Having an experimental mindset with Tom Henriksen

Listens: 403

About

In this conversation, Tom Henriksen talks about

Starting a career in sales and then getting into tech
Getting into Agile, as part of a team adopting Agile practices, under a manager’s guidance
His experience of transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager
Understanding the importance of human skills in agile teams
Some interesting learnings from patterns of behavior in teams, particularly those based on misconceptions
The fact that humans are hard, code is easy
Learning to ‘talk their terms’ when connecting with executives, from the Dale Carnegie’s book
The importance of empathy, to be able to understand the other person’s perspective and context and use appropriate language and create solutions that would meet their needs
How a visit to observe users for a day gave insights into the what their solution needs to do
Having an experimental mindset
The importance of managing up, when it comes to adoption of agile practices in a team
Why rinse-and-repeat would not work when applying what worked in one context identically in a different context
Context matters - and, like many agile coaches say, it depends.
Stop selling agile, start aligning
Being aware of the dangers of gaming the system, when there is too much stress only on quantitative measurements and metrics
The trigger for Tom to launch the Agile and DevOps online summits, long before the pandemic hit and all conferences moved online
How he is able to bring in multiple perspectives by having track chairs
Some experiments being tried in this year’s summit, such as live sessions, gamification and the structure of the three days along the Shu Ha Ri themes
Some changes or shifts in themes he has seen over the last 5 years
His thoughts on curating the content from the summit over the years
His suggestions for early stage and mid-career professionals

For more details on the Agile Online Summit happening this year between October 25 and 27, you can visit https://agileonlinesummit.com/

Tom Henricksen is a problem-solving technology professional. He has worked in various roles in technology for over twenty years. Tom has learned how to solve challenging issues in technology and lead technical teams

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhenricksen/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TomHenricksen

Software People Stories

October 8, 2021

Technology

In this conversation, Tom Henriksen talks about

Starting a career in sales and then getting into tech
Getting into Agile, as part of a team adopting Agile practices, under a manager’s guidance
His experience of transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager
Understanding the importance of human skills in agile teams
Some interesting learnings from patterns of behavior in teams, particularly those based on misconceptions
The fact that humans are hard, code is easy
Learning to ‘talk their terms’ when connecting with executives, from the Dale Carnegie’s book
The importance of empathy, to be able to understand the other person’s perspective and context and use appropriate language and create solutions that would meet their needs
How a visit to observe users for a day gave insights into the what their solution needs to do
Having an experimental mindset
The importance of managing up, when it comes to adoption of agile practices in a team
Why rinse-and-repeat would not work when applying what worked in one context identically in a different context
Context matters - and, like many agile coaches say, it depends.
Stop selling agile, start aligning
Being aware of the dangers of gaming the system, when there is too much stress only on quantitative measurements and metrics
The trigger for Tom to launch the Agile and DevOps online summits, long before the pandemic hit and all conferences moved online
How he is able to bring in multiple perspectives by having track chairs
Some experiments being tried in this year’s summit, such as live sessions, gamification and the structure of the three days along the Shu Ha Ri themes
Some changes or shifts in themes he has seen over the last 5 years
His thoughts on curating the content from the summit over the years
His suggestions for early stage and mid-career professionals

For more details on the Agile Online Summit happening this year between October 25 and 27, you can visit https://agileonlinesummit.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhenricksen/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TomHenricksen