 Thank you everyone for joining this workshop. This is the home stretch before dinner. So I really appreciate your time and attention. I know people are starting to flag. Looking forward to dinner, I am too. But I promise you this will be a very hands-on workshop facilitation. So if you're not really ready for that, just stand by. I'm just pre-warning you. My name is Jules. I'm from Singapore, the first time in your beautiful country. So thank you for the warm welcome. You may know of my more famous colleague, Mr Dave Snowden. Yes, one of the founders of the Canevan framework, whom Carl referenced just now. He's taking a photo of me. No doubt to show Dave later. So I'm here representing our company and I was invited to both give a talk on Saturday, but first to run a workshop. Usually it's the other way around. You talk first and then you run a workshop. But the more I thought about it, actually this would be quite cool because Carl just came from talking about unwrapping the air door present. So now I'm going to take you to the future, but backwards. So this is quite intriguing because who wouldn't love the superpower to be able to predict the future? Just a show of hands. Who would love that? Okay, anyone who tells you they can is lying. I'm just going to drop the bomb now. They are lying. However, as human beings, we have the ability to look at our present, our current state of anything, any topic, whether it's agile of our societies or of the world at large. We live in very interesting times. I must say geopolitically, I think everyone can agree, but we're not going to get into that. We're going to focus on agile. How can we make sense of our current state so that we can start to imagine and plan a range of possible futures? And everyone has the idea of what they would like their future to be. There's no two ways about it. You will not find two people who have the exact same vision of the future and that's actually okay. As human beings who come into organizations, to form organizations, we deal with a lot of differing perspectives. This heterogeneity is actually a great thing. It actually gives us so many diverse perspectives that we can draw on, and this future backwards is one of our most popular methods because it allows anyone at any level to participate in creating all these futures. So the first slide was actually Welcome Check-In, which I did mention about dinner. And I will actually give you more of the theory later because this method actually comes from the field of futures and foresight, which a lot of governments use in scenario planning to try to understand how they can plan for the future of their community, their societies, and their countries. So I will give the theory later because I would like you to start getting active and just jump into the workshop method. So the very first thing you need to do is to make sure you all have posted notes of a yellowish or orangeish tinge. Great. And also just some advance notice that the way we do complex facilitation is a lot more light touch than usual facilitation. I won't be hovering at every table. The discussions are meant to flow freely. The only thing is for this first step is that we need consensus at the table before you start writing things down. That's why you have a lot of discussion before you commit something to paper. So for that reason you can see only one marker at each table. There are a lot of pencils, but please don't use pencils because you won't be able to see anything you write on the posted notes after that. The first thing you will do is to look at the topic we've chosen. In this case describe the current state of agile. It is deliberately quite broad because we don't want to constrain the discussions that you have. Everyone should have the yellowish, orangeish color. And we would like you to discuss it before writing down descriptions of the current state of affairs in agile. And this is in your experience and background as an agile practitioner, as a coach, or someone just new to it, whatever your background is. That is less important than the discussions you're going to have. One description that I'm just going to throw out is a bit cheeky but I will reference it again on Saturday. Personally I would describe the current state of agile as having different religious adherence. We've reached a stage in agile's maturity, what, 20 plus years now since the agile manifesto, where human behavior has started to amass and we start to see all these different behaviors show up in agile as well. Now this is my personal description. If I were working in a group we need to discuss that before we start to write it down on the posted notes. And for the current state, CS, of whatever topic you're working on, you can have multiple descriptions of the current state. So you may have at the end of 15 minutes or so, which is the time box for this part of the workshop method, you may have 10, 15 different posted notes describing the current state of agile. And there's no right or wrong. We just want everyone to voice their opinions to discuss and then to commit it down to paper. And whatever your orientation is on the table facing, looking forward at yourselves, you should start to cluster all these yellow posted notes towards the top right of your table as you're looking at it. Is the instruction clear for the