When: Thursday April 30, 2015
Where: Cambridge, MA.
Who: RYAN MARTENS, CTO of Rally Software
Description
BUSINESS AGILITY: HOW TO GET IT. HOW TO USE IT
“I just want to make an impact with my work !!” We hear this from team members and employees across organizations in all industries.
Organizations have realized 4x and 10x gains from agility and Lean Product Development. They have scaled agile into the teams of 1,000’s of engineers. You say, “What else is left, we must be there?” And that thought passes quickly as your continuous improvement brain says, “We may be kicking ass AND we can always be better!” Where is the bottleneck, what is slowing us down?
In my travels to highly agile customers around the world, the answer to the “What else is left?” question is typically “The Business.”
- What does it look like to match your engineering agility with overall business agility?
- How would you help the business to synchronize and learn about the market in cadence?
- Can’t we just send our Distinguished Engineers to help “them?”
Speaking as an engineer to engineers, I would like to share some design ideas on the nature of that system — including, how to transition to that system and your role in that transition. This talk will leverage some geeky concepts & cartoons (and no pipe-cleaners will be harmed in this session). It will be clear about the benefit to engineering in helping the business gain agility and it speaks to culture, community and craft directly.
ABOUT RYAN MARTENS
I am the Chief Technology Officer at Rally Software. I founded the company in 2002. In my CTO role, I run a team that manages our innovation portfolio of new products and services. This team also leads Rally’s corporate steering process that brings 100+ Rallyers and customers together every quarter to retrospect and work openly on our most pressing improvements. At Rally we are moving beyond product teams to Agile portfolio management and helping customers achieve organization-wide business agility.
We are a “how” company and I am a “how” innovator, focusing on where the rubber meets the road. I am an expert in helping companies adopt Agile and Lean methodologies, loosely defined as methods for delivering small increments in quick cycles to speed feedback and innovation. I founded Rally to help move the industry from a slow, wasteful, and burdensome product model to a fast, sustainable, high-impacting service model. I hope this leads to the kinds of changes that Paul Hawken and the Lovins described inNatural Capitalism. The goal is to break the take-make-waste cycle and move society toward a regenerative service model – a model where work creates joy, diversity, social justice, and clean ecosystem services.
In addition to trying to change the technology industry, I integrate my work in capital markets with social impact. I am a founding board member withEntrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado, a member of the engineering entrepreneurship efforts at the University of Colorado, and a mentor at theUnreasonable Institute and Boulder TechStars. Salesforce.com and Marc Benioff’s 1/1/1 model led to Rally’s membership in EFCO, our certification as a B-Corp, and the creation of the Rally For Impact Foundation.
I live in Boulder, Colorado, with my wife, our son Gus, and a small collection of animals including horses, dogs, chickens, goats, burros, bees, and worms, who all work hard to make soil amendments and food in our permaculture gardens.
REGISTER HERE for RYAN MARTENS
SCHEDULE
6:00PM Agile Intro & QA
6:30PM Food and socializing
6:50PM Announcements
6:55PM MAIN EVENT
7:55PM DONE
8:00PM DONE-DONE
VENUE
ONE BROADWAY, CAMBRIDGE MA
(Kendall Square area)
Directions:
http://www.vencaf.org/directions/
VENUE NOTES:
Our meeting is part of a larger event called VENTURE CAFE. You will be oriented to the correct room when you arrive.
NOTE: DO NOT REGISTER CASUALLY. PLEASE REGISTER WITH INTENT & COMMITMENT TO ATTEND