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Quarterly Event Recap: What do you want to know from the top IT Executives in the Twin Cities?

What do you want to know from the top IT Executives in the Twin Cities? Last Friday, at our Think IT Quarterly Event our Think IT members had the opportunity to text in their questions for our executive panel to answer. Thank you to our panelists; Teddy Bekele, SVP & Chief Technology Officer at Land O’Lakes, Inc.Julie Durham, SVP of Software Engineering at UnitedHealth GroupJustin Kershaw, Corporate Vice President & CIO at CargillMatt Pammer, CIO at Prime Therapeutics and Allen Pofahl, DVP IT, Medical Device at Abbott. A huge thank you to Abbott for hosting our group!  

Below you will find an overview of the most popular questions from our members and a summary of what was discussed.  

Where are you at with your Agile transformation?  

As one could expect, each panelist felt their organization was at a different place in their Agile journey. They ranged from being at the very beginning, some nine months in and others who have been on their Agile journey for 5+ years. The biggest thing to remember during your transformation is that you are never done; you are always learning and evolving. As you switch from a project to a product model you can deliver faster, so each industry/company should utilize agile in some way, shape, or form.  

What is the role of the PMO in an Agile transformation?  

Agile changes the way of working for not only the development team, but other areas of an organization, including HR, Marketing, PMO, and others. For some, they felt the PMO is now the team that teaches the new method as they are moving from a traditional controlling role to now an advisory role. Other thought that they have IT, PMO, and Marketing all involved together. One of our panelists mentioned their team went from tracking everything to adjusting to more check-ins.  

What are the biggest successes vs. biggest mistake?  

The most significant trend amongst our panelists for this question was that they didn’t consider their past mistakes, as mistakes. They believe them to be lessons learned. We never truly fail; we only continue to learn. A few other lessons that were shared included; own up to your mistakes, mistakes usually come from being in a hurry, take your time to build the proper team, and structure matters.   

What trends do you see happening and how will they change moving forward?  

There are exciting things happening at all our organizations that were represented. A few things that were mentioned included; vertical farming, animal technology, and some predicted significant transformations for their company. All of our panelists agreed that they felt their organizations were switching to an insight-driven technology company.  We are in an exciting time and there are many things to come!   

Disruptive thinking and collaboration are what make our Quarterly Events so successful! A huge thank you to our panelist for their executive insights on the trending topics of IT. Also – thank you to our Think IT members for your participation. What topics would you like to see discussed at our next quarterly event?    

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