Jim Benson
Jim Benson incorporates his background in cognitive psychology, government, and management to build community through policy, technology, and collaboration. His management consultancy Modus Cooperandi helps organizations change and develop sustainable teams through the application of lean principles, agile methodologies, and social media.
Website
Sessions
My boss doesn't understand me
Track: Excellence, friday 15:15 - 16:05
Well, you probably don't understand your boss either. You both have different value needs - your jobs and career paths are different, your performance metrics are different, the political games you play are different. What's needed is a value translator. Visual controls like kanban can serve as a visual translator ... while they help you and your team manage your project. Jim Benson will describe how value translators work how to gain an appreciation for other people's value needs, and how to normalize those needs for better team performance and a happier workplace.
Healthy Projects
Track: Agile, friday 13:00 - 13:50
A healthy project requires clarity of project (what are we building), the customer (for whom are we building), the purpose (why are we building it), and of release schedules (when are we building it). But it doesn't stop there, a healthy project requires a collaborative contract and structure, an understanding of what quality means, constant communication between the team and all other stakeholders, and an appreciation of the project's trajectory. Agile and lean give us a highly configurable (and re-configurable) toolkit with which to build healthy projects. Jim Benson will discuss healthy projects with very different management structures and processes to illustrate that process is only healthy if it results in satisfied stakeholders.