Podcast appearances and mentions of debbie madden

What is DevSecOps, and how can we embrace it as we continue improving our systems development cycle?To answer this important question is Sean D. Mack, a transformational technology leader who has literally written the book, ‘The DevSecOps Playbook: Deliver Continuous Security at Speed'.Appreciating the crucial role that security (at speed!) plays in your DevOps process begins with understanding company culture. It's not so much about understanding the tools (“moving to the cloud”) as it is about the People, Process, and Technology. All the stakeholders need to appreciate that prioritizing security upfront will save time and money in the long run. It's not a case of security being something too hard to understand so you think that if it's out of sight, it's out of mind. Ask yourself: what could go wrong if we don't prioritize security? This is increasingly more prevalent with AI writing code and far fewer eyeballs on the software development process. Learning how to begin with the end in mind, ask the right questions, and embrace collaboration are all key issues that Sean helps us to understand. Getting things to market faster, better, and now more secure is sure to see DevSecOps gain traction as we learn that it's not too complex a term to understand. How we start employing it in our systems development cycles is something that (thankfully) Sean is giving us some great pointers for, straight from his playbook. Please join us. “One of the things that's important with dev sec ops (and powerful about it) is that it's not just about security. It's about secure at speed.” ~ Sean D. MackIn This Episode:What is DevSecOps? How is it different to DevOps?How Sean helps businesses keep their businesses secure (People, Process, and Technology)Understanding process: begin with the end in mindHow important is continuous deployment?What are the most costly mistakes of DevSecOps?The power of employing a DevOps coach (but not outsourcing the internal change needed)Building security into how we work, upfrontHow do non-technical stakeholders think about DevSecOps? How do we educate ourselves about DevSecOps? And more!Connect with Sean D. Mack:- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/seandmacknyc/- Twitter - https://twitter.com/SeanDMackNYC- Sean's Book - Amazon.com: The DevSecOps Playbook: Deliver Continuous Security at Speed (Audible Audio Edition)Connect with Debbie Madden:-

How do you tell if you have burnout? Are there key milestones that you should look out for on the way down? And are there healthy indicators to celebrate your recovery? Aldric Giacomoni has been a member of the New York Tech scene for over 15 years and is an old friend and colleague of host Debbie Madden. He also suffered recently from burnout, and in today's episode of Scaling Tech, he's candidly sharing what got him through it in a highly relatable episode. From early warning signs and misdiagnoses, through to the power of having candid conversations with people who know you well enough to point out when something seems amiss, there is almost a methodology of steps and repeatable processes that you can apply as you learn to take care of yourself in the same way as you would your business. Discover what helped Aldric tackle the pile of dirty laundry, get back to job hunting, and beat the pandemic blues in this episode of Scaling Tech that seeks to prioritize mental health by starting a conversation. Please join us. "I had an outsized emotional response to a question that was not particularly emotionally charged. And that's when I realized: this is probably burnout." ~ Aldric GiacomoniIn This Episode:- When do you know that you have burnout?- What are the misdiagnoses with burnout?- The importance of having meaningful conversations with people who know you- Why you should get preemptive professional therapeutic help- The power of a regular meditation practice- What are the milestones as you start to recover from burnout?- Seeing burnout recovery through the lens of repeatable processesAnd more!Connect with Aldric Giacomoni:- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevoke/Connect with Debbie Madden:- Website - https://www.stride.build/- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbiemadden1/- LinkedIn Page - https://www.linkedin.com/company/stride-build/

What are the skills you take when you go from being CTO to head of business operations – and what are the new skills you acquire? And how can a company benefit from having a former CTO looking at its systems and processes? Nick Rockwell is currently the EVP for Strategy and Operations at Fastly, having transitioned from within the company as CTO. Before that, Nick was CTO at The New York Times, and he's been a CTO for the better part of 22 years! All of this makes him expertly qualified to chat with our host Debbie Madden about the skills an engineering mind can bring to meetings, including how to take a data-informed approach (rather than data-driven) to learning, research, and information, as well as still using data for outcomes. The challenges of being cross-functional, learning how to communicate with your teams once senior management has worked out what is a priority, and even the personal identity shift that occurs when you take on a different role within the same company all provide valuable insight into the day to day operations of a thriving tech company. The human challenges of team cadence and doing the simple things really well to achieve success are all carefully considered and articulated by an engineering mind who is now re-engineering company systems. This episode is for all engineers looking for an insight into what it's like to bring those skills to the boardroom table and take on other company challenges. Please join us. "It stands to reason that if you want to change anything about how the company runs, it's at least 80% a communications challenge." - Nick RockwellIn This Episode:- Nick shares on re-defining his identity within the company - Thinking like a product manager – understanding prioritization- Understanding that every company process is manifested in a system- Appreciating that the mechanics of corporate communication holds the key to change- Nick's insights into cross-functionality- Why a "data-informed" approach is better than a data-driven oneAnd more!Connect with Nick Rockwell:- Website - https://www.fastly.com/- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickrockwell/Connect with Debbie Madden:- Website - https://www.stride.build/- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbiemadden1/- LinkedIn Page - https://www.linkedin.com/company/stride-build/

