FLOWCON 2025

Dans un environnement de start-up au rythme effréné, il est essentiel de prendre des décisions rapidement.
L'intuition est la recette secrète des responsables de produits pour accélérer la prise de décision. Mais d'où vient notre intuition ?
En examinant les biais dans la sélection et le recrutement de projets dans le monde des start-ups, nous pouvons comprendre que notre intuition est un handicap et ne devrait pas être notre seule méthode de prise de décision.

Sum up the session in only 1 sentence
Les start-ups croient trop en la qualité de l'intuition pour prendre des décisions, mais l'intuition est influencée par l'expérience et peut conduire à des résultats désastreux si elle n'est pas remise en question.

What are the 3 top takeaways from your session or workshop?
- L'intuition n'est pas une donnée mais une construction
- Les employés des start-ups ont tendance à former un groupe cohérent
- Les start-ups ont tendance à répondre aux besoins de certains utilisateurs plus que d'autres

So You’ve Built It, Now Support It. From Chaos to Happy Customers - Doing the Gardening At Bloom & Wild

Humans make mistakes, it’s a fact of life. Despite our best intentions, and no matter how many checks we put in place, sometimes things go wrong. It’s no different with software. To move at speed then it’s inevitable that production issues will happen. Sometimes it’s your code that doesn’t work as expected, sometimes dependencies break, sometimes infrastructure breaks. Sometimes that once in a lifetime event happens. Again.

This talk is a story about support. It’s a real life story of how what was a chaotic situation, with unhappy customers and developers, has been turned around to something that keeps our customers happy, and is even fun to be a part of.

Sum up the session in only 1 sentence
All teams should support their systems in production and I'm going to explain what I've learnt about doing that, with added flowers :)

What are the 3 top takeaways from your session or workshop?
1. Why they’ll always be some need for production support, why needing it isn’t a indication of failure and how we can make it a nicer experience
2. The different ways that we've supported our systems at Bloom & Wild and what we've learnt as we've rapidly scaled the team
3. A little about flowers and a lot about learning

No Code, Low Code, Machine Code

What level of abstraction is just right?

Everything looks solvable if you ignore most of the complications. Many things look impossible if you’re stuck in the weeds. The current fashion for low/no code solutions heralds the cyclical return to looking for solutions that require softer skillsets. When is this appropriate and when is it a recipe for disaster?

Sum up the session in only 1 sentence
There is no silver bullet (reprise)

What are the 3 top takeaways from your session or workshop?
- Essential complexity cannot not be simplified away - No code/low code solutions are only beneficial in limited domains - AI and ML are tools not solutions

Seeing the world through a different lens

We see the world through the lens of all our experiences. This is probably obvious to most, but what is probably less apparent is that we also carry a coherent mental model of how we expect the world around us to behave. A preconceived notion of what to expect in any given situation, one that even goes beyond the basic laws of nature and common human behaviour. It is so ingrained that we do not know we even have it until made aware of it. Like do you assume predictability because science assumes determinism, or do you accept unpredictability because everything is contextual?

In this talk, we will have a look at some of these lenses, called world hypothesis, and we will explore how profoundly different we interpret the world by choosing one over the other. How does it play out assuming social systems behave like machines, like when blindly copying an approach from others; or trying to create a canonical data model when all have their own context; or how about giving a team orders and designs and then expecting them to self-manage?

We shall see that the lenses are complete and should not be mixed as we constantly seem to do; to our detriment, creating massive confusion and dysfunction. Awareness of these world views and understanding their fitness in any given situation can take us a long way to make the world a better place. Imagine that.

Sum up the session in only 1 sentence
To collaborate and codesign better we need to understand other peoples world views and how they compare and contrast with ours.

What are the 3 top takeaways from your session or workshop?
You need to understand at least the four different world views, seeing how they differ, and understand the issue of mixing them.

Title: Power Structures and Their Impact on Software
Abstract: Code is literally knowledge made manifest, and therefore offers a history of knowledge; it is a record of how people understood a problem over an extended period of time.

But code is also power, and the ability to write/approve/deploy it can be used for ill or good, (intentionally or unintentionally). In so doing, code solidifies power structures; embedding that which is inevitably unequally distributed (unintentionally or intentionally) but embedded all the same.

Code is therefore also a geology (genealogy?) of power structures. Code forms the landscape where records of our old ways of (dis)organising, and ideas that won, continue to shape everything because this code is where teams live *now*.