next 15 minutes? Any questions? Great. Proceed. I will set a timer and I will move around to answer any questions that you might have. As a studio, software, so the competition can be very strong. Actually, I rather than having this awesome, soft and strong, right, it always be that much. This is the number of exports. Okay, this is my agile, my favorite of agile. Yes. I don't have to go big though. Move forward. Everybody is coming to me. One more question. For this step of the workshop method, by now you should have four to five of these posted notes. If not, you can start committing them to paper. Four? Four minutes, okay, good. Okay, let's think of one positive. Okay, two more minutes. Doing a time check. You should start to have a little cluster of posted notes. It's actually great energy. Okay, I think we can stop the timer. Okay, I hope everyone remembered to write with marker pens. Otherwise we won't be able to see anything in the photos we take later of your timelines. I love the energy everyone is discussing. Great, okay, and you have it oriented somewhere towards the top right of your table. Okay, next step. And our lovely volunteers will distribute the next color, which is a bit, yes, great. It's a bit washed out on this PowerPoint, but it should be a pink-reddish color. Okay, excellent. And I can see by now that most groups have self-organized and more or less nominated or self-nominated ascribe. Too bad you're going to be the spokesperson later. No, just kidding. No, no, no, no, no. You will go around and see each other tables and what they have done. Don't worry, I won't do that to you. Okay, next step. Now, this is actually the most interesting step to me of this method. And by the way, this method, like all the methods of the Canevan company is open source. If you're a facilitator, you're welcome to go online and take all these methods and use it in your own organization or practice, just to put it out there. All these slides will be available as well. We want you to think, based on the current state that your table has described. Okay. Sorry. Is this better? We would like you to think of the next of the key event that came immediately before this current state. And this is a historical event. It has to be rooted in something that actually happened. I'll give you an example, not from Agile, when we've run this with societies and governments and in some cases over a two-day workshop. So that's how long this method can be if you do a full-scale, long-range workshop. One group actually took historical events all the way back to the Civil War in the U.S. So this is just to say that this is how far it can go back, but don't worry, we are not going back that far. I would say it's a good constraint for today. Maybe don't go back more than 30 or 40 years. I'm not sure if we'll have enough time in 20 minutes to cover that, but the most important thing about constructing this timeline is that we're doing it backwards. Most people tend to go one step at a time and they try to find reasons and cause an effect, but this method is deliberately taking you out of that by making you construct your timeline one step backwards at a time. And because I'm not Snowden, what I won't do is take people out and remove them amongst groups if we catch them trying to go forwards instead. It's a very, very human tendency to want to think of, oh, something happened in 1991. Okay, let's construct our timeline that way. No, actually asking you to think, okay, we're in 2023 of March. What is the most recent event that happened that has led to this current state that we have described? So that is why... Oops, sorry. We are constructing your timeline this way, not that way. And again, as with this method, the group is meant to discuss it, come to a consensus and then write down that key event. It's not everyone writing their key events and then deciding it, discuss it first and then commit it to paper and then move your key events backwards one step at a time. So maybe we can go back to the 1980s or so I would say for today. We have about 20 minutes. This tends to be one of the longer parts of the workshop method, but time will fly by because you find yourself in very, very heated discussion. Okay, we're going to set a timer for 20 minutes. Any questions before that about this instruction? No, no, one event at a time. So normally we say, oh, if we start at 1990, these are the things that happened that lead up to 2023, but no, we're forcing you to take a step backwards, move back one step at a time. All interruption, but I think that was remiss of me. The question came out from a table. It's not just a historical event in the organization or an agile, it can also be a world historical event. Just to give you one example, COVID-19, the most recent and at a foremost of our minds. It's to wrap up this step. Your future backwards frame should start to look like that. With the key events going backwards, connected to the current state. So five more minutes to wrap this up. Then we move on to the next step. This is very natural. Okay. You can, you can. Okay. How are we doing? Great. Yes. I love the energy and the discussions. Out of interest, how many were Googling dates or just fact checking? Yeah. Love it. Love it. Always happens. It's great. How many did anyone get as far back as Ada Lovelace or