What is it like to take seven months and interview literally hundreds of founders and co-founders of businesses before taking your next job as a CTO? This is the fascinating story of JP Grace, a seasoned engineering leader who's paved his way in the tech industry with his ability to drive business growth and positive change.JP Grace is the current CTO of Endear, where he's assisting omnichannel retail brands in driving sales with an easy-to-implement clienteling platform. How he got to where he is today is a lesson for aspiring CTOs in being intentional about what they want from their next job – and the lengths they are prepared to go to get it. For JP, this involved reaching out to his network, chatting with VCs, and taking countless interviews just to see if that next company could be the right fit. Along the way, he learned how to incorporate interview feedback so that he could tell his story in a more impactful manner.Learn what chopping wood meant to JP as he figured out how to present his best self and prepare for when the stars aligned with the right career opportunity. Your career trajectory can take off too with the intentionality and directionality that JP and host Debbie Madden are astutely discussing in this entertaining episode of Scaling Tech. Please join us!"You have to spend a couple of hours a week just researching opportunities and understanding 'Is there a business here? What is this company actually doing?'" - JP GraceIn This Episode:- How JP first got inspired by technology and making new things out of nothing- What JP learned from interviewing hundreds of business founders over a period of 7 months- Paying attention to how your message is resonating with the people you're speaking to - Learning how to wait for the right opportunity to present itself- What advice does JP have for aspiring CTOs? And more!Connect with JP Grace:LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephpgrace/Connect with Debbie Madden:- Website - https://www.stride.build/- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbiemadden1/- LinkedIn Page - https://www.linkedin.com/company/stride-build/

Which is better: onshore versus offshore hiring? This is an important consideration in today's hybrid world. To answer this question, Scaling Tech's Debbie Madden has brought in Joe Burgess: someone who's tried both approaches in recent months.Joe Burgess started his career as a software developer and teacher at Flatiron School, after which he transitioned into leading teams of data scientists, engineers, designers, and education professionals to build the education product at Flatiron – and then deliver it to tens of thousands of students.Joe then co-founded Ribbon Education where he now focuses on education and sales. Building startup teams is second nature to Joe, but as he found out with some of his offshore hire experimentation, mistakes can be made. This episode is a lesson in, among many things, defining the requirements of the job. Understand those requirements clearly so that a team can communicate at a certain level so that you can attain a certain work level. And as simple as it sounds, for Joe hiring early on via Upwork, the ability of his tech hires to understand English proved to be a stumbling block. Most startups can ill afford the resources to teach someone the job, and walking that fine line between finding someone who is suitably qualified to build you a CRM platform and giving a young coder an opportunity is well-considered and elucidated by Joe and Debbie. How can you go about hiring junior offshore talent? Is timezone important? How do you create the right work culture with a hybrid team? Answers to these questions and more in this week's educational episode of Scaling Tech."When you're a brand new startup (and we're just getting going), it's really hard to allocate the resources to teach someone how to do something." - Joe BurgessIn This Episode:- Joe's early experiences hiring offshore via Upwork- What are the requirements of the job? Defining those clearly- The overlap between teaching and management- The challenges of hiring junior offshore talent- How to tackle timezone issues- Understanding your employment law options when hiring offshore- How to create the right hybrid work cultureAnd more!Resources:- Horsepaste (codenames online) - https://www.horsepaste.com/Connect with Joe Burgess:- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmburges- Ribbon Education - https://www.ribbonedu.com/Connect with Debbie Madden:- Website - https://www.stride.build/- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbiemadden1/- LinkedIn Page - https://www.linkedin.com/company/stride-build/

