Lee Devin
Lee Devin is a retired Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant. Lee's background in theatre brings a unique perspective to the challenges faced by IT managers and managers in general. Lee is Professor of Theatre, Emeritus, and Senior Research Scholar at Swarthmore College, where in 1970 he founded The Theatre at Swarthmore College and taught the first "studio" courses (acting) ever offered there for academic credit. Lee is also Senior Dramaturg at People's Light and Theatre. He has won prizes and grants (NEA, Mellon, EARPLAY) for playscripts, librettos, and translations that have been published and/or produced in the US, Australia, Eastern Europe, and Canada.
Lee Devin is coauthor, with Cutter Fellow Rob Austin, of Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know about How Artists Work. In this seminal book the authors explain iterative processes used by theatre directors and actors to make plays. They apply theatre lore, principles, and methods to the management of knowledge workers who create business innovations. He has presented the ideas explored in Artful Making to a variety of audiences: he has given keynote talks at the Agile2005 conference, to the Theatre Communications Group, and has been a panelist at the Cutter Summit; he has presented at Harvard Business School's Innovation Seminar and made guest appearances in Harvard Business School classrooms.
Collaboration naturally, irresistibly, produces innovation.
Lee is coauthor, with Rob Austin, of "Beyond Requirements: Software Making as Art," IEEE Software, Jan/Feb, 2003; "Successful Innovation through Artful Process," Leader to Leader, Spring 2004; The Economics of Agility in Software Development, Working Paper, Harvard Business School; and "Planning to Get Lucky," Cutter IT Journal, Vol. 17, No. 11, November 2004. In addition, he is author of "An Innovative Frame of Mind," Cutter Benchmark Review, Vol. 6, No. 5, May 2006, and coauthor of "Improvisation and Teaching Negotiation: Developing Three Essential Skills," with Lakshmi Balachandra, Mary Crossan, Kim Leary, and Bruce Patton (Negotiation Journal, Vol. 21, No. 4, October 2005). He is currently at work on "Knowledge Work, Craft, and Calling," with Rob Austin, for Christian Faith and the Global Market, "Artistic Approaches to Management Problems," for The Handbook of 21st Century Management, and Reliable Innovation (Stanford University Press). Lee earned his AB, with distinction and department honors, from San Jose State College. He was awarded both his MA and PhD from Indiana University. He can be reached at consulting@cutter.com.