Chris McDermott: Re-contextualising 20+ Years of Learning
We're so excited to welcome Chris McDermott to the September session of The Complexity Lounge.
In the past 20+ years, the way in which we deliver software has changed beyond recognition, with the development of Lean Agile practices playing a considerable part in this transformation. Our focus on “uncovering better ways” has led us to develop a large number of new ways of working that have vastly increased quality, reduced cycle times, and put valuable software into the hands of customers while along the way, challenging the way we run our organizations.
The question we are now looking to answer is “how can this learning be applied to a different context?” one far removed from the world of software and one that is facing considerable challenges.
Chris will share his experience re-contextualizing these ways of working to the context of public sector business operations in Scotland, a space facing huge pressures and in great need of change. He’ll show how the use of Lean-Agile practice can help transform the operational delivery of public services and provide a platform to help improve the lives of those who deliver them.
Chris will use Social Practice Theory as a framing, showing how it can help us make sense of the way work is done and what it prompts us to consider when introducing change. In conjunction, Chris will also discuss how the application of constraint-based thinking can help change the context towards a more desirable outcome.
Bio:
Chris is an independent Lean Agile Coach, founder of Lean Agile Scotland and Lean Agile Glasgow, Principal Consultant at Contextualise, and co-creator of Change Mapping, a method of visualizing and managing change.
He caught the Agile bug in 2003 when, as a developer, he borrowed his brother-in-law’s copy of XP Explained (which he foolishly returned). In around 2010 he found Lean, ToC, and was introduced to Systems Thinking. This led to the founding of the Lean Agile Scotland conference in a desire to bring together lots of smart people to learn from, draw together two diverging communities, and to introduce others in Scotland to these ideas. In the past few years, his interest in Complexity Theory and Social Practice Theory has grown. His head is now a tangled mess of all of the things he’s learned in the last 20 years which he suspects will take the next 20 years to make sense of.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisvmcd/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chrisvmcd
In the past 20+ years, the way in which we deliver software has changed beyond recognition, with the development of Lean Agile practices playing a considerable part in this transformation. Our focus on “uncovering better ways” has led us to develop a large number of new ways of working that have vastly increased quality, reduced cycle times, and put valuable software into the hands of customers while along the way, challenging the way we run our organizations.
The question we are now looking to answer is “how can this learning be applied to a different context?” one far removed from the world of software and one that is facing considerable challenges.
Chris will share his experience re-contextualizing these ways of working to the context of public sector business operations in Scotland, a space facing huge pressures and in great need of change. He’ll show how the use of Lean-Agile practice can help transform the operational delivery of public services and provide a platform to help improve the lives of those who deliver them.
Chris will use Social Practice Theory as a framing, showing how it can help us make sense of the way work is done and what it prompts us to consider when introducing change. In conjunction, Chris will also discuss how the application of constraint-based thinking can help change the context towards a more desirable outcome.
Bio:
Chris is an independent Lean Agile Coach, founder of Lean Agile Scotland and Lean Agile Glasgow, Principal Consultant at Contextualise, and co-creator of Change Mapping, a method of visualizing and managing change.
He caught the Agile bug in 2003 when, as a developer, he borrowed his brother-in-law’s copy of XP Explained (which he foolishly returned). In around 2010 he found Lean, ToC, and was introduced to Systems Thinking. This led to the founding of the Lean Agile Scotland conference in a desire to bring together lots of smart people to learn from, draw together two diverging communities, and to introduce others in Scotland to these ideas. In the past few years, his interest in Complexity Theory and Social Practice Theory has grown. His head is now a tangled mess of all of the things he’s learned in the last 20 years which he suspects will take the next 20 years to make sense of.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisvmcd/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chrisvmcd
Previous
Troy Magennis - Agile Physics, The Math of Flow
Next
