Where Detailed Positions Can Be Harmful

Traditional organizations are based on hard skills. They hire for detailed position descriptions and look for certain experiences, and once you are hired, they evaluate your hard skills and focus on growing them. It’s all based on the presumption that we know what needs to be done. And because we know what needs to be done, we can plan the work and allocate people with needed skills. Such organizations optimize for individual performance and that is usually supported by detailed position descriptions, and it all works really well, until the business becomes unpredictable, and you wake up in VUCA (venerable, unpredictable, complex, and ambiguous) world. That’s where Agile was born and that business shift turned everything around. Positions, way of working, and also the basic assumption that we know what needs to be done. 

So on the contrary in an Agile environment, we realize that we don’t know what needs to be done. The business is changing so frequently that we can’t really plan, the changes are so frequent, the expectations so unpredictable, and there are so many possible solutions that all we can do is inspect and adapt. Experiment and learn from feedback. Late 90s the world was not like that, and nowadays organizations are still created about that old belief. In a modern world, it is very hard to plan which skills we need. Technologies are so dynamic that the only skills we really need are flexibility and fast learning. And then, the more detailed position description you have, the more you are fixing the status quo and are unable to adapt to changes and innovate your business. 

In agile organizations or if you wish in organizations that require a higher level of adaptability because they are experiencing the VUCA challenges, positions are not only not needed but often harmful. Therefore, many organizations widen their descriptions and start hiring generally for team members, and engineers, or just removing positions at all as something that stays in the way of our flexibility, collaboration, and innovations. They form individuals and teams around problems and ask help people to do their best to solve them, even when it requires learning new skills or changing their practices. 

Positions are not always bad, they create a clear path where to grow and what is expected from individuals, but such a defined position often creates boundaries and gaps and limits the learning. “It’s not my work people say. Somebody else shall do it”. But people are smart. When they change jobs, they always learn new tools, practices, and methods. But for some reason we often try to limit their learning by defined positions when they work for the same organization. So if you care about creativity, adaptivity, and agility, forget positions. People don’t need them to do their job. Give them a clear vision and goals and trust them, they do their best. You won’t regret it. 

Top 10 Agile conferences to attend in 2024

Every year I speak at many conferences and based on my experience I recommend some places to go for inspiration. Here is my list of the Top 10 Agile conferences to attend in 2024. It’s not my intention to cover them all, I’m sharing places where I like to return. Inspiring places with interaction, high energy, and great speakers.

  1. Regional Scrum Gathering Tokyo is organized by an enthusiastic agile community in Japan. The purpose is to provide a “Ba” (place) where practitioners share ideas among Scrum practitioners having a great diversity. Regional Gatherings provides a unique experience and even if you don’t speak Japanese, there are some talks in English and others translated. Join me and the local community on January 5-7, 2024.
  2. AgilePrague Conference is one of the best conferences in Europe. In two days, it creates a unique collaborative space. You can expect two parallel tracks with short talks, afternoon workshops, and inspirational keynotes. Plus, Prague is a great city to visit so you can come early and enjoy the weekend in Prague. Join Agile Prague on Sep 16-17, 2024, Prague, Czech Republic. 
  3. Agile Testing Days are almost a festival, not a traditional conference. The full week of tutorials, talks, workshops, and networking events is just awesome. Join Testing Days even if you are not a tester. It’s in Potsdam, Germany on Nov 18-21, 2024.
  4. ACE! Conference in Krakow, Poland is combining two tracks: Agile Software Development and Product Design & Management. It always has a great atmosphere. Join ACE! on Jun 13-14, 2024. 
  5. XP Days Benelux is a conference with parallel workshops for experienced audience. This year it’s going to be in Mechelen, Belgium on Nov 28-29, 2024. 
  6. Global Scrum Gathering New Orleans is the only global gathering this year. So make sure you don’t miss it. Join the global gathering in New Orleans on May 19-22, 2024. It’s always fun. 
  7. Agile Tour Vilnius is a day full of great talks in Vilnius, Lithuania. The conference is organized by the local agile community and I always enjoy the energy and conversation with participants. Join Agile Tour Vilnius on October 22, 2024.
  8. LeSS Conference is from practitioners for practitioners. Since 2016, LeSS Conferences is where LeSS practitioners share their LeSS experience and learn from new experiments. Join this year’s conference in Madrid on Sep 26-27, 2024.
  9. Regional Scrum Gathering Ghent in Belgium is a good candidate to replace the global Scrum Gathering in Europe this year and meet all the Scrum practitioners from this region. Join the gathering on June 6-7, 2024.
  10. Agile on the Beach is a great event to attend and explore the summer in Cornwall, UK on July 4 – 5, 2024. 

