On the fringes – support your local critical thinking in 2009

Friday, December 12th, 2008

When I saw the proposed stages for agile 2009 last week, they looked a bit bland to me. A lot of the fun and risky stuff seems to have been taken out (musical stage, breaking acts, questioning agile). Ok, open space (I love open space) is still in there.

The 2008 conference was quite good for such a large event. Things that contributed to it were, in my opinion, scrapping experience reports as a separate track and instead having lots of experience reports everywhere as well as the breaking acts and questioning agile stages. Yes, you can have those topics spread out, but having those topics front and center (what is the first thing you see when you look at the conference? its the stages. So the first thing you see is: ah, critical thinking, wild new cideas).

If you want to support new ideas, and at the very least keep up the outward appearance that the agile community invites and supports them, leave a comment on David Andersons’ blog post “The case for an agile fringe” .

I also left one at Johanna Rothmann’s (2009 conference chair) response “I’m Disappointing Already” outlining some of the forces I’m seeing. Johanna ems to take it personal, which I think is unfortunate. Sometimes folks in the kanban camp seem to do the same – getting their sessions rejected for earlier conferences must have been very painful. The reasons for rejection were probably systemic, and it seems some of the systemic reasons have been fixed in 2008, now 2009 seems to be sliding back (and yes, kanban is now establishment, but it will happen again to new new stuff).

So, let’s stop taking it personal, and improve the system; no regression, if we can easily prevent that please – carry out one refactoring “replace experience reports stage with fringe stage”, that’s it.

That’s it for today, maybe I’ll post more later. I’m going back to XP days London (which is one big fringe :) lots of new ideas and critical thinking going on, and the open space is an integral part of the program, which seems to work fairly well at this scale.).

Pimp my Retrospective!

Monday, October 20th, 2008

Nicole Belilos and yours truly are going to present “Pimp my Retrospective” at the first Agile Holland conference this friday:

Title slide, with a photo by Colin a pimped ‘Lemon’ at the ’24 hours of Lemons’

Slots there are just 45 minutes, so we made an interactive presentation with two short excercises: we’re going to ask participants suggestions on how to ‘wreck’ a retrospective and then spend more time on how to ‘pimp’ one, followed by our own favourite pimpin’ practices. We made all the slides like the one above, some pimped cars, some wrecked, and some plain strange (as well as Saint Nicolas on his horse). I notice with slides like these, I’m much more looking forward to giving a presentation.

Curious? Join us at the AgileHolland conference Oktober 24 in Amsterdam :) or read on for the full session description.

(more…)

Where is Willem?

Monday, September 15th, 2008

Sometimes people around me wonder where I am. Maybe you have too. I used to say, I don’t travel much, but I realized that is because some of my colleagues travel even more… So I added a list of upcoming trips to the sidebar of my blog. You can also subscribe to my trips through dopplr. I hope this makes it a little easier to meet up with other people while I am travelling.

The travel feed does not describe that clearly what I’m up to (only if you click through a couple of times), so I guess I’ll still be posting here about upcoming events every once in a while:

  • Paris, next week, will see me and Emmanuel Gaillot co-present an in-house eXperience Refactoring in French – “des excursions dans le Rémaniement continu”. I have been brushing up on my french, and we have been talking French during the preparation. I am looking forward to it. We have been making a number of improvements to the course, e.g. a new exercise and the slides look intriguing in French
  • Helsinki, 29 October sees me and Marc Evers co-present the revamped “right-sizing your unit tests” workshop at the Scandinavian Agile Conference. The past years we toured conferences mostly with systems thinking and other people oriented sessions (e.g. cultural patterns), we thought it would be fun to give people a taste of our technical sessions as well.
  • Eindhoven, 20 and 21 November – together with Bath, UK one of my home towns -, sees yours truly and Rob Westgeest with a demonstration of story testing with rspec at XP Days Benelux and Responsibility-driven Design with Mocking with Marc Evers and Rob.
  • London, 11th & 12th December, I look forward to join Rachel Davies in co-facilitating the large open space at XP day London. It is already their eighth conference, and the XP day London organisers show courage by going with a completely different format – less presentations and more interaction between the participants through Open Space. I think it is fitting. As agile software development progresses, practitioners need a place to push boundaries and work on problems they are (still) getting to grips with. With the high caliber audience that xp day usually draws, this should make for interesting topics and lively discussions.

