Our managing director, Matt Heusser, has been nominated for the Agile Awards again this year – this time in three categories. Most Valuable Agile Professional, Person Who Has Done Most to Promote Agile, and, of course, the one we were expecting, Most Popular Online Contributor. Voting is free from any business email address.
The event is organized by Yoh! Staffing, and yes, if you sign up you’ll get a newsletter or two. Matt went to the event last year where Excelon picked up the award for Most Popular Online Contributor, and didn’t really notice much increase in his mailbox on his return.
The 2015 event was focused on the UK, held at the Montcalm Hotel near Marble Arch, London. The award show included dinner, a brief presentation from the charity the event supported, a list of awards, and a brief before and after party. It’s a good thing Matt went (and wore his tuxedo), at least once, because this year’s event will be online, with winners notified November 10th. 
The event does still do some fund raising, supporting Stepping Stones DS and Whizz Kids. Both of these support disabled children, with Stepping Stones focusing on Downs Syndrome and Whizz Kids on adult preparation for children with disabilities.
Of course, we would like your help. Excelon plays a special part in the software delivery community, sitting at the intersection of test, agile, DevOps, project management, team performance improvement, writing, and perhaps a few other things. Getting the award continues to push the importance of the thinking, responsive human focused on craft in a world obsessed with tools and defined process. Our job descriptions for coaches are more like “figure out the problem and help the team solve it” than “leverage maturity and best practice across teams in a (list of buzzwords) environment while reporting to the (list of existing oversight groups).”
A vote for Matt is a vote for systems thinking – not silly scorecards, meaningless metrics, or death by powerpoint.
Voting is allowed until the end of October. We hope you’ll consider a vote for Matt for an award you believe he has earned. By the way, here’s what we’ve been up to lately.
If you agree then please, vote early at the links above!