Charles Babbage? No. Okay. No. Not yet. Okay. Great. Exactly. So sometimes the history doesn't go that far back just to make a point. Okay. So we're moving from historical events to our imaginations. So this is the really fun part of this method. Every single time I run it, this is why I love to run this method. Every single time I run it, once I say, okay, go, your time starts now, the entire room full of conversations talking. And this is why. So I'll volunteer to distribute the next color, which will be a bluish color that we can find. Now, interestingly, at the beginning, in the early days of developing this method, we used the terms heaven and hell, which I then pushed back on and said that it's a very Western Christian Anglo-Saxon conception of utopia, dystopia, or what I like to call impossibly good futures or impossibly bad futures. Okay. An impossibly good or impossibly bad. And I also said, well, you know, in Buddhism, there are many circles of hell. There are many courts of hell. So which hell is it if you're talking about heaven and hell? So I prefer nowadays to use utopia or dystopia if it's culturally understandable by the audience or impossibly good or impossibly bad. So this is what we're getting you to do in the next step. Discuss, think about and discuss what is an impossibly good future state of agile. Okay. And then you can think maybe 20 years from now, but the timeframe is less important than thinking about what would be an impossibly good future or the utopia of agile. Okay. And just focus on describing that state in blue. You should have blue posted pads. And you have about 15 minutes to do that. Your time starts now. And let your imagination take you while nothing is beyond imagination at this point. Have we let our imaginations run wild? Yes? Good. Good. Okay. So on your tables, your future backwards timeline should start to look like this, the rough shape of it. Okay. As with the historical event timeline backwards from the current state, your next step is to discuss and agree on the key events working backwards from your ideal future. Okay. Again, all down to your imagination. All right. Sorry. It should be... Well, we only have a few colors this time around. So it should be the same pink color. You should still have some pink posted notes left. Use the pink posted pads to construct your fictional timeline backwards from your ideal future. Okay. Great. Okay. Start. Okay. I'm just checking that you all have enough pink posted notes. Our volunteers will come by with more if you don't. And just one moment of your attention, please, as you construct your fictional timeline, it connects to your real timeline. So when you construct your fictional timeline backwards from the ideal state, it needs to connect to one event on your real timeline. Yes. How can it connect? That's the thing. That's what I'm wondering. Yes. So you're constructing a fictional... one event at a time, and one of those fictional events, you're going to connect it here. And this is the imagination part. Okay? Mm-hmm. Yeah. These are the past events. Okay. This is the future. Yes. This one, we just leave it for now. We're not going to touch this. Yeah. We have to connect with one of these historical events from the timeline backwards. No, no, no. Yeah. Yeah. But as with this step, you're supposed to work one step backwards. You are not supposed to choose one of these ever. Yeah. That's right. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. And I was going to go around the tables as well, but not as an instructor. Okay. So I have gone around to all the tables to give you that trump card or that act of God, which you can use if you want to. So your timeline should start to look like this. You should be joining up the fictional key events back to an event of your choosing in the real timeline. And you may or may not use that act of God. It does double checking. I covered all the tables. Okay. So about two to three more minutes to complete this step. And then we'll move on to the next one. On to the next step. And I realize that people are starting to get hungry, perhaps, or you're very deep in discussion. So that's also a good sign. Now, the next step is basically a repeat of what you did for utopia. So I'm going to give, you know the steps. I'm going to give you what you need. But what we're going to do now is to describe your impossibly bad future. Think of, you know, let loose your inner pessimist. Think of all the worst things that could happen. Doomsday, go for it. And as with your utopian timeline, you're allowed one of these acts of God, another one of these acts of God, but you don't have to use it. And again, create that fictional timeline backwards, right? So describe the impossibly bad future, and then create the fictional timeline backwards that connects to a real event in your historical timeline. Okay. And about 10 to 15 minutes for that. Okay. About five to seven minutes, your timeline should start to look like what you see on the screen. Are you still thinking about being pessimistic and create, it's done. Perfect. Okay. Just checking in with the other groups as well. Time, let me know. But more or less, you should have what we see on screen. Yeah, the colors were unfortunately arbitrary. Okay. I'm going to release you very, very soon. Love it. People are still