The Boring Middle Part

Speaker(s): michiko.quinones

This is an updated version of the "Longer is Less" talk Michiko presented at Women InTech Summit.

A lot of people think that in agile, we plan work just in time, that we wait until just before a sprint to do our planning. That's true but what's also true, and often ignored, is the part where you architect strategy ahead of time, getting agreement on high level what, why and how before sending work to developers. So what happens is that developers resurface from coding with a bunch of what, why and how questions; late breaking dependencies, dropping work because of shifting priorities, or getting bogged down with too much work very late in the game. This results in missed deadlines to customers and a lot of unhappy people.

There is a proven way to get a system going to separate out the what, why, and how questions that bog you down. And it's that boring middle part - that training montage in every boxing movie- that we’ll explore- keeping it agile with just enough info to move forward; providing a bit to of structure before we send work to the team.

So in this workshop we're going to actually build out that system in prototype form. I'll bring to you all my best learning that I'm seeing from scaled agile implementations and you'll leave with something you could start immediately that will bring the love back into building great stuff for your customers.

Other Events this was Presented at:
Women InTech Summit

Michiko Quinones has been helping organizations to bring IT projects and product to market successfully for over 15 years. She’s held Program Manager, Project Manager, Scrum Master positions at Fannie Mae, Comcast, and Headquarters Department of the Army to name a few.

For the past four years her personal passion is a free app to help high school seniors remember everything they have to do on college applications.

As the creator and lead of YadaGuru, a College Application app, she’s successfully kept focus on this life goal, encouraged a group of civically minded developers at Code For America’s Code for Philly brigade to build the application, and is now actively promoting it at high schools in and around Philadelphia.

Currently she talks to C-Level IT executives about the benefits of Enterprise Agility and helps large enterprises begin their Agile journey as the Product Owner of a 13,000 seat Agile Central implementation in a major insurance company . She is most proud however, of raising her two fabulous young adult children, Somala and Assoumou. (Planning competing summer camp schedules – now that should be a workshop).

She holds a MS in Conflict Resolution, a PMP, a PMI-ACP, a Six Sigma Green Belt, and a SAFe Agilest certification. And she is the Scaled Agile Coordinator for AgilePhilly.

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