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What Others Can Learn From IT

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In my introductory post I wrote about how I want to help in filling the gap in leadership practices between Information Technology and other industries. I focused on practices that IT leaders could learn from other areas. In this article, I’ll focus on the counter perspective.

There’s been an increased interest in Agile methodologies over the last few years. Agile was not born out of IT, but that’s where some of its applications (e.g. Scrum, XP, Kanban) have been widely adopted. Results were so great by comparison to traditional processes that other industries are now adopting Agile methodologies based on IT experiences.

One of the most interesting examples came from Joe Justice, the founder of Team WIKISPEED, who decided to apply Scrum to building… cars (yup – those with engines, 4 wheels, and everything else that’s needed for driving around). In doing that, he is utilizing a number of practices adopted from software developers. I strongly recommend watching his TEDx presentation (see below), where he explains details of the approach – I’m sure every developer will find them very familiar:

Several years ago, I experienced a similar situation myself, while attending a Scrum workshop. It turned out that only a fraction of the attendees had anything to do with software. I met a geologist, a publishing house PM, and lots of other interesting people who had nothing to do with IT. They simply came to the workshop to learn more about the topic that is becoming increasingly famous in the business world, to see in practice what all those geeks have been doing and how Scrum works under the hood.

People from both worlds, IT and business, can learn and benefit from each other. I trust the articles published here will be of use and value to the wider audience.

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