IN-PERSON: Talk night: Paula McLean on Product and Chris McDermott on Learning

For our August event, we have two great talks for you. As warmups for conferences, we've got a preview of Paula McLean's new talk, "Becoming a Product-Centric Organisation", and Chris McDermott with "Re-Contextualising 20+ Years of Learning".
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Paula McLean: "Becoming a Product-Centric Organisation"

You now work in a Product-led organisation but what does that really mean? For one, you’ll likely be more interested in outcomes rather than outputs. What is the difference? What makes a “good” outcome? How do you then manage these outcomes across a Product Line? In this case study, I would like to share our journey into initiatives and outcomes, bad and good and the repeatable approach we adopted to define and measure these via impact metrics.

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Chris McDermott: "Re-contextualising 20+ Years of Learning"

n the past 20+ years the way in which we deliver software has changed beyond recognition, with the development of Lean Agile practices playing a considerable part in this transformation.
Our focus on “uncovering better ways” has led us to develop a large number of new ways of working that have vastly increased quality, reduced cycle times and put valuable software into the hands of our customers, while along the way, challenging the way we run our organisations.
The question we are now looking to answer is “how can this learning be applied to a different context?”, one far removed from the world of software and one that is facing considerable challenges.
In this talk Chris will share his experience re-contextualising these ways of working to the context of public sector business operations, a space facing huge pressures and in great need of change.
He’ll show how the use of Lean Agile practice can help transform the operational delivery of public services and provide a platform to help improve the lives of those who deliver them.
Using Social Practice Theory as a framing, showing how it can help us better understand practice and what is appropriate to introduce into a different context and what is not, Chris will also share some of his experiences improving the delivery of public services. There may also be mentions of Cynefin, complexity and constraints… because it’s Lean Agile Glasgow!

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Bio: Paula is a passionate Agile Coach working at SSE in Glasgow. Paula is also a qualified cognitive behavioural therapist. Her mission is to help individuals and teams overcome the challenges they face so that they become happier and more productive. By combining her experience as a Scrum Master and CBT therapist, Paula offers a unique approach to the classic Scrum Master role.

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Bio: Chris is an independent Lean Agile Coach, founder of Lean Agile Scotland and Lean Agile Glasgow, Principal Consultant at Contextualise and co creator of Change Mapping, a method of visualising and managing change.

He caught the Agile bug in 2003 when, as a developer, he borrowed his brother-in-law’s copy of XP Explained (which he foolishly returned). In around 2010 he found Lean, ToC and was introduced to Systems Thinking. This led to founding the Lean Agile Scotland conference in a desire to bring together lots of smart people to learn from, draw together two diverging communities and to introduce others in Scotland to these ideas. In the past few years his interest in Complexity Theory and Social Practice Theory has grown. His head is now a tangled mess of all of the things he’s learned in the last 20 years which he suspects will take the next 20 years to make sense of.

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WHEN: Wednesday 9th August, 6pm doors for 6.15pm start.
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WHERE: We'll be hosted by MBN Solutions on West George Street in Glasgow.
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