I planned to write individual posts about new and upcoming workshops, but the rate at which we get invited and accepted to conferences this fall outstrips my ability to post new entries I have to post now, before the conferences themselves are over… I hope you’ll join us for at least one of these. We’ll be doing some hard-core programming workshops as well as more enterprise and facilitation oriented sessions this fall.

First up is Scan-Agile next Thursday and Friday in Helsinki, Finland. Marc already wrote about our Story Testing workshop.  I’m also very much looking forward to participating in the Scan-Agile Open Space, which now has its’ own day.  The main reason for me to return to Scan-Agile this year, is that last year it had very strong participants (and presenters, but good session organizers are only part of what makes a conference worthwile). Having my own unit tests ripped to shreds by critical participants was interesting and valuable. So I’m glad this year all participants get more space. We had some discussion on Twitter about ‘is kanban a failure mode of lean? (and what that means if it is so)’ that merits more than 140 characters… should make for lively open space as everybody involved in that discussion will be there . If I haven’t motivated you to join us, check out Vasco Duarte’s series of motivational posts about Scan-Agile.

Next up is the Practical Product Lines conference , October 20 and 21 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. There we will be hosting a value stream mapping workshop, as described by Marc. We decided to try out more conferences outside our regular schedule of agile conferences – preaching to the choir is fun, and helps us improve our understanding, but going out into the world and sharing what we’ve learned is at leas as valuable. We thought it would be interesting to bring our understanding of value stream mapping, and take participants’ experiences with product lines, should provide an interesting mix.

Freek Leemhuis of Devnology asked us to send in some proposals for the Devnology community day, saturday November 7 in Baarn, Netherlands.  We did, and they chose three of QWAN’s sessions for the program:

Refactoring to concurrency (with Scala) grew out of a series of commits I did for a product I’m developing with Marc, micro-ISV style. We needed some background processing to make our application more responsive, and I wanted to take small steps, be sure that it worked and have everything covered with tests. So I first refactored, until introducing concurrency was just a one character change. This session shows you how to do the same thing, with scala or another language.

Flying Horses – cleaner code in other languages. This session was inspired by a dojo description from Emily Bache (I don’t have the link handy right now, will insert it later). Rob ran with it and tried it out at Agile Open Holland last month. We’ll bring an application written in one language, everybody gets their laptops, a pair to program with and translates that to their favourite language. At first as literally as possible, and then make it ‘more like their language’. Then we will discuss what makes code, e.g. pythonic, javaic, C-sharpish etc. based on the examples we just created.

Give your code some love is a demonstration (a series of prepared katas) of us doing tiny refactorings on code that looks allright at first glance. Tiny refactorings then show that there are quite a lot of things we can do to make the code express its’ intent better. This session was heavily inspired by Ivan Moor and British Mike Hill ’s Programming In The Small workshop at the software craftsmanship conference in London earlier this year.

Jfall, conference of the Dutch Java Users’ group, November 11 in Bussum, Netherlands, sees Rob and me doing TDD As If You Meant It, inspired by Keith Braithwaite’s session of the same name at, again, the software crafsmanship conference in London. Keith kindly gave us permission to reuse the name. We are happy to see more people applying unit testing. Very few, however, seem to be really doing Test Driven Development. In this demonstration we hope to give the audience a taste of what test-first programming can do for you.

Xp Days Benelux, November 23 and 24, Mechelen, Belgium I already described Retrospective Hero with Nicole Belilos of Task24 and Agile Politics – (re)discover the politician in you at XP Days Benelux with Emmanuel Gaillot of Pyxis

and Finally, XpDay London, December 7 and 8th where I’ll be pair facilitating the Open Space with Rachel Davies.

Wille Faler asked on Twitter earlier this week about how people who go to conferences a lot do work. All of the conferences above are one, maximum two days, that leaves plenty of time in the rest of the week to do ‘actual’ work.  The other thing is, writing is a poor medium (for me at least, even though my blog does seem to travel reasonably well these days) to show our passion for software development, going out to conferences helps us connect with other people who are equally passionate about our profession. And sometimes this then leads to actual work. Which leads me to the following:

Shameless plug:

At the moment I’m looking for a new project to work on, either as a developer, agile coach and/or project leader. contact me if you know of a place where my skills would add value. Also, all of the sessions above and more are available as customized in-house training.

The Trousers of Reality Book Cover

Barry Evans works as an independent consultant and writer, and is based in France and the UK. I met Barry a few years ago at Agile Open in Belgium, when he was working as a senior coach in BT’s large-scale Agile introduction. Now we’ve done an interview to find out more about his new book “The Trousers of Reality”.

Willem: So Barry, When did you start thinking about writing a book?
Barry: I have always been a writer. I come from a literary family and it was always something I wanted to do..
Willem: what triggered you to write this one?
Barry: I started writing this book when I realised I had something to say and I had enough life experience behind me.
Willem: what experiences in particular inspired you?

