Vibe Coding in the Era of AI, with Jon Kern (Agile Manifesto Co-Author)

About this event

Zoom - TBD Summary: The rise of "vibe coding"—where advanced AI agents generate code from natural-language prompts—promises explosive productivity. In the hands of truly agile teams and organizations (those that prioritize individuals and interactions, working software, customer collaboration, and responding to change), the results can be transformative: faster innovation, tighter feedback loops, and dramatically higher business value delivered. But without that pragmatic agility, the same tools invite spectacular failure—hallucinated code, unmaintainable messes, security vulnerabilities, and eroded trust. Complexity doesn't disappear with AI; it intensifies. Only disciplined, value-focused agility provides the guardrails to harness it responsibly. Spoiler: The Agile Manifesto is far from dead. In fact, its principles are more essential than ever as AI-powered tools usher in profound new complexity. Join Agile Manifesto co-author \*Jon Kern\* for an interactive vibe coding session to build and deploy a web app. Rather than starting with code, Jon takes us through his foundational practices for building software. Along the way, he demonstrates how he pairs with AI to move incrementally from a failing test to working software. The result is less “AI writes the software for you” and more \*AI as a very fast development partner inside a disciplined product-development process.\* Bio: Jon, a co-author of the Agile Manifesto, is passionate about helping teams succeed in delivering business value. He combines techniques that help teams pay back organizational and technical debt. He works with teams to articulate, design, architect, and deliver processes and solutions that solve challenging business problems. Projects routinely see high-quality solutions in less time, and leave the local team mentored on object-oriented and agile techniques, and excited. (Often more valuable than the technical improvements ;-).) Jon also enjoys speaking and evangelizing about being agile at conferences around the world. Jon has a knack for taking the long view, seeing the big picture—yet knowing the details, and driving business success at every turn. Folks interested in truly establishing a best-of-breed solution, an enduring sense of quality and process, a desire to deliver business value without the BS, and having fun while doing it, love Jon. His varied career has spanned jet engine R&D and flight simulators, to being an object-oriented and lightweight process evangelist through the 90s, authoring books with Peter Coad, helping to found and build TogetherSoft, and his work co-authoring the Agile Manifesto for Software Development in 2001. Colleagues & clients alike credit Jon with much of the stellar success that TogetherSoft enjoyed with the UML modeling/IDE product and with the professional mentor group he formed. Jon seeks better ways for teams to accomplish their goals from the perspectives of people, process, and technology. Jon likes to help teams build an environment that enables effective practices, solid architecture, agile development, quality-by-design (not accident), and a laser-like focus on delivering business value. Specialties: agile development, agile mentoring, domain modeling, architectural solutions, leading distributed teams, highly varied domain expertise, leadership by example.