Having an experimental mindset with Tom Henriksen

In this conversation, Tom Henriksen talks about

Starting a career in sales and then getting into techGetting into Agile, as part of a team adopting Agile practices, under a manager’s guidanceHis experience of transitioning from an individual contributor to a managerUnderstanding the importance of human skills in agile teamsSome interesting learnings from patterns of behavior in teams, particularly those based on misconceptionsThe fact that humans are hard, code is easyLearning to ‘talk their terms’ when connecting with executives, from the Dale Carnegie’s bookThe importance of empathy, to be able to understand the other person’s perspective and context and use appropriate language and create solutions that would meet their needsHow a visit to observe users for a day gave insights into the what their solution needs to doHaving an experimental mindsetThe importance of managing up, when it comes to adoption of agile practices in a teamWhy rinse-and-repeat would not work when applying what worked in one context identically in a different context
• Context matters - and, like many agile coaches say, it depends.


• Stop selling agile, start aligning


• Being aware of the dangers of gaming the system, when there is too much stress only on quantitative measurements and metrics


• The trigger for Tom to launch the Agile and DevOps online summits, long before the pandemic hit and all conferences moved online


• How he is able to bring in multiple perspectives by having track chairs


• Some experiments being tried in this year’s summit, such as live sessions, gamification and the structure of the three days along the Shu Ha Ri themes


• Some changes or shifts in themes he has seen over the last 5 years


• His thoughts on curating the content from the summit over the years


• His suggestions for early stage and mid-career professionals

For more details on the Agile Online Summit happening this year between October 25 and 27, you can visit https://agileonlinesummit.com/

Tom Henricksen is a problem-solving technology professional. He has worked in various roles in technology for over twenty years. Tom has learned how to solve challenging issues in technology and lead technical teams

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhenricksen/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TomHenricksen