Presentation at Mexico's Central Bank

Mexico's Central Bank (Banco de México) asked me to give them a presentation on Lean-Agile today. The experience was awesome starting with the venue. The Central Bank counts with a cluster of Colony Epoch buildings within the downtown Mexico City area (see photos for an example), which are as beautiful on the inside as they are from the outside. The presentation took place at a small but well-equiped auditorium and I had an audience of roughly 60 people. The audience was great and attentive during my 60-min talk, which consisted of Lean Agile fundamentals, case studies, hard data on agile benefits, reflections, and short speech about my services. I was then asked a series of good questions on some lean-agile aspects, on governance, and on comparison with other methodologies.



Next I had lunch with 11 executives and managers from the Bank at its private restaurant, which gave me the opportunity to have closer conversations with them and gave them the opportunity to ask lots of questions. To my surprise I received a limited-edition art book on Frida Kahlo (a famous Mexican surrealist painter) sponsored by the bank.

I have to admit the people I met and the bank itself exceeded my expectations and it would be great if I get to have the opportunity to work with them.

This is a great time for Mexican enterprises to invest on technology

Carlos Slim, a mexican entrepreneur and one of the richest men in the world, invited Mexican entrepreneurs to invest and to be prepared for the recovery in the economy. Carlos said that this and next year are a great time to invest (quoting him: "Creo quye este año y el que entra son buena época para invertir"). He also pointed out that technology is a key industry on which to invest.

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The importance of good software development in Financial Institutions

Mario Sandoval, president of the AMFE (Asociación Mexicana de Entidades Financieras Especializadas) announced that real state development is key to reactivate the financial market. On a similar note, Stefano M. Stoppani, Principal Director or CRIFMexico and Regional Director for Latinamerica, mentioned back in February that proactive fianancial management infrastructure (for payments) requires the usage of four aspects to allow for the right decisions to be made and for efficient execution:

• software
• processes and organization
• data
• analysis

What his means for us is that Agile-lean management and software development, if implemented, can play a crucial role in all of them.

On the software side we have methodologies such as scrum, XP, etc. that increase the efficiency of teams and the overall quality of the software generated. On the process and organization side we have agile-lean project management which creates a better structure for all stakeholders, including customers, to collaborate and make decisions. Agile databases enables data modeling and their implementation to be done more effectively. Good modeling is crucial to good analysis and agile modeling provides waste-elimination ways to do so without consuming vast amounts of time and resources.