Lean Agile Scotland 2025 conference reflections
Many of us got the opportunity to attend the Lean Agile Scotland conference in September, which took place on the University campus at Pollock Halls. We share our favourite conference sessions and top takeaways.
About the conference
As the name says, the talks at Lean Agile Scotland explore lean and agile delivery. Lean is all about eliminating waste and inefficiency. Agile is about continuous and incremental delivery of functionality that’s valuable to users.
These are delivery methods we follow in our team, working incrementally in sprints to carry out our project work.
We often go to conferences related to our individual specialisms, so Lean Agile Scotland was a unique opportunity where all of the member of our multidisciplinary team could benefit.
Team highlights
Lauren Tormey, Senior Content Designer
Top talk: I loved the initial keynote ‘Seven habits of a (mostly) successful team’ by Sander Hoogendoorn, Chief Technology Officer at iBOOD.com. Sander spoke about the things that make his team work well, and it basically boiled down to doing what works for them and not following some prescriptive methodology. Agile teams typically follow Scrum, which is an agile framework for carrying out projects, which has specifics roles, meetings and processes to follow as part of that. But Sander said, “We don’t do Scrum, we just do,” which was refreshing to hear. We follow Scrum, but there are parts of it I don’t think or don’t think are needed for our team, so I don’t do them. So it was nice to hear an industry leader say essentially, it doesn’t matter what you do, just do what gets your team to work well.
Key takeaway: I often speak at content-focused conferences or events, so this conference was a reminder to me what it’s like to attend a conference as a non-specialist wanting to learn more. There were a lot of talks where speakers assumed their audience knew certain agile things, and I had no clue about them so found it hard to follow at times. It’s made me reflect on how I deliver talks at content events and that I need to remember there will always be non-specialists listening who will likely need more background to things I talk about.
Cathy Naughton, Associate Content Designer
Top talk: I really enjoyed Tutu Ariyo’s workshop, ‘F.A.D.E. A.W.A.Y.: turning discomfort into direction’. Tutu drew on her professional experiences as an agile coach, as well as her personal experiences, to provide an engaging introduction to the F.A.D.E. A.W.A.Y. pattern – a set of emotional resistance behaviours that surface when feedback threatens identity and safety. Tutu encouraged participants to reflect on times when this pattern of behaviour has arisen for us in our professional lives, and how we can approach the giving and receiving of feedback in future using the C.O.I.L.E.D. approach instead, which challenges us to equip curiosity, openness, empathy and development-focused thinking in our interactions. I found it very useful to reflect on my past behaviours when receiving or giving feedback, and how using the C.O.I.L.E.D. approach in a future feedback conversation could help make it a more development-focused experience.
Key takeaway: This conference was my introduction to the background and theory of lean and agile ways of working. As Lauren mentions above, Sander Hoogendoorn’s keynote emphasised how his team doesn’t follow a strict Scrum framework for their work. I noticed a recurring theme in other talks and workshops across the conference of a “post-agile” approach to tech team’s ways of working; speakers mentioned that some of the existing rulebooks on agile frameworks are now outdated or don’t work as a one-size-fits-all solution, and that teams can work better when they identify which aspects of agile working frameworks are best implemented flexibly, or not at all. Learning that teams and organisations across the tech sector are taking flexible approaches to frameworks for ways of working has encouraged me to consider how I can bring more flexibility to my own ways of working within the Content Operations team.
Jennifer Doyle
Top talk: I really enjoyed the interactive session on “pre-mortems”. This was a form of imaginative workshopping exercise – you start from a position where a project has failed, then work backwards to all the different scenarios that caused it. This helps you identify potential vulnerabilities ahead of time, and consider any safeguards or prevention measures. I thought it was a really interesting way to look at a project in the planning phases, or even throughout the lifecycle of a project.
Key takeaway: I enjoyed how much space in the programme was given over to broader ways of working and healthy team dynamics, and I think that’s what’s most stuck with me. Lean and Agile methodologies aren’t always applicable in a strict sense to our operational business-as-usual, but positive team relationships and healthy workload management will always help your team thrive regardless of the projects or activities you’re involved in.
More about our conference experiences
We recap our experiences from every conference we go to.
