Agile Caravanserai

This episode of Agile Caravanserai is a presentation from Bob Martin given at our recent Lean + Agile DC Conference. Bob Martin self proclaims himself as the Agile Curmudgeon yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off his lawn.  In this talk, he will describe was agile was, is, and should be.  No muss, no fuss, no adjectives like Lean, Scaled, SAFE, LESS, or anything else.  Just agile, the whole...

Today's press is full of AI prognostications, many predicting a dire future. They are all wrong. History tells us that predicting technology's path is futile. However, preparing for it is not. What does history tell us about past technology advances that we can use to prepare for the future—for both we as individuals and our businesses? Join Jim Highsmith whose recent book,  Wild West to Agile , d...

Mary Lynn Manns is an author, educator and leading change consultant based in Asheville, North Carolina.  I've had the privilege of knowing Mary Lynn for close to two decades. Along with Linda Rising, she is the co-author of the "Fearless Change" Books.  "Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas" was released in 2005, and "More Fearless Change: Strategies for Making Your Ideas Happen" c...

Diana Larsen is Chief Connector & Co-Founder of the Agile Fluency® Project.   Along with James Shore, her co-founder, Diana focuses The Agile Fluency Model on achieving fluent proficiency on an agile development team.   Diana also founded FutureWorks where she led Agile software development, team leadership, and Agile transitions.   She has co-authored several books including: "Agile Retrospective...

Jurgen Appelo is an entrepreneur, speaker, and author on agility, leadership, and innovation. Jurgen is CEO of the business network Happy Melly and co-founder of the Agile Lean Europe network. Since 2008, Jurgen has worked on his blog at NOOP.NL which offers ideas on the creative economy, agile leadership, organizational change, and personal development. Inc.com has called Jurgen a Top 50 Leadersh...

Jim Benson is a pioneer of knowledge work and creator of Personal Kanban. He is also a public speaker, consultant, and author who is an expert in effectiveness for individuals, teams, and organizations. After three decades as a business owner, team leader, and employee in both commercial & government agencies, Jim has shifted his focus to helping people and teams work out sticky  problems. Jim fou...

Laurie Williams is a Distinguished Professor in the Computer Science Department of the College of Engineering at North Carolina State University (NCSU). Laurie's research focuses on software security; agile software development practices and processes, particularly continuous deployment; and software reliability, software testing and analysis. Over the last 21+ years, Laurie has served NCSU at all...

Max Keeler is the Chief Projects Officer and Project Lead for Investor Island at The Motley Fool. His specialty is Agile Project Management. Over the last 25 years, Max has worked at the Motley Fool in a variety of different positions including VP of Business Processes, VP of Project Management, and Head of Global Operations. I've known Max since 2007, when we helped his team get started with agil...

Johanna Rothman, also known as the "Pragmatic Manager," is a coach, consultant, speaker, and advisor. Johanna offers frank advice for tough problems with managing projects, programs, and project portfolios.  Essentially, Johanna helps leaders and teams do reasonable things that work. Johanna started her career in software engineering.  She started managing cross-functional projects in 1979, then m...

Esther Derby is a consultant, advisor, author, and speaker. Esther has spent the last 25 years helping companies design their organization for success.  She has a Master's degree in Organizational Leadership and a certificate in Human Systems Dynamics. In 1997, she founded her own consulting business, Esther Derby Associates. She works with both start-ups and Fortune 500 companies. Esther is the a...

David Anderson is an internationally recognized thought leader and pioneer of the Kanban Methodology. He's the founder of the David J Anderson School of Management as well as the CEO of  Mauvius Group Inc. David is the author of seven books on Kanban. David co-created the Kanban Maturity Model, the Fit for Purpose Framework, and Enterprise Services Planning. His degree in electronics and computer...

Naresh Jain is an award-winning, internationally recognized Technology & Product Development Expert. Naresh is the Founder of the tech startup Xnsio, as well as a veteran conference producer and agile/lean expert. Over the last 15 years, Naresh has helped many Unicorns and fortune 500 companies like Jio, Google, Amazon, JP Morgan, Hike, Directi, HP, Siemens Medical, GE Energy, Schlumberger, EMC, C...

