Presentation: "Coaching and Scaling Agility"

Time: Thursday 15:45 - 16:45

Location: Cornell

Abstract:

Recently, I was participating in a coaching retrospective for a large agile project; I was impressed by the value of the discussion. As the coaches, with some managers, discussed the recent iteration, they talked about their successes and failures as well as the struggles of the people they were coaching. As they shared the techniques the used to help the various project communities, new and better ways to improve emerged as the conversations flow.

For this company, and many others, scaling agility is well supported by growing a collection of coaches who help foster a reflective eco-system from within. While there is no single (or simple) recipe for scaling agility, a collection of coaches seem to be a consistently valuable ingredient.

This session will cover coaches, coaching and how the two work together to help guide larger project communities and large agile adoptions. The session will discuss a bit on coaching in general as well as how coaches and managers can (and do) work together to consistently produce better software.

David Hussman, DevJam

 David  Hussman

David has been creating software for more than 15 years in a variety of domains: digital audio, digital biometrics, medical, financial, retail, legal, and education to name a few. For the past 8 years, David has mentored and coached agile teams in the U.S., Canada, Europe, India, Egypt, Russia, and Ukraine. Along with presenting and leading workshops / tutorials at conferences in the U.S. and Europe, David has contributed to several books (Managing Agile Projects and Agile in the Large), and worked on agile curriculum for The University of Minnesota and Capella University. David is currently writing a book for the Pragmatic Programmer series.

David leads DevJam, a Minneapolis based company composed of agile collaborators. As mentors and practitioners, DevJam focuses on using agile to help people and companies improve their software production skills. DevJam provides seasoned leaders that strive to pragmatically match technology, people, and processes in a way which produces software that makes people happier and more productive.

For more information, check out the DevJam website www.devjam.com