Women In Agile Thesis Research - Natalie Warnert, St. Catherine University
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Summary of findings for Women in Agile thesis defense presentation. Increasing women's involvement in the Agile community. by Natalie Warnert #WomenInAgile May 2015 www.nataliewarnert.com www.womeninagile.com
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Women In Agile Thesis Research - Natalie Warnert, St. Catherine University
- 1. + Increasing Women’s Involvement in the Agile Community Natalie Warnert
- 2. + Agenda Introduction and Purpose of Research Background and Context – What is Agile? Research Methods Findings Recommendations & Strategy Conclusion Questions
- 4. + Research Question What are the reasons that prevent female Agile practitioners from achieving higher levels of involvement in the Agile community, and what strategies can overcome them?
- 6. + What is Involvement? External to daily job responsibilities Blogging Conference attendance Submitting to present at conferences Submitting work for publication User group attendance, membership, participation Earning certifications
- 7. + Context – Initial Literature Review Agile • Expertise • Involvement • Culture Societal • Stereotypes • Environments • Perceptions Individual • Mind-set • Priorities • Standards
- 8. + Method Interviews with women in the Agile community (7) Qualitative data Survey of the Agile community (103) Quantitative data Female 60% Male 40% Survey Gender Distribution
- 10. + Reasons that prevent women from achieving higher levels of involvement Competing priorities for time Organizational and career reasons Lack of confidence, fear of perception from others Intimidation from lack of diversity Some event or interaction has deterred my involvement interest I am not interested in being more involved
- 11. + Survey Questions What prevents you from being more involved in the Agile community? When you think about the Agile community, in your opinion why are men more involved than women?
- 12. + Yes 60% No 40% Company Provides Financial Support for Involvement Career or Organizational Reasons Involvement Level and Company Support (Men and Women) T-Test Involvement with Financial Support Involvement without Financial Support Mean (0-10) 5.31 4.12 Observations 52 33 P(T<=t) one- tail 0.0378
- 13. + Lack of Confidence, Fear of Perception from Others “I received comments at multiple conferences I’ve gone to along the way that, ‘you’re not just a pretty face ‘and then when I start talking, people think that ‘wow she actually knows what she is talking about’.” (personal conversation, February 2015) Men (Individual): 24% Women (Individual): 19% Men (Perception of women): 43% Women (Perception of women): 37%
- 14. + Intimidation from Lack of Diversity “You’d go in and you are the only female, I can see how a lot of people might drop out and be deterred from that fact. It’s not like in a college setting, where there’s three women and 28 guys, and the professor can call on you and boost your self-esteem and say that you’re just as smart as everyone else in the room, there isn’t that community across states and in the country. I think it’s a little more probably intimidating for women to look at all these people writing these blogs and articles, and they seem super smart and you compare yourself to them.” (personal conversation, February 2015) Women (Individual): 9% Men (Perception of women): 60% Women (Perception of women): 33%
- 15. + Competin g Priorities for my time Organizati onal/Care er Reasons Lack of Confidenc e, Fear of perception from others Intimidatio n from lack of diversity Some event or interaction has deterred my interest I am not interested in being more involved Men and women are involved equally Men (Individual) 94% 39% 24% 3% 6% 9% Women (Individual) 84% 35% 19% 9% 9% 11% Men (Perception of Women) 60% 30% 43% 60% 47% 3% 10% Women (Perception of Women) 59% 31% 37% 33% 9% 4% 19% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Men vs. Women – Reasons for lack of involvement
- 16. + Men and Women are Not Equally Involved Mean Difference in Men and Women’s Involvement Levels: T- Test Women’s Involvement Level Men’s Involvement Level Mean (0-10) 4.47 5.67 Observations 57 36 P(T<=t) one- tail 0.0317
- 18. + Strategy Questions What support or actions have helped you or would help you to become more involved within the Agile community? What support or actions do you think would help encourage women to become more involved in the Agile community?
