Daamon Parker
Daamon Parker
Melbourne, Australia
Agile Coach at reecetech
On LinkedIn
The Heart of Agile is independent and not in competition with anything else which is already out there. I use it to take people to a different place to look at things from a different perspective.
Background
Originally from London, after leaving university I had my sights set on ideally being a fast-jet pilot in the Royal Air Force or a commercial airline pilot – neither of which worked out (though I did achieve my Private Pilot’s Licence!).
Instead, I spent 8 years in International Correspondence Banking (yes, this was before the internet!) where I was lucky enough to truly learn the value of customer service and being customer focused. From there, I fell into Software Testing in mid-1999 and discovered my pride in being involved in delivering high-quality, relevant solutions for happy customers – except that the way projects were typically structured often meant that this was often far from the case…
When I first came across Agile ways of thinking and working it made sense to me – it just seemed obvious. I loved it ans was an immediate adopter. Sadly, since then, I’ve seen the Agile movement being increasingly misunderstood, abused and layered with egotistical and commercial interests – at odds with what I believe was the original intent of those involved in creating the Agile Manifesto.
I have a natural affinity with Heart of Agile as it seeks to get back to the core, the heart of what the Agile movement is about. It also appeals as I have always been a “let’s cut through the rubbish and get to what’s actually going on” kind of a person.
Why Heart of Agile
Heart of Agile provides a means to be able to trigger a “let’s stop and think about this” moment – for myself, the teams and clients I work with. It’s common for people to get into the detail, to get into solutioning and to lose sight of the bigger picture – sometimes not even really knowing what the bigger picture might look like. I use Heart of Agile to interrupt when this is occurring and to take people to a different place to look at things from a different perspective.
A great characteristic of Heart of Agile is that it is independent and not in competition with anything else which is already out there, e.g. it’s a set of behaviours which relate to all people, however they’re working; it’s complementary to the likes of Modern Agile; it weaves through Scrum, Kanban, XP, SAFe, LeSS and only adds value to them.
Better still, it has a growing community of global supporters with a broad range of ideas and approaches in play and being shared – but all with the Heart of Agile at, well, the heart of the community.