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RADICAL AGILITY WHEN AGILE… WASN’T?

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HELLO! I am Paul Adams Engineering Leadership: ▸ Zalando ▸ Wayfair ▸ Scout24 (“RightMove for Germany”) ▸ Vercel 2

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Narcissism Bit Talking About Myself Before Talking About Agility 1

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School Dollar Academy 4

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Undergraduate University College, Durham 5

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Postgraduate University of Lincoln 6

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Now: Berlin Engineering Leadership 7

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Controversial Bit Where I Try To Grab Your Attention For Just One Minute 2

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AGILITY FAILED Not only is agility dead, it never really lived and was hardly ever practiced properly. 9

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Zalando Bit Where I Talk About Zalando 3

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2017 The Best Of Times, The Worst Of Times 11

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“WE DO SCRUM” The poster-child process for agility, sold as a perk! 12

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Zalando Sells A Lot Of Shoes 13

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~€4.5billion Revenue in 2017 ~15,000 staff Of which, ~3000 in tech ~200,000,000 Monthly visits 14

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Radical Agility For When You Are Tool Cool And Too Big For Scrum 15

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Drive Daniel Pink’s Essay On Motivation 16

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The Components 17 AUTONOMY Teams are the basic unit of engineering. A team should be able to deliver without the need for collaboration with another team. TRUST Teams should always act with good intent and assume other teams are acting similarly. We all have the skills we need to get our job done well. If now, we develop those skills as part of our work. MASTERY We all know why we are here. Our team knows why it is here. We feel connected to the business. PURPOSE

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Did It Work? Nope. 18 Was It Agile? Also nope.

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“ …over processes and tools …over comprehensive documentation …over contract negotiation …over following a plan 19

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Revealing Bit Where I Wow You With Rhetoric 4

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Agility Had A Branding Problem ▸ Everyone was agile… ▸ …But nobody was agile. ▸ They were all Scrum. Or Radical Agility. 21

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Switcheroo In 2017 “nobody” was really agile, but all claimed to be. In 2022 “nobody” really claims to be agile, but are more agile than ever. 22

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23 THANKS! Any questions? You can find me at: ▸ @therealpadams ▸ [email protected]