Teamlead Conf: retrospective and future plans

    New mood post.

    Tomorrow comes the new 2019 year. In the new year, by tradition, we all somehow promise ourselves to do something better, something else, not to do something at all :) Well, again, by tradition, on the last day of the year, it’s customary to sum up and plan for the future . 2018 was the year of the birth of TeamLead Conf, a conference for those who want to move to a new level of control for small teams. Under the cut there are some memories, some thoughts, many letters of plans for the future and the announcement of the first reports on our winter event in Moscow.



    In 2018, we held two excellent conferences for tmlids and colleagues from the IT and near-IT community who empathize with them. In Moscow in February, we gathered about 450 people, and it was mega cool because It was the first specialized event of this kind. 30 reports on completely different topics, hundreds of eager fellowship colleagues, experts and speakers for two days discussed the most pressing and important topics for tmlid managers. The atmosphere of that event is a great feature of the reporting video . At that time, it seemed to us that we had completed the task, gathered all interested parties and answered all their questions. How were we mistaken :) Now the list of questions that somehow relate to the activities of the team leads takes about 6 pages and is constantly updated.

    In the fall, we repeated the conference in St. Petersburg. To our surprise, the interest in the event was even higher. Nearly 600 participants, dozens of experts, full two days of reports, trainings and meetings, a competition of reports of 3.2 reports for one place, a sea of ​​communication, beer and a beautiful autumn city. We collected the program of the second conference more consciously, paying attention to several key topics, among which it is worth highlighting the metrics and the team's assessment, building processes and communication. It would seem that the topics are jaded to the holes, but it turned out to check that the topics are so extensive that we can talk about them for a very long time. Here there is the reported video. Judging by the feedback from the audience, it turned out very well, but we had something to think about and adjust the approach to the selection of the program and the organization of the event as a whole.

    So. I present you TeamLead Conf 2019 Moscow . The conference will be held on February 25 and 26 in Moscow in Radisson Slavyanskaya. According to our forecasts, we will gather about 700 participants: leading industry experts, experts and everyone who is not indifferent to the topic of managing teams, people, processes. Among the participants are Kaspersky Lab, Tinkov Bank, Lamoda, Avito, Badoo, Ivi.ru, Ozon, Skyeng, Dodo, Agima, a number of well-known independent experts, dark horses and just very good and smart guys :) The list of participants is constantly updated. In other words, once again a platform awaits you, where it will be with whom to discuss your most pressing problems and ask questions to those who are doing really cool and bold things in terms of managing people and teams. We still submit to the public a little more than 30 reports, but this time the key topics are different from those we discussed in 2018.

    This time we will focus on the following areas (below are key topics, but not all):

    • Planning your work, including talk about the fight against overload.
    • Retrospectives, brainstorming, facilitation sessions, planning and other aspects of group and teamwork.
    • Delegation.
    • Intangible motivation.

    And also we will add manufacturability - we will discuss some aspects of the organization of the technological process. Development, review, assembly, integration will be in sight, and how to integrate all this into the general business process, as well as all kinds of regulations and instructions - their benefits, harm and ways of implementation.

    Also this time we decided to conduct a small experiment and select a separate interactive track (yes, a whole track) for a whole series of topics that somehow sounded from the stage, but caused a huge amount of questions from the audience and conversations on the sidelines. What does this mean? Many of you probably attended the so-called round tables, when specially invited experts answer questions from the presenter or from the audience. Often there are so many questions and so little time that most of the answers do not sound, and the audience in general is deprived of the opportunity to take part in the dialogue. This time everything will be different. Firstly, we have increased the time for this format up to 2 hours (there was only one hour before), secondly, we will prepare a number of questions “for seed”, we will still ask the experts to speak, and then we will invite for discussion Hall. Each of you will be able to speak on the topic and share your experience. We believe that this will add pepper to the discussion, will strengthen pluralism, there will be additional opportunities to express their point of view among those who for some reason do not really want to apply for a report. We are sure that there are a lot of “secret” experts among our listeners, and we really want to involve them in the discussion. Each “round table” could be replaced by the report of one speaker, but the topics are so painful and relevant that we decided not to lose the rest of our opinions. that there is a huge number of “secret” experts among our listeners, and we really want to involve them in the discussion. Each “round table” could be replaced by the report of one speaker, but the topics are so painful and relevant that we decided not to lose the rest of our opinions. that there is a huge number of “secret” experts among our listeners, and we really want to involve them in the discussion. Each “round table” could be replaced by the report of one speaker, but the topics are so painful and relevant that we decided not to lose the rest of our opinions.

    Among the topics that we now consider in the first place, these:

    • Remote employees, how to work with them, how to manage, etc. Or maybe it is universal evil?
    • Intangible motivation. Best practices, options for implementation. Or maybe only money and top projects really motivate?
    • Management of "stars". What to do when you have a “star”? Is it worth hiring those who are obviously stronger than you?
    • Long-suffering theme of cross-functional teams. Everything is said about it, many have long been implemented, and some still build their processes on the basis of highly specialized units. Maybe there is some secret?
    • Well, the cherry on the cake. What to do when it was not possible to become a cool team leader? Is there a way back? How to organize your work activity so as not to burn bridges? Here, in theory, we will touch on the topic “what to do if there is no way forward”.

    We very much hope that the format will go, but for now we are training on various top-secret meetings.

    Well, in conclusion, I want to run through the first dozen reports that have already been accepted into the program, the speakers began to prepare, and we focused on further selection.

