Great software comes from getting your team’s best ideas into the product. Jim McCarthy, who led the legendary turnaround of the Visual C++ group at Microsoft, left Microsoft in 1996 to create a team dynamics laboratory to figure out how to always create a create a high performance team.

The McCarthy lab has focused extensively on this challenge, and has produced 11 rich, precise protocols (called the Core) for making unanimous decisions, supporting quality thinking, strengthening design iterations, and incorporating feedback, emotions, nobility, and passion into products.

Learn about these protocols in this motivating, challenging talk. In just a few minutes, you can pick up the fundamentals of an entirely new class of tool.

• Do you notice too much discussion and arguing and would prefer the best ideas would just get implemented now? –Learn about the Decider Protocol which guarantees unanimous team decisions with accountability and moves the team forward with a bias toward action.

• Do you accept that it is vitally important that you get the opinions of others about the quality of work products but notice that it is consistently painful to give and receive feedback? – Learn about the Perfection Protocol which solves all the problems associated with criticism.

• Do you notice that dumb things consistently happen on your team and everyone seems to lack self-awareness to some degree, including you? – Learn about the Core Commitments which provide a team constitution about commitment and accountability to the team. And learn about the Personal Alignment Protocol which allows each team member to address self-awareness around courage, integrity, passion and other virtuous behaviors.

This event is free and is at our new location, Puppet Labs. It begins at 6:30 pm with pizza, sponsored by PNSQC (Many thanks to both Puppet Labs and PNSQC for supporting agile in Portland).

The program starts at 7:00 pm.

After the program you're invited to join us for a no-host gathering at a nearby brewpub for further discussion.

The format this month will be each participant bring a one-page writeup of your vision, with questions you'd like feedback on, half an hour total per vision.

Areas of questions could be pretty much anything:

Vision Market Need Team Marketing Operations Legal Budget

This event is open to the public.

Organized by: Alex Linsker (503) 517-6900 [email protected] Twitter: @alexlinsker

This is Design x Strategy: Building the Future Web WebVisions Portland May 18-20 at PNCA and Revolution Hall http://www.webvisionsevent.com/portland/

Discover how mobile and connected devices, design, user experience and content strategy are impacting the the future of the Web. Get the inside scoop from the Internet’s leading experts: Douglas Rushkoff will explore themes from his new book, “Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus”, Mike Monteiro muses on why “This is the Golden Age of Design...and we’re screwed”, Nina Freeman will share her experiences in creating indie games and more. Sign up for a Three Day Pass to experience awesome workshops with Nathan Shedroff, Aaron Draplin, Leo Frishberg, Paul Backett, and Chris Butler.

Register today at: http://wvpdx16.eventbrite.com