CodePath EES2024 WORKDAY - Embracing the Agile Mindset: From Classroom to Career Success

Hi everyone, welcome to the breakout session embracing the agile mindset from classroom to career success hosted by our partner Workday. We’re so excited to have you join us today. I’ll be introducing our speaker shortly, but wanted to share a few reminders that I’m sure a lot of you are like well acquainted with by now.

So please utilize the chat to have conversations. We’re also going to be raising hands in this session. I haven’t raised hands in a session before, so try to locate the raise your hand button when that pops up.

Please keep your messages relevant to the topic of the session. The speakers and the presenters can see the chat. I can also see the chat.

So, we’ll our team will be monitoring and answering questions as we can. If you have specific Q&A questions to save for the end of the session, you’ll want to use the Q&A button. And also following the session, we’ll ask that you complete a brief feedback survey because your feedback is very important to us.

So with those reminders out of the way, I’d love to introduce our speakers and bring them on stage. Alejandro Chaniga and Shaya Hampshire from Workday. We’re so excited to learn from you all today.

Hello everybody. Hello. Hi everyone.

Hi CodePath. Thanks Kelsey. It’s great to be here.

Thanks everyone for joining workday today and embracing the agile mindset. I hope you’ve been learning new skills at EEES and building knowledge that will help lead you to your success in your career endeavors. So, I’m Shaya Hampshire.

You can call me Shay. I’m based in Boston and I’ve been at workday for two years and I have the pleasure and privilege of leading our strategy on how we engage with universities and our amazing partners like CodePath. I also lead our early ID programs.

So workday has been a partner with CodePath since 2022 and has hired many alumni who are now at workday and at the end of this session I will share with you how you can stay in touch about opportunities to connect with workday. All right, wonderful. Thank you for that introduction, Shayzda.

And hi everybody. My name is Alejandro Chanertiga. I’m a program manager here at Workday.

I help with the agile learning experiences. And I’m going to be taking on the large chunk of the presentation today. So, I’m really excited to be here with you all.

So, with that being said, I did see a lot of emojis popping up and we’re going to be using those emojis for this first activity. So, we’re going to go ahead and get started there. Just to get to know each other first, I wanted to share with you my favorite emoji.

I don’t know if Airme and Code Pats have it here, but it’s a little cheerleader blob. It goes and it changes colors. It’s unfortunately the the GIF or GIF, however you say, didn’t come there.

But go ahead. I want to see your favorite emojis. What’s your favorite emoji that you have access to right now?

I see some hearts. Give me some more. Is that a wow one?

Okay, nice. And there’s a cool one. Wow.

A lot of confettes. Nice. Okay, look.

It looks like you’re a little bit limited. Oh, but thank you for sharing those right there. That’s that’s that’s really wonderful to hear.

See, okay, let’s go ahead and get a couple more going. So, the next thing, just so you know about me, I’m Latino, so I was born in Guatemala. Anybody else here from Latino or from Guatemala?

Let me see some emojis. Okay, nice. Got a couple thumbs up.

Nice, nice, nice. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. Okay, about 10 of you.

I love it. Nice. So thank you so much for sharing that.

Yeah, I’m really I want to make sure that you know that about myself. Even though we’re going to talk about agility, that’s that’s where my roots are from. That’s that’s that’s my background.

In addition to that, I’m a middle child. So, any other middle children out there? Show me your emojis.

There we go. Heart heart. Three.

Three middle children. Oh, no. We got a couple more. Okay.

Nice. That’s about 10 as well. I love it.

Nice. Okay. So, if you’re a middle child, you can kind of see in that picture.

I’m very sad and disappointed. Cuz the reason I was sad is because that was actually when my little brother just came from the hospital and I wanted to be the one to hold him but because I was little I didn’t have enough strength in my arms. My big brother was the one holding him and I was sad.

So middle children. I think you can all relate. And then the next one is I love Marvel.

Any other Marvel fans out there? Where you at? Show me your emojis.

I know Shaya is a Marvel fan too. Nice. Okay, that one got the most emojis.

I love it. And specifically, I’m a Spider-Man fan. So, any other Spider-Man fans out there?

Nice. I love it. Yes.

Oh, there’s Groot. I love Groot in the chat. Yeah.

You know, some people sometimes ask me like, "Oh, who’s your favorite Spider-Man out of all the movie iterations?" And my answer is none of them because none of them make do justice to the comic book Spider-Man. So, that’s my favorite superhero. And then the last one is we’re gonna talk a lot about speaking up today.

So I want to make sure that I’m kind of centering this and this is going to help transition us. But I struggle to speak up. I know I’m kind of like talking really loud right now and I’m presenting up here.

But honestly like I kind of struggle with it. I mean I don’t know if you can kind of tell but I’m like sweating a little bit. It’s not just because it’s hot.

It’s because I’m a little nervous cuz I kind of struggle here. Anybody else struggle to speak up? Let me see your emojis.

Oh, I love that Spider-Man meme right there. Okay, I see three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. Okay, 12 of you struggle to speak up.

Or maybe there’s more of you who struggle to speak up, but you didn’t want to speak up with the emojis. Oh, there’s a couple more. Cool.

So, that’s going to be kind of central to what we’re talking about. So, thank you everybody so much. I love seeing who’s out in the audience, and this is the opportunity to get to know each other.

So, let’s go ahead and dive into the material. The agile mindset. Could I see with the emojis?

Anybody here heard about the agile mindset already? Let me see. Have you guys or are agile agility two people?

Okay, great. No, I see. Okay, neat.

Oh, then I see a yes. Okay, wonderful. So, good good amount of you all.

If we had more time and we were interacting, I would love to ask you like what you’ve heard of it. But I’m just going to go ahead and introduce it for everyone else who doesn’t know what this means, what this is talking about. Okay, so agile mindset.

Essentially it breaks down into these five components. Number one, it’s about collaboration and teamwork. It’s about adopting a mindset where we emphasize how can we come together and work better together, right?

And work better as a team. There’s as you come as as you come into the tech world, into software world, right? You have large teams that you’re working with.

