2024 is shaping up to be a different year.

I’m closing one cycle. I’m preparing a new one.

Between now and then, I want to get back to meeting as many people as possible. In different formats. One of these formats could be conferences. I just applied to Agi’Lille (Nord Agile) for 2024.

Two topics for now:

The Disappearance

The Disappearance…or how to lead an agile transformation without ever speaking its name.

“La Disparition” is a lipogrammatic novel by Georges Perec published in 1969. Its originality is that, over nearly three hundred pages, it doesn’t contain a single letter e, yet the most commonly used letter in the French language. (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Disparition_(roman)).

The term agile has been mixed into every sauce. Agile is constantly distorted, mistreated. So today, when you say “agile” in a room, people roll their eyes. It’s normal—they’ve generally been fed an appalling slop. Yet there hasn’t been a paradigm shift, and agility remains an approach that has proven itself and continues to be very effective when it’s understood, desired, and properly applied.

Today, one way of doing things, which has quite a few advantages, is not to say the term “agile.” So how do you lead an agile transformation without ever saying the word “agile”? That’s the subject of this session.

Understanding and thinking about a transformation without using the vocabulary forces you to ask the right questions, to have the right reasoning. It facilitates the implantation of the agile mindset in a company. And it forces understanding of the principles and levers underlying our tools. It’s one way among others to approach this enterprise agility—there are others, but I see the benefits of this one.

The other topic is:

Mapping

Mapping and dynamics of our support work: who does what when how with whom with what requests what strengths what weaknesses in our support work and over time.

I imagine spending 40/50 minutes pulling on the thread of the ball of yarn of all these coaching, mentoring, and expert interventions in our agile support work. How do they interweave, oppose each other, complement each other, explain themselves, understand each other?

  • How do they begin?
  • With whom (role, position in the company)? With what type of request?
  • What posture is expected?
  • What posture would be the right one in a given place?
  • What rate?
  • What objective?
  • What malus? What bonus? Depending on positioning.
  • What roles are present (agile coach? Organizational coach? Executive coach? Individual coach? Systems coach? Manager? Mentor? PO? PM? SM? Dev? Expert? Lead? etc.) and how do the positionings and understandings of these roles evolve, or have evolved (over the years)?

I think it would be interesting for quite a few people to position ourselves well in our support work, to understand expectations well, to clarify our support work well, to grasp well the benefits between roles and how they complement each other, to grasp well the weaknesses of certain roles and how they oppose others, to understand the evolution over recent years of these roles and these expectations.

Agility in 20 years?

I’m adding this topic following a conversation with you.

Is agile still relevant? Haven’t we already changed paradigms? Is its rejection explained by this type of change? What would a paradigm shift mean?

The beginning of my reflections:

  • There are several forms of agility. In particular, two very different ones that coexist today: that of people’s emancipation (the developers who originated Xtreme Programming) which draws its sources from historical forms like sociocracy. And that of Californian startups: acceleration, optimization, constant adaptation, relevance, even frugality. And within these two broad categories, we can see very different forms. Contrary to appearances, both are sought by dominant thinking, capitalism. The first because engagement makes each of us better artisans, workers, collaborators. The second because it’s an optimization of performance.
  • We must question the usefulness of this agility at the end of capitalism. Are there things to keep? Very certainly: people’s emancipation, engagement, frugality, adaptation, a certain form of optimization, etc. And what will no longer be on the agenda: mainly a certain idea of value, a certain form of optimization, a different temporality, etc.
  • And we must question the challenges of the world after collapse. If we accept that mitigation is absolutely not being taken into account by our leaders, or even our fellow citizens, it seems sensible to me to prepare for post-collapse adaptation. Will this agility still be relevant? And if so, how. (I must tell you that I’ve started writing something that resembles this a bit).

A session that’s a bit more out there… I know I’m sometimes criticized for being too “meta.”

1970-2070 IT team, a speculative narrative

I’m adding this topic following a conversation with you. It’s much more ambitious and I really want to do it. Especially since it consolidates the work I’m currently doing with Henri L. on CarbonSquad, a role-playing game.

Recalling the major movements in development from waterfall to agility, the dynamics at play, company positioning, different types of companies, and in the middle, the coder, from 1970 to 2024. And then projecting into the next 50 years to come. Does AI change the game? What use? What benefits if there are any? The end of resources, the end of IT? Yes? No? Should we envision IT and more broadly digital differently? The cloud? The renewal of computers, processors? Moore’s law? The network itself?

2052 is the collapse—on one side, large corporations that survive and push today’s world to the extreme; on the other, a lowtech branch gets organized. On one side, the network and satellites; on the other, “The Mesh,” a mesh network made of bits and pieces.

Underground, the Carbon Squad, an anti-corpo intervention group that first appeared with a first sabotage in 2034 at the World Cup in Saudi Arabia.

What becomes of coders?

Half-real narrative about past years, half-speculative narrative about years to come, we question the role of coders (broadly: UX, design, facilitation, etc.), these IT teams and the different universes we can imagine emerging. <>

Your opinion?

We’ll see if I’m selected. In the meantime, I’d like to know

  • Does this make sense to you?
  • At which conferences would you like to discuss this with me?
  • What topic would you like to hear me talk about?

Thank you

You can write to me at pablo {at} projetwinston {dot} fr or on mastodon (or even, let’s be crazy, on Linkedin)