In this episode of AgileNEXT, Bill Wagner, Senior Content Developer at Microsoft, joins Daniel and Stephen and talks to us about Agile and the Agile ecosystem.  Some topics include:

  • Is Agile too process focused today?
  • Using Agile on a massive worldwide open-source project
  • Agile outside of IT
  • Building the open-source nonprofit Humanitarian Toolbox
  • AgileNEXT

Bio:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/billwwagner

From Bill:

My whole career has been in the software industry; I began writing code right out of college, in the ‘80s. What excites me the most about software—what has always fascinated me about technology in general— is what it can do to help people. To that end, I serve today as President of the Humanitarian Toolbox, a 501-c-3 nonprofit leveraging Open Source software to help global relief organizations become more effective.

After working for eight years as an independent consultant, I co-founded a software consulting firm in 1999, SRT Solutions, serving in a hybrid role as CTO and de facto “Development Mentor”. The company earned a fast reputation for developing high quality software, winning numerous industry awards and inclusion, twice, in the Inc. 5000 List of Fastest Growing Companies. I sold the firm in 2013, and am happy to be working again as an independent consultant with a reinvigorated passion for helping companies build and grow high performance development teams, while evangelizing the need to write better code.

I want young developers to embrace the notion of software as a longer-term asset—decisions around technology should be made with cognizance of sustainability; i.e.-pick the platform that justifies a 10-15 year investment—whether in the Cloud, Mobile space, etc.

I continue to serve as a Microsoft Regional Director and Microsoft MVP; considered a worldwide expert and thought leader on C# programming language. I’m an avid blogger, and I’ve written hundreds of technical articles (MSDN Magazine, .NET Developers Journal, many others), as well as two books, “Effective C#”, a best seller, and “More Effective C#”.