My session: Agile Values, Innovation and the Shortage of Women Software Developers

Is scheduled Thursday August 16, 2012 9:00am – 10:30am @ Austin 4-6

This session is in the Leadership track but it’s leadership with a lowercase “l”. Not Innovation and Intrepreneurship — as valuable as they are — but day to day individual integrity.

It is about what we as practitioners should do and the workplaces we should strive to create around us.

It is about how our embrace of Agile development informs our values and provides us tools to make change happen.

Here’s what I hope attendees come away with:

• Awareness of research establishing the shortage of women developers and the material and cultural factors that contribute to it.
• Agreement that a way of working that discourages women from entering our field and drives them out mid-career is not a collaborative, effective, agile way of working.
• Belief that agile practice provides a value system and tools that can help us change our workplace to be more tolerant, humane, and creative.
• Optimism that we as individual workers can do more than we think to make this happen.

Here’s the outline I’ve worked out:

• Presentation: the shortage of women developers (15 min.)
• Table discussion: what antigens exist in your workplace? (20-25 min.)
• Presentation: agile principles demand we address the shortage of women developers (15 min.)
• Table discussion: how is your current agile practice failing to address this impediment (20-25 min.)
• Presentation: change your team to change the world? (5 min.)