discussing. That's awesome. I actually take it as a personal sign of failure if people suddenly stop talking and look at me. But if they continue discussing, it means that the flow of conversation is very good on your table. Okay. Actually, the next step that we normally do is to get each table or each group to get up and move around to other tables to see what the other groups have done and to notice what's similar, what's different, what surprised you. But I'm going to save this for at the end so that you can trickle out naturally to go find some food if you're hungry. But now, as promised, I wanted to give you an idea for why we have this method in the first place because this method, the future backwards, comes from the world of futures and foresight. It's a technique that usually governments, but increasingly now organizations, use to try to do scenario planning. Very traditionally, you do scenario planning. In this case, I'm just going to skip to the relevant slide. So this is what I would have you do now normally. I want you to do that at the end instead. This is the description of the method. And I actually wanted to hold back from putting this all up in front because usually then people start to question and ask questions about it. I wanted you to go straight into discussing and creating your timeline. Working backwards actually forces us to stop and think. It's very natural and I noticed this very often. Personally, I fall into it as well. Some groups were compiling events and then deciding where they wanted to go forward. It's a very human tendency. It's part of our bias, but it's fine. I just wanted to disrupt that pattern and put it in the workshop setting. The other thing that this group also mentioned is that utopia and dystopia may be more likely than we think. Why do this? Why think of impossibly bad future? Well, it could be closer than you think. You could fall into it and not even realize that you do. So this is also sort of like a situational awareness, risk management technique where you can say, okay, what are we not being aware of? And what can people imagine that is a very, very bad future? Now, this method is very often used in conflict resolution. But how we do it is that we actually know the audience beforehand. We maximize for group think. So whether people know each other or they come from the same department, interestingly, when we use it, emerges in acquisitions. If you're from the acquired company, you form your tables. And then the acquiring company form other tables. What we're actually trying to do is to allow each group to have their say. Each group has the right to construct their own current state and to have it be seen by others. How we actually help with conflict resolution is for everyone to go around and see different perspectives. We're not forcing different perspectives from the outset on other people. We're allowing people to have their say, to construct their own timeline, and then hopefully very naturally go around and see what others are thinking. And that is often a better way to get people to see different perspectives than forcing it on them from the outset. And very typically, as I said, we use this when we work with government, with civil society. We have used it on very sensitive topics, like geopolitical topics as well. And it's actually a great way for different groups to voice their opinions and then to come together to see what can be achieved. So agile is hopefully less contentious. I don't know too much about it. I don't get into political battles on that. But this is just to take a method that we can use in such vastly different settings, whether in geopolitical settings or in agile or in your organizations. And if nothing else, it's a great way to get different groups of people together to come to see different perspectives. So any questions on that? I just wanted to leave you with this bonus slide to compare and contrast. There is forecasting, backcasting, and sidecasting in the world of futures and foresight. And people, yes, people actually do make a living from this, usually consulting for governments. Very traditionally, you do forecasting, right? Whether you do it for revenue projections, for forecasting, same with these future scenarios. And I will also say no one can accurately predict the future. We can only get a glimpse of it based on our present, but no one can actually predict the future. Then, of course, we try to say, okay, maybe we need to stop being so linear, stop trying to find cause and effect. So we try backcasting, but actually it's much better for you to cast on each side to see what's happening around you, that situational awareness that was mentioned earlier, so that you know how to proceed. Okay, what is the next possible step that you can take towards that future? Okay, that's it for this workshop method. I hope you found it interesting and helpful. All this material will be available on the portal, or if you just Google for the future backwards, you'll find all of that online as well. If there's no other questions, please feel free to look at the other groups, what they have done just, you know, from walking around. I can see some similarities already, but also very different views. And after that, you will, I think it's pretty much dinner time. So thank you, everyone. Hope you enjoyed it.