It’s not just one or two people. You have to really learn and understand how can I work best in a group of that’s like six, seven, eight, nine, 10 plus people. And so the agile mindset really embraces this.

How do we emphasize collaboration? How do we emphasize teamwork in our groups? The next one is embracing change and challenges.

So, it’s about especially if you have come into the tech world, software world, there’s a lot of unknowns, right? There’s a lot of uncertainties. Even when you have a vision and an idea, you don’t really know how that’s going to play out and how that’s going to look like in reality.

So, that’s the other part of the agile mindset. We don’t grumble or we don’t look at these challenges as like problems. We actually embrace them and we see them as opportunities to learn and to grow.

The next one is openness to feedback. Okay, so this this one’s hard especially as someone who like struggles to speak up. But it’s crucial to be able to share feedback with our peers and also to receive feedback in a way that is that we understand we understand that it’s for our benefit, right?

H Let me see emojis. Any of y’all heard of this saying that feedback is a gift? Who’s heard of that saying?

Show me the emojis. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Thumbs up. One clapping emoji.

Yeah. So, feedback is a gift. It’s but it’s about embracing that, right?

It’s not just about saying it, but it’s about like actually embracing it and be like, "Hey, give me all the feedback that you can give me because that’s a gift." And I want to give you the all the feedback I can because that’s a gift as well. And also as it relates to customers, right? The customers being able to share feedback with us and the products that we’re building, the features we’re building.

We want to how do we maximize that? How do we get feedback from all directions and are open to it because it’s a gift. That’s the se third part of the agile mindset.

And the last one is again continuous improvement. So I mean all these three from above kind of feed into this one, right? Like if we’re collaborating and and we have solid teamwork, if we’re embracing change and challenges and we’re opening up kind of our our our minds to it.

And if we’re opening ourselves to feedback, then the natural progression of that is we’re going to find opportunities to continually improve. Not just improve our products and our features, but improve the way that we work together. Because that’s actually when I was developing this training, I was actually interviewing a manager.

He’s he’s been at worked there for like nine years and he’s managed a lot of different teams. He’s a senior manager. Yeah.

And he said, the hardest part about working in software is having to work with people just because there’s a lot, you know, there’s a lot of nuances. There’s a lot of dynamics that can come in and out. And so how not only how do we improve our software and our products, but how do we improve the way that we work together so that it’s a better environment for everybody?

And the last one is your voice matters, right? In order for all these to happen, we got to be speak up like, "Hey, do you want to collaborate? Do you want to do teamwork?

You want to collaborate on this presentation?" You know, like, "Hey, I’m embracing change." Like being able to voice that and say, "Hey, like I’m I’m open to this. I’m open to tackling this challenge." Feedback, right? Your voice matters.

You got to speak up. And then continuous improvement. Hey, I see this thing that we need to improve on.

Don’t just keep it down hidden. Voice it, right? Your voice matters.

So, these are the five components. Sharing them really quickly and then if you have questions on these, feel free to ask them at the end. Okay.

So, how do companies use the agile mindset? Essentially, level one is the most foundational basic level of applying agile mindset is by applying frameworks. So, how many emojis emoji time?

How many of you guys have heard of scrum? Heard of scrum? I’m pretty sure a good number of you.

It’s very very popular agile methodology. One of you mentioned agile development. Okay.

Like that’s a ton of emojis. I love it. How many of you have heard of combon?

Show me your emojis. Yeah. Okay.

That one’s less common. Okay. Okay.

And then there’s also safe. So for those of you who have heard of these, I don’t have time to get into them. But if you guys could go ahead and put in the chat what you’ve heard about scrum or compon please do that.

You can also Google it. It’s scrum combon. Write it in your notes.

Google it later. But these are frameworks that companies apply, right? Yeah.

Somebody put sprints. Exactly. That’s scrum.

So these are frameworks that companies apply. But at the end of the day, they are just tools. They’re methodologies.

They’re frameworks. They’re processes that we can apply to work as a team to come together and work as a team. Right?

So yeah, I I don’t I don’t have time to get into it. So please look at it on your own, but essentially it’s just a framework. It’s just this idea of hey let’s apply a tool and then some companies stay there like hey our a agile mindset is this tool our agile mindset is hey we we use this process check it off and then that’s where it stops however if that is where your application of agility and the agile mindset finishes it’s actually really really really I mean it’s really lame honestly it it leads to products that won’t really astound the customers and it leads to working in teams that you’re just doing things for the sake of doing it and that’s why the agile mindset is the most important piece right I could have delivered a presentation on the scrum framework and just told you a tool or I could have delivered presentation on combine and just told you a guide but at the end of the day it’s about that mindset because that mindset is what really allows companies to then go to level two which is where you’re actually adopting and embodying that mindset and you’re iterating, improving and having impact not just with customers but again with the teams.

That’s a a big part of this is how we’re working in the team because if your team is not happy, if your team is not solid, if you’re not able to have collaboration and teamwork, embrace change and challenges and be open to feedback and continually improve, then you’re you don’t have a solid team, you’re not going to have solid products. So again, this big part is about how do we work well in teams. And at level two, you’re actually embodying and adapting that mindset.

It’s not just okay I open myself up to feedback but it’s like yeah a like asking people for feedback and letting them deliver feedback to you as well. And then level three is kind of disrupting markets. This is like when the entire company is like agile, agile, agile and they’re like live and breathe and eat agility and everyone really really is there for those five components of like they’re they’re making sure their voice is heard, making sure they’re sharing feedback and that’s when it becomes part of your culture and once it’s really part of your culture, you’re able to yeah start building products that disrupt markets and that’s that’s kind of like the ideal the the place we want to get to.

And I love what Kelsey said. Yeah, if you don’t have a solid team, you’re not going to have solid products. Exactly.

So this is how companies use it. Okay. But enough about the companies.

Let’s start talking about how you can use it. So how can it help you? Here’s I was trying to kind of condense it down, break it down into four main ways that you can adopt the agile mindset.

Number one is understanding that open communication is the foundation. So listen, I I’m still sweating because I’m still nervous. I’m an introvert.

