About

Woody_small

 

 

Welcome to this blog.  I am Woody Zuill.

I’ve been programming computers for 35+ years, and have almost 20 years of experience as an Extreme Programmer, and 15+ years as an Agile Coach. I believe that code must be simple, clean, and maintainable so that we can realize the Agile value of Responding to Change, and that we must constantly “Inspect and Adapt”.

My team at Hunter Industries and I are the originators of Mob Programming, a “whole-team” approach to teamwork in software development, and I’m co-author with Kevin Meadows of the book “Mob Programming, A Whole Team Approach”. I frequently speak on this topic at conferences, user groups, and meet-ups all over the world.

More generally, I’ve delivered workshops, trainings, and coaching sessions on Agile Software Development, Mob Programming, and Software Development Practices for a number of firms including Ericsson, Schneider Electric, Qualcomm, Intel, H & M, King Games, Capital One, Twitter, Zip Car, Pivotal Labs, and Spotify.

My passion is to work with teams to reinvent our workplace to make it possible for everyone to excel in their work and in their life. I believe we can always find a way to improve our abilities, skills, workplace, industry, and world by paying attention and rapidly taking countless, continuous tiny steps in the direction of “better”. The accumulation of these tiny steps leads to an emergence of a great workplace, and many wonderful things.

I live near San Diego, CA and love to hike and spend time outdoors.

 

 

9 Comments

  1. Dmitry:

    Hi Woody,

    I’m putting together a Scrum/Agile presentation for our execs. I would really like to use your excellent animated taskboard slide (from the CodeCamp talk). If you don’t mind, could you send it my way (I assume you can see my email above)?

    Thanks
    Dmitry

  2. Woody Z.:

    Hey Dmitry – Thanks for your interest… and as you know I converted that presentation to a Flash animation: Scrum Task Board Animation

  3. Steve:

    This was a great presentation this weekend:

    > Agile Development Basics – In this presentation I cover the Agile values and principles, as well as the a little about why we need something like Agile.

    Thanks!

    I’d like to share some of with my team – if you are sharing your slides, could you email them to me?

  4. Woody Z.:

    Thanks Steve – you are too kind. I’ll be happy to send the slides as a PDF over the next few days if that helps. The slides are just my talking points – I use them to remind me of things I want to say, so a lot of what I am trying to convey is left out.

  5. Chris:

    Woody,
    Is there a way I can contact you about that offer you mentioned at the Dot Net Dev meeting yesterday?

  6. Lee Jones:

    Hi Woody,

    Did you used to give banjo lessons in Escondido in the late 70s? If so, I took a couple of lessons from you, then I moved to San Diego. Wish I’d been smarter back then, I would have took more lessons. I did learn to play banjo – mostly on my own, been in the music business since 1980. I do, though, have a bad case of the banjo yips – maybe you have some input on how to deal with that – or better yet, make them go away.

    Lee Jones

  7. Woody Z.:

    Hello Lee,

    Yes! I used to give banjo lessons in Escondido. I haven’t been picking much in the last 20 years, but I still pick up the guitar or banjo every now and then. I don’t think I have much help to offer on “banjo yips”.

    Cheers!
    Woody

  8. Kathy Stafford.:

    Woody,
    KPBS Folk Rewind is on & memories of the ole days came flooding to mind.
    Sounds like you have been doing well ~ and to actually be able to thank you for sharing your life and talents many years ago have never been forgotten.
    Thank you Woody,
    Kathy
    Escondido Blue Grass

  9. Woody Z.:

    Thanks Kathy! Those were great times! I’ll email you.

    Cheers,
    Woody

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