Abstract I don’t know about you, but I spent a lot of 2020 walking with my husband outdoors. We are fortunate to have miles of walking trails in our community and even during the most severe lockdown, we were able to log over four miles a day. I know the scientific evidence for being outside … Read More
Check out our YouTube playlist to watch all the talks from Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise 2020. Abstract Many teams strive towards Agile development, chopping work into small pieces to increase velocity and value of feature delivery. Without carefully defining and measuring feature value with defined success metrics, these processes can devolve into just a … Read More
Some organizations have implemented a brand of “agile” which is full of ceremonies, conformance, compliance, and standardization; a heavyweight process that was never intended by original Agilists. Instead, we re-invigorate agility by (re)turning to values which focus teams on outcomes instead of outputs create a culture that welcomes teamwork and healthy confrontation support continuous learning … Read More
Poet and critic Paul Valéry got to the heart of the relationship between art and business when he wrote, in 1922, “[For lovers of perfection], a work is never finished…but abandoned,” the act of abandonment being “the result of weariness or an obligation to deliver.” We software developers are, in the main, lovers of perfection–and … Read More
One of the biggest challenges in systems development is scaling. We want to scale vertically, horizontally, and organizationally. Sometimes we even want to scale our processes. Why is it so hard? In many cases, it is because we want to find structures that work well at all scales. When we can’t we call it failure … Read More
Doc walks us through the Hawthorne Effect and Goodhart’s Law to explain why setting goals for velocity can actually hurt a project’s chances. Take a look at what can negatively impact velocity, ways to stabilize fluctuating velocity, and methods to improve velocity without the risks. Leave with a toolkit of additional metrics that, coupled with velocity, give a better view of the project’s overall health.
Innovating in such environments can be a challenge, but it is both personally and professionally rewarding to do so. In examining the motivations behind these hostile cultures, we can see patterns and opportunities where individuals or teams of developers can serve two masters and deploy cutting-edge technologies and techniques while still honoring both the spirit and the letter of a myriad of restrictions.
Agile HR represents a new, emerging way for HR to partner with their leaders and people. The paradigm is shifting from one of controls and standards to a new level of engagement – one that focuses on the facilitation and improvement of organizational agility. This means helping to build and drive programs that create adaptability, foster innovation, provide transparency, and inspire collaboration. Building on these principles, Comcast’s Technology + Product team is reimagining Performance Management. We are an innovative and agile organization and we are transforming our Performance Management approach to reflect our culture, provide real-time feedback, and develop our most important resources – our talent.
This talk describes, step-by-step, how to evolve from today’s vision of agile software development to a truly disciplined agile enterprise. It briefly examines the state of mainstream agile software development and argues for the need for a more disciplined approach to agile delivery that provides a solid foundation from which to scale. It then explores what it means to scale disciplined agile strategies tactically at the project/product level and strategically across your IT organization as a whole. Your disciplined agile IT strategy, along with a lean business strategy, are key enablers of a full-fledged disciplined agile enterprise. The talk ends with advice for how to make this challenging organizational transition.
You can apply agile approaches to your hiring, iterating on everything. You can get feedback as you go, and involve the entire team, including the sourcing. You can teach your recruiters to use a kanban board to track candidates and where they are in the pipeline. You can iterate on the job description (and job ad) based on what you see in candidates. When you involve the entire team, you can create questions and auditions that work for you. You can identify candidates who fit your culture and those who don’t. This session is a timeboxed interactive workshop. Be prepared to experiment and learn. Let’s make your hiring more agile.
