Scrum Day London - Origins and it's Future (Nana (Bambara) Abban)

Scrum Day London is our second conference of the year, and we’re thrilled to bring you more exciting episodes from this renowned event!

As we continue our TalkInTen series, we have a special episode featuring Nana (BAMBARA) Abban, the founder of Scrum Day London, who dives into the evolution and future of this remarkable conference as it approaches its 10th anniversary.

Nana on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nana-abban-2a43b460/

Here is the synopsis of Nana's Talk:

Nana Abban shares the inspirational journey behind Scrum Day London, a conference that has become a cornerstone in the Agile community over the past decade. Starting with the vision of creating a diverse, inclusive, and vibrant space for learning and networking, Nana discusses how the event has evolved to focus more on business agility and the human aspects of Agile practices. He also gives us a sneak peek into the exciting plans for the 10th-anniversary celebration, emphasizing resilience, community, and continuous learning.

Episode Highlights:

- Evolution of Scrum Day London: Learn about the origins and transformation of the conference over the years.

- Business Agility: Understand the shift from traditional Agile frameworks to a broader focus on business agility and human-centric practices.

- Future Plans: Get insights into the plans for the 10th anniversary, including special guests, awards, and new formats.

- Ubuntu Philosophy: Discover how the spirit of Ubuntu and human-to-human connections drive the essence of Scrum Day London.

🎙️ This episode is filled with inspirational stories and insights into building a resilient and inclusive Agile community. Tune in now!

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Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.

