Originally posted on LinkedIn

I’ve been to a few conferences, but none like AgileCamp. I want to extend thanks to Stacey Louie (Hyperdrive Agile) and Nigel Thurlow (Toyota Connected) for their willingness to host the camp and their companies sponsorship. Also I want to thank these sponsors for their support — Intuit, Scrum Alliance, Scrum.org, Improving Enterprises, Eliassen Group, Tasktop, e-Core, CertiProf and Collabnet VersionOne.

I chose to attend Katrina Tanner’s talk on 3 role changes in one year and Veronica Stewart’s discussion on business disruption as a Game Changer. As well, I joined Ram Srinivasan to learn about Team Emotional Intelligence and Brian “Ponch” Rivera who covered the OODA loop and the Toyota Flow System. In addition to these speakers, hearing from both Ken Rubin and Dave Snowden truly rounded out the experience. 

Here are my thoughts on what I heard as a professional who seek to increase my agility in business. This insight should come a no surprise; change is constant and unrelenting so adapt. Second, figure out where you fit best professionally to create the most value. Third, find out ‘why’ you fit best in a role or function. Fourth, look out for your team while understanding the rule of engagement. Fifth, build the right capabilities in the team for optimal value creation.

I had parallel careers until 2016 when my time in the military reserve ended. Today I can say that much of what I experienced in the military has fed into my desire to better understand how to increase business agility from the individual contributor level to the executive offices. Attending events like AgileCamp are important to my continued, professional growth as I build connections within the Agile community who similar values and views.

As humans, we use business as a system to create value for each other on a large scale. Our ability to discover other’s unexpressed needs or desires are at the heart of what agility SHOULD be within business. Through the process of building products and services to meet those needs and desires we should improve lives. AgileCamp reminded me that at the core of what we do in business and why we do it, we should always remember we’re creating for the benefit of our families, friends, neighbors and communities.

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