Date: May 3, 2007

Presenter: Beth Schmidt, Farm Credit Services

The guest speaker for this meeting was Beth Schmidt, Director of Application Development at Farm Credit Services. Ms. Schmidt discussed the development of agile teams and the workplace structures to support them.

Agile software programming is a method of software development. Noted for rapid iterations, agile development processes compresses the time and scope of large development projects into multiple small increments. The smaller projects are essentially stand-alone, with a finished product that functions, but may not have all components of the desired end product. The process reduces the risk of large projects that may not get completed because because of cost overruns, time constraints or scope creep.

Ms. Schmidt discussed the people component of agile development methods - the team - how to build them and how to provide the necessary business support structures to keep teams at a high level of productivity. Agile methods require more face-to-face interaction, so team building and personal compatibility are very important attributes. Ms. Schmidt also discussed the concepts of diversity in the workplace as it applies to team building.

With permission of the the presenter, Innovation Through Innovation Through Diversity and Agility has been provided for the ITC as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. To read this file, you will need to download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.