Who are Mary & Tom?
Mary Poppendieck started her career as a process control programmer, moved on to manage the IT department of a manufacturing plant, and then ended up in product development, where she was both a product champion and department manager.
Mary considered retirement 1998, but instead found herself managing a government software project where she first encountered the word “waterfall.” When Mary compared her experience in successful software and product development to the prevailing opinions about how to manage software projects, she decided the time had come for a new paradigm. Over the past several years, Mary has found retirement elusive as she lectures and teaches classes with her husband Tom.
She wrote the award-winning book Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit in 2003 to explain how the lean principles from manufacturing offer a better approach to software development.
Based on their on-going learning, they wrote a second book, Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash in 2006, a third, Leading Lean Software Development: Results are Not the Point in 2009, and a fourth book, The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions in 2013. A popular writer and speaker, Mary continues to bring fresh perspectives to the world of software development.
She has a Master of Science, Mathematics from the University of Maryland, and a Bachelors of Science, Mathematics from Marquette University
Tom Poppendieck has over 25 years of experience in computing. His modeling and mentoring skills are rooted in his experience as a physics professor. His early work was in IT infrastructure, product development, and manufacturing support, and evolved to consulting project assignments in healthcare, logistics, mortgage banking, and travel services.
Tom led the development of a world-class product data management practice for a major commercial avionics manufacturer that reduced design to production transition efforts from 6 months to 6 weeks. He also led the technical architecture team for very large national and international Baan and SAP implementations.
Tom Poppendieck is an enterprise analyst and architect, and an agile process mentor. He focuses on identifying real business value and enabling product teams to realize that value. He specializes in understanding customer processes and in effective collaboration of customer, development and support specialists to maximize development efficiency, system flexibility, and business value.
Tom is co-author of the book Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit, published in 2003, its sequel, Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash, published in 2006, Leading Lean Software Development: Results are Not the Point in 2009, and The Lean Mindset: Ask the Right Questions in 2013.
Tom earned a PhD in Physics from the University of Wisconsin, and a Bachelors of Science, Physics, from the University of Wisconsin.
Overview
As the Agile Manifesto turns 20 years old in February 2021, it’s a perfect opportunity to look back to see how far we’ve come in the world of software development in the last 20 years. Mary & Tom will share what they’ve observed leading up to 2001, and in the two decades since the Manifesto was published. We’ll talk about some of the challenges and successes they’ve seen and explore some thoughts as to what might come next.
Mary & Tom are the co-authors of a number of books related to Agile and Lean, starting with their award-winning book “Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit,” published in 2003. To say that they’ve been engaged with Agile software development for a few years would be a massive understatement!
This will be an hour long conversation – a little different from our typical QuickTalk format. We’ll do our best to incorporate questions that you have for them, too.
You can see Mary and Tom’s presentation in our Youtube Channel
AgileTO 