The deliver:Agile 2018 conference program committee is pleased to announce Andrea Goulet and Jeff Sussna as the keynote speakers for this year’s conference in Austin.
Andrea Goulet is the CEO of Corgibytes, a software development shop dedicated to maintaining and modernizing software applications as well as the founder of Legacy Code Rocks! and author of the upcoming book “Becoming Technical: Build an Amazing Career in Tech Starting at Square Zero“. Her keynote, “Empathy Driven Development”, is a technical talk about one of the most important and misunderstood skills in software development: empathy. Her session will detail the six different types of empathy and how incorporating this skill into your daily development practices can have profound positive benefits.
In a recent blog post she explained empathy in relation to software:
Software is ultimately an expression of ideas. It’s developing a tool that will be used by another human being. You cannot build a tool effectively without imagining first how another person (either someone else or your future self) will use it. Empathy is a required ingredient for successful software… Empathy drives sales, customer service, product development, human resources… and more. When we use empathy for decision making, we discover that we have more diverse teams, happier customers, and less conflict. Empathy is the glue that holds a vision and the fuel that drives a team to achieve it.
If you have ever found yourself saying “I’m good with machines, but not with people”, this is one keynote you will not want to miss.
Jeff Sussna is an internationally recognized IT coach and design thinking practitioner, helping digital organizations improve service quality through effective collaboration, as well as author of the book “Designing Delivery: Rethinking IT in the Digital Service Economy“. His keynote “Continuous Design: Harnessing Change for Competitive Advantage” will explore the shared heritage of Agile, DevOps, and Design Thinking in order to create a deeper understanding of what it means to deliver value and present the view that by making design a continuous part of everything we do we can fulfill the Agile promise of harnessing change for competitive advantage.
In a recent interview, Jeff explained Continuous Design:
…Continuous design [is] basically bringing together the entire organization and a unifying design in operations. It’s taking what we are doing in DevOps and expanding it to include product, design and support… The issue that we face is that we live in a service world now. The point is… much more about responding to our customers and having relationships with them. This is happening in a world that is more and more complex while less and less is in your control. We can’t figure everything out in advance. We have to have the ability to respond to the unexpected. We have to be able to do that at every level.
This keynote will introduce a truly unified approach to design, development, and operations that goes beyond merely bolting them together.
These two keynotes from well-respected thought leaders in the Agile and DevOps communities are not to be missed and will provide a great platform to the wider range of speakers and topics that will be discussed at the deliver:Agile conference. On behalf of the Program Committee, we look forward to seeing you at deliver:Agile 2018 in Austin on April 30 – May 2.
