Kathy G. Berkidge
Agile Trainer, Consultant and Mindfulness Coach, mind at work consulting, Australia
With a background in software development, Kathy is a business analyst/consultant with over 25 years of experience in I.T. working with teams deliver software and process improvements for organisations both large and small. As a mindfulness practitioner, Kathy is passionate about seeing people, teams and organisations succeed and thrive within an environment of collaboration and harmony. Kathy works with teams to help them learn the skills needed to implement mindfulness to achieve benefits at an individual level, as well as at team level, leading to more valuable business outcomes. In addition, Kathy has worked in a number of agile teams over the past 10 years, and also delivers agile training courses and consulting.
Presentation
THE ESSENTIAL SKILL FOR AGILE COLLABORATION – MINDFULNESS
This interactive session will allow participants to gain practical experience and understanding of why mindfulness is the essential skill for effective collaboration.
Mindfulness is the quality or state of being conscience or aware. The practice of mindfulness allows our mind to be more calm, more focussed, and most importantly more aware of what if going on all around us. In an agile team, mindfulness enables us to be truly alert to what is happening with our team, our customers, our competitors, and the whole business context. When our mind is settled and clear, we can make better decisions, collaborate more effectively, and deliver more innovative solutions that not only meet customer’s needs, but exceed their expectations.
When our minds are disturbed with hundreds of thoughts, and bombarded with stress and emotions, our brains simply cannot be creative or collaborate effectively. By allowing our thoughts and emotions to settle and subside, it opens our minds, freeing us to think about meeting our customers’ needs in new and improved ways. It also allows us to respond to each other and work together with greater cooperation, which is the essential ingredient for Agile team success.
During this session, participants will be guided through a mindfulness exercise to try mindfulness for themselves and share their experiences with the group.
Kathy will discuss her experiences using mindfulness in her work, with her teams, and the resulting benefits. She will share tips on how to practise mindfulness, as well as what difficulties to look out for, to enable you to begin a mindfulness practice straight away.
Workshop
HOW MINDFULNESS ENABLES AGILE TEAMS TO CREATE BETTER SOLUTIONS
Is this your Agile team?
- Trying to deliver innovative solutions that not only meets your customers’ expectations, but exceeds them, while their demands constantly change?
- Unsure whether the decisions the team make are the best to deliver real customer and business value?
- Attempting to collaborate effectively as a team, as well as work closely with your customers and stakeholders?
- Attempting to collaborate effectively with your customers, stakeholders and delivery team with little or no time?
This workshop will help you focus on real customer needs, to truly empathise with your customers and deliver innovative products and services that they love, through mindfulness. Through mindfulness, the whole team can better understand customers’ requirements, collaborate more effectively at all levels, and think more clearly resulting in more innovative and valuable solution outcomes. You will gain practical experience and understanding of why mindfulness is the essential skill for agile team collaboration.
This workshop is for:
- Product owners
- Business Analysts
- Scrum Masters / Project Managers / Iteration Managers
- Technical, development, and test team members
- Anyone working with or in an Agile team
Workshop outline:
- The common issues faced by Agile teams.
- Introduction to mindfulness and the scientific research on the benefits of mindfulness.
- Applying mindfulness in an Agile team.
- Applying mindfulness to collaborate more effectively.
- Using mindfulness to develop better ways of thinking and improved problem solving that enables improved creativity and innovation.
- Implementing mindfulness in day-to-day work.
- Practical exercises to learn mindfulness techniques and develop mindfulness practice.
Learning Outcomes:
- Identify why mindfulness is so important to Agile teams.
- Better empathise with our customers to deliver more valuable and innovative solutions.
- Enhanced collaboration with our customers, our teams and our stakeholders.
- Apply mindfulness to our daily work to delivery better customer outcomes, as well as realise benefits to ourselves.
2.55MB 
