right investment to make in your teams depends on where they’re at, what they need, and what your organisation is willing to provide.

Learn how to tailor your coaching efforts to best fit your context. You’ll learn how to evaluate your teams’ proficiencies, organisational needs, and how to balance benefits and investments. Using the Agile Fluency™ Model, a proven model for understanding team capabilities and opportunities, you’ll be able to articulate what benefits to expect from your teams, what opportunities exist, and what efforts will be needed in order to take advantage of those opportunities.

Qualified participants will also be given the opportunity to license the Agile Fluency Diagnostic, a detailed tool for facilitating team self-assessments, at no additional charge.

By the end of the workshop, you will understand:

• Four “bus stops” teams end up at in their Agile skill development
• What benefits to expect from teams based on their current stop
• What efforts are needed to help teams move to different stops
• How to choose which “bus stop” is right for your teams and organisation
• Common challenges teams face as they move from one stop to another
• How to lead discussions about team development costs and benefits with managers or executives
• How to facilitate a team self-assessment of their proficiencies and gaps using the Agile Fluency Diagnostic

Structure
The workshop is a highly interactive mix of discussion, teamwork, and hands-on exercises.

Audience
The workshop is intended for coaches, leaders, change agents, consultants, and anyone else who guides Agile teams and transitions. For those considering licensing the Agile Fluency Diagnostic, an intermediate or higher understanding of Agile principles and practices is recommended. For other participants, a basic understanding of Agile concepts is sufficient.

“Agile Fluency” is a trademark of James Shore and Diana Larsen.

JAMES SHORE
James Shore is a thought leader in the Agile software development community. He combines deep technical expertise with whole-system thinking to help development teams worldwide. James believes that great software development teams consistently deliver market success, technical success, and personal success for team members and stakeholders.

James was an early adopter of Agile development and he continues to lead, teach, write and consult on Agile development processes. In 2001, he was one of the first 10 people to sign the newly-released Agile Manifesto and in 2005 he was an inaugural recipient of the prestigious Gordon Pask Award for Contributions to Agile Practice. James is a popular lecturer on software development process and his writing has appeared in many industry publications, including IEEE Software, SD Times, and Better Software. His work is frequently referenced in the press and his Art of Agile blog is regularly found on AgileDaily’s list of top twenty most recommended Agile blogs. James is the co-author of The Art Of Agile Development (O’Reilly, 2007).

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