Individuals, Interactions, and Improvisation
As agile practitioners, we constantly strive to better ourselves, our team, and our delivery. A great way to achieve this is simply being open to learning new ideas from other disciplines—including improvisation. Jessie Shternshus shares her story of realizing the uncanny similarities between agile team principles and the pillars of improvisation. Effective improvisers give their teammates unconditional support, practice active listening and accept (and build on) each other’s ideas, see and use mistakes as opportunities, learn to embrace the unknown, and always consider who their audience is. And all of this is exactly what a good agile practitioner should be doing. Jessie leads you on a hands-on journey to find, define, understand, and experience these similarities. She uses these techniques in many organizations that want to make an organizational change. Come explore the Agile Manifesto from a fresh angle, and leave with a toolkit of exercises that you and your agile team can use to make your agile interactions clearer and more effective.
Owner and founder of The Improv Effect, Jessie Shternshus helps individuals and businesses reach their full potential through interpersonal-communication skills improvement, leadership training, and agile/executive coaching. Jessie has been a key player in internal culture transformations for global companies. Her clients include executives from Netflix, Crayola, Groupon, Skype, Adecco, Capital One, and many technology startups. She is a sought-after keynote speaker at many design, technology, and agile conferences. Using an array of experiential techniques, design-thinking exercises, and agile methodologies, Jessie leads teams and organizations as they endeavor to improve teamwork, creative problem solving tools, presentation skills, strategic planning, and product development ideation sessions. Jessie is the coauthor of CTRLShift: 50 Games for 50 ****ing Days Like Today.