The following are documents, recordings, and other resources from our past events.
Past Meetup Events
September 8th, 2022
Time: 12:00pm PDT / 2:00pm CST / 3:00pm EDT
Topic: How Does Work Work? The First Principles
Our Guest Speaker is Andrew Webster
An introduction to the meetup: Nothing seems to work! Everything seems to work! Which framework? Which methodology? Who’s right? Who’s wrong? How can we ever tell?
Wikipedia defines a “First Principle” as “… a basic proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption.” This session might just save you many years of hard-earned experience. The framework marketplace is a duck-hunt of competing silver-bullet solutions, and it can be very costly and wasteful working out which would help you, in your specific situation.
So you’re going to be introduced to a few very simple criteria to assess your situation, make excellent decisions about how to approach that situation, and stay on course as your navigate our increasingly complex world.
Takeaways:
- A simple yet sophisticated situational assessment approach
- A fundamental reason for almost all misunderstandings in the workplace
- The core economic structure of worthwhile work.
Andrew Webster
A broad background in many different industries led Andrew Webster through software development and team leadership, to qualification as a senior Scrum Master and Product Owner and eventually to being an enterprise Agile and organizational coach, trainer, and consultant, working with a full range of clients, from individuals to major Silicon Valley corporations.
He’s lived and worked in three countries and Alabama, and now lives semi-retired with his wife in the San Francisco East Bay, writing his first novel, running a meet-up (Wisdom at Work), and still working as a personal coach to a select few. His greatest desire is to ease the experience of everyone involved in corporate life, from customer to management to worker to neighbor to environment.
Attendees (71)
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August 2nd, 2022.
Time: 12:00pm PDT / 2:00pm CST / 3:00pm EDT
Topic: The Golden Rule of Agile
Our Guest Speaker: Larry Apke
An introduction to the meetup: Agile is the four values and twelve principles outlined in the Agile Manifesto. Therefore, at its most basic, it is a philosophy. Would it be possible to take this philosophy, the four values and twelve principles and distill them into a single phrase? Maybe, maybe not, but wouldn’t it be interesting to see what one Agilist has come up with? Larry Apke presents his version of the “Golden Rule” and talks about his own Agile journey which includes over a decade as an Agile coach and a running a nonprofit called The Job Hackers that has provided over $4 million of free Agile and Scrum classes to people all over the world.
Takeaways:
- What is the Golden Rule?
- How do we operationalize the Golden Rule through backlog management?
Larry Apke
Founder and Chief Agile Officer, The Job Hackers
Author of Understanding the Agile Manifesto: A Brief & Bold Guide to AGILE
Attendees (100)
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July 12th, 2022.
Time: 12:00pm PDT / 2:00pm CST / 3:00pm EDT
Topic: An Introduction to Basic Lean-Agile Solutions Team – BLAST
Our Guest Speaker: Al Shalloway
An introduction to the meetup: Achieving Agile across multiple teams is challenging for many. However, the reason for this is more due to a lack of understanding of key concepts, than that it is inherently difficult. In this seminar we look at how understanding three important concepts can make Agile at small scale (3-9 teams) readily achievable:
- How to provide teams a way to align instead of having to have them coordinate
- What value streams are and why they are important
- The minimum business increment – how to track requirements and needs when creating enhancements to existing products
- The value stream impedance scorecard – how to tell if a change in your process will be an improvement
After this background, the seminar will review the dozen points of the BLAST approach.
Attendees of this webinar will leave with an understanding of what it takes to do Agile at small scale. Many of the concepts presented will be useful at both teams and even larger scales.
