Jisha Sharma
Agile coach, speaker, McKinsey Digital Labs, India
People dynamics – agility to our rescue.
In their endeavour to be agile, teams often lay undue focus on following ceremonies and maintaining artifacts and thus lose sight of true agility that comes from customer collaboration and excelling in people dynamics. We believe that one of the inherent values of agile teams and the secret to successful Product Ownership is the mindset that builds bridges of communication and trust, resulting in active problem solving. In this session, we will describe how constructive dialogue and behavioral agility have enabled us to meet our project goals. We will narrate our learning experiences with stakeholders highlighting that investing in relationships bear more fruit than investing in mere solutioning. We will also illustrate how flexing our styles to suit the situation and customer has eased our path to success.
The audience will learn how they can put themselves in the customer's shoes and focus on the big picture, the two of the greatest secrets of product ownership. They will also learn how we can achieve not what the customer wants but what the customer actually needs. They will also hear from us real life experiences of keeping an open mind, using humor to diffuse tension, and listening actively to both words and body language. The audience will learn techniques to build a rapport with customers which eventually helps in better and right solutioning. Also, they would gain from our experiences of weighing in the cultural nuances and leveraging all shared interests.
About Jisha Sharma
Jisha has about 10 years of rich experience in the IT industry and has worked in various domains with diverse clients spanning across the globe. She has had a varied cultural experience through her interactions with people from different backgrounds. She started as a Java developer and then moved to client centric roles as nurturing client relations is what she is best at. Complex projects and tough clients have given her experience on how to deal with difficult situations with ease. She is passionate about agile. She strongly believes that agility of mind is what we need before we can apply agile mechanics. She believes that even the most challenging of clients can become a pleasure to work with if time is spent on relationship building as well and not only on solutioning. Flexing of style according to situations and stakeholders is another aspect that she excels in. She has conducted various workshops on improving client relationships and flexing your styles.