Okay? I’m an introvert as Oh my god. And now that sweat got in my eye.

Sorry, guys. I’m an introvert as much as as much as I like this is my job facilitating I am very much introverted but the agile mindset is understanding hey I need to speak up I need to talk I need to communicate right so that’s number one open communication is the foundation how are you opening yourself up to communicate not you know yeah within your teams like if you have group projects how vocal are you how much are you taking lead there and opening up and speaking up right within the networking piece like I love how some people were putting to LinkedIn and they’re saying like hey message me I want to connect do that right do more of that because that’s essentially understand that part of the agile mindset and adopting it now is understanding hey I need to speak up I need to put myself out there even if I’m a little introverted I’m a little shy because that’s what’s yeah going to lead to that collaboration and teamwork number two is having a growth mindset over a fixed mindset how many of you guys have heard of this before fixed versus growth growth mindset. Can I see emojis?

And then, bonus points if you can put in the chat what a fixed mindset is versus a growth mindset. Bonus points if you can put it there quickly. But essentially, right, it’s this, idea of fixed mindset.

It’s like, okay, you know, I’m going to stay with the status quo. I’m going to continue going with what I’ve been doing. This is what’s been working.

Staying there. Versus growth mindset say, hey, what can I learn? What can I grow?

Yeah. Where can I grow? I love Sarah put a growth mindset means you can improve through effort.

Yeah. So, how am I applying effort and where where can I find opportunities for improvement? Flexible not flexible to new ideas.

Yeah, that’s the fixed mindset, right? But the growth mindset is hey, let me be open to new ideas. Yeah, fix is I can’t.

Growth is I can or I will. I love it. That’s the that’s the agile mindset right there.

Okay. Growth mindset just the the differentiation between like growth mindset and agile mindset that we teach at workday is growth mindset is very like individual, right? Agile mindset is very much group and team.

How are we collaborating as a team? And so that’s the kind of the distinction. But if you have a growth mindset and you’re growing in your growth mindset, then that’s only going to help you facilitate and improve the way that you can apply the agile mindset.

The next one is asking for and acting on feedback. Okay, very clear. Again, that’s actually the hardest one for me.

So, I wanted to share that one as one that it can help you. Now, if you can start working on this now, it’s going to take you really far, right? If you can ask for and openly be like, "Hey, where how can I improve?

I just had a conversation with you. How could I have had that conversation better?" Okay, maybe that’s a little too much. But, you know, with the people that you work with in the groups that you interact with with professors or managers, supervisors, taking that initiative and saying, "Hey, how can I improve?

What are what’s some feedback you have for me?" And then sharing feedback with them. And I recently shared feedback to my manager and I was really scared when I did that because it’s scary sharing me feedback up, right? But the agile mindset is saying like hey we all have room to improve and grow so let me share that gift.

So again the very clear very very applicable just ask for and act on feedback. And then the last one is identify one way to be better every two weeks. Someone mentioned sprints.

So the way that scrum works right there are sprints. It’s essentially one week to four weeks. And there’s this kind of saying of like oh try and be better find one way to be better every day.

But I actually think that’s really hard to find one way to be better every day. So I think it’s better to just kind of cond just kind of open it up a little bit. Try and find one way to be better every two weeks.

That continuous improvement piece, right? And then making sure that you’re applying it, you’re adopting, and you’re you’re able to improve. So if you’re improving every two weeks, you’re going to be a much better at a skill, much better at a habit, much better at something that’s going to help you progress in your career than you were at the beginning of the year.

Right? So that’s those these are the ways that it can help you. But enough talking y’all.

Enough talking. I’ve talked way too much and also I need to get like a paper towel or something. But let’s go ahead and do an activity where we can start really applying what this mindset looks like.

We’ve talked about it, but now let’s try actually look at it in action. So real quick in the chat, I want to hear from you. What words normally come to mind when you work in a group?

What words come to mind when you’re working in a group? When you think about Yeah. Group work, what’s coming to mind?

Collaboration. Collaboration. Okay.

Think about group projects you’ve had in the past, right? Like do you love them? Do you dislike them?

Project management. Te tell me about like your your groups like in in class in like college or even like high school groups. Did you did you love those groups?

Did you guys love them? Conflict management. Okay, here we We’re getting one.

May I managing conflicts, interest, unbalanced? Okay, now we’re hearing unbalanced. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I love the other ones, too.

Those are really positive. Adapting, strength, transparency. But also, you know, like if I’m being honest, too, like there’s a good number of group projects that I’ve been a part of that I didn’t really enjoy and that were really difficult and really like hard to get through because sometimes I was the only one pulling my weight, right?

Cussy emojis. Any of you relate with that statement? Like struggling with group projects because you kind Okay.

A a lot. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I love let’s see.

Jose put the best group projects I ever had when I had a clear role. Eliminated the guest work. Nice.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So transparency piece, right? Open communication. What’s your role?

So okay, me right now. I hear you. I hear you.

So let’s go ahead and do an an activity. We’re going to do an activity. We’re going to do a group project here within a couple minutes to emphasize the agile mindset.

So, let’s go ahead and we’re going to go ahead and select five people but we’re going to do it with a little question. The first five people to answer who remembers my favorite emoji are going to come on stage with me to do an activity. So, describe my favorite emoji the best you can.

April. Okay, April, can you go ahead and raise your hand for our facilitators, please? Sarah, a happy emoji.

Okay, I’ll get I’ll give you that one. Sarah, can you also raise your hand if you can see your raising hand feature for our facilitators? Nancy, put a little Yeah, that’s actually pretty good.

That’s like the closest one. And then we got have Islam and then is it Sar? Sar, go ahead.

Raise your hand. Go raise your hand. Our facilitators are going to bring you on stage with me right now.

So, I see there’s Sarah, there’s April. Nice. Nice.

We’re going to go ahead and do Nancy, if you could raise your hand. Nice. And then Islam, if you raise your hand as well.

I’m going to put a little heart emoji. If you could go ahead and raise your hand here. So, those folks I put put a little heart emoji, can you go ahead and please raise your hand there?

Okay. Nice. We got Or actually Oh, actually, we can only do four y’all.

