TheAgileShift

Our industry is facing a significant challenge in the coming years as our needs for new developers are going to massively out-pace the ability of higher education to produce those developers. This session will demonstrate a path forward by investing in training up new software developers ourselves.

This is not an insignificant challenge, you need to understand many things including: * Target demographics * Expected graduating skill set * Training requirements * Financial models that work, and their challenges * Plans for future growth and mentorship after training

This talk will address all of these models, and talk about how they can be accomplished in the small (personal mentorship) to the large (corporate bootcamps), drawing on significant experience running and succeeding at these initiatives.

Motivation:  Teams that enjoy open communication and the freedom to innovate have a reason to come in early and stay late. A shared vision and accountability towards a core set of objectives drive cross-functional teams to deliver more innovative solutions than they would have individually.

Problem: How difficult is it to listen? How difficult is it to keep innovating when oil is $20 a barrel? How difficult is it to innovate when oil is $100 a barrel? The answer is that it can be difficult no matter where we find the price. Currently, the world is at a crossroads. The global economy has become increasingly complex and the landscape is flattening. We are more connected and at the same time, listening less to one another.

Approach: In my weaving career and over the last 20 years I've been able to listen to many different voices. Each of those voices belong to real people and I've found that with the freedom to do so there is a spark of innovation in all of them. There's always room for an application, system or process to improve. That can come from someone intimately familiar with a challenge or someone experiencing it for the first time.