That’s it for now. I will probably go to London and Bath somewhere in October as well. I don’t know when yet.

Agile Open – it’s also for “structured” people ;)

Sunday, June 8th, 2008

Agile Open Europe 2008 is over…

This panorama photo of the introduction was made by Harald Walker, who volunteered to be our resident photographer. He’s already posted his impressions :) . On thursday it was a bit rainy, so all sessions were inside. Friday was a nice, sunny day, so there were a good number of sessions outside – I spent all day in the garden. The Volksuniversiteit Utrecht has a nice location in the middle of the old centre, with a garden in the back – we always look for a location with nice, green outdoor space and that is easily reached by public transport. Usually these two conflict, not in this case.

impression from the everybody is Refactoring, right? session
We decided to cap this conference at just thirty participants. To our surprise, it was sold out in a week and a half, even though we were very late in announcing it (about a month in advance). The reserve list worked well. We had some last-minute cancellations that we were able to fill with participants from the reserve list.
We succeeded in simplifying the organisation, and in enrolling some volunteers, so that Marc and I could also participate in sessions :) I enjoyed (re)newing connections and learning a thing or two from the sessions – maybe more on that later.
From the closing round, I learnt that:
  • Capping it at thirty might be a good thing, as some participants mentioned that as a feature – because of the small size it is easy to connect with others. Nynke remarked before the conference, that it probably scales best in time (e.g. more times per year) and place (more places in the world, that is already happening).
  • Agile Open is also for “structured people”. I like chaos, and add structure if necessary ;) Some participants remarked that they were unsure what to expect, and normally like things to be “structured”. After the opening session that fear disappeared. I must say this years’ opening filled the agenda remarkably fast. We added some extra timeslots to get all of the sessions in (note the post-its on top that were sessions still looking for a slot after the opening)
  • If we can figure out a way to make it less work for us (last year we also had to deal with and take the risk for participant’s hotel reservations), we might go for a residential agile open again in the future. Some participants missed the evening games we had last year.

participants mark sessions they want to go to
group portrait on friday
We used to have a topic incubator on a wiki for the first two agile opens. That helped people convince their boss, but had as a drawback that it was mostly  the ‘usual suspects’ who ran sessions. This year and last year, everything was last-minute, and that gave a wider variety of session organisers – this also seems to be influenced by how we explain what to run sessions on. I’ve learnt to emphasisze that it is perfectly ok to run a session on a problem, it doesn’t have to be some prepared solution.
We’re thinking of running a Benelux agile open sooner than this time next year, but are not sure when would be the best time (and what would be the place). Your suggestions are welcome!
Credits: photos by Harald Walker

Cap the conference :)

Friday, May 9th, 2008

Marc Evers and I were a bit buzzed… We hoped, this year, to start announcing agile open earlier (and, unlike last year, not keep repeating ‘we should get started’). Well, unlike last year, we didn’t keep repeating it. We just didn’t get round tuit…

So last week, we finally got together around a whiteboard, decided that we did want to hold it in June (like last year, and as we planned), but we didn’t have a location etc. and didn’t want to spend as much time as last year in sending out invoices, dealing with exceptions etc.

So, we decided to go with an affordable conference location and leave things like hotel, dinner out of the basic package. That means we can send out just one type of invoice – you come two days, or you don’t, and  beside diet preferences there are no options. Well, you can of course volunteer (we got spontaneous offers for that. ) or sponsor.  We also decided to cap the conference at just thirty participants, so we could go with the venue. One of the reasons being, we thought we can’t get that many participants in a month anyway… Surprise, surprise, sending out the invite to a couple of mailinglists, and we’ve already passed the twenty participants mark. And we have some sponsors as well (we didn’t expect many in this timeframe, so we’re pleasantly surprised. Now we have to make sponsor packages :) and facilitate the other volunteers so we can self-organize )

So, without much further ado, I’m proud to announce the next

Agile Open Europe 2008

will take place in Utrecht, NL on June 5th and 6th. A vibrant place to push the envelope and do business together. And yes, we will find Belgian Beer – one participant listed that as a dietary requirement ;)   Looks like its’ going to be good fun again. See you there!

