The Soft Skills in Software

continuous-delivery-and-devops Accepted Workshop 90 Mins Beginner communication collaboration cooporation
Evan Leybourn
Evan Leybourn
Author
Directing the Agile Organisation
location_city Bengaluru schedule Mar 18th 02:00 - 03:30 PM place Esquire

You’re probably here at this conference because you want to become a better developer, but I’m here to tell you that that you’re focusing on the wrong area. The difference between a good programmer and a great one isn’t the ability to write a kernel module in LISP, but the ability to communicate with your colleagues and customers. Skills sharing, collaboration and functional communication are critical for the success of any software project, and yet usually overlooked and undervalued.

Developers who strive to be great, cannot afford to neglect their professional development in these areas. You don’t to reinforce the dreadful stereotype of the shy, stuttering, geek, do you?

This interactive presentation will examine a few of the critical “soft skills” that are needed to thrive in corporate team environments. For example, how you can:

  • write effectively and speak clearly; i.e. get to the point,
  • move beyond your technical silo to work effectively as a team,
  • build trust and rapport with your project customers,
  • mentor, motivate and encourage others,
  • mediate or negotiate between competing points of view,
  • lead others and manage vendors
 
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Outline/Structure of the Workshop

This workshop will be split into three sections; communication, collaboration and co-operation

Communication

  • Concise communication
  • Daily Stand-up practices (in 7 words or less)
  • Writing is just editing
  • Non-verbal communication

Collaboration

  • Cultural communication differences
  • Working through tools (distributed agile)
  • Building trust
  • Sharing skills

Co-operation

  • Negotiation strategies (win-win)
  • Competing points of view
  • Outcomes over outputs

Learning Outcome

  • write effectively and speak clearly; i.e. get to the point,
  • move beyond your technical silo to work effectively as a team,
  • build trust and rapport with your project customers,
  • mentor, motivate and encourage others,
  • mediate or negotiate between competing points of view,
  • lead others and manage vendors

Target Audience

Developers and other techies

Slides


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Video


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Links

Sample Feedback From Attendees

  • “Awesome speaker, very interactive” - Game Services Group
  • “Good and valuable advice from [Evan]. Clarity and style of presentation was great” – Dell
  • "Simplified way of presenting concepts & we could relate to our work environment” - ST Ericsson
  • “Interactive, Evan was very responsive to questions asked” - Motorola
  • “It was fun to learn, real life examples, practical approach & Q/A sessions” - Experian
  • “[Evan] is very innovative and has a great ability to get everyone involved” - Dell
  • “Clear concepts of the subject, Best practices based on experiences” - UCBC
  • “Great that it was tailored to Misys and recommended where to deviate from 'the book'” - Misys
  • “[Evan] has extensive experience & was able to give practical insights & applications” - Misys
  • “It was very thorough and informative, but fun as well because of the activities” - Game Services Group
  • "Because all the participants came from the same company, we were able to customise the [workshop] according to what we really do.” – Fujitsu Ten Solutions

Previous Conferences

I have a long history of presentations. I will have presented this topic and Agile India and CEOC prior to Agile2015, however I do not have the slides prepared at this time.
 
July 2014, Agile 2014 (America) - Breaking down the barriers (http://agile2014.sched.org/speaker/eleybourn)
June 2014, Agile Australia - Agile Engineering / Agile Business Workshop (https://a.confui.com/-5KvM42MA)
May 2014, International Testing Conference - Agile Testing
Mar 2014, Australasian Software Engineering Conf - Autopsy of a failed project
Feb 2014, Agile India - From Lean Startup to Agile Enterprise / Let’s Kill an Agile Project (http://present.agileindia.org/user/evan-leybourn)
Nov 2013, Future Enterprises Summit - The Rise of the Connected Enterprise
Nov 2013, Australian BI/DW Conference - Agile Business Intelligence
Sep 2013, Lean, Agile and Systems Thinking (Australia) - Agile Business Management / Let’s Kill an Agile Project
Sep 2013, PMOz (Australia) - Agile Business Management / Let’s Kill an Agile Project
Jul 2013, Intel APAC Agile Conference (Malaysia) - Agile Keynote
Jun 2013, Agile Australia (Australia) - Let’s Kill an Agile Project
Jun 2013, XP 2013 (Vienna) - Agile Business Management
Aug 2012, Agile DC (America) - Agile in the Australian Public Service
Apr 2012, PMI Colombo (Sri Lanka) - Agile in the Australian Public Service
Feb 2012, Agile India (India) - Autopsy of a failed project / Agile In the Australian Public Service (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb_xmosGzaI)
Nov 2011, Open Source Developers Conference (Australia) - Free as in Kittens (CTO of Open Source)
Nov 2011, Malaysian CIO Conference - Agile Business Management
Jul 2011, Malaysian Open Source Conference (Malaysia) - Open Source Business Intelligence
Jun 2011, Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing 2011 (Singapore) - Open Source Business Intelligence
May 2011, BI Executive Forum (Canberra) - BI in the APS
Sep 2010, OSSPAC (Australia) - Open Source Business Intelligence
Nov 2008, Open Source Developers Conference (Australia) - Advanced SQL / OSS Licensing
Jun 2008, Software Process Engineering Conference (Singapore) - OSS Toolchain
May 2008, CeBIT - Open Source Business Intelligence
Nov 2007, Open Source Developers Conference (Australia) - SQL Tips & Tricks
Dec 2006, Open Source Developers Conference (Australia) - Data Warehousing HOWTO
Dec 2005, Open Source Developers Conference (Australia) - Commercial Open Source Software
schedule Submitted 5 years ago

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