Sep 10, 2020 | 3 min read

Finding Flow in Software Development with Mik Kersten

By: Patrick Emmons

Finding Flow in Software Development with Mik Kersten

When managers and executives don’t fully understand the technical constraints of a project, it can lead to a frustrated engineering team. Dr. Mik Kersten has a way around this issue: the flow framework.

Mik joined us this week on Innovation and the Digital Enterprise to discuss his theories on flow diagnostics and offers practical tips to help managers remove roadblocks from their engineering teams. Listen for his thoughts and pick up his book Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework to learn more.

  • (01:47) - Tasktop in a nutshell
  • (04:00) - Measuring the flow of value
  • (09:10) - Team measurement
  • (16:29) - Elastic capacity of human ability
  • (22:59) - Happiness and trust metrics
  • (25:32) - Hand-offs and dependencies
  • (28:10) - Making the case with data
  • (31:40) - Heightened uncertainty
  • (35:51) - Project to Product

Dr. Mik Kersten is the CEO of Tasktop Technologies, creator and leader of the Eclipse Mylyn open source project, and inventor of the task-focused interface. As a research scientist at Xerox PARC, Mik implemented the first aspect-oriented programming tools for AspectJ. In 2018, Mik launched his book, Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework, with concepts to help drive software at the pace of an organization’s business.

Mik has been an Eclipse committer since 2002, is an elected member of the Eclipse Board of Directors and serves on the Eclipse Architecture and Planning councils. Mik’s thought leadership on task-focused collaboration makes him a popular speaker at software conferences, and he was voted a JavaOne Rock Star speaker in 2008 and 2009. Mik enjoys building tools that offload our brains and make it easier to get creative work done.

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About Patrick Emmons

If you can’t appreciate a good sports analogy, movie quote, or military reference, you may not want to work with him, but if you value honesty, integrity, and commitment to improvement, Patrick can certainly help take your business or your career to the next level. “Good enough,” is simply not in his vernacular. Pat’s passion is for relentlessly pushing himself and others to achieve full potential. Patrick Emmons is a graduate of St. Norbert College with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. Patrick co-founded Adage Technologies in 2001 and in 2015, founded DragonSpears as a spin-off dedicated to developing custom applications that improve speed, compliance and scalability of clients’ internal and customer-facing workflow processes. When he is not learning about new technology, running a better business, or becoming a stronger leader, he can be found coaching his kids’ (FIVE of them) baseball and lacrosse teams and praising his ever-so-patient wife for all her support.

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