This year I not only had the pleasure to attend LAST Conference Brisbane, but I got a chance to present myself — you can see my presentation here. But I was equally excited to be an attendee, learning from a wide range of great thinkers and speakers in the space of software delivery.
In this article — I’m going to share with you my personal take-aways from the speakers I attended. It is merely a subset of the great number of wonderful people who shared their stories, and is it only the things that managed to stick in my mind (and notes). For the best information on each of these topics, you should look at the slides and notes prepared by each presenter via the link below.
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If you’d like to explore more details of these speakers and their sessions, or any other speakers from the day, check out the conference page here: https://www.lastconference.com/brisbane/schedule/
Sharon Robson—The Psychology of Modern Working Practices
“It’s all about the people”
Key Learnings
Focus on People and Connections: Prioritize relationships, team reinforcement, and fostering a sense of belonging to create safety and trust.
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Start with Purpose and Ownership: Begin with the end in mind, encouraging psychological ownership and shared responsibility.
Challenge Assumptions: Break cognitive anchors and biases by balancing your approach and engaging curiosity.
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Cultivate Awareness and Adaptability: Be mindful, practice metacognition, and engage the other half of your brain to form new connections and perspectives.
Meaning Making and Gratitude: Reflect on what experiences mean personally, and maintain a perspective of gratitude.
Optimize Cognitive Load: Simplify processes to avoid cognitive overload, enabling clear thinking and effective remembering.
People as the Core: Centre all actions and decisions around people, fostering purpose and connections.
Change is constant — embrace it: The world is complex — and it’s only getting worse. Embrace change as the constant, staying optimistic and resilient in a fast-evolving world.
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We need to shape the Future Together: Define a shared vision for where we want the world to be and work collectively toward it.
Purpose-Driven Impact: Strive to leave the world better than we found it, creating meaningful change.
Perception Drives Possibility: Believe in the potential of what can be achieved if you can envision it.
Tools are useful, but people are the key: Technology is powerful, but its effectiveness depends on the wisdom of its users.
Mike Burns — Evolving Modern Teams with AI: An exploration of AI Innovations
“(AI is) not so great at sarcasm — some humans aren’t either”
Key Learnings
AI has strong synergy with Agile: AI aligns with agile principles, enhancing team adaptability and efficiency if used appropriately
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Manage your expectations on AI: Recognize that AI isn’t a universal solution; its capabilities have limitations.
Be mindful of your own AI biases: Address and reduce perpetuated biases stemming from the buzz around AI. We need to be mindful of those biases
Define AI’s Role: Establish a clear social contract on when and how to use AI, as well as the data it interacts with. Prompt engineering works great to define that contract.
Integrate AI as a Team Member: Treat AI as an assistant and incorporate it meaningfully into team workflows.
Acknowledge and work around AI Limitations: Understand that while AI struggles with nuances like sarcasm, humans often do too.
“The human promise of Agile hasn’t been delivered”
Key Learnings
Agile isn’t the remedy to our problems: Address the shortcomings of Agile in fostering true autonomy and engagement.
Carefully balance autonomy vs control : Strive for a balance between autonomy, learning, variety, and necessary bureaucracy in teams.
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Purpose Over Product: Move beyond product-centric models to purpose-driven organizational structures.
We need to empower Teams: Shift control to the team level, avoiding dominance through hierarchy while ensuring visibility of the bigger picture. Nobody ever does the actual job written on their JD
Think in Micro-Enterprises: Embrace small, self-directed units with control over strategy, people, and rewards, testing their value against customer funding.
Align your motivations: Use systems thinking to design organizations that align with human motivations like autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
Enable people to be their best selves: Tackle the lack of engagement by enabling people to bring their whole selves to work.
Trust as the Foundation: Change and innovation are built on trust; without it, progress stalls.
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Trust Under Pressure: Change tests trust, making it essential to address trust blockers proactively.
Manage Expectations: Recognize that few innovations fully meet all expectations, requiring clear communication and realistic goals.
Conduct a Trust Audit: Evaluate trust levels and identify barriers to understanding and moving forward in the next phase.
Believe in the Problem: Foster trust that the problem being addressed is worth solving to maintain commitment.
Emotion + Intent = Impact: Combine strong emotions with clear intent to drive meaningful change and innovation.
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Tony Ponton — Govern Agility; How Governance needs to change
“Don’t apply governance to your Agile, apply Agility to your governance”
Key Learnings
We need to transform the whole system: Focus on transforming the entire system of delivery, not just individual teams or projects, to enable true agility.
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You can’t change in isolation: Incorporate both internal and external sources of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity into governance strategies.
Treat governance as a Keystone: Recognize governance as a vital but often overlooked element that ensures agility’s success at scale.
Link the strategic intent to the systems of work: Bridge the gap between strategic intent and systems of work in the “three-speed economy” of strategy, governance, and operations.
Information flows are key: Emphasize that agility thrives on efficient and timely information flow, supported by proximity in person, place, and time.
Guide Rails Over Guard Rails: Implement flexible governance that empowers teams with direction without rigidly constraining them
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Adaptability as a Core Competency: Embrace constant change as inevitable and build organizational capability to excel in a dynamic environment.
Matthew Casperson — DevEx as a Service : Building Developer Experience
“There’s no value in creatively solving a common problem — just use a common solution”
Key Learnings
Specialisation evolves over time: Start with generalists in the early stages of development and introduce specialists as systems mature.
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Clarify Responsibilities: Define clear boundaries with a shared responsibility model to avoid burnout and inefficiency.
Leverage Common Solutions: Avoid reinventing the wheel by solving common problems with shared, scalable solutions.
Prioritise Internal Platforms: Invest in internal developer platforms exposed through interfaces to drive scalability and improve efficiency.
Focus on Developer Experience: Make platform engineering about enhancing developer experience and enabling productivity.
Learn from Big Tech: Even the largest companies face challenges; adopt pragmatic solutions rather than chasing perfection.
Roelof Steyn — Engineering Synergy: Aligning Teams for Seamless Product Delivery
“As soon as you use (a process) — we become slave to it”
Key Learnings
Goal-Oriented Autonomy: Provide teams with clear goals and outcomes, allowing them the freedom to determine how to achieve them.
Embrace Continuous Learning: When faced with uncertainty, search for and learn from others’ experiences to find effective solutions.
Distinguish Roadmaps: Align strategic roadmaps focused on problems and outcomes with technical roadmaps centered on delivery processes.
Validate Problem Solving: Ensure that the problems being addressed are well-defined and worth solving.
Acknowledge Technical Debt: Recognize technical debt as an integral part of a product’s survivability and long-term viability.
