Todd Little is Chairman at Kanban University, the leading provider of professional Kanban management training. He is also a Founder at Accelinnova, a leadership and agility consulting group. Previously he has held executive roles as Vice President of Product Development for IHS, and Director of Software and Technology for Landmark Graphics a division of Halliburton.He has been developing or leading the development of software for over 35 years. For the past 10+ years, Todd has been a frequent presenter at Agile and Software conferences around the globe. He is a founding member and past President of the Agile Leadership Network. He has served on the Board of Directors of both the Agile Alliance and the Agile Leadership Network, and was a co-founder and Conference chair for several of the Agile20XX conferences. Todd is a co-author of the book “Stand Back and Deliver: Accelerating Business Agility,” Addison Wesley.

Agility and Closed Loop Feedback

At the core to agility is the ability to manage for uncertainty. This is only possible through a process of continuous learning which requires active feedback loops. Linear approaches are doomed to fail in a world of uncertainty. Feedback incorporates new knowledge which enables learning. The key is maintaining healthy feedback loops which will enable success. An iterative approach with broken feedback loops is similarly doomed.

Feedback is a core general practice of the Kanban Method. The visual board, metrics, and regular cadences all provide feedback to enable continuous learning and continuous improvement. Not only are feedback loops the foundation of business agility, empiricism is the foundation of the scientific method, Shewart-Deming process improvement cycles, and the Lean Startup model.

Todd’s background is as a Chemical and Petroleum engineer, so control systems and empiricism are natural for him. Todd will share his background with control systems and explore how healthy approaches for agility incorporate multivariate closed loop control systems.