Takeaways:
- Why alignment is more effective than coordination
- How and why to use minimum business increments
- What value streams are and how to use them to improve your workflow
Al Shalloway is the founder and CEO of Success Engineering. Al is a recognized thought leader in the areas of Lean, SAFe, Kanban, Scrum, design patterns, Acceptance Test-Driven Development, Lean-management, value creation networks, Lean product management, and more. He is the creator of the FLEX system, which is the heart of the Disciplined Agile Value Stream Consultant workshop. He has co-written five books ranging from Design Patterns to Agile at Scale. He holds Masters degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Mathematics from MIT and Emory, respectively. He is an international speaker. He is a former SPC Trainer and contributor to SAFe. His current focus is on providing an effective Agile at scale approach to large organizations, which includes helping internal change agents be self-sufficient in training their teams in a cost-effective manner.
Attendees (87)
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June 16th, 2022.
Time: 12:00pm PDT / 2:00pm CST / 3:00pm EDT
Topic: Lead with Joy and Watch Your Team Fly
Our Guest Speaker: Rich Sheridan
An introduction to the meetup: Change is hard, but in order to create a joyful workplace you can’t continue to lead the way you’ve always led. In this talk, Rich explores his own journey to joy, focusing on how he had to learn to lead in a completely different way and, by doing so, witnessed results that exceeded his wildest expectations. In his talk, Rich applies the analogy of flight to the teams we lead. His message is simple: when we finally understand the relevant principles (in flight or in teams), we can fly to heights and distances that were previously unimaginable. But to get there, you, as a leader, will need to create change. Serious change. And you will need to undergo your own personal evolution as well. Drawing from his book Chief Joy Officer: How Great Leaders Elevate Human Energy and Eliminate Fear, Rich will share the personal and professional journey he has taken as a leader and invite you to join him at the vanguard of understanding what it takes to unleash the potential of the people who work for you and around you. He will explain how the longstanding and appalling disengagement statistics represent a fundamental failure of leadership and how you can reverse that trajectory in your own organization. Finally, Rich will discuss the simple, actionable things you can do to get your teams off the ground and flying. You will come away energized and inspired to start your own journey toward leading with joy tomorrow! And you will be firmly convinced that it is within your power to do so, no matter how big your organization or how longstanding its culture is.
Takeaways:
- Lead with joy
- Take concrete steps to elevate the human energy in your organization
- Change how you and your team see the role of a leader
- Turn your organization around to one that embraces action instead of meetings
Rich Sheridan, CEO and Chief Storyteller at Menlo Innovations, is a successful entrepreneur and author of two best-selling books—Joy Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love and Chief Joy Officer: How Great Leaders Elevate Human Energy and Eliminate Fear. Rich’s passion for inspiring organizations to create their own joy-filled cultures has led him to address audiences across the world—through four continents and 18 countries (and counting) as well as throughout the United States. What motivates Rich to speak to tens of thousands of people around the world in nearly every setting imaginable? What does he share with his audiences that make them jump to their feet with enthusiasm and return to their organizations on fire with inspiration? Simply this: joy. More specifically, that joy in your organization is not just possible but essential—essential to profitability, to productivity, to every measure of success. Rich and his message of joyful leadership have been featured in press outlets ranging from Inc, Forbes, and New York magazines to Bloomberg, U.S. News & World Report, NPR’s On Point podcast, NPR’s All Things Considered, and the Harvard Business Review. His videos for organizations such as Gemba Academy, VitalSmarts, and the Arbinger Institute continue to inspire audiences around the world. Rich doesn’t just talk about joy in the workplace. He lives it every day at Menlo, the custom software and consulting company he co-founded in 2001 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Since then, Menlo has received worldwide notice for its unique culture, including recognition by Inc. Magazine as the most joyful company in America. Menlo has also been recognized by the Alfred P. Sloan Award for Business Excellence in Workplace Flexibility for 11 straight years and has received a lifetime achievement award for Freedom at Work from WorldBlu, as well as five revenue awards from Inc. magazine. Today people come to Menlo from all over the world—nearly 20,000 in the past seven years alone—to learn about Menlo and how they can create a culture of joy in their own organizations.
Attendees (50)