Barry Evans

Willem: In your book, you discuss a number of techniques, besides Agile also NLP, Systems Thinking and the Theory of Constraints. How do they help to improve business and private life?
Barry: I talk about things like NLP because it allows us to communicate better – this is useful everywhere.
NLP in particular concentrates on seeing the other persons point of view – it is not hard to see how this skill is useful talking to both your colleagues and your significant other.
Willem: indeed.
Barry: As you get good at it in one situation you must get better at it in all others – it is a skill that takes constant practice.
Willem: like playing the piano, programming, or writing….
Barry: Funny you should mention that – I use almost the same example in the book.
Willem: I swear I haven’t read it yet:). I’ve just been thinking a lot about deliberate practice recently.

Barry: When I looked at Agile and my experience as an Agile coach I realised that what Agile was doing most was clearing the lines of communication and trying to get rid of presuppositions on every side.
Willem: so that fits nicely with NLP then.
Barry: NLP is concerned with just that and has proven tools, so I said to myself – why reinvent the wheel.

Willem: that makes sense.
Barry: It also fits into systems thinking which shows how things are interrelated. You need to be able to see outside your job, categorisation, sphere of influence, interest, skill-set though.
Willem: yes, and that is a hard soft skill to master.

Barry: When I started looking at these things I noticed that they all had an intersection point and that interested me greatly.
Rather than the ceremony of Agile I started to ask myself why does it work and isn’t it interesting that other things that work all seem to intersect at a subset like a huge Venn diagram. In this intersection I started to find things that worked everywhere – therefore back to the work/life thing.
In fact that started to be my litmus test. The things with real value tend to work across borders of every kind or they are parlour tricks with limited shelf life.
Willem: so how do you distinguish one from the other?
Barry: In my experience with Agile and software development I began to realise that too much was being hung on which tribe you belonged to. Tribalism is the great enemy. My mission with the book is to tell people that whatever tribe you think you belong to that there are things that just work and it is power to understand why they work.
Just clinging to a tribe will leave you out in the cold sooner or later – it blinds you to what is really happening.
Ritual and ceremony were the target of Agile and they seem to have crept in under the door again – I want to call it before it is too late. Indeed NLP has the same problems and the same solutions. Understand the principles and why you are doing what you are doing…. If you really understand it you can turn it into a process for convenience; but you must know when and how to change that process.

Willem: how do you distinguish people who follow “the rules” by rote from those who genuinely want continuous improvement?
Barry: Well the quick answer is experience. It is also trust. If you are a business you hire people who genuinely know what they are doing and who are not afraid to tell you home truths. There is no lazy way out.
There are thought leaders and professionals who are clearly interested in making things work. Identify them. It is also important to develop your own ability to distinguish – based on experience and knowledge. I say in the book to beware the “One Truthers”. Look for flexibility and things that work in variety of environments. Be suspicious of spin and hyperbolic claims. In the end it comes down to Einstein’s advice – Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Whereas Occam’s tool was a razor – Einstein uses a vice to similar effect.

Willem: The one topic you cover in the book that we haven’t discussed so far is the Theory of Constraints. How does that fit into all this?.
Barry: There is a chapter in the book called “The Key”. It explains what these things are and ties them together. Essentially TOC allows you to examine cause and effect and is a tool to work your way out of assumptions and constraints.It is great for helping you to understand your current reality so you can start to step up into systems thinking.

Willem: what have you learned from writing the book?
Barry: That writing books is great fun and marketing is hard work. Of course I did a lot of research and as I said in the book the real secret to life is to keep learning. It opens possibilities and opportunities. This is the great thing about what we do if we are involved in IT – we keep pushing our own boundaries of knowledge and what we think is possible.
Willem: yes, that is what got me into IT in the first place. Marketing folks would say that marketing is fun and writing a book is hard work, though .
Barry: Part of the secret of managing people is realising that what you like to do, or do not like to do, does not necessarily map onto other people. You must have empathy but at the same time realise the others feel differently to you. It makes it fun to work with people you do not understand, when you see that lack of understanding as a new model of the world to learn about. And you can be delighted that there is always someone out there you can work with who will like to do the things you do not – great teams are made of this sort of interaction.

You can find out more about Barry Evans and this book at The Trousers of Reality’s website.

Xavier Quesada Allue tells me this will be mostly in Spanish. My Spanish stops around ‘donda esta el bano’ and ‘hola’, unfortunately. If yours goes further, this might be for you. Madrid as a location is attractive, and should be easy to reach. No doubt the organisation will be very good as well, and the event is for free!

electronic waterfall by curly_exp( l)osure

In the meantime, if you speak english, why not attend Agile Open Holland – my named cloud is bigger than yours, or is it?, September 10 & 11? Registrations are going fast. At last count we had over 50 participants, with space for about 80. As in previous years it’s looking to attract a good mix of old & new faces, all equally fanatical about uncovering better ways to develop software. It’s not free, but we kept registrations low enough – we hope the value for money makes it a no-brainer; the fee covers part of the costs, but its’ main purpose is to prevent no-shows, so that everybody who wants to attend, can attend. I hope to see you there!