We experience this “code-as-knowledge-and-power” every day; our freedom to act restricted or permitted.

In this talk I’ll dissect what is at play here. I’ll consider what is happening with “code-as-knowledge-and-power” and show how to work with it intentionally, instead of suffering/benefitting disproportionately at the hands of it.

Your code, and your life, will be better as a result.

Sum up the session in only 1 sentence
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” Ursula K. Le Guin

What are the 3 top takeaways from your session or workshop?
1) Societal power structures make our code bad - code is structured knowledge and power 2) To see where the power lies, pay attention to who has control - of punishment, information, and who is charismatic 3) Fight uneven power distributions - by protecting everyone's freedom to reorganize, move and disobey.

Atelier Domain Storytelling

Domain Storytelling permet de transcrire les histoires racontées par les experts métiers à l'aide d'un langage pictographique facile à comprendre. En regroupant tous les acteurs ayant une connaissance du produit ou du problème à résoudre, Domain Storytelling va permettre de diffuser la connaissance au sein de l'équipe. Les schémas produits sont d'excellent moyen pour les différents participants de se remémorer les discussions autour de points particuliers de l'espace du problème tout en produisant une documentation simple et claire.

Le but de cet atelier va être de vous donner les éléments théoriques et pratiques nécessaires pour animer des ateliers de Domain Storytelling. Il est donc destiné à n'importe quel acteur d'un projet informatique.

En maîtrisant Domain Storytelling vous allez pouvoir simplifier:
la compréhension d'une problématique
définir un langage commun entre les différents acteurs d'un projet
évoquer les éléments de spécifications
identifier les différents contextes de la solution

Sum up the session in only 1 sentence
Apprendre à faciliter des sessions de "Domain Storytelling" pour améliorer la compréhension du métier.

What are the 3 top takeaways from your session or workshop?
- Apprendre à mener des conversations pour découvrir le métier avec des experts du domaine.
- Transcrire dans un langage pictographique les discussions.
- Maitriser un nouvel outil pour concevoir la bonne solution.

Comment faire converger des dizaines d'applications informatiques existantes vers une plateforme IT cible commune ?

Au-delà des principes et des frameworks, cette conférence est un retour d'expérience sur la transformation innovante d'une division IT de plusieurs centaines de personnes.

Un défi technologique, organisationnel et... culturel !

Note : this conference will be given in French but with materials written in English to allow everyone to follow 🇬🇧

Beyond agile: Product Innovation at Google, Airbnb, Spotify, Vinted, & Amazon
What truly distinguishes Google, Airbnb, Spotify, Vinted or Amazon as world-class product companies? This talk goes beyond the conventional "agile" framework to explore how these organizations create a seamless flow across discovery, delivery, and innovation, ensuring that impactful products are delivered consistently.
We'll explore how these companies:

• Blur the lines between discovery and delivery: By integrating user research, data analysis, and rapid experimentation into every step of the product lifecycle, creating a constant feedback loop.
• Foster cross-functional synergy: High-performing teams collaborate seamlessly across product, design, engineering, and data science, ensuring that work flows continuously across disciplines and silos are eliminated.
• Embrace a data-driven culture: Data informs every decision, from shaping product strategy and prioritizing the roadmap to development and post-launch optimization, ensuring that each step is based on real insights.
• Prioritize user-centricity: Understanding user needs and behaviors deeply, translating these insights into intuitive, delightful experiences that evolve with real-time feedback.
• Master the art of experimentation: Using A/B testing, multivariate testing, feature flags, and gradual rollouts to experiment quickly, validate assumptions, and minimize risk—ensuring that the product evolves without disrupting flow.

We’ll also dive into the key enablers behind their success:

• Clear alignment on business objectives: Empowering teams to flow autonomously while staying aligned with overall company goals, ensuring strategic focus without bottlenecks.
• Robust technical foundations: Microservices, cloud-first architectures, and CI/CD pipelines are leveraged to support continuous, scalable delivery, enabling smooth transitions between development phases.
• Design systems that ensure consistency at speed: Reusable design components and patterns enable rapid development while maintaining a high-quality user experience, ensuring flow without compromise.

This session provides a behind-the-scenes look at how these companies create a continuous, harmonious flow between product discovery, delivery, and innovation. Whether you’re a product manager, engineer, designer, or anyone involved in product development, you'll leave with actionable insights to optimize your own processes and foster a smoother, more effective flow within your team and organization.