The Collaboration Equation — Creating Improvable Cultures
The Job Hackers Agile Meetup
Session Overview:
Surprise, Agile can be successful!
But we see Agile fail so often that we delude ourselves into thinking our failures are due to someone else or something else. If only management wouldn’t have screwed us up, if only people would have used Jira, if only it wouldn’t have snowed….
Alas, the highway of modern coding is littered with the wreckage of many a well-intentioned agile transformation. This is true for agile (scrum, xp, dad, scaled agile, safe, etc) and lean (TPS, ASQ, Six Sigma, etc) and all their sister processes.
Why?
They all leave out a key factor: Professionals work in teams to create value. This is the Collaboration equation. Agile and Lean both focus on part of the equation (agile teams, lean value) but not the whole thing. We rarely ask what people need; we give lip service to problem solving and opportunity seizing, and we fail to act on learning.
Across diverse organizational environments — software, construction, medicine, world government, and more — Jim Benson has helped build teams of professionals that understand their work, their political realities, and how they can help make things better. He has learned that every team has a unique context made up of predictable and unpredictable stuff.
In this session, Jim Benson will show you how your team can understand its culture, its information needs, and its response to change…then use that information to build a real culture of continuous improvement. Not a process from a box or a book, but a way of working that allows that team to work professionally, adapt from learning, and improve. The people on the team get what they need as professionals, the team learns and builds together, and the product evolves in the best ways possible.
About Our Featured Speaker:
Jim Benson is the creator of Personal Kanban and Lean Coffee and is a pioneer in the field of Lean Management. His book Personal Kanban, which he co-authored with Modus Institute co-founder Tonianne DeMaria, is a global bestseller and winner of the Shingo Prize in 2013. He is also a fellow in the Lean Systems Society, senior faculty at the Lean Enterprise Institute, and a 2012 winner of the Brickell Key Award for Excellence in Lean Thinking.
Jim has built light rail systems and neighborhoods as an urban planner, enterprise software and web sites for major government agencies, and created better working environments for teams of all sizes as a Lean collaborative management consultant with Modus Cooperandi and the online school / community Modus Institute.
Jim’s other books include Why Plans Fail and Why Limit WIP.
His most recent book is The Collaboration Equation.
He loves to eat and hates Powerpoint.
He is @ourfounder on Twitter for the time being, but you’d be better off finding him on LinkedIn.