We can only I think. Yeah. So, actually Sara, I apologize.

We’re not going to do five. Okay. We’re going to do four.

So, okay. We got Nancy, Islam, Sara, and April. Okay.

We are maxed. Thank you so much, Amy. I appreciate that.

Okay. So, we can only do four. So, we’re going to have those folks there.

You’re going to go ahead just put yourself on mute just for now, but you are going to come off mute and do an activity momentarily. Okay. So, next slide, please.

The purpose of this activity is to illustrate the key concepts of agile. So, pretty much what we just covered and also see the agile mindset in action. So this is what you’re going to do.

Okay, Sarah, April, Islam, and Nancy, listen up. This is what we’re doing. Your goal as a team is to build a cohesive story that answers the prompt, describe a day in the life of a developer.

Right? This is code paths. This is what you are all preparing for kind of going into you know the full-time work being a developer.

So what you’re going to describe the the day in the life. However, you have a couple of rules. You have a couple of restrictions to your day or yeah acceptance criteria that you have to meet.

Number one is as you share your story, you must follow the following rules. Rule A, the story must start with being a developer is like so you’re going to do an analogy. Okay, that’s rule number eight.

Rule number B, every new sentence must have a new speaker. So if if if if it feels like there’s a sentence there or it’s like a run-on sentence, you got to switch speakers. You got to switch speakers.

Okay? We’re switching one different person every time. C everyone has to speak more than once.

So you can’t just alternate between one and two one two one two one two one two one two one two one two one two one two one two one two. It can’t be just Sarah and Nancy. Sarah and Nancy Sarah Nancy, right?

Everyone has to speak more than once and you have to alternate who’s speaking who’s sharing that story. And then there must be a villain in this story. Okay?

Okay, you got you got to put some tension into the story. Put some tension. Make it scary.

Being a developer is scary, right? So, what’s the villain that’s going to come in? So, we’re going to do three rounds.

And again, this is to apply and kind of look at the agile mindset in action. What for each round, what you’re going to do is you’re going to have one minute to plan. And then later rounds, you’re going to iterate and you have two minutes to execute your story.

And then we’re going to we’re going to kind of be the judges here. We’re going to say, okay, was that a sufficient enough story? Always sufficient enough tension and sufficient enough you know speaking back and forth.

So you you you got to share a story that’s really like engaging and will draw us in about being a developer and then audience anytime they’re planning or iterating you can share ideas with them to kind of help them spark some ideas. Okay. So April, Sarah, Islam, Nancy, you can come off mute and let me know.

Do you have any questions about these rules? Is there a minimum requirement for how many sentences? There is no minimum requirement for number of sentences, but it does have to be a cohesive story.

So, if you can do a cohesive story in four sentences, great. But, you know, we’ll we’ll there’s Yeah, there’s a little I I’ll be the judge there a little bit. Great question.

Who else has a question? Okay, I’m going to take silence as is. Okay.

I’m going to start my timer here. Question. No. Okay.

So, you’re going to have one minute to plan. Okay. I’m going to start my timer.

So, Sarah, April, Islam, Nancy, can I get a woohoo if you’re ready to get started? Okay. Audience, can they see an emoji if you’re ready to get started?

Audience again. You can participate by giving them ideas. Being the developer is like blank.

One minute. Sarah, April, Islam, Nancy, start talking. Start figuring out what you’re going to do.

Ready, set, go. All right, guys. I think we can start.

First, we need to figure out the order like who’s going to talk, right? I can go last. I volunteer last year.

Okay. Okay. So, I think being a developer is like innovative is like you’re the mastermind the the the I don’t know brainstormer.

Yeah. But this is for the day in the life not necessarily so big. Maybe like a little bit more focused.

It’s just that from the beginning like you wake up and check your emails, right? Like if something new then what you can do you take your work. A meeting with one of the team leads.

We get feedback and then we cry ourselves to in the bathroom. We come back and then we get more feedback then we start coding. We play League of Legends and then we take a break and eat lunch.

Yeah, it might be helpful to focus maybe on who we want the villain to be and then frame everything around that. A code a bug code that just cannot be figured out. Yeah.

And we can mention the time when we get stuck when we cannot figure out figure the things out like how to solve certain problem and we stuck. Okay. Time is up.

Time’s up. You actually got an extra 20 seconds there because I had to go get a paper towel. Okay.

Cool. Cool. Cool.

So that’s time up for planning. You have two minutes. Give us a story.

Ready, set, go. So being a So being a web So being a software developer is like every day you’re putting like a step towards like kind of like innovating something. But that also means that you can be facing a battle every day with either bug or just fighting against time.

And when you cannot fix that bug, it’s a good option to ask your teammates or other co-workers who can help you and which can save time to solve that problem. But if you can’t figure it out, you head to the restroom and cry yourself to sleep. Yeah.

And then play League of Legends. You still got a minute. You still got a minute.

Fill up this time. And this it’s important to keep in mind to have a rest between the tasks so that you can you don’t work non-stop and you refresh yourself and come back to the tasks with a new fresh energy. Yeah.

Like take a walk around the park or Yeah. Hit up some leagues. I don’t know, man.

Just try and relax. The bugs will always be there. Time is always moving.

So, you have to take time for yourself to rest and recharge because tomorrow is always going to happen and come again. Yeah. Beat that bug.

Yeah. And at the end you can sum up with team meeting and plans for the next day. What we’re going to do next day and how we’re going to distribute tasks.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. We’re going to stop it there just because that that was actually really solid. That was pretty good.

That was pretty good. A lot of improv there. A lot of improv there.

But I’m gonna go ahead and say I’m gonna be here kind of like a bit of product critic and I’m gonna say that that that wasn’t fully there. I think you had a strong start, but you were trying to have a cohesive story in just four sentences and I actually think that kind of damaged it being a cohesive story. So, I think you should try again.

Have a cohesive story. I love that you brought in Bugs as a villain, but you didn’t flesh out this villain enough. Okay, it told you you’re going to go cry.

