Lean IT Forum in Columbus: Proven Lean Practices for IT

Proven lean practices for IT
Jon Stahl, founder/CEO of Cleveland-based LeanDog

When: September 21, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
Where: Pfahl Hall 140, Fisher College of Business

For more info see the Fisher College of Business Lean IT Page

Lean IT Forum is normally for members only, but this event will be open to the public

Stahl launched his software engineering firm in Cleveland after nearly two decades experience providing IT leadership in Fortune 500 and startup organizations. As he works with companies on Agile transformation and Lean management, Stahl's passion is eliminating waste, optimizing team performance and helping organizations adopt process improvement values. An active leadership coach, instructor and speaker, Stahl also has co-founded a number of events in the Cleveland area, including Ignite Cleveland, Cleveland Startup Weekend and the Cleveland GiveCamp for IT Philanthropy. He is a Pittsburgh native and graduate of Ohio State University.

August Meeting: Lean Framework, Agile Principles – Using Lean Management and Problem Solving to Sustain and Scale Agile Teams

One of the largest insurance companies in the United States, Nationwide Insurance is the home of a next generation application development center fusing a lean software development framework with agile principles and techniques. In this interactive session Tom Paider explores with participants how Nationwide has taken a small grassroots agile movement and extended it to enterprise scale using lean principles and tools such as A3 thinking, standard work, kaizen, and a focus on lean management.  With Nationwide’s lean-agile practices teams can confidently promise to deliver on time every time, within budget, and with zero defects. Join with other participants to hear why companies far and wide are making gemba trips to observe Nationwide’s success.

Tom Paider is the Associate Vice President, Build Capability Leader for Nationwide Insurance. His group works across the company to implement continuous improvement thinking and improve application development processes. Tom was instrumental in creating Nationwide’s Application Development Center, a next generation development center fusing a lean framework with agile principles and techniques. He has also consulted with dozens of companies across the United States on their lean transformations.

Tom is a board member for The Fisher College of Business Center for Operational Excellence at The Ohio State University. Tom is also the chair of the IT Leadership Network, a partnership between industry and academic leaders focused on helping member companies collaborate and sustain their lean IT journeys. He has a Masters degree in Business Operational Excellence from The Ohio State University and is a Six Sigma Black Belt.

When: August 9, 2012  (Second Thursday).
Networking: 5:30-6pm.
Program: 6-7:30pm.
Where: Max Training. 4900 Parkway Drive Suite 160 , Mason (Cincinnati), OH 45040

PMP's: This event counts for 1 (one) PDU

Book Sponsor

Update on Friday, September 14, 2012 at 10:24PM by Agile Cincinnati

Tom Paider was among us to share Nationwide's experience on Lean Management and Agile Principles

Daily accountability and three tiered approach from local agile teams upto VP level is one of the radical approaches we ever see and we understood their effort to transition from fire fighting to fire prevention.

You can review his presentation here. Thanks for sharing it with Agile Ciinncinnati community.

July Meeting: TDD - Unit Tests From a Slightly Different Point of View

Test-driven Development is generally either embraced or despised by developers. I will discuss the different mindset between coding and coding using TDD, the benefits of TDD, and where to start.

Katie Dwyer has experience on both sides of the coin, software engineering and project management. Since discovering the benefits of using Agile practices, Katie has become passionate about spreading the word and teaching others about Agile and best practices for adoption and using Agile practices to improve software quality in her work as a release manager. She is a Certified Scrum Master and Certified Scrum Developer, and has a M.Sc. in Computer Science from Northern Kentucky University.

When: July 12, 2012  (Second Thursday).
Networking: 5:30-6pm.
Program: 6-7:30pm.
Where: Max Training. 4900 Parkway Drive Suite 160 , Mason (Cincinnati), OH 45040

PMP's: This event counts for 1 (one) PDU

Book Sponsor

Update on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 at 11:32PM by Agile Cincinnati

Another summer meeting; and we started with networking...

Katie Dwyer shared her excellent presentation on Test Driven Development with Agile Cincinnati audience.

She kindly allowed us sharing her presentation material with Agile Cincinnati community, please give her credits for this excellent session about TDD.

Thanks again Katie!!!

June Meeting: Keeping the Dream Alive - Keys to Agile Sustainability

Note: This interactive workshop will use the full 90 minutes, so please arrive by 6pm.  We will cut the networking time to accomodate the extra time.

Much has been written and discussed about the transition phase of Agile adoptions – forming new teams, learning to work in iterations, scaling to the enterprise level. During the transition there is a focus on learning, engaging experts, and asking “are we doing Agile right?”

But how do we influence what happens after the transition phase is over and Agile becomes the new normal? How do we keep historical patterns of organizational behavior that may be the antithesis of Agile from creeping back in? There are a number of steps we can take during the transition and beyond to improve the odds of remaining Agile over the long term. This workshop explores those considerations.

Don’t let “we are agile” become “we were agile.” You will leave this session with specific actions you can take to help ensure that your dream of Agility does not become a nightmare of backsliding.

Dan Neumann is an independent Agile coach, who holds a CSM and CSP. He is experienced in leading transitions from waterfall to Agile in both small companies and large corporations. His professional experience includes software development and project management experience in a large CPA and consulting firm. Dan has presented on Agile topics at several regional conferences and user communities, and volunteer on the Agile Leadership Network’s national Board of Directors.

 Susan DiFabio is an Agile coach seeking to learn, collaborate, and enable software teams to build great software. She has been part of software development teams for many years, holding many different roles from developer to designer to project manager. She was born with the Agile mindset. After years of feeling like a round peg in a square hole trying to fulfill the role of traditional project manager, Susan was thrilled to discover like-minded people in the Agile community.

When: June 14, 2012  (Second Thursday).
Networking: 5:30-6pm.
Program: 6-7:30pm.
Where: Max Training. 4900 Parkway Drive Suite 160 , Mason (Cincinnati), OH 45040

PMP's: This event counts for 1 (one) PDU

Book Sponsor

Update on Sunday, June 24, 2012 at 12:55AM by Agile Cincinnati

In this interactive meeting we explored our own organizations with Susan and Dan's help.

Dan introduced Schneider Culture Model and specific attributes in each culture type.

 

Then Susan presented pillars of team.

We tried to answer the following questions about our organizations and management.

• Reflect on your organization's management
• How are teams setup for success?
• What are you or your managers doing?
• What could you or they consider doing?

Last Susan discussed various parameters around metrics such as;

• Information vs. Evaluation
• People know they are being monitored
• Process vs. outcome
• Balance
• Trends vs. Targets
• Who is the right audience?

Then we searched for the answers related to metrics in our environment

• Consider a metric to use
• What is its intendend behaviour?
• What potential unintended behaviours could it foster?
• Consider ways to mitigate the unintended behaviours.

 

We had a very participative presentation and good time. Great collaboration. Many thanks to Susan and Dan for sharing their experience with us.

Here's our winners for Atlassian t-shirt and a book from Pearson. Thanks for supporting our community.

Claire Revalee	Pam Mitchell	Eric Landwehr