The selection is based on my personal preference and experiences from those events.

Other conferences to consider this year

There are many great events that didn’t make it to this list, so please share your suggestions with us and we add them to the following list.

Positions and Career Path in Agile Organization

Considering the shift from siloed based departments with subject matter experts focusing on their specialization in traditional organizations to more general cross-functional teams where members combine different skills to maximize the value in agile organizations, there is a trend to generalize positions and flatten the career path as the hierarchy got less important. Agile organizations are moving from fixed detailed positions to t-shaped skill positions or even no-positions at all, with emergent roles depending on the actual need. They abandon the skills based positions and creating a competence based model where employees are deciding what is their journey going to be. We optimize for flexibility and career mobility. The reason for such shift is again dealing with VUCA challenges as the world becomes too volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous for pre-defined skilled based roles. Agile organizations need flexibility. They need to react fast on any changes in the business environment, are there new competitors offering different value, are there new technologies emerging, are there new challenges in the market, those are just a few questions you can ask. But there is no doubt that the world is not the same anymore. To deal with changes and support the people growth, Agile organizations invest in developing coaching and mentoring programs, and encouraging the internal workshops led by employees where they teach each other.

From my experience, from organizational design perspective, the hardest to imagine is the flat structure where leadership is emergent, and no fixed positions even exists. People are developing roles for themselves based on the current situation and needs, teams are forming around business challenges and adjourning once the challenge is solved. It’s a liquid structure. Very flexible, and very purpose driven. It’s one of those things you need to experience to be able to believe in it. And that’s a chicken – egg problem. What helped me was the experience from our Scrum teams, where I could see how self-organization works at the team level. And then applying it to large ecosystem was simply just using the same skills I was used to apply at the team level. In such environment where people take over the ownership and responsibility for doing their best to maximize the value and achieve the purpose, the detailed positions become irrelevant as teams are cross-functional and individuals t-shaped skilled. Then you can freely remove them, as they are not needed anymore. Quite straightforward. The culture and mindset goes first, the practices will follow. 

Now if my last paragraph was way too far for you, the first small step you can start with even in very traditional environment is to shift from managing individuals to team collaboration. The more they collaborate, they develop the T-shaped skills for each individual. It still doesn’t mean that every single person can do everything the same way as anybody else, but they can actually help each other, they can review and test each other’s work, and they understand the whole little by little. T-shirt are not taking too much effort and are creating a ground for forming cross-functional teams. Once you have a cross-functional team, as first step, you can shift from skill-based roles which are not applicable anymore – like tester, software developer, UX designer, business analyst, etc. to general roles – i.e. team member, engineer or as Scrum call is ‘developer’ (note in Scrum we don’t mean ‘software developer’ but ‘product developer’).

It’s not that hard. Collaboration is fun and t-shaped skills are going really fast. On that journey, detailed positions becomes very soon redundant, and soon after, the career path will reflect the dynamics of the organizational design. People in such organizations are not motivated by given career ladder. They care about their opportunity for growth and personal development.

Time to Change Performance Review and Rewards System

I wrote here about the need of changing the HR in agile organizations. Agile HR helps organizations to adapt their culture to be more creative and collaborative and less control and compete oriented. They are here to create best employee experience from the first contact, through day one, support their growth, motivation, and increasing their value to the organization. And once you embrace such collaborative and creative culture, it’s time to redesign the performance review and overall evaluation process. The individual KPIs created by managers for upcoming year becomes irrelevant as the people are inspecting and adapting not only of what they deliver, but also what their roles are as those are changing depending on the needs. Some organizations are going towards team created and measured goals (like OKRs) but the others are removing any fixed goals with exchange to the radical transparency and strong evolutionary purpose. That’s where we talk about team organizations.

