Jonathan Kohl will be giving a keynote presentation entitled What’s More Important: Being Agile or Creating Value? at the Better Software Conference & Expo in Las Vegas in June. See here for more info. Looks like a great talk. Here’s the abstract:
Agile processes and tools have become very popular over the past few years. They promise success where many organizations have had failures. Concerned over struggles to “be agile†and worried that they are not doing everything that every agile consultant says they must, some organizations are worrying whether their projects are really agile or not. Is worrying about whether or not we are really agile the point? Are we, in our rush to be “agile,†losing sight of what’s really important? Shouldn’t our question be, “Are we creating software our customers value?†Jonathan Kohl focuses on understanding why we are developing software, for whom, and what our end users and team members value. It’s easy to get caught up with the newest trends and tools and measure our success based on their adoption, while forgetting about the basics. Jonathan helps you determine whether your tools and processes are helping you create value or if they are distracting you. Furthermore, if your processes and tools are helping you deliver software that your customers value, does it matter how “agile†you are?
Remember, it isn’t about how well you are doing a process. It is about how well your process is helping you build valuable software.