The treacherous journey from Developer to Coach

As a developer I was constantly frustrated by processes, policies and top down management. I’d like to share insights and lessons of my Agile journey from frustrated Developer to “slash SM” to Delivery Manager to Agile Coach to show others how this frustration can be significantly reduced.

Traditional software development in South Africa still consists of many companies employing a strict top-down approach to product delivery. Executives and Senior Management come up with ideas of what should be built and when it should be completed by with minimal input from the teams who will have to figure out how this will need to be done in the time frame dictated.

As a developer in that environment, I grew frustrated by having my creativity, ideas and delivery quality negatively affected by being excluded from this process. Believing that work could be better I progressed over the years to Developer/Scrum Master to being the Manager of my own development team, to becoming the Agile Coach of Travelstart. This journey was full of ups and downs, but I learned something new and valuable every step of the way.

I would like to take you back with me, along this journey, to show you how experiencing failure at each role, lead to a great success in a future role.

Learning Outcomes:

• I would like you to leave knowing that you have the ability to facilitate positive change at any level in your organisation
• I would like to share some real-world examples with practical (and impractical) experiments you can try at your own organisation
• I would like to bring

Technical requirements: Projector and laptop (can provide my own if needed). No seating preference.

Why me?: I’ve been in software development since 2009 in a variety of roles. I’ve gone through quite a few roles in this time and have been extremely passionate about improving the ways we deliver value to customers to solve real-world problems. I’ve given a 45 min talk at Product Tank CPT Meetup on Building High Performing Product Development Teams, which was well received. I would like to constantly improve my speaking so I can more effectively share any knowledge I’ve gained with others. I’ve also shared some of my experiences on Medium.