If you are not there yet, any type of the 360s, like Comparative Agility, Agility Health radar etc. can be a good start. It helps to start with receiving feedback and learning based on that. We are shifting from management feedback and ranking to self-assessment, peer-feedback, and coaching for growth with regular check-ins. I remember that the biggest shift happened where we stopped evaluating and started coaching people. Help them to design their own journey. We made organizational goals transparent and let teams and individuals to create their own goals. Together with a strong sense of the ownership, it helped to feed the motivation.

Finally the last step is to change the rewards and bonus system. It’s only possible if you already created a culture based on collaboration, transparency and purpose driven. Removing the detailed positions goes hand in hand with changing the evaluation system. The peer feedback is flowing there and back on a daily basis, most of the teams would be running their regular retrospective to improve, and help each other to grow. Most of the agile organizations are shifting towards higher base salary with no variable part as they realize that money are more demotivating factor at the end of the day. In creative complex world incentives for tasks are not really working. So that organizations are decoupling financial rewards from individual performance. If there is any bonus it’s more at the overall organizational level, split to the teams and allowing them to distribute it themselves, then given by the KIPs evaluations or decided by management. Some organizations go further on and make salaries fully transparent to everybody. Such level of transparency is a good review system as any inconsistency is visible to everyone.   

Agile organizations focus on rewarding people behavior, and learning, over just doing your job.  They realize that flexible working hours, self-selection of work, unlimited vacation, work from any place on the world, etc. are better motivation factors than your salary and bonus.

It’s all very different world. And it will not shift overnight. So start small, and inspect and adapt from there. The very first step is to get awareness about what culture you have in the organization and what is the desired culture. You might need a good communication, facilitation, and coaching skill to be able to help your organization to reflect that way, but that’s only the beginning. It’s all about changing mindset. Grow that mindset first, the different practices will follow.

In a summary, Agile HR helps organizations to change their culture to be more creative and collaborative and less control and compete oriented – we build organizations around motivated individuals, involving them in co-creating their journey. Agile HR focuses on the best employee experience from the first contact, through Day one, support their growth, motivation, and increasing their value to the organization. It’s not about processes but a different culture, different mindset.

Top 10 Agile conferences to attend in 2023

Every year I speak at many conferences and based on my experience I recommend some places to go for inspiration. Here is my list of the Top 10 Agile conferences to attend in 2023. It’s not my intention to cover them all, I’m sharing places where I like to return. Inspiring places with interaction, high energy, and great speakers.

  1. Business Agility Conference is one of my favorite conferences every year. Two days full of stories from organizations on their agile journey by executives, practitioners, and thought leaders. Join us in NYC on Apr, 26-27, 2023.
  2. AgilePrague Conference is definitely one of the best conferences in Europe. In two days, it creates a unique collaborative space. Two tracks with short talks, and inspirational keynotes. Join Agile Prague on Sep 18-19, 2023, Prague, Czech Republic.
  3. Agile Testing Days is Europe’s greaTEST Agile Testing Conference. Join Agile Testing Days on Nov 13 – 16, 2023 in Potsdam, Germany.
  4. Scrum Australia Sydney is another conference in an awesome city with awesome speakers. Join Scrum Sydney 30-31 March, Sydney, Australia.
  5. LeSS Conference is for practitioners. Since 2016, LeSS Conferences is where LeSS Practitioners share their LeSS experience and learn from new experiments. Join this year’s conference in Berlin on Sep 27-28, 2023.
  6. ScanAgile is one of my favorite conferences. This year is planned for March 28-29, 2023 in Helsinki, Finland.
  7. Scrum Day Colombia has a great program this year and it’s definitely worth visiting. Join Scrum Day Colombia on 24-25 de March 2023.
  8. Agile2023 conference brings agile enthusiasts together every year to share experiences and make new connections. Join passionate agilists from around the world to learn about the latest practices, ideas, and strategies in Agile software development from the world’s leading experts, change agents, and innovators. This year it’s on July 18-22 in Orlando, Florida.
  9. Agile on the Beach is a great event to attend and explore the summer in Cornwall, UK on July 6 – 7, 2023.
  10. XP 2023 is the premier Agile software development conference to combine both research and practice. It is a unique forum where Agile researchers, practitioners, thought leaders, coaches, and trainers get together to present and discuss their most recent innovations and research results. The theme for XP 2023 is Whole Team Sustainability. The conference is planned on June 13-16, 2023 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

The selection is based on my personal preference and experiences from those events.

