I just spent this weekend speaking at the Agile IT Exchange conference in Reston, VA. This was hosted by the same organization that hosts the No Fluff Just Stuff symposiums, but while those are geared more to developers, Agile IT was geared more towards managers.
I speak 12–15 times a year at NFJS events, and probably the number one comment I hear back from the audience is “I wish my manager could see this stuff”. Well, this weekend, they did. the audience was more than 50% ‘manager-types‘, which was perfect for the material. Everything from a gradual introduction to agile management techniques, through practices for hiring, to an introduction to the kinds of monitoring and maintenance needed after an application deployed as a service is ‘done‘.
The good news is that there will be more of these Agile IT conferences next year – 5 or 6 traveling around the country, much like the NFJS format. If you are a technical manager, whether you were promoted from the ranks of coder or find the inner workings of software a mystery, you will find something among the 5 tracks of management material.
Thi blog entry might sound like a commercial; I hope it doesn‘t… I spent 11 years as a coder and manager in a moderately-sized government contractor, and I have spent the last several years teaching good management practices to hundreds of people. The material at this conference is top shelf – exactly what this audience needs to hear more of.
