How Do Teams Really Work?

Organizations come in many different shapes, sizes, and ages but one challenge they all share is how to set teams up for success in today’s fast-moving and volatile world. How should teams be structured? How should they collaborate and communicate? What tools, processes, and ways-of-working should they use? How can we help teams to learn and improve?

This track will explore how teams in a variety of organizations - from a tech startup with just a handful of employees, to a 180 year old enterprise of over 65,000 - are trying to answer these questions and more. Speakers will share their stories and insights of how teams are really working and being empowered to get stuff done.


From this track

Session organizing at scale

Making Change Stick: Lessons Learned From Helping Teams Improve at the Co-Op

Tuesday Apr 9 / 10:35AM BST

The Co-op has a wide range of software teams, working closely with its variety of businesses (from food to funerals) to build and improve services for use by over 65,000 colleagues, 5 million members, and many more customers.

Speaker image - Neil Vass
Neil Vass

Engineering Manager at Co-Op with 18+ Years in Tech, Previously Worked at BBC and Tessella

Session organizational design

The Journey of ClearBank From Start-Up To Scale-Up

Tuesday Apr 9 / 11:45AM BST

Join me on the journey of ClearBank’s transition from a start-up to a scale-up, focusing on the impact on culture and decision-making, and how this affected our engineering teams.

Speaker image - Michael Gray
Michael Gray

Principal Engineer @ClearBank

Session

Being a Bad Influence – The Dangerous Dichotomies of People Management

Tuesday Apr 9 / 01:35PM BST

Humans are complicated unpredictable creatures. As managers and leaders we need to be consistent, yet flexible. Strong, yet vulnerable. Caring, yet authoritative. We need to be so many things that it's often hard to be ourselves - but don’t forget to also be authentic!

Speaker image - Hannah Foxwell
Hannah Foxwell

Product Director @Snyk

Session SRE

Bits, Bots, and Banter: A Deep Dive into How Tech Teams Work in a DevOps World

Tuesday Apr 9 / 02:45PM BST

Working in a DevOps world, we've all witnessed many recommendations for how teams work. We have books, blogs, tech trade articles, and even entire pieces of software dedicated to helping teams work together more effectively. We're expected to take a blue-sky approach with the given advice.

Speaker image - Brittany Woods
Brittany Woods

Senior Engineering Manager @ The LEGO Group

Session Team Topologies

A Tale of Team Topologies at m3ter

Tuesday Apr 9 / 03:55PM BST

The path to success is frequently a winding one, and as a series A tech startup, m3ter is no exception.

Speaker image - Ricardo Nuno Almeida
Ricardo Nuno Almeida

Senior Software Engineering Manager @m3ter

Session DevOps

Thriving Through Change: Leading Through Uncertainty

Tuesday Apr 9 / 05:05PM BST

Navigating change and building resilient teams is a complex challenge that many organizations face. Times of change can lead to uncertainty, disagreement, and a breakdown in trust.

Speaker image - Jennifer Davis
Jennifer Davis

Engineering Manager @Google, Previously @Microsoft and @Chef, Author of "Effective DevOps" and "Modern System Administration"

Track Host

Sophie Weston

Principal Engineer @ClearBank, Co-Organizer of DevOpsDays London & FastFlowConf

Sophie has spent nearly thirty years working in technology as a software engineer and DevOps advocate. These days her main focus is on ways of working, helping to create happy, effective teams and build a good engineering culture.

This is what she does in her current role as Principal Engineer at ClearBank. Prior to that, she worked with Matthew Skelton (co-author of Team Topologies) helping organisations to adopt Team Topologies and fast flow ways of working.

An active member of the wider tech community, she is an ambassador for Women In Tech York, co-organiser of DevOpsDays London and FastFlowConf, and has even been known to give the occasional talk herself.

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