Other conferences to consider this year

There are many great events that didn’t make it to this list, so please share your suggestions with us and we add them to the following list.

Psychological Safety, Motivation, and Growth

In my previous post, I was writing about the need for awareness of what is happening in the organization. Looking deeper into the culture, safety is a prerequisite of collaborative environments. Without it fear of failure will take over and people stop experimenting and try new things and start hiding behind roles, rules, and processes. The level of psychological safety correlates with team performance – people need to have trust that they won’t be punished when they make a mistake. One of the famous studies done by Google in 2012 on teamwork and team performance –  Project Aristotle – identified that psychological safety is the most important for a team’s success. Creating safety is key for motivation and if your environment is not safe enough, no agile can be successful there. Agile and Scrum teams address the safety issue by operating in very short iterations. Even if the entire iteration fails, it’s so short, that it won’t create any huge problem. We can still learn and improve. At the end of each iteration, there is a time to reflect, inspect, and adapt via regular retrospectives. It’s not about being perfect and never fail. But in agile space, we take failure as a good thing – an opportunity to learn.

It’s interesting how some organizations are almost freaking out when they hear about learning through experimenting. I guess they imagine the experiment as something big, like the whole product. No surprise they are afraid to fail the entire thing. But experiments in agile are small and tiny steps. In the nowadays world, there is no clear solution exists. Problems we are mostly facing can’t be analyzed, planned, and delivered according to that plan anymore. The plans are failing. For that, most of our problems are too volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. In the VUCA world, we can’t just say what needs to be done because we don’t know how to solve it yet. However, what we can do is an experiment, try different options, and learn from feedback. The three pillars of empiricism are transparency, inspection, and adaptation. And empirical process core for an agile environment.

Psychological Safety

The other interesting shift we are facing in agile organizations is about motivation. Traditionally organizations focused on extrinsic motivation factors where a reward is used as a motivator for specific activities. Already from school, we are stimulating the fixed mindset where people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are given and talent creates success without effort. On the other hand, in agile organizations, we rather focus on intrinsic motivation, where we believe that people do the work because it’s internally rewarding. It’s fun and satisfying. In agile environments, we stimulate the growth mindset where people believe that one can always improve, or exceed their natural talents. Now let’s pause a minute here. How do you motivate people? What is your organization doing? Is it more extrinsic motivation (money, bonuses, gifts, …) or intrinsic factors (purpose, autonomy, environment, …) ? Do we believe they are creative and smart and can learn what is needed from them? Or do we approach them more as machines?

All we need to do is to create a good learning environment, help people to be confident, and deliver continuous feedback. And here is the role of leadership and specifically HR in an organization. Agile HR is here to help create such an environment that is safe to fail, rewards learning, and builds a growth mindset. It seems to be simple, but in reality, it’s often where organizations are failing.

To assess your environment, you can ask a few questions:

  • Are goals clear to everyone?
  • Do you believe that the work you are doing matters?
  • Do you expect team members to take accountability?
  • Can you trust team members to do their best?
  • How comfortable do you feel taking risks on the team?
  • How comfortable do you feel depending on your teammates?

Remember, the level of psychological safety correlates with team performance, so it’s a good place where to start your business agility journey.

Agile HR: Start by Getting Awareness

As organizations are changing the way they work, their need for overall business agility is growing. Different departments are trying to not only implement the agile frameworks and apply Scrum or Kanban to enhance their capabilities to deliver value but also completely redesigning their function and AgileHR is one of those departments which requires a radical shift. You need to change the way you look at things and approach things. Agile requires a different culture that is team oriented, and much more collaborative and creative. As many practices organizations currently use for Recruiting  & Onboarding, Positions & Career Paths, Performance Review & Evaluation, and Rewards and Bonus systems are individual oriented, and are coming from competing and controlling cultures, the change is inevitable. The higher level of business agility is in the environment, the stronger pressure is for changing the practices as well. So what is HR role in the agile space?