Madrid scenes de rue by George Eastman House

Refreshing by Louise Docker

So, whenever I’m working for a client in London, or otherwise visiting the UK, I try to massage my schedule so that I can be in London on a tuesday (not very often, as I still spend most of my time in the Netherlands or otherwise travelling). As the Michelin guide would say: worth a detour, and the london XP days are always worth the trip. I’ll be making that trip again in December for XP Days, and hope to organize the Open Space there with Rachel Davies. XTC is loosely coupled, so things magically seem to happen and it ‘just works’ – participants organize the weekly meeting, and the conference is organized without much fuss. (In case you want to propose a session for the ‘organized’ track, the deadline is today, and the review process is open). It’s a great place to try out new things, like the Haskell Dojo Mike Hill and I ran in the spring, not only is there great enthusiasm, the breadth and depth of knowledge of who ever is there is amazing, and I’m not sure how I would have otherwise met them.

As Rachel already said it’s hard to convey the energy that is there, but I’m shure that without XTC many ways of developing better software would never have been uncovered.

Sunset & the Thinker by Esparta Palma

Whenever I travel back from an eXtreme Tuesday Club meeting, there’s always lots to think about. So, I hope to see you there (again) some time. Cheers!

We chose the theme ‘my method is bigger than yours… or is it?’ because it seems that as this agile software development thing goes mainstream more and more people lose sight of what we perceived was one of the underlying goals of the Agile Manifesto: get continuous experimentation and learning going by developing software and helping others do it across communities – hence the signing by people involved in all ‘lightweight’ methodologies at the time. We like the Named clouds meme and hope it spurs some discussions.

Even if this theme does not speak to you, come to Agile Open Holland anyway – anything goes, and new cloud formations are likely to form during the conference. Named ones in the sessions and the hallways, unnamed ones in the sky (we do hope the sun shines most of the time though..).

I’ll process and post the rest of the photos when time permits – I decided not to do everything in a big batch this time (which sometimes means the batch never gets executed and photos are not published). Tomorrow Marc and I depart to Luzern, Switzerland for the first instance of our Agile Product Development training, so there is not much time left.

It’s back in Sardinia, in the beautiful town of Pula so the place itself is worth a visit – I was in Sardinia once for XP2001 – it is stunning.

looking to the Sea from Pula fourtress by Alistair Young

Temple of Augustus, Pula by yellow book ltd

a “ development project for bored consultants”

contact Johannes if you’d like to spend (at least) one day per month in a project with other agile consultants and you are willing to give this project priority on that day.

I believe a regular programming project with like-minded programmers this is a great idea. Programming is a long haul activity, some effects you only notice after a while, and jamming with fellow practitioners is a great way to learn.  The reason I support Johannes’ idea is because I believe it will support participants in sharpening their saw – increase understanding of what they already know by spending time doing programing work and reflecting on it, as well as creating a space where experimentation is not an option – it is a requirement

A Lady's saw - by KaCey97007

As a consultant I am most often hired to explain what I consider to be “the basics”. This is a moving target of course, as my understanding of “the basics” changes with experience. When I started out coaching teams, I did a great deal more experimentation on client projects, as I was learning “the basics” together with my clients. There is nothing wrong with doing “the basics” again and again, that is also a way to deepen your understanding of a subject. Kata’s in a coding dojo work like that – coding dojos are another way to keep up your programming skills.

However, keeping up is not enough. I am lucky in the sense that I have been able to keep up my programming skills by teaching technical workshops and doing hands-on coaching on client projects occasionally. I’m starting on another hands-on project for a client in a couple of weeks, where we will pay quite a bit of attention to “the basics” and everyone (including me) will learn some new things.

However, client projects are not always a good place to try out experimental stuff that has not been proven yet – that requires visionary customers with some slack in their organisation. And quite frankly, my customers often benefit more from my understanding of what I already know than from my desire for experimentation and learning (which I then satisfy by learning about their domain instead).

Therefore, having a separate project to regularly practice practices and having the space to try things out is good. I’m lucky: with my partners in QWAN we came to some of the same conclusions as Johannes. We need to be able to spend significant time developing with other visionary developers so that we can advance the state of our practice. We decided to develop new hands-on programming workshops with challenging excercises – beyond our current understanding of “the basics” and start developing some (mini-) products together. We did that because we needed some software to support our business, have some wild ideas, and last but not least wanted to sharpen our saw.

We want to improve our programming skills in an organisation that has the vision and slack to support it (e.g. our own ), because keeping up is not enough.

The year is getting off to a good start – we did an iteration on the session proposal January 1st. To fit with the spirit of the conference, we’ve added a coders’ dojo to it. I look forward to going back to the BBC site, having facilitated in-house dojos before.

I’m still wondering what happened with our other proposal – the continuous integration install party. It might not have gotten through, but I guess we could run it as a BoF (possibly at the SPA conference in April, also in london).