Anne-Marie Charrett

Is agile coaching evolving into engineering leadership? I’ve observed a noticeable shift lately in New Zealand’s Agile community: many experienced agile coaches are moving into engineering leadership positions. This transition seems to coincide with decreasing engagement in traditional agile circles—fewer meetups and conferences, quieter forums, and fewer fresh perspectives. Have you observed the same? My top 3 hypotheses about what's driving this trend: - Broader Impact – agile coaches often seek wider organizational influence, and engineering leadership roles provide clearer pathways to strategic impact across teams and products. - Career Progression – as companies increasingly embed agile principles into their cultures, specialized coaching roles might feel limited. - Cost-Cutting Pressures – In tighter economic times, companies scrutinize every role. Agile coaching—especially when decoupled from delivery—is often seen as a “nice-to-have” rather than essential. And this change in the market may be driving agile coaches to look for new roles. Is this a natural evolution—or are we losing something vital? Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying this is a bad trend; after all, I followed the same transition; I'm just curious how the market has been evolving and what we can learn from this. And if you are new to tech leadership, make sure you follow Tech Waka Podcast & Leadership Collective, where we shape and share the journeys of Aotearoa's tech leaders. #AgileCoaching #EngineeringLeadership #TechWaka 

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Across ANZ, a new efficiency mindset is taking over. Leaders are asking: How do we scale smarter, not bigger? AI and automation are driving serious productivity gains, but they’re also raising the bar for technical capability. Today’s lean, high-impact teams are powered by senior cloud engineers, AI product specialists, and cyber leaders who can turn tech into tangible outcomes. This isn’t a cost-cutting story, it’s about capability. The Tech Hiring Shift unpacks how this mindset is reshaping talent strategy and redefining the skills that will matter most in 2026. Read the full report and stay ahead of the shift 👉 https://lnkd.in/gKrk6gHt

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Adam Sandman made an incredible return to Testing Talks Conference Sydney today with a dynamic talk that had the audience fully engaged. As Founder & CEO of Inflectra, Adam drew on his global experience to unpack how AI-powered testing is reshaping the QA landscape. Through compelling real-world examples, he showcased how teams can accelerate high-volume test execution, improve efficiency, and cut cost, all without compromising on quality. A trusted voice in the industry, Adam delivered fresh insights and practical strategies that left attendees inspired and ready to innovate. #TestingTalksConference

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A successful multi-phase pilot by ANZ and SuperChoice shows super payments using NPP rails are within reach — just in time for PayDay Super reform. A big step toward a faster, fairer system.   Read more: https://lnkd.in/gPPUyheS Lisa Vasic.   SuperChoice , Australian Payments Plus

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🇦🇺 Thrilled to share this piece in the The Australian Financial Review by Tess Bennett about Sovereign Australia AI and the journey we're embarking on to build Australis - Australia's own foundational language model. I couldn’t be prouder to be building this alongside my mate and Co-Founder Simon Kriss This isn't just about building another AI model. It's about ensuring Australia maintains its digital sovereignty and voice in an increasingly AI-driven world. We shouldn't be dependent on decisions made in Washington, Silicon Valley, Beijing or Europe about how AI understands and represents our Australian culture, values, and way of life. Yet to achieve this isn’t easy and it takes scale to compete, so we’ve made a massive investment in compute and have acquired 256 NVIDIA Blackwell B200 GPUs hosted in NEXTDC's secure Australian data centre in Melbourne, and managed by our colleagues at SHARON AI What makes me particularly proud of what we’ve done so far: ✅ Ethical from the ground up - We're committing $10M to compensate copyright owners, working WITH creators rather than against them ✅ Built for Australia, by Australians - From the ground up, built, trained and inferenced onshore, here in Australia, and compliant with our privacy and copyright laws ✅ Customers & Partnerships In Place - We partnering with some amazing Aussie organisations to help them solve some of Australia’s AI challenges. The partnerships we can speak about include ACS (Australian Computer Society), UNSW Canberra & GT Systems Australia, with more to follow! The path to digital sovereignty doesn't require billions, it requires vision, ethical principles, and the determination to ensure Australia's voice isn't lost in the global AI conversation. We're proving that sovereign AI can be built responsibly, affordably, and with respect for the creators whose work makes it possible. Australia's digital future should be in Australian hands. Let's build it together. 🚀 Special thanks to Craig Scroggie, Andrew Leece, Kieran Habojan, Dan Mons, Sudarshan Ramachandran, Rhod Brown, Brett Bonser, Melissa Hamilton, Josh Griggs, Rhett Sampson and so many more. #ai #sovereignai #llm #gpt #innovation #australia #australian https://lnkd.in/gnF8N3mR