We can say that: “We build organizations around motivated individuals, involving them in co-creating their journey.” Agile HR focuses on the best employee experience from the first contact, through Day1, supporting their growth, and motivation, and increasing their value to the organization. It’s not about processes but a different culture. We simply create environments enhancing collaboration, co-creation, innovations, and creativity. Very different from what HR role is in traditional environments. I see HR as the core of the transformation. They need to allow it to happen, they need to support that shift.

Continuous Feedback

Every change needs to start with awareness about the current and desired stage. What is our current culture? What are our values? What is the current level of safety? What is the engagement of people? Do we understand employee satisfaction? Are they promoters?

If you look into the ADP Research Institute Global Study of Engagement “Only about 16 percent of employees are ‘Fully Engaged’. This means 84 percent of workers are just ‘Coming to Work’ instead of contributing all they could to their organizations.”

Be aware of those things is a good starting point. Many organizations start by measuring engagement on yearly basis. And it’s a good start. Having the ability to compare results not only to the global data but also to your company trends. But if you start doing it, two interesting things usually happen. First – people start complaining that they have to fill in too many questions at one time, and second that once you start digging into the data and trying to inspect and adapt based on that, people start telling you that their responses are not particularly valid anymore – for example, there was a lot of stress in December, but now, in January we feel we are fine, etc. So sooner or later you realize you need to do such surveys more frequently, and also in a distributed way. The good news is there are many tools that can support that need. I have experience with using Officevibe which is designed to ask one question per week and that way is giving you more frequent data points and trends so you can make it actionable. It’s easier to be measured and you can see the impact of changing the practices right away.

Top 10 Agile Podcasts

Lately, I realized that people start listening more than reading and that podcasts become quite popular. So here is a list of my personal recommendations on top 10s agile podcasts.

#1: The #AgileWay Podcast by Zuzana Zuzi Sochova

#AgileWay podcast is exploring challenges organizations face on their agile journey. How to become a great ScrumMaster, how to change your leadership style, or how to embrace agility at the organizational level. Zuzi has also Czech language podcast “Jsme Agilni”.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agileway/id1555101534

#2: LeSS (Large Scale Scrum) Matters Podcast by Ben Maynard

The LeSS (Large Scale Scrum) Matters podcast guides you through a proper understanding of how to use Scrum with multiple teams. Ben invites practitioners from the LeSS community to share their experiences with scaling Scrum.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/less-large-scale-scrum-matters/id1605120218 

#3: (Re)Learning Leadership Podcast by Pete Behrens

(Re)Learning Leadership podcast is facilitated by Agile Leadership Journey founder Pete Behrens. The current ways of leading are failing to meet the challenges of our disrupted workforces. Today’s leaders have a choice between adaptation or atrophy: are you ready to evolve your mindset and accelerate change within your organization?

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/re-learning-leadership/id1551181774

#4: Relationship Matters Podcast by CRR Global

The Relationship Matters Podcast  We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole. Beyond Emotional Intelligence (relationship with oneself) and Social Intelligence (relationship with others) is the realm of Relationship Systems Intelligence where one’s focus shifts to the relationship with the group, team or system. This podcast is not specifically about agile, however in agile world relationship matters.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relationship-matters/id1507583306

#5 The Collaboration Superpowers Podcast by Lisette Sutherland

The Collaboration Superpowers Podcast by Lisette Sutherland focus on remote work. Recently the remote work becomes a necessity, but not many organization knows how to make it healthy, effective, and collaborative space. Lisette Sutherland, one of the most experienced people about remote work I know,  is interviewing people and companies doing great things… remotely! These interviews are packed with stories and tips for those whose business models depend upon successfully bridging distance to accomplish knowledge work.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-collaboration-superpowers-podcast/id931999061

#6: The Agile Book Club Podcast by Justyna Pindel and Paul Klipp

The Agile Book Club by Justyna Pindel and Paul Klipp is a podcast about books. Agile books. Every month, Justyna and Paul review a different agile book, sharing our thoughts, elevator pitches for the books, favorite quotations, and key takeaways.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agile-book-club/id1465706071

