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Thinking Agile – Thinking Critically, Dr George Allan The characteristics of Agile methods include efficient team dynamics to design and build quickly, fast responses changing reality and effective problem solving. All of this requires fast decision-making, which needs fast thinking. We can all think, we do it all the time. An important question that few have time for is, “How can we improve our thinking to make our decision making better”? This session explores raising our thinking ability towards critical thinking. But critical thinking has a reputation for taking time and here is a dichotomy with Agile. Is it possible to reconcile a set of Agile methods that demands “fast” with critical thinking that demands “slow”?
Our research over the past 12 years has evolved methods of fast thinking with enough depth to contribute to Agile methods. This session demonstrates and explains one technique, the ALE technique, as a fast and effective method that improves thinking and understanding by several orders of magnitude so we can improve our Agile decision-making.
Dr George Allan – BSc Med PhD FNZCS FBCS FHEA CEng CITP, Victoria University of Wellington
Dr George Allan’s professional career started as a Systems Analyst and progressed through Team Leader, Project Manager, Project Director and Academic. A pioneer in Agile methods and a form of Scrum right from the beginning, Dr Allan found that agile was a sensible way of designing and building quality products that kept pace with technological advances and customer changes. At the heart of Agile is the need to ensure that everybody in a project has a common understanding of the meaning of the terminology and deliverables. This lead Dr Allan to research how people think, understand, build meaning and how this influences project success. This research is on-going today and everyday with companies in the Wellington area of New Zealand and Victoria University of Wellington.
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