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Ben Maynard

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Product Agility Podcast

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Transcript

0:00

Hello and welcome to the Product Agility Podcast. I'm your host Ben Maynard and for the next few days we have extra special episodes coming to you from Scrum Day London 2024. This event is a beacon for agile enthusiasts and professionals and I'm thrilled to bring you insights and new ideas from some of the brightest minds in the agile and product community. For those of you who are new to the podcast, the Product Agility Podcast is your go -to resource for practical tips, strategies, and stories from world -class products and agile thought leaders. Our goal is to increase your knowledge and motivation to experiment, so together we can create ever more successful products. Before we dive in, I'd like to thank our sponsor for this episode, Sheave. Sheave is my company, and we specialize in helping organizations simplify, focus, and align through embracing a product mindset. and using Agile as a means to drive success. Whatever your product or Agile challenge, learn about how Sheave can help your organisation thrive or extend out your own Agile journey at www .sheave .co .uk. That's S -H -E -E -V. And to get a whopping 15 % off of all of our courses, use the code PRODUCTAGILITY24 at the checkout. Now we have an exciting line of speakers from Scrum Day London 2024 who will be sharing valuable insights and practical tips for you to experiment with. So grab a pen and paper, perhaps a hot drink, and let's dive into a talking tent. So wrapping up my time at Scrum Day London 2024, I'm with Nana Bambara -Aban, who is the founder of Scrum Day London. All around, I don't know if it's too far to say that you seem like to me like a bit of a legend. I think what you're doing at Scrum Day London is just, it's just lovely. It's such a lovely conference with some amazing speakers and a great vibe. So first of all, thank you for having the Product Agility podcast at the conference. It's been an absolute delight and. What I would love for us to explore because you weren't doing a talk today, were you? No. I'd just like to understand more about the history of Scrum Day London and also where you intend to take it because next year is a big year, it's your 10th anniversary. So, Nala, if you wouldn't mind just introducing yourself to our listeners and then, yeah, talk a little bit about the history of the conference. Thank you. Now, this is really awesome. Thank you very much for having me on this. as well. So, welcome to Scrum Day London. I'm really glad that you made it. The history behind Scrum Day London, perhaps maybe I should start first with a bit about myself. I've been in the agile space for a couple of decades and been involved in business agility, but I've always been the guy that questions everything. I never get stuck on... methods or frameworks or when people have new ideas, I don't get stuck on those ideas. I'm always asking, is there more? Is there something else we should be doing? Rather than thinking that every idea that is introduced is complete, it's never complete. Human beings are not perfect, we are flawed. And so we're beautifully flawed. And because of that, our ideas are also beautifully flawed, including our frameworks and methods. And therefore, we need to keep asking those questions around, you know, what can we do better? How can we make it better? So my background has always been the guy who keeps asking those questions that are somewhat uncomfortable for people to, you know, to take. But I do it in a nice way. I want people to think, you know, out of the box. And so critical thinking is a big thing for me. My background... been in, you know, studied on the shop floor as a management consultant, went into project management from there into, you know, Scrum Mastering, Agile, then into program management, and eventually into the boardroom, and then later as a business owner, and setting up several tech businesses and other really interesting companies. So, but I've always really enjoyed working on the shop floor with teams, and so I love coaching based on my experience and the fact that I love engaging with people. Of course, I love helping managers and executives, but more importantly, everything's about people. So I love building Land Rovers. I'm into farming, organic farming. I live on a mountain top in Ghana. I live in Kent when I'm in the UK. But yeah, I love farming, you know, and I love building Land Rovers. I love traveling in my Land Rover across different parts of, you know, Africa. love motorbikes. One of my big things is actually, you know, into orphanages and helping children in orphanages. So I want to adopt lots of orphanages, not just one child, but the whole orphanage and support the orphanage and all the children in the orphanage. So there's a, we have a charity, our CSR, adinkrahini .org. Yeah, so that's a little bit about me and Scrum Day London started about 10 years ago. The idea was from about 13, 14 years back. been going to other Scrum Day events in Europe and different parts of the world and I thought hang on a minute, there's nothing going on in London. And I thought no, we need to have something in London and had a chat with some interesting people in Scrum .org, Ken Schwaber, the co -creator of Scrum, and he says, do it now, let's do it, go ahead. And he gave his support, you know, he sponsored, and they've been sponsoring since then. And Kent was incredibly supportive and later on Dave came on board and he was also, he's been supportive, Dave West. And so Scrum Day London really is that community space. I thought we just need a space in London where we can talk about Scrum because Scrum was a really big topic. And for me, everything is driven by Ubuntu people, you know, our shared humanity. And so I keep saying to people, it's not about B2B or B2C or B2E or B2G, it's about H2H, human to human. And so for me Ubuntu is a big thing for me because, you know, being born in Africa, walking barefoot and, you know, in the village and feeling, you know, very much connected to the earth. It's always been about people, that village life, you know, community life. And that stayed with me forever. And so, you know, in London, in the UK, in this space, I thought, why don't I bring part of that, the African heritage, that Ubuntu philosophy, that Ubuntu vibe. and also bring that H2H concept, human to human. Everything we do is about human beings, you know, it's about us, about people. And that's why I thought, well, let's create a space in London for Scrum, and let's talk about Scrum, let's talk about other agile practices. And that's basically how we started. There was nothing going on, and I thought, no, no, just do something. But I wanted it to be diverse. I wanted to have people from different communities, from different racial backgrounds, from different cultural