#7: Agile Toolkit Podcast by Bob Payne

The Agile Toolkit Podcast by Bob Payne is one of the first agile podcasts, interviewing agile community about agile software development, methods, tools, and business agility.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agile-toolkit-podcast/id78532866

#8: Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches by Vasco Duarte

The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast by Vasco Duarte interviews Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches from all over the world to get you actionable advice, new tips and tricks, improve your craft as a Scrum Master with daily doses of inspiring conversations with Scrum Masters from the all over the world. Some of the topics we discuss include: Agile Business, Agile Strategy, Retrospectives, Team motivation, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Backlog Refinement, Scaling Scrum, Lean Startup, Test Driven Development (TDD), Behavior Driven Development (BDD), Paper Prototyping, QA in Scrum, the role of agile managers, servant leadership, agile coaching, and more!

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scrum-master-toolbox-podcast-agile-storytelling-from/id963592988

#9: Bridging Agile and Professional Coaching Worlds Podcast by by Tandem Coaching Academy

Bridging Agile and Professional Coaching Worlds is a podcast with focus on anything and everything coaching – from Agile to Professional. We bring you the best of the best from the Agile and Professional coaching world, building that bridge between the two. We envision the future where Agile world embraces professional coaching skills and competencies, bringing them closer together.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bridging-agile-and-professional-coaching-worlds/id1499503189

#10: The Working Genius Podcast with Patrick Lencioni

The Working Genius podcast by Patrick Lencioni is designed to help people identify their natural gifts and find joy and fulfillment in their work and life. What type of work makes you thrive? Are you burning out because your job requires you to work in your areas of frustration? How can teams and families better tap into one another’s gifts? This podcast answers all these questions and more. This is another podcast that is not agile by focus, but quite relevant in agile space.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-working-genius-podcast-with-patrick-lencioni/id1553105854

Other great podcasts recommend by the community:

There are many more. Let me know if there is a podcast you like missing and I’ll add it here.

who is agile?

Who is agile? is the video edition of the leanpub e-book of 2010. A book of personal reflections on journeys where people stumbled on agile.

Agile Amped Podcast – Inspiring Conversations

The Agile Amped podcast by Accenture | SolutionsIQ is the shared voice of the Agile community, driven by compelling stories, passionate people, and innovative ideas. Together, we are advancing the impact of business agility.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agile-amped-podcast-inspiring-conversations/id992128516

Agile FM: “The Radio for the Agile Community”

Agile.FM by Jochen (Joe) Krebs interviews interesting agilists and bring their stories for a few years already, recording at many conferences. They cover a wide range of topics, for example Scrum, Kanban, Lean, Extreme Programming, CSM, PSM, Product Owner, Communication, Leadership, Agile Transformations and Cultural Change.

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agile-fm/id1263932838

A day in the life of an Agility Enabler

A day in the life of an Agility Enabler podcast by Jesus Mendez helps with building the next Agility Enabler’s generation in Montréal, Canada. Highlighting talented Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches and Agile Leaders from the Lean/Agile Montreal’s community, it intends to reveal what a day in the life of an Agility Enabler looks like and to help the audience with discovering the human being behind the Agility Enabler, its personal story, challenges, successful stories, tips, tricks and many more.

Listen on Apple Podcast: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/a-day-in-the-life-of-an-agility-enabler-tEmuaAecxbf/#

You are a Leader

Some time ago I published my new book The Agile Leader: Leveraging the Power of Influence that is looking at organizational agility and is focusing on the shift required from the leaders. I wrote this book to help people understand that agile is more than just some frameworks and practices. There are many stories from my friends and colleagues, which can give you a different perspective on the agile journey. People often ask me what is the biggest obstacle preventing organizations from embracing a greater level of agility. And I usually turn that question back to them. Everyone is a leader, everyone is having a power of influence and can make a difference. Don’t wait for some magic as it’s not going to happen. All you need is to have a vision, where do you see the organization in maybe five years from now, know why is it important for this organization to change. And what happens if the organization won’t change. Are we still going to be successful? Or are we going to starve? Share the vision of how different this organization needs to be, and why is it important. Create a sense of urgency. Without it, no change will ever happen.

