Agile Beyond Software conference comes to Cedar Rapids in March

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Intro to Agile Beyond Software, a two-day conference focusing on bringing agile techniques to all types of employees, will come to the Hotel at Kirkwood March 19-20. The conference is hosted by Agile For All, a consultancy based in Aurora, Colo.

Agile is a collection of techniques focusing on self-management and iterative projects which started in software development circles. However, as the name implies, Agile for All helps companies spread the agile philosophy to other departments.

"I'd say that it's all about making a mental shift towards getting the right things done," wrote Kevin Reiter, agile coach at Geonetric. "You learn how to respond to change effectively.  You make work and results transparent.  The focus goes away from someone's job title, toward working on the most important things your team needs to accomplish.  It's really more of a culture shift than anything."

"One of the biggest challenges I've seen is just understanding how different personality types learn.  Engineers, in general, learn very differently than someone in Marketing, for example.  The output of each team is different, but there are many parallels you can take from one team's transition to the next…you just have to find out what works."

Geonetric builds and markets websites for hospitals. They have publicly experimented with agile techniques throughout the organization, and a year ago, abolished all managers. The company has worked with one of the founders of Agile for All for two and a half years.

"It's interactive learning, it's tangible, and you learn from each other.  It's definitely not boring," Reiter wrote.

For more information or to register, visit the conference's

eventbrite page.