backgrounds. men, women, different people from different parts of the world to come to London, enjoy London in the summer and also have a day of learning, sharing and networking. I think you've achieved a great thing. Has the conference fundamentally changed in any way over those nine, ten years? Yes, now there's been over the last ten years, we've seen a shift in the last five, six years, there's been a shift where, you know, we used to talk a lot about Scrum ten years ago and a bit more than that. And so there are a lot to talk about Scrum, how to get your Scrum better, how to do this, how to do that in Scrum. However, in the last few years, five, six years, we've seen a shift, and this is before COVID. We've seen a shift where it's less about Scrum, it's less about any other method or frameworks, and it's more about agility, you know, and it's not just organizational agility, it's about people agility as well. How can we empower people? How can we enable people or enable teams so they can work better? and enjoy what they do. And so the talk has been, you know, it's been, you know, that space been shifting. We've seen a shift and the speakers that we've been having, and of course the themes that I've been putting out there like this is removing the barriers of critical thinking, optimizing the flow of value across your organization. In the early days, it was maximize your scrum. But now it's more about business agility and critical thinking, removing those barriers to critical thinking. So the emphasis, you know, the focus is changing and executives are also, you know, a bit tired as well about just talking about Agile. They want to talk about business agility and under business agility you've got Scrum, you've got Kanban, you've got SAFE, you've got XP, you've got so many other practices. So I guess people are a bit more mature and they've done it for so long and they said, okay, what next? What else can we do? And that's what we've seen that the shift has been more towards business agility. and less about just talking about frameworks and methods. So talking about the shifts and changes, next year is a big year for you all. It's your 10th anniversary. Can you share any of your plans or ideas of what you're doing to celebrate that decade? absolutely. So next year is about the business resilience and building resilience organizations. and by building people to make people a bit more resilient against the shocks and the challenges, the storms of life. Next is a big one. So we have two days, not one day. We're going to have two days and I'm trying to add a third day but my team is not letting me at the moment. So it's two days where we're going to celebrate. We're bringing people who spoke 10 years ago on the platform. We're bringing them back like Rob Hardin of Capital One, Ken Schwaber. I'm trying to get a video out of him. We're going to get a bunch of other people as well who spoke like 10 years ago and I said 10 years later, what have you done? What have you achieved? Because it's nice to know your journey, your story. So that's one part of it. But we're also looking to do an awards night with some dinner. So we're going to have dinner, have some awards and the awards really is just gratitude awards saying thank you to a bunch of people who have been with us on this journey. Sounds lovely. I mean, I can't wait for you to... I say, guys, I can't wait for next year. I'm not going to wish my life away. But hopefully we can carry on this journey together because I'm really excited about being involved with the conference and seeing what you can do next year, man, because it's been a lovely day. I must admit, it's always hard for me because I spend a lot of this time in the conference sitting down and just interviewing people. But the weird thing, I say weird thing, the different thing with Scrum Day London was that I've never had so many people pre-booked. And I've never been to a conference where I've literally just been sitting down just person after person after person. I think it just was a testament, I think, to how well you organise things and how well things were communicated and how keen people are to really share their stories. So we've had everything. I've broken our record today for a number of episodes in a day. I think we've hit about 14 today, which is not bad. And somebody said to me, so I'll keep you going for the next two months. I'm like, no, that's a week. You know, we're going to get all those out of the next week and this will be the one that we released last. I think it's a lovely way to wrap it all up. Before we do wrap up this episode, is there anything in particular, any message you want to share for listeners of the Productivity Podcast? Yes, I really do want people to focus on what I've mentioned about Ubuntu and that it's all of this is about people. We can talk about profit, we can talk about balance sheets and the profits and loss and income and expenditure and business. the developments and all of that good stuff. But essentially, it's all about people. So I do want to bring that spirit of Ubuntu into the agile community. And let's talk more about business agility. Don't get stuck on methods and frameworks. Keep an open mind, apply critical thinking, like Marcus says, don't outsource your thinking. Keep an open mind and as much as possible, you know, think about, you know, this age to age. It's all about human to human. And as long as we can put that in front of us in whatever we do, I strongly think that we can transform anything. We can optimize anything. We can do great things together as long as we focus on that shared humanity and making. the environment possible for people to be able to thrive. That's what basically, you know, I really do want people to not get stuck in fixed, you know, methods and fixed frameworks and have a bit more flexibility in your thinking. Yeah, and flexibility is key. You mean, look at a tree. The trees bend and they sway, but they're not rigid. People look at a tree, they think they're big, big firm tree trunks, but they're not because if they're rigid, then they fall. You know, it needs to be a bit of flexibility. I think the challenge is flexing to the point where you break. But actually there's a lot of strength in flexibility, which I don't think many people realise. Thank you so much, it's been a lovely way to end it all. And thank you everyone for listening. This will be the last episode. It will be recorded live at Scrum Day London. However, I think we may be squeezing in one more person remotely. So there might be another bonus episode coming. Make sure you are following us on the podcast platform of your choice. Hit that bell or just follow us on LinkedIn to find out more information about all the great episodes we've got coming out. Nanna, thank you very much and thank you everyone at Scrum Day London for just arranging and organizing a fantastic event and letting us be a little tiny part of it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.