- 19. + Research Findings: Strategies to Support Women’s Involvement Immediate: Extend a personal invitation to participate Mid-Range: Increase company support to participate Promote and seek out diversity in Agile community activities Encourage and facilitate networking among women Long Term: Increase early recruitment efforts of girls/women in Science Technology Engineering & Math (STEM) fields
- 20. + Immediate: Extend a Personal Invitation to Participate
- 21. + Mid-Range: Encourage and Facilitate Networking Among Women “All these men are typically reaching down to pull up other men like, ‘Hey let’s talk about this project. Do you want to go get a beer?’ It’s going to be really weird for me to go get a beer with another married person. I’m a married person. He’s a man. I’m a woman. That just doesn’t have good optics and so there are really no women to reach out and look for sponsors.” (personal conversation, February 2015)
- 22. + Long-Term: Early Recruitment in STEM fields “I did a few classes for elementary school kids where we brought in computers and I tore them apart and I let them look at them, and then ask me any questions they had about the computers. At fifth grade level, 24 kids signed up. Not a single girl…I don’t understand how we’re losing the girls.” (personal conversation, February, 2015)
- 23. + Recommendations Agile • Expertise • Involvement • Culture Societal • Stereotypes • Environments • Perceptions Individual • Mind-set • Priorities • Activities • Standards Change Perceptions
- 24. + Future Research How do men perceive themselves? Will these strategies be successful? What are the benefits of involvement? How do perceptions affect involvement and interaction?
- 25. + My Commitment
- 26. +
Editor's Notes
- 2 min How I got started in IT and became involved in Agile. Realized there were fewer women present and of those present, fewer involved. Group to address the issue, but it lacked strategy and understanding of the underlying issues that are preventing women from being more involved.
- 3 min What are the reasons that prevent female Agile practitioners from achieving higher levels of involvement in the Agile community, and what strategies can overcome them?
- 4 min Agile manifesto in 2001 Men are the only signatories Very structured and led to many misconceptions And this is what Agile is centered around
- 5 min
- 7 min Individual/Societal – Societal stereotypes affect what women think their priorities must be such as family. Male dominated environments such as Agile and software development can be hostile and widely held perceptions negatively can affect women’s mind-sets about themselves. Agile/Individual – Women are looking at involvement as competing with their other priorities and are also holding themselves to very high standards for sharing their expertise. Agile/Societal – Agile culture embraces traits that society views women as more skilled at, e.g. relationship building, collaboration, facilitation Middle – the purpose of this research is to determine where all these influencing factors converge and how to address them strategically.
- 8 min Maybe make less boring – picture? Interviewed 7 women in the local Agile community from all ranges of involvement, industries, and roles Survey – women and men in the Agile community – national/global, distributed via social media, open for four days and got over 100 responses.
- 10 min Realizations women were coming to when talking to them. Internal struggles with how to answer the questions and why they felt the way they did. Confidence comes with the title. Interaction with boys and girls.
- 11 min Competing priorities for time Organizational and career reasons Lack of confidence, fear of perception from others Intimidation from lack of diversity Some event or interaction has deterred my involvement interest I am not interested in being more involved How the interviews and the survey fed into these Asked women in the interviews what the biggest reasons were hindering their involvement. Asked both men and women in the survey to understand the popularity of each reason for themselves and how they perceived them influencing women’s involvement specifically. Competing priorities for time was the most popular, which is not surprising. The three in orange had the most interesting reasoning behind them and answers were very thought provoking. I will go into more details of the three orange reasons next.
- 13 min Explain what organizational and career reasons are: company support, confidentiality, too involved at work already to be externally involved. Company financial support makes a huge difference in involvement
- 15 min Interesting that men cited this more than women as a top two reason.
- 17 min Raises a lot of questions (why and how it manifests itself in the behavior and treatment of women, interaction)
- 18 min This is a summary of the reasons and questions I have already explained to you. Points to cover: highest in both is priorities. Discrepancy between women and men, perceptions. Men and women see themselves as less affected than they see others, especially men. Not asked about men’s involvement because of the Men and women are not equally involved.
- 19 min
- 20 min Remind again what involvement is, we just learned the reasons women have for lower involvement levels as stated by themselves and perceived by others, the next portion of the research was to determine how to increase involvement levels.
- 21 min
- 22 min Tie to the research? research findings: Strategies to support involvement Write out STEM (bold) - women
- 23 minutes – tell story of how I tested this assumption at a user group meeting. This is something that anyone can do immediately.
- 24 minutes Mentorship, sponsorship Networking and events just for women This is mid range because it will take time to develop relationships between women, build credibility to increase sponsorship.
- 26 minutes Is what we’re doing working? Re-evaluate. Need to do it earlier, make things fun, consistency. Also discuss how recruitment needs to happen later in life by colleges and companies. Educate adults Experience how women usually do not go into school wanting to be a computer major, but someone suggests it.
- 28 minutes Start the Conversation Extend an invitation Encourage others
- 30 minutes
- That concludes my presentation