The “Agile mindset” was introduced to the software development community in 2001 in an attempt to foster freedom in the way that we work together. Its intent was to encourage organizational change that focused on people, collaboration and culture.

But words on a screen don’t mean much in practice, especially if the people using them don’t - or won’t- understand their intent. How can individuals, teams and companies learn to correct these mistakes and break free from the challenges associated with change?

Jen will share practical advice on effective Project Management, Agile Transformation, and getting things done– all told through the stories of her own journey towards something better at Red Hat.

You’ve worked hard, you have mastered every coding language on the planet, including COBOL. You know jenkins, travis, go, containers, puppet, chef, CFengine, nagios, github, graphite, logstash, ansible, aws, gce, vagrant, cms, cvs, abc, 123, and even a little bit of TFS. Your resume is up to date, and you are ready for your next job.

Well, slow down there… Industry trends in engineering are showing a growing desire in companies to hire people who have proven soft skills, are good at collaborating with others, and can regularly solve the most complex problem we face today: effectively talking to our fellow humans.

Please join Jen for a self-effacing and situationally humorous conversation about the journey of becoming more comfortable with collaboration, open communication and reaching through “the wall.”

Topics will include:

• “Collaborate or Die” survival skills
• The dreaded “soft skills” and how to become comfortable with them
• What to do in common situations all engineers face
• How to convince others that your idea is the right idea
• How do you get the time you need to get your work done