LLM fluency: what is it, why do tech teams need it, and why should we care about it? LLM transformation is the new digital transformation, and Dan Mason, a principal at Stride Consulting, is today's guest to help us understand all we need to know about Large Language Model transformation.Dan is a prolific product and engineering team leader who's led teams and products at ESPN, People Magazine, Viacom, and more! Dan has put together a course on LLM fluency and so is uniquely positioned to offer tech leaders out there valuable insight on how they can use deep learning techniques and massively large data sets to understand, summarize, generate, and predict new content. It's about understanding the outlines in the beginning so that by becoming a prompt engineer, you can potentially solve some of the more common customer problems you may be grappling with. Engaging LLM so you get to the point of initial utility may be a messy, creative process. Still, the upside of having expertise that builds on itself seems well worthwhile for that initial period of experimentation and understanding. Because it's all so new and happening so very fast, host Debbie Madden is just about the perfect host when it comes to bringing it back to her audience (tech leaders) and what they can do to increase their LLM fluency for better team productivity. Learn more about the downstream effects of unlocking creativity with LLM and more in this thought-provoking new episode.(on LLM transformation) "Really, what's going on here is just a creative explosion." ~ Dan MasonIn This Episode:- What is LLM fluency, and how can you use it in your team?- What should we expect as we embrace LLM transformation?- Why is LLM the new digital transformation? - What new patterns and roles will emerge with LLM transformation?- How can tech leaders build LLM fluency and capabilities within their teams? - How do we engage LLM to get to the point of initial utility?- What areas of constraint does Dan foresee? - The downstream effects of unlocking creativity- Is the Age of Specialists now over?- Which industries should be the most concerned?Resources:- Stride's LLM Crash "Course": https://www.stride.build/services/ai-transformationConnect with Dan Mason:- Website - https://www.stride.build/Connect with Debbie Madden:- Website - https://www.stride.build/- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbiemadden1/- LinkedIn Page - https://www.linkedin.com/company/stride-build/

Today on The Rabbit Hole we are sharing an episode from Scaling Tech with Debbie Madden, who is the Founder and Chairwoman here at Stride. The podcast is well worth checking out and listeners can expect to hear some great conversations between Debbie and top tech leaders and experts on a wide variety of contemporary issues facing the industry. Here we are airing the chat that Debbie had with Josh Seiden, in which they cover the valuable idea of outcomes over output, a subject on which Josh has literally written the book!

Are you a CTO, Chief Product Officer, or Tech leader? Have you been missing all the good things – the passion, the curiosity, the innovation, and the camaraderie – that came from tech conferences since the pandemic took its toll on live events? If so, fear not! I am here to bring the tech industry to your home. I'm Debbie Madden, a serial tech entrepreneur and the host of Scaling Tech. Each week I will be interviewing tech leaders as we focus on one key topic, and they share their successes and failures – knowledge that you can then apply to your business and share with your team. In this introductory episode, I lay out my plan on how you, as a tech leader, can apply today's best practices to lead a high-functioning tech team in an ever-changing tech landscape. I'm excited for this journey – let's dive in!"If we can't bring the tech leaders to the network, we're gonna bring the network to the tech leaders." ~ Debbie MaddenIn This Episode:- Appreciating Debbie's history in the tech industry- Why Learning is more important NOW than ever for the next generation of tech leaders- What can we expect from Debbie's new show? Resources: - Free 1.5 hour Product Strategy Alignment workshop - ideal for any tech teams who seek alignment around ensuring you are building the products/features that are most valuable to your business. Email debbie@stridenyc.com to see if you qualify.Connect with Debbie Madden:- Website - https://www.stride.build/- LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbiemadden1/- LinkedIn Page - https://www.linkedin.com/company/stride-build/

Are you a CTO, Chief Product Officer or Tech leader? Then this one's for you:If there was one tool that would help you learn best practices and avoid top mistakes so that you can achieve your goals, would you consider that tool?If you answered "yes," this is the tool you've been looking for.Debbie Madden is a serial tech entrepreneur.She is well known for helping teams scale in ways that result in measurable outcomes paired with a strong culture. She is the founder & chair of Stride, a national agile software development consultancy. Stride helps the world's top brands like SeatGeek, Spotify, Codecademy, and Casper get high-quality products to market while modeling the way for tech and product best practices that upskill and enable tech teams.Episode after episode, you'll hear top tech leaders and experts in their fields sharing first-hand successes, failures, and lessons learned about the topics that are a high priority for today's tech teams. Let the technology leaders of our time share first-hand stories of successes, failures, and lessons learned as they lead and grow their teams amid an ever-changing landscape.

