This month's Topic: "Is it possible to conduct effective performance reviews in a culture of agility?" Speaker Bio: Matt Roberts is an agile pragmatist continuing his lifelong learning and teaching journey currently as Senior Director of Software Engineering at CA Technologies. His experience is wide-ranging as he has developed software and led efforts to create systems for product development teams to deliver innovation in companies and organizations ranging from early-stage startup to government agencies to publicly-traded product companies in both consulting and full-time roles. He has had the privilege of serving the Austin software development community as Agile Austin President over the past 18 months and as a Board Member of the Austin chapter of the IEEE Computer Society over the past 6 months. Matt is instructor at Austin Community College teaching Agile Project Leadership. He holds a number of certifications, none of which he thinks are important to mention here. Feel free to learn more at
http://linkedin.com/in/cpgmattr. Topic Description: Much has been written by many forward-thinking individuals on the negative effects and systemic problems associated with traditional performance reviews, most notably W. Edwards Deming. This discussion will outline some of the negative aspects of performance reviews and appraisals and will offer a few solutions, including the obvious one which is not to do them. The presenter will discuss how he has managed to conduct them with minimal negative impact (and possible positive impact) to the team in small, medium, and large software organizations and will invite discussion across the SIG, which should help to identify and potentially create new ideas in this area. Agile Leaders SIG Info: The purpose of the Agile Leaders SIG - is to provide a forum in which those responsible for leading agile adoption and improving agile practices can learn from each other. Attendees are expected to share their knowledge with the group and contribute their unique perspectives. More information and communication may be found at the SIG's Google Group:
http://groups.google.com/group/agileaustin-leaders Food and Drink -- Lunch will be provided courtesy of Agile Austin. Informal Directions and Parking Info: CA Technologies is on the south side of Lake Austin at the 360 Pennybacker bridge. Coming down 360 from the north, turn right into the first driveway immediately after the bridge. Coming up 360 from the south, exit right before the bridge, take the turnaround under the bridge and then turn right in the first driveway. You can park in the open lots or any of the garages that aren't indicated as reserved. 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 pelease only sign up if you are committed to attentending. For more information/questions, please send email to: AgileLeadersSIG@agileaustin.org