And if you ‘still’ haven’t registered – there’s a handful of places left…

Beyond Agile in France

Monday, March 10th, 2008

Raphaël Pierquin just put the rough version of the agile open france proceedings online – to enable ‘us bloggers’ to start using the proceedings he uploaded scanned images with an index. A more polished version will follow later. This ‘reduce cycle time’ version already provides lots of value to me. For instance, I can now show you the beautiful notes Antoine Contal made of ‘Beyond Agile’:

beyond agile proceedings from agile open france 2008

Notes of Beyond Agile. Click the image for the full-size scan.

I decided to propose a run of “beyond agile”, so I could try a different way of presenting the cultural patterns before qcon London this wednesday. The runs at xp days last year (then dubbed ‘people vs process’) were well received, and gave us ideas for improvement:

  • we needed the question and answer time to get across why we believe these patterns are useful in our work (they help us determine where we are, and decide on a strategy on where / how to go next),
  • attendees got the idea that one goes from one pattern to the next in a linear fashion. We then presented it in a linear fashion then, so surprise,surprise…

In this instance, I ditched the slides and presented from flipchart. After presenting the ‘why’, the participants did a round of experiences on the questions:

  • ‘did you ever experience people telling you that your mix of ‘agile’ practices is too much process? ‘
  • ‘did you ever experience people telling you that your mix of ‘agile’ practices is too little process? ‘

We then gradually constructed the circle, starting with the cultural pattern (‘routine’) suggested in the story told by the last participant. Meanwhile, I explained some common choreographies (the arrows), each with their advantages and difficulties through stories:

cultural patterns in a circle

We discussed more choreographies than could sensibly make the notes, and further discussions over dinner gave me some more inspiration. Even this ‘circular’ drawing follows the same linearity as in Gerald Weinbergs’ books. In wednesdays’ presentation we’re also going to talk about some other choreographies (e.g. going from routine, or routine to oblivious).

As you might guess from the notes, we ran the entire session in french. I needed to ask for some words, and probably my grammar is not up to par, but overall it went much smoother than I expected. The other participants were extremely helpful in letting me and Barry Evans speak as much french as we could, providing us with words when needed, and allowing us to switch back to english when we couldn’t manage in french – less and less frequently needed as the days passed :) .

So now it’s time to re-order the slides in a quasi-random order – some order that allows us to string stories together in a way that makes sense to the audience, add choreography slides and practice a bit more. I hope to see you at qcon on wednesday.

Agile Open Northwest 2008, March 14-18

Tuesday, February 26th, 2008

I went to Agile Open NorthWest last year, and it was a blast! This year’s announcement is eh, just-in-time, so I won’t be able to make it, but I strongly recommend it. Here is there announcement:

Agile Open Northwest, an alliance of agile practitioners in the US Pacific Northwest region, presents Agile Open Northwest 2008.

Our first agile open event, Agile Open Northwest 2007, was held last year and was a great success. This year, we once again invite 100 experienced, collaborative, committed agile practitioners from the Northwest and beyond to join us in tackling the issues around the theme of agile development in the real world.

The Northwest has a wealth of practitioners with years of real-world experience with agile methods and self-organizing teams. Agile Open Northwest offers an opportunity to strengthen our community of practice and co-create the future for agile development. Your commitment to arriving at the beginning and staying until the end both days will ensure we build on conversation after conversation as we engage important questions like:

  • Who practices Agile in the Northwest and what is its impact?
  • What is “Agile” anyway? What does it look like in organizations?
  • What are the technical challenges facing Agile?
  • How does Agile co-exist with project management, process control and other governance structures?
  • Can we adapt agile practices to our organizations without diluting them?
  • Can agile methods work in big, risky projects?
  • Can distributed teams use agile approaches?

