Open Tech Calendar

Usual Running Order.
18.30 for refreshment and networking
7.00 Welcome and Code of Conduct
7.05 Awesome Niall
7.45 break
8.05 Amazing Lena
9.00 tidy up and pub.

Welcome to the Rebranded Scaled Agile group... I hope you like it. and with the Name, we are broadening out to not just scaled agile, but also more: community, psychology and pirates.

At the August event, we are going to have two first-time speakers at our August meet up! We are very excited to introduce Evelyn Lekhtman and Niall Ogilvy.

Niall will be talking about Transforming Businesses with "Economy of Flow"
Business transformation is about converting a vertical, economy of scale organisation into a horizontal, economy of flow organisation, to create a vibrant, scalable business of higher value – equipped to meet the demands of a new generation with pivotal buying power.
Taiichi Ohno, with others, were responsible for developing the 14 principles of flow from the ideas of Clarence Saunders and Dr W Edwards Deming. It is these principles upon which modern retailing, manufacturing, service industry and agile software development are founded. Flow is also a quality state of mind in which the human brain works at its most effective.
Niall will explain why transforming the processes, culture and technology of an organisation from the 14 principles of management devised by Henri Fayol in the 19th Century, to a system-of-systems based on economy of flow is critical for survival in the 21st Century.
Niall Ogilvy has worked with technology and associated business change for over 15 years as a Project and Programme Manager in a wide range of organisations. He is ideally placed between technology and the business ensuring a strong business-focus on the delivery of technology initiatives. He covers both sides of change management, behavioural and delivery; leveraging digital technology and harnessing process innovation and human behaviour to meet customer demand at less cost, and so transforming business-as-usual.
Before working in technology, Niall had a career in the Armed Forces. He led IT for the Infantry and was a member of the strategic project team that defined and delivered the core business for the British Army, namely ‘Battle Management’.

And Evelyn Lekhtman will be talking about "What Makes Agile Valuable and How to Ensure Value when Applying Agile."
Lena writes "Hello, my name is Evelyn Lekhtman. I started working in the IT industry 21 years ago in NYC as a mainframe analyst programme. I was exceptionally proud to be working in industry, helping fight the potential Y2K crisis. At the time, I truly felt and believed I was saving the world.
In 1999, I moved across the pond to work for HSBC bank, where my role evolved into being a Senior Systems Specialist developing algorithms to support the UK ATM Network and designing databases for HSBC Global to help them understand their global lending risk appetite.
In 2004, I decided to move north to bonny Scotland where I became an independent management consultant focusing on Project and Programme Management both in the IT and Business Change sector. My goal was to gain as much experience as possible with a variety of clients, ranging from SMEs to multinational organisations so that I could learn the techniques and understand the ethos of what good value add product delivery actually looked and felt like.
In 2012, I started to work with Lean and Six Sigma where I learnt how to make savings within the delivery change cycle. These newly adopted skills excited me greatly and I continued to use them until I fell upon Agile, where I found my greatest love.
Today I am as an Agile Transformational SME, Strategist, Advisor, Agile Coach and Scrum Master. I can help anyone who wants help to be better, by showing them how to apply easily and effectively agile methods to improve their workflow so that they can confidently and sustainably achieve their goal whilst tracking value.
Hence, my talk tonight will be titled 'What Makes Agile valuable and How to Ensure Value when Applying Agile'. It will help if you are:-
Struggling to demonstrate value when using Agile techniques? Struggling to enact your role within an agile environment?
Finding through the agile transformation behaviours are more disruptive than beneficial?
The goal of my talk is to share techniques along with case studies to show what Makes Agile Valuable, what steps are needed to be successful in any type or size of agile transformation journey and explain how to always align to value when adopting to agile ways of working for any type of workflow environment "

It is going to be an interesting night with both speakers available for questions and follow up.