Past Events

DataGrid's official event launch! Enough with the slide monkeys - let’s dive into the content... Sander discussed his topic "Getting Unstuck"

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This is the era of rapid and increasing change, adapting rapidly or perishing. Many organizations, big and small, struggle to survive. Their products and software have aged and become hard to maintain until they reach Technical Death, where all available effort goes into mere survival. At the same time, in our global economy, competition comes from anywhere, with better products built at lower costs. Organizations must jump the Innovators’ Dilemma and reinvent themselves to stay ahead of the competition.

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Speed, agility, and adaptability are more crucial than ever. However, agile frameworks became both a solution and a source of uncertainty and rigidity. Organizations seek fresh perspectives and adaptable strategies and techniques. They are stuck.

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This talk presented a battle-tested repertoire of practical strategies and techniques that serve as a compass for comprehending and continuously navigating between maintenance, renovation, and innovation, maintaining a solid focus on customer-centricity, reaching your dot on the horizon while instilling transparency, autonomy, and collaboration. These strategies involved leveraging proposed tools such as idea funnels, tech boards, collectives, and microteams. 

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This talk empowered you to evolve from conventional agile and cultivate a culture of continuous growth. Of course, it offered a treasure trove of real-life stories from the trenches, providing an authentic glimpse into agile but redefined for the modern era. 

 

After his initial talk we encouraged the audience to interact and discuss case studies. 

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In this talk, we explored the current wave of Generative AI and its impact on the tech landscape, focusing on how organizations can harness this technology to drive efficiency. The session dove into practical use cases where AI delivers significant value, particularly in streamlining business processes.

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We started with a broad overview of the potential AI holds, before narrowing our focus to efficiency-driven applications. At this point we jumped into discussion! Taking examples from the group by discussing the challenges they face in their current organization. From initial assessment of applicability of GenAI, to privacy concerns, adoption rate hurdles, or even the feasibility in which solutions can be implemented - the crosshair between what's technically possible vs the risk.

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In our discussion we also provided a detailed use case from the mortgage industry. Here, AI is applied to automate document processing, cross-referencing, and business rule validation. This solution involved integrating technologies like Vision AI for data extraction, standardized metadata definitions, and low-code business rule management, ultimately reducing the workload for specialists and accelerating the time-to-decision for consumers.

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From this specific example, we zoomed out to outline a general framework for identifying and implementing efficient AI-driven business processes—starting with building a strong business case, through discovery, and on to successful realization. In our discussions we tackled the key challenges organizations face when moving AI solutions into production, such as integration, scalability, and maintaining flexibility in dynamic environments.

Increase the flow of delivery with effective software design and team interactions.

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Have you ever faced roadblocks in software development stemming from disjointed team structures or interactions? You’re not alone. Misalignment between software and the domain, siloed teams focusing on random tasks, or processes dictating software architecture often end up in rigid software that is not coherent with evolving environment and requirements.

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Enter Team Topologies, a pattern language, and a set of principles and practices to ensure a steady flow of value while respecting human-centric aspects like trust boundaries and cognitive load. This perspective poses a burning question: What if we change how teams interact with each other and leverage these interactions to evolve the organization and the software? What would such a world look like?

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Through real-world use cases, we discussed and undertsood the implications of applying Team Topologies and fast-flow principles. This session was not just theory; it was about practical hands-on, discussion, and learning by doing. It provided the opportunity to reflect on our context and discuss it with the other participants.

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What is this session about

The software we produce quickly changes the user's needs, which has a ripple effect on the software itself. Requirements change, and people want different things. This is good; people are engaged, and the software's value is sound. But there’s a caveat: how the teams inside the organization interact can be an enabler or blocker to evolving the software services and the organization itself. You probably have experience with how the friction between different people and teams inside a company didn’t yield the desirable results.

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This session focused on a different angle. What if we take how teams interact and leverage our native humane capabilities, such as trust and empathy, around a common goal? Rather than starting from the technical angle, we start from the social and humane angle. With this in mind, we used Team Topologies principles and practices. We designed how teams can interact with each other and how to have a sensible software architecture that enables a fast flow of value toward the users.

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You will work in smaller groups around a fiction company example based on real-life use cases. The session provided a space to safely experiment with different options and reflect on the trade- offs and implications. There was a strong emphasis on the practical side of things, with short theory blocks to give you the foundation for the exercises. At the end of the workshop, we applied the principles and practices to our context, improving the flow and business outcomes.