You are a leader, no matter what position you are having right now. Leadership is the state of mind.

Once you have a vision, you need to be able to motivate people and learn from feedback. It’s not just about the ability to give feedback that people understand and are able to change based on that, but primarily about the ability to be open to hear the feedback yourself and learn from it. Giving feedback is hard, but receiving feedback is even harder. How many times you rejected the feedback from your peers by saying in your mind that something like “they don’t understand it”, “They don’t know all the details.. “, “I know better”. It’s easier that way, isn’t it?

In a complex VUCA world, where most of the problems involve volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, we need different skills. Individuals are not that successful in dealing with complexity and reacting to unpredictable and unstable business environments, we need a higher level of creativity, we need a team to come up with more innovative solutions to solve the challenges. That’s where the ability to listen to the feedback and learn from it is crucial.

Combining both strong vision and feedback feed the motivation. People are not working at their best just for incentives, they are working at their best when they deeply care about the outcome, where they feel a need to support that vision, where they feel involved and have a voice. Successful organizations know that and create environments with high trust, transparency, and open communication, where feedback is encouraged.

And don’t forget, you don’t need any positional power to become a leader. You are the leader, and you already have all the power you need, the power of influence.

Top 10 Agile conferences to attend in 2022

Every year I speak at many conferences and based on my experience I recommend some places to go for inspiration. It’s not my intention to cover them all, I’m sharing places where I like to return. Inspiring places with interaction, high energy, and great speakers.

  1. Business Agility Institute organizes several high-quality content conferences every year, bringing the best Executive, Thought-Leader, and Practitioner speakers to NYC to share their experiences and insights with you. No tracks, just the best stories, concisely told in 20-minutes. Join us in the NYC on Mar, 23-24, 2022.
  2. LeSS Conference is for practitioners. Since 2016, LeSS Conferences is where LeSS Practitioners share their LeSS experience and learn from new experiments. Join this year conference in Warsaw, Poland on Sep 22-23, 2022.
  3. AgilePrague Conference is planning to create two days of experience face to face this year on Sep 19-20, 2022.
  4. XPDays Benelux XP Days Benelux is a conference made for, and by, the Agile Community. It focuses on practical knowledge, real-world experience, and the active participation of everyone. There is no date yet, but the plan is to make the 2022 mini edition a physical gathering, in Belgium! Stay tuned.
  5. Global Scrum Gathering is back in Denver, Colorado this year. Reconnect with the community and join this outstanding event on Jun 5-8, 2022.
  6. AgileTestingDays is another great event happening for many years in Potsdam, Germany. Join Europe’s greaTEST Agile Testing Festival on Nov 21-24, 2022. There are always great speakers and a friendly atmosphere.
  7. ScanAgile is one of my favourite conferences. Planning started 🙂 But no details yet.
  8. Agile2022 conference brings Agile communities together year after year to share experiences and make new connections. Join passionate Agilists from around the world to learn about the latest practices, ideas, and strategies in Agile software development from the world’s leading experts, change agents, and innovators. This year it’s on July 18-22, 2022 in Nashville, Tennessee.
  9. XP 2022 is the premier Agile software development conference to combine both research and practice. It is a unique forum where Agile researchers, practitioners, thought leaders, coaches, and trainers get together to present and discuss their most recent innovations and research results. The theme for XP 2022 is Agile in the Era of Hybrid Work. The conference is planned entirely as a physical event in Copenhagen on Jun 13-17, 2022.
  10. Finally, if you want to experience something different, joinRegional Scrum Gathering Tokyo. It’s organized by an enthusiastic agile community in Japan. The purpose is to provide a “Ba” (place) where practitioners share ideas among Scrum practitioners having a great diversity. Regional Gatherings provides a unique experience and even if you don’t speak Japanese, there are some talks in English and other translated. Join the local community on January 5-7, 2022.

The selection is based on my personal preference and experiences from those events.

Other conferences to consider this year

There are many great events that didn’t make it to this list, so please share your suggestions with us and we add them to the following list.