Zurich for the LAS event

An evening arrival into Zurich followed by a short train ride and walk took me to the Hotel Greulich last night.  Another to add to the list of design hotels around the world worth seeking out.  One notable aspect is the silver birch plantation in the middle of the hotel which I have pictured.  I will confess to not realising until this morning that there was a wardrobe area, it was just hidden by a floor to ceiling, wall to wall curtain.  I got bitten on the wrist and arm just after going to bed and realised I had forgotten the antihistamine cream that is normally a part of my travel kit.  Net result a sleepless night but I had to be in time to walk down to the conference venue and deliver a keynote on Complexity to 5th Lean, Agile & Scrum event.

I have been developing a theme around these events of late using the complex domain model (latest version up soon) which argues that most projects, including Scrums and development projects in general wait too long to start and remain linear, albeit over a short cycle time.   My argument is that what we need is pre-process which includes something like our safe-to-fail portfolio approach to complex interventions as well as micro-narrative services such as those provided by SenseMaker®.   I first put this together in Kracow at an Agile event and took this opportunity to reduce the content a bit and get the focus better.  I also had to speak more slowly as a large part of the audience dis not speak English as a first language.   That makes for a good discipline and it went down well, although I could not resist the odd side swipe at stray magpies.  Slides and podcast are all loaded so I will not repeat the material here.

Tomorrow early, oh so early, I have to fly to Milan, hope the family arrive 90 minutes later and then it is a week's holiday.  Expect holiday blogs more than business ones.