Okay, great. But give me a little more a little more meatiness in this villain. Okay, flesh out this villain and then yeah, try and have a little bit more cohesion through those two minutes.

Is my feedback clear? Okay, you’re gonna have one minute to plan. I see a lot of a lot of people are relating with your story in the chat.

So, audience again, give them some more ideas. You got one minute. We’re going to plan one more round and yeah, we’re going to come back and try again in one minute.

Okay. So, April, Nancy, Sarah, Islam, are you guys ready? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Audience, are you ready?

They’re like quiet. Okay. Ready?

One minute. Go ahead. Plan again.

Yeah. So, we need to kind of dramatize our scene, right? I mean, we can Can we get descriptors for like the worst bugs you guys have ever faced or like the most challenging situations?

Make it really harrowing. I mean it can not the bug itself but misunderstanding between co teammates I I think that that can be that can be really good on how and how we solve that how we go through that. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Like the plot stories, right?

Having like a rise in conflict, resolution, all that. And maybe so then the villain becomes the misunderstanding or maybe Yeah. And our team or co-workers split into two sides and debate each other, throwing up arguments or whatever.

Can we solidify our order so we aren’t talking over each other during the two minutes where I think it seemed like it was Zara, me Islam, and then Nan Nancy and just stick to that. Yeah, sounds good. And then maybe have a timer for two minutes.

So nice. That was actually you guys are you guys are doing a really good job. Honestly, I’m I’m very impressed.

So let’s go ahead. Let’s see if you can fill up the two minutes with your cohesive story and your villain and more drama. Hello.

Who Who put that more drama? Somebody put was Jennifer said add drama. So yes, more drone.

So let’s see if you can do it. Two minutes. Are you guys ready?

Yes, sir. Yeah. Okay, let’s try it out.

Go ahead. So being a software developer is like innovate is like working on innovating something every day. But the process of innovation also involves collaborating with teams to together tackle problems that people might have different opinions on how to solve.

Yep. Yep. Don’t forget collaboration.

It’s not just code. Yeah. And sometimes when collaborating on some task some pe different people can have different opinions and they want they will want to go with their own way of solving that and they can be conflicts between two people or even two teams.

Yeah. So, I believe I don’t like this certain teammate because they’re kind of like over pushing their bounds and I like my break. Yeah.

And don’t forget the manager or the project lead. Yes. And it’s important to be respectful during those conflicts and trying to but still trying to figure the things out and finding the common language and common way of solution.

Yeah. Remember that the villain isn’t your teammate. It isn’t your team.

It isn’t the company. It isn’t the technology. It’s the problem that you are all trying to team up to solve together.

So then we can all work in harmony and peacefulness. Yeah. You got 15 seconds.

You’re almost there. Yes. That’s on the national side.

Awful. It’s okay. It’s okay.

We’ll stop it there. We’ll stop it there. You kind of got You’re so close.

You’re so You’re literally You’re almost there. You’re almost there. Doing such a good job.

So, thank you guys for sticking in there, for having fun with us. But you’re not there yet. Okay, you’re not there yet.

So, try and figure out just one more iteration. What can you do? I think you have you have a good story there.

You know, I love that emphasis on like, hey, the problem’s not the people and the team just how make it more cohesive, right? How can you make it more cohesive? And just fill up those two minutes and really inspire us with your story.

You’re almost there. You just need a couple more tweaks. So, I’ll let you figure that out.

Okay. All right. One.

Oh, a romance. Someone said to add romance. That’s up to you.

I’ll let your team figure that out. You got one minute final iteration and then chat if you got or audience if you got more ideas, please give it to them one last minute. Here we go.

Ready, set, go. So I feel like we should add some transition words. Maybe we can also maybe start off like being a a day in the life, right?

So we should start off like waking up. Maybe incorporating some not small tibbits like breakfast, lunch. I don’t know like so the villain in our story is like we have a conflict with I’m just trying to make sure our conflict is with like a coworker.

I think so. Yeah. Right.

So just making sure so the order is Sarah, April, Islam and then me, right? I guess Sarah can like open up like being a developer is whatever her lines like about innovation and then we can like kind of go in chronological order about like our day day-to-day activities and then we can end off of like hey we had a conflict we took a break from the teammate come back resolution is like we became peaceful again and we all live happily ever after. Kind of like a star format situation task action resolve resolution.

Yeah. Yeah. So Sarah, like set set the scene, I guess.

Yeah. And then keeping a time probably leaving the last 30 seconds to 15 seconds for like the conclusion resolution because we seem to hit it at like the one minute mark, right? Oh, you time us.

I mean, oh Dang. Okay. Wow.

Yeah. The one of the 10 seconds hit two minutes. So, it’s So, it’s one of the things that we’ve been missing in the last two iterations.

So, if we can get the pacing down, I think we can nail it. Yeah. Okay.

Time’s up. Time’s up. Okay.

Time’s up. Okay. All right.

Let’s do it. This is your final attempt at the story. So, make sure close us out.

Do whatever you need to to make this a cohesive story talking about the day of the developer. Okay. All right.

Here we go. Oh, audience, can we get them clapping emojis as they do their final iteration? All right, April, Nancy, Islam, Sarah, ready, set, go.

Being a the day of a life of a software developer is basically on every step you’re innovating for something no matter how difficult it might be or no ma or no matter what what awful things might come into your day. Yeah. And every day can start out kind of normal.

You can start out just getting breakfast, grabbing your coffee, and before you know it, you’re sitting down at your laptop getting ready to get on a meeting and sometimes tragedy strikes. Yeah. And as many developers start, you can start with a team meeting and discussing how to distribute tasks, what’s going to do what.

But unfortunately at some moment there are conflicts arising between your teammates and that’s very sad thing sad experience but you have to go through all of them anyways. Yeah. Jimmy from public relations he pissed me off the other day.

I don’t know what he did but like I’m angry. Yep. And basically you have to get started with that meeting and that drama like just one minute or a couple of minutes after waking up.

And but one thing you got to make sure of is that like the problem isn’t just with Jimmy. The problem is the entire situation that you and Jimmy find yourself in. And keeping that collaborative mindset can maybe get you unstuck from the real villain of this day.

