The Agile Executive

In his recent post on the blueprint for building a thriving Agile community, colleague Scott Killen outlined our plan to start an  “Ask An Expert” program by Agile Austin, as follows:

We will soon implement a program we call “Ask An Expert”.  This program will make an experienced agile practitioner available once a week for two hours of consultation.  The event will be hosted at a local restaurant with a separate room and wireless access.  Facilitators will register in advance and their availability and qualifications will be posted for prospective attendees to review.  We hope that individuals and entire teams will take advantage of the opportunity to consult with an experienced coach.

No doubt, some/many of the questions that will be posed to the experts will be of the “how” variety. In addition, I am very much hoping my colleagues and I will successfully address the “what” and “why” of Agile. For example: Why is Agile so very effective during this decade but was not earlier?  What enabled Scrum to get the traction it did? Why is a company’s sales strategy very related to doing software in an Agile manner? What is the mindset that enables end-to-end application of Agile? What is the relationship between Agile and innovation? Etc.

To me, questions like these are at the very heart of Agile adoption on a large scale. Important that the processes, practices and artifacts of Agile are, we often get stuck between Agile at the team level and acceptance of Agile at the enterprise level. The main reason IMHO  is difficulty in crisply articulating the answers to these and other “whys” and “whats”.

Hence, the “bring along your team/colleagues/executives” motto of this program. In addition to being a forum for “how” questions, use it as a vehicle to help socialize Agile in your company. Bring the skeptics to the program and we will do our very best to win them over.

Starting May 7, the program will be held every Thursday 6-8PM at Mangia’s Pizza, 8012 Mesa Drive, Austin, TX.