During this special (belated) Valentine's Day episode Lyssa Adkins, Debbie Madden, Brad Stokes, Troy Lightfoot and Andy Cleff have a lively panel discussion on how they use their agile mindsets, those values, and beliefs - in their daily lives: With their partners Their children On Thanksgiving and Christmas But, alas not with their pets. (Would have given agility training for fido a whole new meaning!) Nothing was off the table… well, maybe some things… they kept the episode SFW as they took Software Development out of the Manifesto... And shared how they apply the guiding principles outside of the team room. Support the Agile Uprising by making a contribution via patreon.com/agileuprising Episode Hosts Troy Lightfoot Andy Cleff Links Contact Information Lyssa Adkins Debbie Madden Brad Stokes Troy Lightfoot Andy Cleff Websites Agile and Mindfulness: http://agileuprising.libsyn.com/agile-and-mindfulness SAFe Demistified: http://agileuprising.libsyn.com/safe-demystified-with-brad-stokes StrideNYC: https://www.stridenyc.com/ Agile Coaching Institute: http://agilecoachinginstitute.com/ Lean Agile Intelligence: https://www.leanagileintelligence.com/ Books Agile Faculty A Theory of Everything Responsibility Process Support the Agile Uprising by making a contribution via patreon.com/agileuprising

Debbie is an award winning serial technology entrepreneur, CEO, founder, board member, thought leader, author and advisor with a 26 year track record of scaling profitable technology startups.She is currently the founder and chairwoman of Stride Consulting, an agile software development firm. She has been CEO of 3 technology startups, 2 of which she founded. She has scaled 4 high performing technology companies through 2 global downturns, and has landed on Inc 500 twice (with a total of 9 out of 9 eligible years on Inc 5000).

Debbie Madden wants you to make better teams because she knows what she’s doing. The founder and CEO of NYC-based Stride Consulting, Debbie offers practical advice for hiring managers, anyone looking for a new job, or who wants to change the culture in their current organisation. And it’s not just that hiring for diversity is a lofty [...] Read more » The post Hire Women! – Debbie Madden [Rebroadcast] appeared first on Mind the Product.

In today’s episode, Justyna and Paul talk with Debbie Madden, the author of Hire Women: an agile framework for hiring and retaining women in tech. Get the bookThe Advantage by Patrick LencioniHarvard Business Review publications on diversity: https://hbr.org/topic/diversitySupport the show (http://patreon.com/agilebookclub)

Get the book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G8QTJNH/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_JxL1DbPQ7YPYM Open Salaries: https://blog.lunarlogic.io/2016/open-salaries-outcomes/Paul's D&I arguments doc: http://paulklipp.com/witthoughts.htmAnita Wooley's research on collective intelligence: https://anitawoolley.com/Contact the hosts: paul@wawelhill.com and justyna@wawelhill.comApologies: As I edited this I caught myself repeated using gender binary language. I apologize to our trans and non-binary listeners. - PaulSupport the show (http://patreon.com/agilebookclub)

Debbie Madden wants you to make better teams – but because she knows what she’s doing, she gave her book the attention-grabbing title Hire Women. The founder and CEO of NYC-based Stride Consulting, Debbie offers practical advice for hiring managers, anyone looking for a new job, or who wants to change the culture in their current [...] Read more » The post Hire Women! – Debbie Madden on The Product Experience appeared first on Mind the Product.

