LKCE 2014, Hamburg – Lean Kanban Central Europe

Autumn, end of October – LKCE 2014, Hamburg is approaching and so it’s high time to think about and remind you on it. Arne has already lately written about this topic, so here are my plans for the conference.

Fantastic Keynotes

We have the pleasure to welcome awesome keynotes this year!

Mary und Tom Poppendieck have lately written one of their best books, looking far beyond process and going in depth also in the early phases of product development, by also describing ways to better and earlier find out what our clients need and then design the right product in economical ways.

Henrik Kniberg, will give a keynote on the practitioners view on building the right products and not wasting time on building stuff no one needs.

Don Reinertsen, will finally talk on why it might make sense to learn how to live with uncertainty and variability in product development rather than to introduce a lot of waste fighting it.

Management Track

Rather than planning the whole of the program together, this year we decided on the experiment of organizing the conference into tracks and delegating these to track chairs. I am quite happy and proud on having ‚won‘ the ‚Management Track“.

The goal I set for myself in this track was not to come up with definite answers but to have several people talk on the challenges in Management and their different views on what the challenges are in managing in the Lean and Agile context, so that everyone can listen to several views and build her own picture through those different angles. And these are the sessions:

Katherine Kirk will explore why, even in our data driven environments, the deeply human side of politics and gut feel often take over and how to cope with it.

Jabe Bloom looks at „Management as a design problem“, Wach for us will the opportunity to learn something on design theory and its applicability for management in the complex on the side. Design-Aufgabe betrachtet und wird uns nebenbei einiges über Designtheorie erzählen.

I am especially looking forward to Fritjof Detzner’s talk on the management principles behind his work as CEO of Jimdo. This will explain some of how and why Jimdo manages to let culture be the driving force through all the expansion and growth that Jimdo has been seeing in the last years. Here is a flavor of what Stephen Bungay has observed at Jimdo.

My own talk will be on the schallendes and requirements on management at the fuzzy front end of product development, where we discover what the client ants and where uncertainty is high and information yet especially low.

We will wrap up the track with an interactive World Café session on the „Requirements on Management in Lean and Agile Environments“. We hope that everyone interested in the topic will come and contribute to the group on what he has seen and experienced in his very own life and environment.

The Pecha Kuchas

Chris Young – Coffee Bean Buffering, Lean Laundry and Kanban Kids

A view on the fundamentals of Lean and Kanban in everyday life, when making coffee, doing the laundry and feeding the kids. Perhaps we need to stop thinking about work, or perhaps the ubiquity of the principles that underpin Lean and Kanban are a clue to why they are so effective. This Pecha Kucha offers another way of looking at it is as a source of useful metaphors for talking about work, lean and kanban.

Markus Andrezak – Design & Research against risk – a neighborhood story

New shops open all the time in my neighborhood. Very few survive. The people who live here know that. But no one asks them It is sad to see those shops come and go, the owners go broke. But they don’t look around, they don’t ask. And with the products we build, it’s just the same most of the time. People don’t care about the people they build products for. They don’t understand their needs, they don’t do the hard work of research. Simple questions would help, simple concepts like the job to be done. 6 minutes 40 of Lean User Research.

Pawel Brodzinski – Learn like a child

Last year at Lean Kanban Central Europe Jabe Bloom offered us a great advice how to scientifically approach the process of learning. In the same spirit this Pecha Kucha will offer another inspiration, coming from a very different source. We consider our children extremely capable to learn new stuff. At the same time we don’t put that much attention to how they learn. Interestingly enough we have a lot to learn from our little children. As professionals and as parents too.

Claudio Perrone – Jobs-To-Be-Done in 400 seconds

Operational excellence means nothing if we fail to understand what customers truly value and need.

Unfortunately, traditional approaches to customer and product segmentation introduce a lot of noise but give us only marginal insights about what customers are trying to accomplish (i.e. their “job”) and what causes them to “hire” our products or services.

As a consequence, most of us resort to incremental innovation to satisfy well-understood — but often over-served — market needs. Life goes on until, inevitably, we fade into oblivion or a new player outlearns and disrupts us.

In an epic battle against the clock and his own demons, Claudio will obey to the cold and unforgiving rules of Pecha Kucha to catapult you into the fascinating world known as Jobs-To-Be-Done.

If you could not yet make your mind up to make it to LKCE once again, take a quick look into the program, read Arne’s much more detailed blog and simply book a ticket.

Have fun and see you in Hamburg on November 11 and 12!

Facts

Where: Hamburg

When: 10. & 11. November 2014

More Info und Booking