Abstract: Globally women in IT are a minority and there is a focus to improve gender diversity at workplace. IT departments practicing agile are no exception to this. So, does agile help when your voice is one of the minority? What does the new momentum towards digital initiatives mean for women in Agile? This talk is my attempt to explore answers to these questions based on the experiences that I had over my 10-year journey as a woman agile practitioner in India. The talk will address 3 key problems across timezone, forums and skills that I have seen more prominently faced by women working in agile teams. Addressing these problems helps to create an ecosystem which will aid not only women but overall teams to excel and thrive:
1. Timezone: Uneven distribution of women in teams due to time zone issues
2. Forums: Insufficient avenues for women to express their views
3. Skills: Adapting the skills of women for the core engineering roles
The lessons learnt will help you deal with your teams - especially women from your teams in a better manner.
Lessons Learned from Your Experience: - Lesson 1: Need to create ecosystem where your company management and your clients work together and ensure that diversity is their joint concern. Many times it is seen that while your company may have diversity as top priority, clients may not be ready to do necessary changes to enable accessible work options. This may lead to a step back in your diversity efforts.
- Lesson 2: You need to provide various avenues for teams to open up. Team members especially women may not voice out the true feelings in regular forums. You will have to explore different avenues like surveys or bringing in women facilitator for some duration to help team open up
- Lesson 3: Today there are less women with STEM qualifications. To ensure the skills for the women who you have in your organization remain relevant in the future, you need to invest in upskilling programs.
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