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At the fourth Manage Agile in Berlin Brandenburg, which took place from October 5 to 8, 2015, a full program of presentations and workshops was offered, which I took advantage of together with my colleague Fabian Stein.

I would like to mention in advance that the congress is a confirmation of what we have done in recent months to become even more agile. Unfortunately, this also means that the congress only brought us a small amount of added value, because much of what was discussed and ideas and suggestions given there correspond to what we are already doing or have planned to do in the future. Nevertheless, I would like to share with you my personal key learnings (in no particular order):

Being agile is nothing new

Even if IT thinks we are now "the cool kids on the block" because we are now agile, as Dr. Andrea Tomasini from agile42 put it so well on the second day of the conference, because, as he went on to point out, Toyota discovered the principle for itself almost 100 years ago and called it "continuous improvement".

Companies and teams within companies need to be more self-organized

Several speakers explained this statement in more detail from different perspectives or gave tips on how this can be achieved more easily. For example, by defining values and/or rules on how decisions should be made in the company. Or that in transition phases that are intended to lead to more agility, it is important that new processes are introduced quickly so that two processes do not exist at the same time and a lot of "waste" is produced because, for example, the old process is still being used (as it is not intended). hr pioneers also pointed out that 100% self-organization of development teams can lead to demotivation/counterproductive because they suddenly have to bear too much responsibility, although they may actually "only" want to develop. The hr pioneers therefore advocate not burdening the teams with all responsibility, but rather relieving them of certain organizational tasks, for example.

Management must want to become agile and employees must (want to) live agility

The strategy of wanting to be "agile" must fit the company, i.e. employees and management must want it and be behind it. hr pioneers also added to this statement by saying that there are different "maturity levels of agile companies" and that a company can only become more agile if the agile attitude of the people who work in the company is greater, i.e. the "agile level" that the company has reached so far. The diagram that was shown reminded me of an avocado due to its colors and shape, which is why I would like to call the model "Agile Avocado" at this point. You should also never lose sight of the guiding principles of the "Agile Manifesto", as some speakers mentioned in passing.

Create transparency

Agile companies, or those who want to become one, should try to be as transparent as possible in as many areas as possible, such as corporate strategy, order situation, know-how in the company, etc., not only towards customers, but above all towards their employees.

Further suggestions:

• Make meetings optional rather than mandatory
• Agility does not mean change on demand, but rather flexibility
• Restructuring organizational structures often helps more than optimizing small processes, because you can only achieve local efficiency that way, but not global efficiency! Eliminating impediments should also help.

Would I attend the conference again?

As I mentioned at the beginning, I wasn't able to gain many new insights for us as a company and therefore can't say a clear "yes" to the trade fair. In my opinion, contrary to its motto "The conference for agile managers and those who want to become one", the conference is more for managers who are not yet agile or are not yet acting agile and can use the conference more as a good source of information with many experienced experts.