Mike Bowler

Mike Bowler

Coach and Trainer, specializing in Agile, Lean, technical software practices and human behaviour.

Overview

Mike is a coach and trainer who helps teams, and their management, improve the way they work. He’s been writing code for forty years and has been an active member of the Agile community for twenty-five. He blends his strong technical background with a deep understanding of Agile and Lean methods to help organizations consistently improve how they deliver value to their customers.

Recognizing that all software is written and maintained by people, Mike also has a keen interest in human behaviour, psychology, and applied neuroscience; understanding how people work, both individually and in teams.

Mike is based in Canada and has travelled around the world, provide training classes, coaching and facilitation services to his clients. Today, preference is being given to coaching that can be done remotely.

In addition to consulting, Mike is a popular trainer. He is a Professional Kanban Trainer (PKT) through ProKanban.org and for many years was a Registered Education Provider (REP) for the Scrum Alliance. He teaches a wide variety of other customized classes for his clients.

Mike was a contributor to the following books and is also a popular speaker at conferences and events around the world.

  • “Test-Driven Development: A Practical Guide” Author: Dave Astels, Published: 2003
  • “Mob Programming” Authors: Woody Zuill & Kevin Meadows, Published: 2016

He is a supporter of open source software. Mike created HtmlUnit and maintained that for many years before handing that off to other maintainers. Today, he actively supports the JiraMetrics tool that extracts and reports on data in Jira.

Visit LinkedIn for recommendations and other details.

Mike is available to help your organization, wherever you’re located.

Credentials

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Articles by Mike

Date Title Location
2023-11-25 Premature optimization Improving Flow
2023-11-19 Improving meetings Improving Flow
2023-11-18 Hero Culture Unconscious Agile
2023-11-12 Not motivated to do anything Unconscious Agile
2023-11-05 Prime factors in Elixir Agile Technical Excellence
2023-11-04 Exploring Elixir Agile Technical Excellence
2023-10-14 NLP Meta Model Unconscious Agile
2023-09-17 How We Think: Systems 1 and 2 Unconscious Agile
2023-08-27 Code comments Agile Technical Excellence
2023-08-05 Perils of Why Unconscious Agile
2023-07-28 Learning from the past Agile Technical Excellence
2023-07-08 Per-story estimates Improving Flow
2023-06-18 What is a Service Level Expectation? Improving Flow
2023-06-17 A developers job Agile Technical Excellence
2023-06-10 Kanban: Simple, but not always obvious Improving Flow
2023-06-04 Rebuild vs Refactor Agile Technical Excellence
2023-05-27 Logical Levels Unconscious Agile
2023-05-21 Motivation & Self-Determination Theory Unconscious Agile
2023-05-20 Keeping people busy Improving Flow
2023-05-13 SAFETY model of psychological safety Unconscious Agile
2023-04-29 Why we should stop using spikes Agile Technical Excellence
2023-04-25 Steps to improving predictability Improving Flow
2023-04-24 Where should a tech lead start? Agile Technical Excellence
2023-04-23 Technical vs Architectural Debt Agile Technical Excellence
2023-04-23 Optimizing collaboration Improving Flow
2023-04-22 Ensemble Programming Agile Technical Excellence
2023-04-21 Defects / Bugs Agile Technical Excellence
2023-04-09 Five chemicals (neurotransmitters) that drive behaviour Unconscious Agile
2023-03-31 Is a blocked column on your board always a poor practice? Improving Flow
2023-01-28 Technical Debt Improving Flow
2023-01-21 Pre-requisites for Continuous Improvement Unconscious Agile
2023-01-01 Multiple boards for a single team Improving Flow
2022-08-02 Who should define the workflow? Improving Flow
2022-02-22 Presentation: Neuroscience of psychological safety Unconscious Agile
2021-09-20 Defining a workflow Improving Flow
2021-09-17 Staying within our WIP limits Improving Flow
2021-09-14 Moving backwards on a kanban board Improving Flow
2021-08-28 Getting Kanban metrics from the Jira API Improving Flow
2021-08-22 The cost of interruptions, and how to reduce it Improving Flow
2021-07-25 Massively overburdened with WIP Improving Flow
2021-07-14 Flowing value Improving Flow
2021-07-10 Power of words Unconscious Agile
2021-06-16 Classes of service Improving Flow
2021-06-14 Neuroscience of psychological safety Unconscious Agile
2021-06-13 Book recommendations for Agile Coaches Unconscious Agile
2021-06-06 “We tried Kanban and it didn’t work” Improving Flow
2021-06-01 The millennial whoop and our brain as a prediction engine Unconscious Agile
2021-05-31 Google’s Project Aristotle Unconscious Agile
2021-05-30 Code coverage as a perverse incentive Unconscious Agile
2021-05-28 What’s wrong with the common Scrum questions? Unconscious Agile
2021-05-27 Waste: Psychological Distress Improving Flow
2021-05-26 Understanding waste in the system Improving Flow
2021-05-18 Determining cycle time from an online system Improving Flow
2021-05-17 Improving the standup Improving Flow
2021-04-18 Setting initial WIP limits Improving Flow
2021-04-04 Lowering the Water Level - the metaphor explained. Improving Flow
2021-04-02 Introducing the Kanban Guide Improving Flow
2020-04-27 Collocated vs Distributed Teams Unconscious Agile
2018-02-18 Body Language Unconscious Agile
2017-08-21 Apex Problem Unconscious Agile
2017-06-29 Teddy Bear Effect Unconscious Agile
2017-06-17 Leveraging the Doorway Effect Unconscious Agile