Self-organisation - a practice report

Self-organization is a fundamental principle in agile teams that promotes flexibility, adaptability, and productivity. It refers to the ability of team members to independently make decisions, collaborate, and manage their work without constant direction from a central authority.

So much for the theory. But what does it look like in practice?

In a moderated fishbowl we will get to the bottom of this question. The format offers the opportunity for people from the community to contribute their own questions and experiences.

Panel participants are

Marco Fretz, COO, System Engineer at heart, VSHN
Marco's journey at VSHN began as a system engineer, but his passion for team empowerment and customer engagement quickly led him towards organizational development. He is driven to understand the dynamics of VSHN as an organization of self-managing teams, without traditional bosses. Marco strives to create clarity, provide support, and empower others without assuming the role of a boss. Instead, he represents the Delegator of all VSHN teams. He has successfully led various organizational changes and is an advocate for diverse mindsets and toolboxes, such as Sociocracy 3.0, while avoiding restrictive frameworks. Marco goes beyond being a facilitator and actively participates in decision-making, collaborating with the teams to foster growth and empowerment.

About VSHN and Sociocracy 3.0:
VSHN is an IT company with 50 people working in more or less self-managing teams, that values principles and utilizes patterns from Sociocracy 3.0. With a distinct collaborative culture, VSHN never followed traditional paths but always aimed to make their culture more explicit and approachable by their VSHNeers. Marco will share their journey towards explicit self-management, the challenges faced, the mistakes made, and the continuous improvement they embrace. Expect honest answers and deep insights into their experiences, because at VSHN, it's not about striving for perfection but about ongoing growth and learning.

Franziska Hoberg Agile Coach, Swisscom (Schweiz) AG
Enabling people and creating the environments where everyone can unfold their potential is Franziska's passion. She calls herself Agile evangelist, Kanban practitioner, New Work ambassador, Diversity advocate. She is a keen learner regardless if it's related to work, sports or music. In 2019 she joined Swisscom (Schweiz) AG to support the transformation towards new ways of working.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/franziska-hoberg-161224119/

About Swisscom (Schweiz) AG
At Swisscom (Schweiz) AG, a leading Swiss telecommunications, provider, they’re approximately 5-7 years into a journey adopting new ways of working. they use a setup based on Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) to benefit from lean-agile ways of working. Their own principles to make new ways of working successful are: Develop strong, stable and independent teams, Align collaboration to the value stream, Clarify value and prioritise rigorously, Continuously create value and learn quickly. This approach is based on self-organised teams. Franziska will share how they handle the evolution from an enterprise culture towards self-organising teams and all the pitfalls on their way.

Agenda
17:30 - Arrival, first drinks
18:00 - Start of the fishbowl discussion
19:30 - Networking, snack, drinks

A big thank you to our sponsors who made this Meetup possible
Event Sponsor: Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts
Location Sponsor: Digicomp
Apéro Sponsor: DevOpsDays

We are looking forward to the exchange with you
Martin