Presentation: Tweet"Beyond Agility - Resilience"

The real power of agility or let's use the term the psychologists choose, resilience, is the key not to just better software, but to a better life.

Our first tendency when we see good performance is to explain it away by saying, "Oh, s/he was born with that talent." Extensive research on mindset suggests different answer: "Yes, s/he seems to have talent but s/he also must have worked hard to develop it. I may or may not have a special gift in this area but I can be better tomorrow if I am determined to improve." It's not just about talent. It's also about working hard and about the quality of our work--"deliberate practice," as Anders Ericsson calls it. This is not only an important response for ourselves, but for the others in our lives, especially our children.

Based on this research, the U.S. military has created a resilience-building program and is trying to teach the skills needed to hold an agile mindset. The program is designed by a team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. This effort—one of the largest psychological interventions ever attempted—holds lessons for all of us--at any age—and at any point in our careers--because we all want to learn how to be more agile, more resilient in our thinking.

In this presentation, Linda will outline the curriculum currently being used in the U.S. military training and provide some translation to the world of software and life.