Monthly Meeting - The Agile Manager. Not Scrum master, not leader: Manager

Topic: The Agile Manager. Not Scrum master, not leader: Manager

We often talk about Agile Leadership and the management of an agile transformation, but cultural leadership and process leadership are not the manager role. In April, we'll assemble a panel of development managers to discuss how they do their personnel-focused job in an agile context.

The panel will be drawn from managers at Austin companies ranging from <50 employees to IBM, to respond to questions in these broad areas of people-management, in an agile context: Compensation, Culture, Innovation, Interviewing & Hiring Decisions, Performance Evaluation, Personnel issues (life, health, family), Promotion & Growth, Retention, and Staffing Models.

Speaker: Panel of Agile Managers

The panel discussion will be moderated by Yasser Farra, Director, Product Development at Kasasa, and includes:

Educated at Texas A&M University, John Hickson has spent the last 20 years in a career in technology. John began at FTG, leading the growth of the company from 3 to 30, managing CAFM services, as well as web and desktop development. He was a developer, product owner and then director of development for MicroMain Corp, developing CAFM and CMMS software. More recently, John joined startup Qv21 Technologies as software development manager, serving in this role as well as others. John led the transition to scrum both at MicroMain and Qv21. He is a Certified Scum Master and Certified Scrum Product Owner.

Michael Estrin is a classically educated software developer, architect, and manager with over 25 years of diverse experience. In the past 5 years, Michael has converted two businesses to Scrum, two to Kanban, and one to Lean Start Up. He's currently the Director of Software Engineering at Kinesis and is accountable for all of company's software development activities.

Ken VeArd began his career in software development at an early age. He wrote his first line of code when he was 3 years old, and has never looked back since. Currently, Ken is a Software Engineering Manager at Blackbaud in Austin, TX. Prior to Blackbaud he has spent time working for a Software Consulting Company (CGBOT, LLC), Government Contractor (J&J World Wide Services) and several startups.
Bryan Bilbrey

Bryan Bilbrey is the President at New Iron, a local Austin recruiting, staffing, and outsource firm with an emphasis on Agile. Bryan has been active in the Agile software community starting with the Rational Unified Process and Continuous Integration in the late 1990’s, and subsequently receiving his Scrum Master certification in 2005. Since founding New Iron in 2000, Bryan has placed hundreds of candidates in local Austin firms and employed 10’s of developers on projects.

Kincade Park has spent the last 17 years in various software roles starting with support and then moving through various roles in Product, Engineering Leadership, Operations Leadership and Agile coaching, primarily in the financial technology sector. He was an integral part of an Agile transformation across multiple departments at BancVue (Kasasa) and is currently a key leader in shifting Mozido from “doing Agile” to “being Agile.” An active member and occasional presenter at Agile Austin events, including an instructor in past semesters of Agile Austin U, Kincade is always looking for ways to apply Agile principles in both software and non-software work.

Margot Casey began working for IBM in 2000 and has been involved many areas of software development, including development, test, documentation and support. She has been a manager for the last 2 years, and last year she hired an Agile team of 14 people. She has seen several transitions during her time at IBM. Most recently, she is encouraged to be working with a collocated team on the IBM Digital Marketplace.

Monthly Meeting Info:

Food and Drink will be provided courtesy of Modis.

Seating is limited!

Please make sure that you are able to attend this session. Seating is limited and on a first-come, first-served basis. We want to give everyone the opportunity to attend, so please only sign up if you are committed to attending.

For more information/questions, please send email to:

programchair@agileaustin.org