On 29 August 2019, the Melbourne Kanban and Cynefin meetup groups held a joint meetup for the first time. The Kanban meeup group has done this a couple of times before with other groups, but I thought it would be a good time to try out a combined session with Cynefin. There are a number of overlaps between Kanban and Cynefin, so I wanted to get together and see if we can explore these to see if they really exist or not.
In choosing the format for the session I was inspired by a number of the conversations I have with Kim Ballestrin (@kb2bkb). Kim has been running the Cynefin meetup group since its inception and over the years we have had a number of discussions about cynefin and agile practices – I often leave the conversation having shifted my viewpoint or at the very least have something new to think about (thanks Kim!). Thus, I thought that this kind of approach would be something worthwhile for the combined meetup.
So, the idea of the “Debate Night” was formed with the purpose being that we’ll try and explore these areas to see if there is any overlap. We figured that we’d use a method for exploring the complex domain or areas of uncertainty and debating had some really positive reasons for doing this, such as putting people in a safe environment to explore things that might be counter to their own current beliefs.
Kim and I enlisted the help of her meetup co-host Helen Palmer (@helenmpal) to help organise the event. I must take my hat off to Helen (thanks!), she did a wonderful job helping to set things up for this session. Helen’s “snowstorm” idea that we used at the end of the session for summation / feedback is something I haven’t tried before and having seen how she did it I’m sure I’ll use it in the future.
There were 3 topics for the evening, we broke everyone up into randomly organised groups for the affirmative and negative for each topic. Participants were given 20 minutes to discuss and come up with some arguments for their particular side of the topic. Once the preparation was done, each team selected one person to present the arguments / things that they discussed. Due to the time constraints, we couldn’t organise a full debate, but I think we got a lot out of hearing what the discussions provided.
The Topics
Discussing the Topics
Going through one topic at a time, we heard the arguments for and against each topic statement. Then the audience were given a chance to decide whether they were swayed by one group or the other – and if they had changed their thinking as a result of the presentation. I must admit, that even though I have a strong bias towards Kanban, I did take onboard some of the arguments that were presented and started to think more critically about things.
As I mentioned earlier, the “Snowstorm” was used to sum up and give feedback. Here are the many points of feedback:
The topic of the use of Kanban for the complex domain generated quite a lot of discussion – we may take this back and run another meetup session on that in the Melbourne Kanban meetup. Also, I believe there may be spin off sessions in the Cynefin meetup group to discuss how each of the domain might / might not apply to a given topic. Watch this space for further developments.
All in all, I think the night was a great success and perhaps it would be a good format to use for future meetups. Special thanks to Elabor8 who provided the meetup venue.
For anyone wanted to get more information on the meetup groups, here are the respective links. Note that the Melbourne Limited WiP Society has been renamed to the Melbourne Kanban Meetup.