Evan Leybourn is the Co-Founder and CEO of the Business Agility Institute. As well as leading the Business Agility Institute, Evan is also the author of  Directing the Agile Organisation  (2012) and  #noprojects; a culture of continuous value  (2018). AGILE BUSINESS MANAGEMENT IS ABOUT CHANGE; CHANGING HOW YOU THINK, CHANGING HOW YOU WORK, AND CHANGING THE WAY YOU INTERACT. BY ACCEPTING, EMBRACING...

Dean Leffingwell is the Cofounder and Chief Methodologist at Scaled Agile. Dean is an entrepreneur who is best known for creating the Scaled Agile Framework for the enterprise, or SAFe®. He has long history of entrepreneurship, having founded several successful startups, including Requisite, Inc. (acquired by Rational). Dean is also the author of several foundational books, including Agile Softwar...

Howard Sublett is the Chief Product Owner and CEO of the Scrum Alliance. Howard has been a force to reckon with in the Scrum and Agile communities for a while. He has a talent for bringing people together in his inimitable style. Howard is focused on people – who they are and what they need, and lives according to the mantra that strangers are only friends he hasn't met. He is passionate about mak...

Professor Rashina Hoda is the Associate Dean in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University, Melbourne. Rashina is an award-winning researcher and an international expert in human-centered software engineering specializing in agile software development. Her research covers agile transformations, self-organizing agile teams, agile project management, large-scale agile, and serious ga...

Deepti Jain is the founder of the India-based agile consulting firm Agile Virgin, and an agile coach, trainer and mentor. She is also the Agile Alliance's India Community Development Chief. Personally, Deepti loves to connect and interact with people and prefers to call herself a social scientist. A tireless entrepreneur, she is the driving force behind several conferences including AgilityToday,...

Ellen Grove is the Interim Managing Director of the Agile Alliance, and an agile coach, trainer and organizational change agent with Agile Partnership. In 2013, Ellen partnered with LitheSpeed on an agile transformation. As an Agile coach, Ellen has worked with organizations of all sizes – from software startups to public sector agencies and global data networking enterprises. She helps them trans...

After a series of Agile Caravanserai conversations with the authors of the Agile Manifesto, let's pivot to conversations with senior leaders in industry and also in the agile community. Michael Carrel is the Senior Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, Marketing & Enterprise Growth Solutions at Nationwide Insurance. I've been privileged to know Michael for 14 years. We first met in 2007 when...

Andy Hunt is one of the 17 Agile Manifesto authors, and a well-known author, publisher and musician. Andy has long impressed me with his commitment to the discipline of software development.  Unlike those who get lost in arcane techniques and tools, Andy has long championed a straightforward pragmatic approach. Along with fellow manifesto author Dave Hunt, Andy authored the seminal book, The Pragm...

Arie van Bennekum is one of the 17 Agile Manifesto authors, and the one with the unique distinction of not being from North America. When the manifesto was written, Arie was there representing the UK-based DSDM Consortium. DSDM or the Dynamic Systems Development Method is one of the agile methodologies, and was developed in the early 1990s by a consortium of expert and industry representatives fro...

Ron Jeffries is an Agile Manifesto author and the co-creator of the popular eXtreme Programming or XP methodology.  For decades, Ron has been a vocal proponent of disciplined practices for quality code. Ron evolved XP on the now-famous Chrysler C3 project in the mid-1990s, along with Kent Beck and Ward Cunningham. They proved out extreme software development discipline with engineering techniques...

Kent Beck is an Agile Manifesto author and the co-creator of the wildly popular eXtreme Programming (XP) methodology.  Kent is also the leading proponent of Test-Driven Development (TDD). In the mid-1990s, along with Ron Jeffries and Ward Cunningham, Kent evolved XP on the now-famous Chrysler C3 project.  They proved out extreme discipline with engineering techniques like TDD, refactoring, automat...

James Grenning is an Agile Manifesto author and a true software development guru. James' contributions to agile methods are wide ranging, especially in the all-important space of embedded systems. James has designed complex embedded applications ranging from weather radar displays and aircraft control tower displays to distributed automatic testing systems and high-speed cut-sheet printing and com...

As the co-creator of Scrum and an Agile Manifesto author, Jeff Sutherland needs little introduction in the agile community. Jeff originally designed and developed Scrum based on principles from Takeuchi and Nonaka in their landmark Harvard Business Review article, A New, New Product Development Game . He also incorporated techniques from his background as a fighter pilot, including Colonel Boyd's...