Yeah. And instead of kicking in Jimmy and using your karate skills, it’s good to find some diplomatic way and at the end of the day solve this problem in a way which works for both of you guys. Yeah.

Turns out Oh, that was Oh, Nancy, you want you want to give us our finishing line? Oh, it was more like turns out it was a misunderstanding and there is no romance involved, but we will be enjoying a happily ever after. Yeah.

Yeah. All right, let’s give a round of applause. April, Sarah, Islam, Nancy, thank you so much for coming up.

Just go ahead and stay here just for one. I got one question for you. How was that?

How was that? Three different iterations. You went from like barely a story in the beginning.

Now you have you even had Jimmy and you had karate skills and you had a lot going on there. So how was that for you? Just let me hear really quickly how was it for you?

It was amazing. Like I feel like it really discussed how the life of a developer is like like every day like the good, the bad and the ugly and know how you deal with the bad and the ugly. Yeah.

Yeah. I enjoy it like everyone. Good good good.

Yeah. The feel that feeling of responsibility when it’s your turn to speak and you’re trying your best to kind of keep the flow and sometimes coming up with some crazy things. Yeah.

Yeah. I love it. Those crazy things, those are the challenges, right?

Those are the you guys were embracing those challenges, embracing that change, right? Yeah. And I love how you were saying it’s amazing, right?

It’s it was fun. That’s great. That’s what we want to highlight, right?

That’s collaboration and teamwork and action. The more collaboration and teamwork we have, the more fun it’s going to be because we’re like everyone’s engaged, right? Rather than just one person talking in their standup, I know some people are talking about standups and code reviews, right?

Just one person sharing blah blah blah blah blah. Like, let’s engage everybody. You were doing that really, really well.

So I love it. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

And we’re going to go ahead and take you off stage now as I kind of close off this activity and kind of talk a little bit more about the agile mindset. Okay. All right.

Wonderful. Thank you again. Can we get another round of applause, please, on the emojis?

Okay. So again, want to emphasize that like how well did you all work in this group? I actually think you all did a amazing job of working together.

I mean, I’m going to assume you don’t know each other or you’ve had minimal interactions outside of this meeting. But I think you did a really great job of coming together and yeah, delivering the cohesive story. And so, you know, also just want to kind of juxtapose that.

I want you to think about, okay, everybody think about this. You just saw a great example of people coming together, working well together, and applying the agile mindset. But think about other times where maybe it hasn’t been like that, right?

Think about other group projects. Think about times when you’re working with teammates and it hasn’t been like that, right? I want you to think about that as a kind of just reiterate things and close off the agile mindset piece.

Okay, so let’s go ahead and move on to the next slide. So first one here is collaboration and teamwork. Okay, here’s a quote from an agile coach and organ or organizational consultant, Esther Derby.

Esther says, "Agile leadership is not about directing the team, but creating a space where good decisions can be made. I think you all did a really really good job." April was kind of taking a little bit more of that leadership, kind of showing the time, coming up with some strategies, but at the end of the day, it did not feel like April was directing everybody else, right? It really felt like there was a space there for everyone to kind of contribute ideas and there was even some moments where they were asking the audience like hey g give us your most harrowing experience.

That’s great. You’re allowing that space for ideas to come up and you guys did a great job of highlighting that piece of collaboration and teamwork. The next one is embracing change and challenges.

This one actually came up quite a bit when you guys were talking about the problem. So a quote is going to come up here. Is going to address that the problem is not that there are problems.

The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem. So actually you guys were talking a lot about problems, right? You were like trying to come up with this villain and you had first you had bugs and then you had Jimmy and then you had hey the problem is not Jimmy.

The problem is that we’re trying to figure out how to get work better together. But the thing is in the agile mindset, part of embracing change and challenges and being like, hey, there actually are no problems. There’s only opportunities to learn, opportunities to grow, opportunities to embrace change and challenges.

And if you think that any of those are problems, then that’s the problem. I’ve said problems way too many times in those couple sentences, but that’s the idea, right? Embrace it.

Embrace it. Embrace it. There’s going to be challenges.

There’s going to be changes that happen. But it’s not a problem. If you think it’s a problem, that’s a problem.

But embrace it. Okay? And you guys all did a great job of that throughout the different iterations.

And I was kind of trying to throw some curve balls, but you embraced and you rolled with every curveball that I sent you. So, great job. The last one is openness to feedback, right?

You guys had a lot of different ideas there. Some ideas were a little bit opposing as well. But you guys did a really good job of trying to figure out, okay, how how how can we make this a cohesive story?

So, here’s a quote, right? Feedback in agile is about reflection and adaptation, not about judgment or control. And I guess this one, openness to feedback is also a little bit hard to kind of do in a 10-minute activity.

Because you really do get the most chance to share feedback. So, I can’t even say it. You really do get the most chance to share feedback with people the longer you work with them.

And then, but then it also can become a little bit difficult, right? Because now you got in close to your work co-workers, you got in close to your teammates and maybe you don’t want to damage that by sharing feedback. But then that’s this idea of hey the feedback I’m sharing is a gift because it’s going to help you reflect and it’s going to help us adapt as a team.

It’s not about oh you’re sharing feedback to me because you’re trying to judge me and control mem right? It’s not about that. It’s about how can is the feedback that we’re sharing a gift.

How is it helping me reflect and how is it helping me adapt and help us reflect and adapt as a team? And I think you did a great job of that in the 10 minutes we were together. So wonderful.

But again, that one’s a little harder as you work with someone for longer. And then the last one is continuous improvement. So the important thing is not your process, but improving your process and you guys improved every single time.

The first one, you didn’t even fill one minute with story. You kind of tried to just do it at four sentences. But by the end, you guys had a cohesive story.

You guys were also improving a little bit. I saw a little bit kind of improving kind of like you know trying to transition do transition words and everything and all of those additional pieces came from you improving your process and that’s the key that’s the agile mindset is how do we improve how we work better together and you guys did a phenomenal job at embodying that so thank you again. All right and the last one is your voice matters.

