WordCamp Nashville 2016: The promise and peril of Agile and Lean practices

On September 20, 2016 by Mike With 0 Comments - Agile, WordPress
Presenting "the promise and peril of Agile and Lean practices" at WordCamp Nashville 2016

Presenting “the promise and peril of Agile and Lean practices” at WordCamp Nashville 2016

I’ve spoken at WordCamp Nashville every year since it started in 2012, and it was an honor to be invited back again this year. In preparing my talk, I wanted to share my experiences, both good and bad, in bringing Lean and Agile practices to different organizations over the years. Adopting these practices can lead to enormous benefits in quality, customer satisfaction, and developer happiness. But they can also involve very painful transitions, they can go very wrong if not done carefully, and some practices don’t translate well to the world of consulting and freelance work. The challenge was to present all these considerations, in 40 minutes, which doesn’t really allow time to explain a whole lot about actual Agile and Lean practices! My goal was to explain just enough about Agile and Lean – what they have in common and how they are different – and give some real life examples of what to expect if you try them in various kinds of work environments. The audience had great questions for me and I got really good feedback after the talk, so it went well. Here are my slides (they’re also embedded below).

As always, the after-party was great. It was at The Family Wash this year, and I saw a lot of familiar faces. Nashville is starting to feel like a 2nd home.

Here are my slides:

There were a bunch of excellent talks this year. I especially enjoyed these two:

I also had time to do some exploring around Nashville. Since it wasn’t my first time there, I skipped most of the touristy stuff. I spent most of my time in the Germantown neighborhood, where the WordCamp was held this year. Here are some pictures:

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