    1. Yegor Tolstoy . Avito. OKR: instructions for use. Finally, we pulled the guys to share their experience of using OKR in work in a large organization. Avito OKR has been practicing for the third year and during this time they managed to try many different approaches to the formation of goals and key results, collected a bunch of rakes and are now ready to share with us experience and practical cases of implementing and using OKR in various structures and teams.
    2. Philippe Delgado . Information technology and systems. Methodology as a constructor: assembly instructions. Phil plans to develop the idea of ​​Kobern, which the latter described in his article “Each project has its own methodology”. What details can the development methodology consist of? What should be paid attention to when designing and implementing it, when and how to rebuild the created methodology, I will tell you about several useful practices.
    3. Marina Peitsch , Purrweb. How to use the advantages of your leadership style in team management. What to do if you embarked on the path of team leadership, but something is not working with the team? The shortest way to effective and comfortable work with a team is the definition and development of leadership qualities that are already embedded in a person. Fortunately, everyone has some default leadership style. At the session, we will examine how to become a cool team leader (read, leader), effectively using the strengths and recommendations of Dr. Adizes. Are you all familiar with the works of this outstanding husband?
    4. Ahmed Sheriev . Interfax. Legacy team refactoring and development processes. (From my point of view, the topic is mega-topical.) What should I do when I have to accept a command “with history”, with established processes that are not very effective? Where to begin? Which approaches to reforming teams have proven themselves and allow for the most painless changes? Let's look for answers to these questions together with Ahmed.
    5. Pavel Aksyonov . Ozon.ru. Maintain cross-team projects. We will listen to the story of how projects are being made in Ozone, in which 10-15 teams participate. Roles, typical problems, launch and maintenance, synchronization and many more tricks and subtleties. Personally, I do not have such a number of teams, but there are integration projects in which the number of participants is commensurate, albeit temporarily. In general, a promising topic.
    6. Anastasia Kalashnikova . Mysterious empathy, hearing and feedback, or Timlid as a psychologist. When working with people, at some point you realize that you need to develop empathy in yourself. Learn to understand what the developer of your team is saying. Move away from the illusion that he should be like you. At the same time set tasks, follow the results and do not fall out of emotion. We will hear about how to develop active listening skills. Nastya is a practicing psychologist and HR in IT, she knows exactly where it hurts.
    7. Evgeny Peshkov . Dodo Pizza. Management 3.0. Theory and practice in Dodo Pizza. Another buzzword or a popular approach to team management in the agile world? What is this model, and what parts of the guys from Dodo are considered important and used in the management. What practices can be taken right now and apply in their teams.
    8. Natalia Sveshnikova . Kaspersky Lab. Prevention of holivar and other symptoms of unhealthy meetings. At the moment, warm lamp gatherings turn into a natural cf @ h. Who is guilty? What should be done to stabilize meetings and make them useful and productive? What you should pay special attention to. That's about it and listen. Natalia taxis system analysts, for these guys meeting is a huge part of life.
    9. Vladimir Romanko . Kaspersky Lab. Practical techniques for conducting a Code Review. Promised a little above tech report. Codereview. For each, this word means something different. We will listen to the story about the techniques and approaches to the seemingly eaten up process. In the report: monitoring
    10. Andrey Ryzhkin . Agima. Manager vs timlid: distribution of responsibility. Another hot topic from my point of view. Do you often come across the fact that the team leader and manager play “ping-pong”, trying to throw the task to each other? Does it happen that someone takes on an extra responsibility and does someone else’s work to the detriment of his main responsibilities? You have to argue on the question “who should do this?” Or find a compromise so that the task moves towards the result? Together with Andrey we will look for answers to these questions.
    11. Maxim Tsepkov . Mtsepkov.org. Models softskill for timlid. Never was, and here again. With teams - as in development. You can simply write code, and you can know and use templates. So the teams - you can simply build teamwork of people, and you can - know and apply models and patterns, and this knowledge allows you to notice problem points, strengths and weaknesses and work with them. There are many such models, and you cannot tell everyone in the report. Max’s goal is to give an overview of those he uses and show on cases how they work and how useful they are. And at the same time, to show that using models doesn’t mean turning into a soulless manager, for whom people are soulless resources.
    12. Evgeny Rossinsky . Ivi.ru. In the name of a new product. A year ago, Eugene talked about how ivi.ru underwent Agile-transformation, what results were achieved by creating a scalable scrum with value streams. This time it will be about how the guys from ivi.ru changed the structure of the product and technology unit at the time of creating a new product, what remained of flexible methodologies, why quality control engineers played a key role in organizing the development process, in teamleads and product owners.

    Looks very promising. Is not it? And this is only one third.

    As they say, those who usually do not speak much Russian - stay tuned. I am sure that no less interesting reports are waiting for us. By the way, if you have an idea about the topic for a “round table” - offer, I will gladly discuss it with you. If the topic is interesting and will be included in the list of topics, we will invite you to the conference absolutely free.

    Thank you for reading!

    Happy New Year. And may the Force be with us!
    I remind you that Call for Papers to the TeamLead Conf 2019 conference for timblids, which will be held February 25-26 in Moscow, is in full swing. Only 15 days left. Hurry up! Here, briefly on how to submit a report, and the conditions for participation, this is a link to the application form.

    And stay with us! We will continue to post articles and videos on managing development teams, and in the newsletter we will collect collections of useful materials for several weeks and write about the news of the conference.

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