So, I’m going to talk about that in a second, but I just want to reiterate the way that you can apply this as you’re still in college. Okay. So, how and yeah, Shaya, you did a great job transitioning.

Sorry, I just I I went back and forth a little bit there. So, thank you, Shaya, for also embracing the change. Okay, but how can I help you?

Now, again, these are the four these are I I I I I thought hard about this guy, y’all. Okay, I thought really hard about this. I was like, okay, what do what am I going to leave them with?

And these are the four things I want to leave you with. Again, open communication is the foundation and you all did a great job of embodying that in our developer story activity. You you you talked, right?

You you you shared your ideas. You all built on each other’s ideas to have a cohesive story. Keep doing that.

Do more. And if you didn’t come up here and you weren’t part of the group trying to share your story, I’m going to encourage you. Open open communication is key, right?

And that’s key for the agile mindset and it’s key for your career. How can you speak up more? How can you make sure your voice is heard more and make sure you’re also hearing everyone else’s voice, right?

So sharing in that communication. Number two, the growth mindset. Being able to I love how someone said is fixed is means I can’t and then growth is I can’t yet.

Right? So so we we couldn’t come up with that cohesive story in the beginning, but it’s not that we couldn’t and then we’re done. It’s that hey, what what do we have to do?

Where could we build more kind of strategies and and build off each other. So that’s that growth mindset, right? Really adopt that in what you do for yourself personally and the skills that you’re building.

And I know we’re having fun about like, oh, if a bug comes up and you can’t fix it, go in the restroom and cry, right? Yes, that’s okay. Cry, but then also adopt it growth mindset and see, hey, what can I do?

How can I learn? How can I grow from this? How can I eventually squash that bug with my karate skills?

So that’s a growth mindset. Number three is asking for and acting on feedback. Again, again, just just do it.

Ask for feedback, okay? From your peers, from your colleagues, from your mentors, from your professors, from people you do a group work with for just 10 minutes in a agile mindset CodePath emerging engineer summit. Like ask feedback.

Say, "Hey, where could I have improved? Where could I grow?" That’s going to take you very far. And then the last one is identify one way to be better.

Oh, see it says every time. I changed it to one thing every two weeks as it was in the original slide. Just because I feel like every time every day is just going to it’s it’s kind of hard to keep up with that, right?

So, but I think if you have one thing you’re going to improve on one skill, how can I improve on this skill? Two weeks from now I can look back and I’m a lot better at the skill. What are you going to do?

And then enacting on it, right? Or a habit or maybe it’s that open communication piece. Two weeks from now, I want to be able to really share a lot of communication, be be more open.

So, address that and build that. These are the ways that you can adopt the agile mindset now as you’re working in your groups in college. So, and then I think the next slide I kind of lost track now a little bit.

Oh yeah, there we go. So, the next one is your voice matters, right? And I do want to emphasize this is hey, we need you at workday.

We need we need you at workday, okay? We need you and we and and the reason we need you is because diverse voices leads to better discussions, right? The more voices we have.

I wish we could have had five people in here. We were limited, but that’s okay. But the more people we have, the more voices we have, the more ideas and the richer that conversation becomes.

And then the better discussions we have, that’s going to lead to better outcomes. Not just for the customers, not just give a product for the customer or the feature for a customer, but it really is about developing better outcomes for ourselves as a team at workday. The agile outcomes, the first one is teams.

How are we making sure that coming to work every day, being part of this team is something that we look forward to, right? Mondays should not be something that we begrudgingly get out of our beds from and like go to work, right? It really should be something that we feel like we’re an integral part of the team.

We’re an integral part of the company and we matter and your voice does matter. And so I just want to share this. Oh, shoot.

I was going to give you a URL. I don’t have it here, but that’s okay. If you go on the Workday website, right, and you go to the Vive, they have a Vive page.

This I looked at this page when I was interviewing for Workday and I I read it, right? And I said it said, "We believe a supportive and inclusive workplace where everyone feels valued and included is the key to great products. Happy customers in an enduring company.

And I read that and I was like, h, every place says that, you know, every place. I’ve been at other companies, they talk about inclusion and belonging and diversity, blah blah blah blah blah. But in my experience, workday, and I’m I’m being really legit here, like Workday is the first company where I’ve actually felt like that is applied.

It’s not just something on the website. It’s not just a check mark, but it’s actually a way that we work here in this company is like, hey, we want to make sure you’re included and supported. And I really really feel that.

And so again, your voice matters and you’re a part of being that diverse discussion that will lead to better outcomes. And it’s legit. Like I feel like it’s legit here at workday.

So with that being said, we don’t have time for this. I was going to share my story more. So, I’m just going to quickly share these bullet points.

I had a whole story I was going to share, but that’s okay if you if you want to talk about it, you can look me up on LinkedIn. But essentially, coming to workday was the most difficult interview process I’ve ever had. It was really scary.

It was really long. But, you know, every time I interviewed someone, they always I always felt a little bit more reassured and really felt seen and like they really wanted to get to know me. The reason it was really scary too is because there were a lot of folks with more experience than me, right?

So, I I I only have a year of experience. Well, I guess I have two now, but when I interviewed at workday last year, I only had a year of experience in in in the agile world. And I looked at somebody who had applied to the role and they had 15 years of experience.

So, and then I looked on LinkedIn, how many people had applied? It was 300 people had applied. I’m like, well, of course, I’m not going to like they’re not going to pick me.

One in 300 and I only have one year where these people have 15 years and then but the thing is I have a mentor here at workday. When you get hired you get a mentor. So my mentor he was part of my interview panel.

So, a year goes by and about a month ago when I met my oney year anniversary at workday, he I asked him about it or actually, no, he brought it up and he said, "Hey, you know, when we interviewed you," he he said, "Even though," he’s like, "These are the four things that stood out about you when I interviewed you. Number one, you’re young. Number two, you’re inexperienced." He legit told me that.

But then he said, "Number three, you’re willing to help and you’re willing to learn." And he said, "Because of that, that’s why I put in my vote for you out of everyone else because I was willing to help. I was willing to learn because I was willing to apply that agile mindset and really embody it." So that’s my advice to Right. If you’re worried about applying to workday, you can be a part of this company as well, you can be part of these teams.