We discuss our time at the CTO Summit at the NASDAQ Marketsite from a couple weeks back. This was a great conference, because technology leaders from startups to larger companies congregated to talk about managing and scaling tech teams. We talk about software process, distributed teams, how deployment is the main cause of all software failures, and a whole bunch of other interesting software development topics. Just as a warning, there isn’t a lot of crypto content on this one, but we thought our learnings from the conference were worth highlighting. Topics: On the CTO Event Recaps  - Eliot Horowitz of MongoDB Inc.: The Right Amount of Process to Scale Your Engineering Team  - Maria Belousova of Grubhub: Building Highly Distributed Teams  - Michael Boufford of Greenhouse: Establishing a Management Cadence  - Bjorn Freeman Benson of Fresnel Research: Seventeen Things that Have Bitten Us But Shouldn’t Have  - Yvette Pasqua of Meetup: Engineering Leadership Through High Growth and High Change  - Angie Ruan of Nasdaq: The Nasdaq Financial Framework Transformation  - Rebecca Miller-Webster of DevMynd: Refactoring Trust on Your Team  - Johnny Ray Austin of Mapbox: Setting Your Team Up For Failure  - Mona Soni of Dow Jones: Is Your Team Built to Be Effective?  - Edith Harbaugh of LaunchDarkly: What I learned From Not Running 100 Miles  - Lena Reinhard of CircleCI: Better Communication for Stronger Teams  - Michael Ellison of CodePath.org: Improving Diversity in Tech by Transforming CS Education at Colleges  - Stacy Gorelick of Flatiron: Growing a Platform Team  - Jean Barmash of Komodo Health: How to Receive Feedback  - Ushashi Chakraborty of Mode Analytics: Run Engineering Meetings Using Improve Skills  -Kwame Thomison of Magnetic Inc.: Your Hiring Pipeline is a Product  - Debbie Madden of Stride Consulting: How to Retain Developers. And When To Let Them Go  - James Kenigsberg of 2U: Standing on the Shoulder of Giants - Adapting Existing Technologies for Speed and Credibility  - Andrew Montalenti of Parse.ly: Fully Distributed & Asynchronous: Building Eventually-Coordinated Teams That Ship  - Randy Shoup of WeWork: Breaking Codes, Designing Jets, and Building Teams Links: Bjorn Freeman Benson - https://twitter.com/bjorn_fb Johnny Ray Austin - https://twitter.com/recursivefunk Lena Reinhard - https://twitter.com/lrnrd Why we re-designed our engineering career paths at CircleCI - bit.ly/circleci-matrix Debbie Madden - https://twitter.com/debbiemadden200 Andrew Montalenti - https://twitter.com/amontalenti Randy Shoup - https://twitter.com/randyshoup

When it comes to leadership, Debbie Madden has the experience. Currently the fearless co-founder and CEO of Stride Consulting, an agile software development consultancy for companies and startups, Stride is her fifth company and the role marks her third time as CEO. The organization's clients include The Daily Beast, casper and Equinox, and has been named to the 2018 Inc. 500 list, as well as designations for Crain's Best Places to Work In NYC — twice!   In today's episode of I Want Her Job: The Podcast, we talk to Debbie about her culture-first philosophy, discuss what has fueled Stride's growth and delve into her top leadership strategies. We also talk about performance review techniques applied at the company, job opportunities that exist in agile software development and why the company is such a magnet for former teachers and those who love to teach in various ways.   Debbie also opens up to us about the brave decisions she made after her breast cancer diagnosis. While the phrase "great leader" can be thrown around so often it can feel like a cliche, Debbie truly embodies the definition of leadership. We feel confident that once you hear Debbie's story of pursuing a dream — despite extreme difficulty — it will inspire you to push yourself further.

Debbie Madden shares the happy accidents and glorious roadblocks that led up to starting Stride, how she manages to work with her husband without hurting her marriage, and how we can cultivate accountability in our teams.   To learn more, and for the complete show notes, visit: YourBadassJourney.com   Resources: Learn more at debbiemadden.com Read: “Hire Women: An Agile Framework for Hiring and Retaining Women in Technology” by Debbie Madden Read: Want Your Business to Run More Efficiently? Start By Improving 1 Meeting Each Week. Here's How” Twitter: https://twitter.com/debbiemadden200 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbiemadden1 Email: Debbie [at] StrideNYC.com   Your Badass Journey is produced by Podcast Masters

