David Crowe - My Agile is not your Agile and that's OK - Lean Agile London
Channel: Actineo Consulting LLP
Date: 2020-09-15

Lots of people talk about “Agile” as though it’s a common object with a common meaning, however David Crowe's research has shown this is not true, and that Agility is a lot more complicated than that. Based on his MSc dissertation, "The Agility Code: Deciphering Contemporary Agile
Discourse", this talk takes a fun and interactive approach to deconstructing how people talk about Agile, in order to promote appreciation of perspectives, and to encourage practitioners, trainers and coaches to reflect on the language they use.

Aim and Objectives

To give agile practitioners, trainers and coaches an insight into how different people use Agile ideas and language to achieve different goals at different times. This will be achieved by exploring discourse (ie. writing about Agile topics) to understand how language is being
used.

1. Promote reflection by attendees on the language they use and why they use it when they use it.
2. Provide attendees with a very high-level overview of discourse analysis.
3. Outline a number of common interpretive repertoires about Agile, and what they are intended to achieve.
4. Identify who uses which repertoires, and why.
5. Outline how different repertoires are woven together to achieve different goals.
6. Encourage attendees to think about how they might change their use of language in the future.
7. Encourage attendees to be critical of some of the language they see/hear used.

*** DAVID CROWE ***

David Crowe is completely unqualified to host this talk, because he isn't sure what Agile is, and, worse, he's not sure anyone else knows what it is either. What makes it worse is that he spent 13 months researching whether people know what Agile is, and came to the conclusion they didn't. Or at least, everyone is fairly certain they know what they think Agile is, but it turns out that everyone else sees it differently. David has been certified for 10 years as a scrum master and product owner, and has coached different companies to introduce Agility in various organisations, including the British Library. He is owned by four cats.