It’s okay if you’re young. It’s okay if you’re inexperienced. If you’re willing to help, you’re willing to learn.

You’re willing to grow. You’re applying the agile mindset. Again, it’s this idea of together we’re stronger.

So don’t let all those things intimidate you, right? We need you. We want you.

You have a lot to offer. So that’s my story really succinct. And so with that being said, why should you join us at workday?

There’s a lot of reasons. If if what I have told you about the is not enough. It’s a employee first culture.

There’s work dogs. There’s work dogs. The dogs can come to the office and you can pet them.

It’s so awesome. There’s career growth opportunities. There’s amazing workmates like Shaya, she’s amazing.

I’ve loved working with her on this and developing this. So amazing workmates. Your voice matters again and it really does is legit, right?

Your voice matters. And then applying the agile mindset. So if you come to interview, mention the agile mindset.

Okay, mention it. It’s it’ll it’ll be good. It’ll be key.

And if I haven’t sold you enough on the I’m going to bring up the work dogs again and I’m going to show you my work dog. He’s so cute. He’s on the next slide.

This is why you should come. Okay, come to work day thing. All righty, that’s enough on my end.

Thank you so much for listening to me and hearing me pass it off to Shaya to close us out. All right, can we get a round of applause for Alejandro? Who doesn’t want Alejandro now as their agile coach?

Well done, Alejandro. That was awesome. You did so great.

Thank you so much. Just so you all know, when we were deciding what content we should share with CodePath, we we’ve done a lot of presentations with CodePath in the past and when I met Alejandra when he first joined, he was so passionate about just helping students, helping them achieve their career outcomes or just build their skills. And I don’t know, just the first person I had in mind to deliver this presentation was Alejandro.

So, thank you so much for leaning in and for all of you for joining workday today. So, in the last minutes that we have here, wanted to just let you know about how you can stay in touch with workday about our summer 2025 internships. We have started to post these jobs on our career site.

However, we haven’t posted all of them. So this is why I am inviting you to scan the QR to check in and so when we do have so that I can contact you after EES and share with you what are the opportunities that we have at workday that you might be interested in. We hire in multiple locations across the US across a variety of roles.

Like I said they’re not all posted out there yet on our website but they will be. But I want to share with you some information just to give you a preview so you know whether or not to bookmark workday and and come back and check us out. Those jobs will be open.

We’ll keep the job postings open for the next couple months here. But don’t delay on applying if you are interested because we have a lot of interest in these roles. But we really really want to encourage our CodePath students to apply.

As I mentioned earlier at the top of this presentation, Workday’s been a CodePath partner for last couple of years and we love the organization. We really love the students. It’s so rewarding working with all of you.

So hopefully you’ll stay connected and if you have I’m going to pop over here into the Q&A right now. Did Oh, we actually have a couple of questions. Can we do questions Amy Kelsey?

Maybe. Yeah, you can do questions. You can go ahead and choose them, Shaya.

I don’t have to choose them for you. So, okay. All right.

Great. So just, Alejandro, just a couple questions for you. Yeah.

Yeah, I can I can I can take them. I I I’ll just try to go really quick. It says is there anything you Yeah, I think just kind of stay on Oh, I think I lagged there.

I’m going to answer the questions. Go ahead, Alra. I think I’m lagging.

Okay. Sorry. I don’t know why it’s lagging though.

Is there anything you struggle with or any pitfalls when people fall into trying to implement agile? Yeah, there’s there’s a lot, right? So, there’s actually what we call anti patterns.

It’s essentially things that people do that prevent them from working better together. It’s pretty much anything you can think of, right? Like keeping ideas to yourself, not sharing feedback, shying away from conflict.

So when you come to workday like we have like part of my job is to lead training on all of those things. There’s a lot there’s a lot of pitfalls but I want to encourage you to think more about how can you apply the five things I told you about right collaboration and teamwork embracing change and challenges open to feedback continuous improvement and making your voice heard. If you do those five things you’ll be you’ll you’ll fall away from the the pitfalls right embodying those is the main piece.

What are some ways workday makes you feel supported? Workday makes you feel supported in that my manager tells me, hey, Alejandro, you have a lot on your plate. Take something out of your plate.

I’m like, wait, is that a trick question? Like, are are like, can I really like focus on less things? He’s like, yeah, focus on those things.

Like, we care about you, right? I also had like a series of panic attacks when I first started here and I was so scared to tell my manager and I was like, oh my gosh, this is my first tech role. I’ve never worked in a tech company.

And then he said he I told him I was like, "Hey, I haven’t done any work for four days because I’m having these panic attacks." And he said, "Hey, I don’t care about that. What I care is about your mental well-being. So, how are you?" So, yeah, those are ways workday and my manager has made me feel supported.

And I think those are all I have maybe question for one more. Do you guys have any do you have one favorite thing about workday’s culture, whether it’s an event or some sort of tradition? I like the peon.

There’s a peon survey that comes up every Friday asking work workmates like, "Hey, what are what are some ways we can improve as a company?" So, every Friday they ask everybody in the company how they can improve. So, I think that’s really cool. But Shaa, do you have something that you really like?

Yeah. Plus one to that. And the dogs and all the free snacks.

Yeah. Oh yeah, totally. The work dogs.

Yeah, I love the work dogs. So I think that’s all we have time for now. But thank you for your questions, y’all.

Yes. Thank you so much workday for everything that you shared. This was such a memorable session and we’ve reached the end.

So we’d love to thank our presenters in the chat with your emojis. Please drop your appreciation and we encourage you to go visit them at the company booth during the networking break. I will also be at the career center booth table if you have any questions for me.

And to close us out, we will now go to a video from Bobby. Thank you all. Next up, we have network breaks.

And remember, here’s a nuggets. Your network is your net worth. So hopefully you hear that, Jim.

But here’s some information I want you all to remember. Where you can access the network lounge or visit the company’s booth during this break. This is a great time to connect with companies and each other.

So, we encourage you to go visit the spaces and build connections.