Shelly Kramer's guest on today's Future of Work Talk show is Debbie Madden, CEO and founder of Stride Consulting, an Agile software development consultancy in NYC.    Debbie has unparalleled leadership in the technology space, and she's pretty good at writing her own success stories, building five companies from the ground up prior to founding Stride. She's also the author of Hire Women: An Agile Framework for Hiring and Retaining Women in Tech and a sought-after speaker on the topic of diversity in tech.    Debbie is a CEO, wife, mom, cancer survivor—and, well, in case it's not already crystal clear, she's pretty much a badass in every sense. With a reputation as a passionate woman executive in technology, she's is a sought-after writer and speaker discussing diversity and inclusion, hiring technology leaders, and defending women in the workplace. She has appeared in popular media outlets such as Inc., Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal.    A few minutes with Debbie and you'll see that she's as passionate about helping businesses embrace diversity and inclusion as she is about helping her clients improve business outcomes through the use of software—and she's nothing short of amazing.   Some of the things we discuss include:    What inspired the book Hire Women, and Debbie's unique approach to writing it.  The characteristics of being a great leader isn't something we're born with—it's something we learn over time. And sometimes, when you're least expecting it, life can throw you a curveball that inadvertently results in you becoming an even better leader. Debbie's story is a prime example of just that.  Diverse teams are more effective and get more done than homogenous ones. Yet, despite decades of effort, many tech teams are failing at hiring and retaining women. The reason: we’re looking in the wrong place. Hiring women doesn’t start with recruiting—but she'll tell you where it does start and how to revamp your approach. Want to champion inclusion and diversity within your organization? Debbie has some great advice on how to make that happen, in a way that's measurable and sustainable and positions you for success.  Debbie's advice to women on how to do some work in advance that will allow more buy in for their ideas and presentations (and it's really simple). 

In this podcast recorded at QCon New York 2017 Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Debbie Madden, CEO of Stride on communication advice and techniques for technical teams and what it takes for build truly great teams. Why listen to this podcast: - The most effective teams have a true advantage in today’s organisations - The danger of coddling “rock star” performers - Create working environments that are flexible, welcoming and diverse - The value of healthy conflict - having a team environment where it is safe to disagree, not just within the team but across organisational levels - Becoming a really effective team needs constant effort, it doesn’t just happen and it must be maintained More on this: Quick scan our curated show notes on InfoQ http://bit.ly/2uRuDz2 You can also subscribe to the InfoQ newsletter to receive weekly updates on the hotest topics from professional software development. bit.ly/24x3IVq Subscribe: www.youtube.com/infoq Like InfoQ on Facebook: bit.ly/2jmlyG8 Follow on Twitter: twitter.com/InfoQ Follow on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/infoq Want to see extented shownotes? Check the landing page on InfoQ: http://bit.ly/2uRuDz2

  Even though it’s a team meeting, the stand up gives the Product Owner a great opportunity to learn and listen to the work in progress. As PO’s, we should be looking for the chance to discuss the why, clarify what you meant, or approve of a story that is done. Today’s episode has some strategies you can use to contribute to the meeting, tips to make sure you don’t take it over, and tricks to make sure the focus stays on the team.     Feedback: twitter - @deliveritcast email - deliveritcast@gmail.com   Links: Co-host Post - http://deliveritcast.com/looking-for-a-new-co-host Jason Yip - http://martinfowler.com/articles/itsNotJustStandingUp.html Tom Cagley - https://tcagley.wordpress.com/2016/03/15/beginning-agile-active-passive-and-inattentive-listening/ Debbie Madden - 4 tips for launching minimum viable products inside big companies Dr Jim - http://theaccidentalpm.com/z-product/how-do-you-manage-a-product-that-is-a-massive-hit

Debbie Madden has built five companies from the ground up, is a lead generation istructor at General Assembly, and a sought after public speaker and writer, appearing in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fox Business TV, the HuffingtonPost, Inc. Magazine, and more. Prior to Stride, Debbie was the CEO of Cyrus Innovation, an Agile software development consulting firm, which she grew Cyrus into a 60-person, multimillion-dollar, five-time Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies winner, and Crain’s NY Best Place to Work.  How does a team realize their best? Improve in small steps, not trying to change the world overnight Expand on strengths Identify risks, past success, factors in control Make the process of software development more reliable   Honesty What are your goals, are they realistic? Adding value is making product better People’s opinions are based on past life experiences   Risk Decisive — set tripwires “Liftoff” meeting — Diana Larson, Liftoff Create working agreements, risk assessment Proactively monitor risks   Tools to help stay aligned with principles and priorities Have deadlines for action items and follow up  3 things you will stop doing in next 30 days to make room to do this? Categorize how you spend your time   Other episodes mentioned: Ken J