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Every bank I speak to is facing similar challenges - the need to go faster while being more efficient yet burdened by legacy systems and siloed organisational structures. Bendigo Bank, one of Australia's most trusted financial institutions, tackled all of those challenges head on and successfully completed one of the fastest digital banking transformations in our region. Consolidating two separate divisions and over 30 different forms and systems into a single, unified platform - all in 13 months. "We had customers using multiple tools, bankers using multiple tools. We couldn't actually start to improve the process because we had multiple processes instead of one standardised approach." Neil Edwards, Head of Business Design, Bendigo Bank There's no secret sauce. It's a deep commitment to trusted partner relationships, embracing standardisation and prioritising "pace over perfection". Now, they have a unified customer experience, streamlined operations, and a foundation for continuous innovation. https://lnkd.in/dJxgnF3E

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As businesses expand across borders, scaling engineering teams effectively is key. Learn how NAB, Deputy, and Ansarada used CBTW’s Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model to access global talent, accelerate innovation, and boost efficiency - without compromising culture, security, or long-term control. 📥 Download the white paper to explore the strategic framework: https://lnkd.in/g5DXNEus

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Compliance is now 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛 easier for cloud-native businesses across ANZ. We’ve teamed up with Wolk Technology, one of Australia’s leading cloud providers, to deliver Scytale’s compliance automation platform directly via the AWS Marketplace. Scytale gives you access to 40+ frameworks and slashes your audit prep time by 90% whilst Wolk secures your cloud. Whether you’re scaling fast or chasing your next certification, we’re making compliance simpler, faster, and built for the cloud. Better together. 💜

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6,000+ Cloud Certifications and counting 🚀 Since launching in 2018, our NAB Tech Academy has been helping tech colleagues build globally recognised skills — from deep capability in cloud and software engineering to emerging tech like GenAI.   Because continuous learning isn’t just about building our people’s skills — it’s about delivering smarter, faster and world-class experiences for our customers.   As NAB’s Head of Global Tech Academies Paul Silver puts it: “We’re keeping our tech teams at the top of their game — because the pace of change isn’t slowing down, and neither are our customers’ expectations.”

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Building a future-proof data foundation requires more than technology—it demands trust and alignment. 💡 Australian Payments Plus is uniting people and tech to power better experiences across the Australian payments system. CIO May Lam discusses how critical data is to their innovation, noting that Snowflake and Amazon Web Services (AWS) form the backbone of their data foundation. Learn more 👉🏻 https://bit.ly/46PqhK3

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Signal beats slogans every time. CreditorWatch is Australia’s innovative bureau with real adoption and real outcomes: ATO tax defaults, Tradeline, Invoice and full credit suite integration that finance teams actually use. What makes the difference is not just features. It is the customer and member network behind them. Every month our customers look up over 500,000 businesses and monitor over 2.4 million businesses. The ATO state there is about 2.7 million active businesses in Australia, which means our coverage now spans almost the entire market. Here is the truth about defaults: Lodging a default only matters when you have customers. If no one is watching, the network effects do not travel. In our network, those signals are seen, shared and acted on. That is the compounding power of CreditorWatch: * More customers participating means stronger signals and less noise * More monitoring means earlier warnings and faster decisioning * More real data in means better outcomes out Some talk about data. We partner with customers who create it, share it and act on it at scale. Join the bureau where network effects really matter. When your risk decisions ride on reality, not marketing, CreditorWatch delivers. #CreditorWatch #Innovation #NetworkEffects #CreditRisk #Fintech #Australia #B2BData #B2B #RiskManagement #DataStrategy

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NAB’s PayTo solution, Pay by Bank - is a new way for customers to pay directly from their bank account without the need for credit or debit cards. It connects buyers and merchants via secure banking networks, so payments are fast, seamless, and happen in real-time. 🎬 Watch the video to hear Jon Adams explain how this modern alternative makes paying straightforward and easy.

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