Lakeside Lessons: Reflections from Agile on the Beach NZ 2026
1 April 2026Taupō might be inland, but don't let that fool you. The beaches along New Zealand's largest lake made a spectacular setting for the return of Agile on the Beach NZ.
Held at the Hilton Lake Taupō over 20 - 22 March, this boutique conference brought together around 75 agile practitioners, coaches, and thought leaders, mostly from across Aotearoa with a handful from Australia and Europe. The intimacy of the event creates the kind of conversations that larger conferences struggle to foster.
The conference ran a thoughtful format: Friday masterclasses for deep dives, Saturday invited talks and workshops, and a Sunday open-space unconference. The theme this year - Energise, Evolve, Effect - wasn't just branding. It genuinely showed up in the content. What struck me most was that the sessions consistently pushed agile thinking forward rather than retreading familiar ground. If you came expecting another round of "here's how to run a retrospective," you would have been pleasantly surprised.
AI as Collaborator, Not Competitor
AI was, predictably, a thread running through the event, but the framing was refreshingly constructive. Rather than hand-wringing about threats to jobs, the conversations centred on how AI can augment and support agile practices. Natalia Curusi's session on AI-augmented agile teams was a standout. She combined system thinking with scenario planning to map out four possible futures based on AI capability and regulatory environment, from a "Wild West" of unregulated high capability through to a well-balanced "Plastic AI Ecosystem." Her practical takeaway?
Start building AI literacy now, establish governance frameworks, and focus on human-AI collaboration regardless of which future materialises.
What I appreciated was the honest assessment of where we actually are. The audience was split between "low penetration" and "Wild West" scenarios, but everyone agreed regulation is lagging. Her observation that specialists consistently find AI falls short on the critical 20% of their domain work resonated with many in the room.
The Human Work Continues
The strongest sessions, though, were firmly about people. Natal Dank's opening keynote on Workplace Elasticity set the tone beautifully.
In a world where economic forecasters can barely predict two months ahead and organisational restructures happen mid-engagement, she argued we need systems that bend and stretch rather than break.
Her model, built around togetherness, product-led thinking, portfolio awareness, flow, T-shaped competencies, and human-AI collaboration, felt both ambitious and grounded. The case studies from Octopus Energy and TomTom gave it practical weight.
Aurélien Béraud's session on Jungian shadow work was, frankly, confronting in the best way. His core message is that what triggers us in others is often a repressed part of ourselves and landed hard in a room full of coaches and leaders. The practical framework he offered (find your triggers, ask "where in my life am I like them?", then shift from shame to curiosity) is deceptively simple and genuinely transformative. His insistence on professional guidance and the honesty about his own ongoing three-year journey gave the session real credibility.
Winter Fable's session on the 7-second pause was a masterclass in inclusive facilitation. Using Kahoot quizzes to engage the audience, they demonstrated how giving people just seven seconds before expecting a response creates space for all neurotypes to contribute meaningfully. It's such a small, practical change, and one every facilitator and meeting chair should adopt immediately.
Making the Invisible Visible
Steven Gibson's talk on end-to-end flow metrics might have been the most practically useful session of the conference. His "Japan trip" analogy, illustrating how a family holiday involves over twelve months of invisible upstream work before anyone boards a plane, perfectly captured why so many agile transformations feel frustrating. When delivery teams represent only 8% of time-to-value (with ideation at 48% and release at 44%), optimising the delivery team alone is like rearranging deck chairs. His message was clear: data brings visibility, visibility brings conversation, and conversation brings system-level improvement.
Michael Law, Deputy Mayor of Whanganui (and self-described "recovering Agile coach"), delivered what might have been the conference's most entertaining and provocative talk. His thesis was blunt: most organisations, and especially councils, have no measurable, repeatable definition of what value actually is. He walked us through how his council reduced 2,600 KPIs down to five, then scored every service line item by cost, usage, impact, and community sentiment to produce a relative value-per-dollar ranking. The result? They cut over $4 million from the budget and almost nobody noticed because the things cut weren't delivering value anyone consumed. The exception was an aviary costing $50,000 a year that barely anyone visited but triggered public outrage when threatened. His line stuck with me:
"Value consumption is more important than value creation. If people don't notice something is gone, it wasn't providing value."
For anyone working in environments where planning has become a hostage situation rather than an adaptive practice, Michael's approach is a breath of fresh air. On a side note, this approach enabled the Whanganui to have the lowest rates increase in all of New Zealand this year, at only 2.2%!
Gareth Holebrook's Ishi Spiral - a four-phase discipline of Decide, Forge, Persist, Reflect - offered a compelling personal governance model. His Ironman stories brought the framework to life, particularly the tension between noble persistence and dangerous overshooting. The "AHA" mechanism (Adjust, Hold, Abort) defined before you start is something I can see teams adopting quickly.
Tristan Lomberg's session on Patrick Lencioni's Working Genius framework gave everyone a practical lens for understanding why certain work energises them while other tasks drain the life out of them. The self-assessment activity had the room buzzing with recognition and conversation.
Worth the Trip
Agile on the Beach NZ continues to punch well above its weight. The organisers have found a sweet spot: large enough to attract international speakers and diverse perspectives, intimate enough for genuine connection. If you're looking for a conference that advances your thinking rather than confirming what you already know, put this one on your calendar for next time. The community is warm, the content is sharp, and the beach setting doesn't hurt either.
