Hello Digital Warriors ⚔️!

After a few inspiring days at the Italian Agile Days 2024, I’m excited to dive into everything we learned, shared, and experienced. This conference was packed with insights into digital transformation, change management, and socio-technical systems, each moment reinforcing why we need to:

Stop Transforming and Start Evolving. 🌱

Day 1: The Journey Begins – Road Trip to Florence

Our adventure kicked off with a 14-hour road trip from Slovakia to Italy 😵💫. Along the way, I picked up Attila Fejér and Marco Consolaro in Hungary and Vicenza, and the drive became a moving discussion on craftsmanship, agility, and digital transformation. It was a unique way to start IAD24, diving into ideas on Agile, XP, and behavioral engineering before even arriving.

Day 2: Unconference – Freestyle Debates that Took Over the Day

The unconference format at IAD24 opened the floor for organic, engaging discussions. Marco started with an intriguing session on how our brains are not designed for logical thinking and how this can be used to our advantage to bend culture to a desired state. This insight set up a powerful follow-up with me and Gabriele Giaccari, head of Product at 20tab. Together with Marco, we led a Q&A session on “Logical Thinking” and “Behavioral Engineering.”

This was no ordinary session—the room was packed to the brim, with people spilling out the doors!

Our topic struck a chord with attendees, delving into why teams often resist adopting XP and Software craftsmanship and shifting from traditional workflows. To illustrate this, Gabriele and I took a unique approach: he used the left side of the board for a Logical Thinking analysis, mapping out the root causes of resistance using Logical Thinking trees to identify underlying blockers. Meanwhile, I took the right side of the board to perform a Behavioral Design analysis, focusing on how to design targeted behavioral changes that foster a lasting cultural shift.

Together, we framed a real transformation scenario using ATDD (Acceptance Test-Driven Development) to analyze team behavior. This side-by-side approach showcased both the logical dissection of resistance and the behavioral prompts needed to nurture sustainable change, bridging analysis and action in real time.

The turning point? Behavioral engineering. We demonstrated how micro-behaviors—starting with tools like the Pomodoro Technique—can dismantle resistance and spark genuine curiosity. The audience was captivated by how small, intentional changes could transform attitudes, drawing them into deeper engagement. The impact was so strong that we spent the rest of the day in follow-up discussions, with attendees eager to keep exploring these ideas.

Probably also a sign that in the near future, we should transform this completely improvised workshop into a more polished version, ready to be showcased to a broader audience on a main stage rather than as an experiment in the unconference setting.

Day 2 Evening: The IAD24 Speaker Dinner – Energy and Inspiration Over a Meal

That evening, we joined other speakers for a memorable dinner. The synergy among seasoned Agile enthusiasts, sharing insights and celebrating the journey, was invigorating. For many of us, this journey into Agile and transformation has spanned over two decades, making the evening both a reunion and a source of renewed inspiration.

Day 3: Conference Highlights – Must-See Talks

Throughout the conference, the IAD24 stage hosted incredible minds sharing game-changing insights. While I couldn’t catch them all, these talks left a lasting impression:

• Unpack the Agile Manifesto – Andrea Provaglio
• Trasformare il Debito Tecnico in Vantaggio Competitivo – Roberto Bettazzoni
• La trasformazione del settore food: il pane Agile – Anna Di Girolamo
• Connascence: al di là di Accoppiamento e Coesione – Marco Consolaro
• Will Customers And Developers Ever Speak The Same Language? – Attila Fejér
• La Solitudine dei Manager – Paolo Sammicheli & Silvia Furlan

Each talk brought fresh perspectives and actionable insights. I’ll delve deeper into some of these in future articles as the Italian Agile Movement releases recordings.

Day 3: My Talk – Stop Transforming, Start Evolving

In my talk, Stop Transforming, Start Evolving, I delved into the common pitfalls of rigid, by-the-book transformation approaches and emphasized the necessity of viewing transformation as a socio-technical evolution. Building upon insights from previous Forge of Unicorns episodes (26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31), I highlighted how behavioral engineering can drive sustainable, human-centered behavioral change by balancing technical and social systems. This perspective is designed around the 14 years of research, diving into the five organizational psychotherapy anti-patterns we clustered and their corresponding solutions.

For those interested in the talk, I will publish a new article featuring the recording and slides. The materials will be available in the IAD24 repository on my GitHub account.

A significant highlight of the talk was announcing an exciting new chapter: BriX Consulting and Alcor Academy are joining forces!

Together, we are evolving our SW Craftsmanship Dojo® into a new model that integrates BriX’s behavioral engineering research with Alcor’s depth in craftsmanship and expertise in legacy code and technical practices with their masterpiece book “Agile Technical Practices Distilled.” This partnership aims to create an improved continuous active-learning environment that not only focuses on technical excellence but also brings a human-centered approach to change—driven by empathy and shared purpose leveraging the latest discovery in neuroscience and behavioral psychology. This initiative aligns with the socio-technical approach inspired by Bob Marshall in his work, “Hearts Over Diamonds.”

An Open Invitation to the Italian Agile Community

To everyone in the SW Craftsmanship community: we invite you to join us in this journey. Let’s build a world where craftspeople lead change with heart ❤️ and empathy 🤗, guiding organizations toward a sustainable and resilient evolutive future. Join us as we shape an ecosystem where technology and humanity thrive together.

Day 3 Evening: Celebrating with Friends in Florence

Our post-conference dinner in Florence wasn’t just a chance to unwind; it was a gathering of minds deeply committed to the principles and ethics of software craftsmanship. Together with our friends from DoubleLoop.io and Tuscany’s SW Craftsmanship community, we found ourselves in a profound discussion about the values that should guide our work. In today’s climate, there’s an urgent need for the human, evolutionary side of transformation to prevail over the drive for short-term financial gains and unsustainable targets.

One recurring theme was a disturbing trend we see too often: companies are looking for “solutions” as a product—they’re more inclined to hire consultants to quickly refactor and modernize their systems than to invest in upskilling their own workforce. This approach favors an external fix over building internal capabilities, leaving organizations dependent on temporary, superficial improvements. This anti-pattern—prioritizing quick, outsourced solutions over long-term investment in people—undermines sustainable growth and goes against the core values of craftsmanship.

What’s more, this quick-fix mentality is now colliding with the rise of AI-driven automation and widespread layoffs, creating a market on the brink of collapse. Companies are sacrificing workforce development for short-term gains, ignoring the essential human aspect of transformation. Craftsmanship, however, is about more than just technical skill; it’s about nurturing values, ethics, and a commitment to empowering organizations from the inside out—not merely from a product or technology standpoint.

This dinner was a reminder of our shared responsibility as craftspeople to advocate for practices that are not only functional but also evolutive. By sharing these values and strategies, we reinforce our dedication to crafting software that helps companies lay the foundation for a sustainable digital future—one that prioritizes human development alongside technological advancement.

Day 4: The Trip Home – Reflecting on Lessons Learned

On the journey back, Marco, Attila, and I couldn’t stop discussing everything we’d learned and the valuable input we’d gathered from attendees and speakers. This trip enriched each of us with insights and new ideas, helping us refine the SW Craftsmanship Dojo®, the Unicorns’ Ecosystem and further shaping the ongoing discussions in our newsletter the Forge of Unicorns.

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⏭️ Stay tuned, in the next episodes, we’re going into more detail about our evolutive approach.

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