This event is designed to allow agile practitioners to meet in self-organizing groups where they can share their latest ideas, challenges, hopes, experiences and experiments. We follow an Open Space format to foster collaboration and allow the conference to take its direction from the participants themselves.

  • What: An Open Space event discussing agile practices and techniques.
  • Where: Seattle Center, in several of the Northwest Rooms.
  • When: March 18 and 19, 2008
  • Who: Anyone with some degree of experience in agile methods
  • Cost: $100 per person, including lunch both days

Naked Agilists podcast online

Thursday, January 24th, 2008

Clarke Ching posted part 1 and part 2 of the recoding of the Naked Agilists conversation on January the 19th, 2008.

The session was organised by Kevin Rutherford and chaired by Clarke Ching

Presentations:
* Servant Leaders — Nancy van Schooenderwoert
* wevouchfor.org — Laurent Bossavit
* Fit4Data — Adrian Mowat
* Shared data for unit tests — Paul Wilson
* Let them Eat Cake — Brian Marick

You can find out more information – including slides – at  http://www.nakedagilists.com/jan-08.

It was interesting to see how some technology rots over time… Last year’s naked agilists used a skypecast, where the presenters and an audience of about 60 people could participate. This year, we could not get the skypecast to function even for a test run with only a handful of people. In the end, the event ran as a regular skype conference call with the presenters, Kevin, Clarke and yours truly, so we lost the direct participation of the audience unfortunately.

This was the first time I was involved in a ‘talk’ podcast. I have podcasted some of my music, that is ‘just’ a matter of playing, synthesizing and then rendering the result… Things I learnt :

  • Have tested options, so you can switch easily, even at the last moment
  • Test the connection with all presenters. The connection to Nancy was bad at some points, which made it difficult (but not impossible) to get all of it.
  • Using slides does not have to be complicated. Put up a presentation, or a collection of images on a webpage, and as a presenter say ‘next slide’.
  • Not having a visual of the presenter takes more concentration
  • Many interesting presentations can fit in the space of an hour, so go download the audio :)

Upcoming public courses and conferences

Monday, January 21st, 2008

From the department of long-overdue-announcements :)

First off, the commercial service announcements. Marc Evers has joined the ranks of eXperience Agile facilitators. He is supporting Rob and me in getting a new Refactoring course off the ground. We plan to do trial runs in february (currently talking to a couple of places to do that, drop us a line if you are interested) and then the first public one, eXperience Refactoring, March 4 and 5, near Eindhoven.

Participants in other courses have long been asking us for a Refactoring course, a topic we mostly cover by showing and doing Test Driven Development, where Refactoring is a ‘natural’ step, so you don’t need to talk about it much. This one is going to cover refactoring in more challenging situations (e.g. when there is a bulk of legacy code – code without tests, or the team has been cutting corners for a while). This will prepare participants to stay vigilant in good times, and calm, resolved and focused in bad times…

We’re also planning to run another eXperience Agile near Eindhoven, 25 through 27 February and publish an extended course schedule for the rest of the year. Yesterday’s weather says eXperience Agile runs about every two months, so we plan to run instances near the end of April and June.

More new courses are in development for the second quarter. We’re listening to our customers, and would also love to hear from others what kind of courses they want.

Marc and I have been invited to present Beyond Agile at QCon London in March, which is a further development of the People vs. Process session we ran at XP Days Benelux and London. I’ve heard from several people that it had quite an impact, amongst others, people at other companies giving our presentation in-house).

Impression from People vs. Process in London

People versus Process participants exercise at XP days London

The new title was a suggestion from the QCon organizers. It fits well with feedback we got so far, to make it (even) clearer what the relation with agile software development is. We are working on a paper to explain it in more detail, and we’re thinking of running an open enrollment course combining people versus process with systems thinking in June.

I’m planning to attend Agile Open France, which now has a location: Hotel Arnold in Itterswiller, France (it is near Strasbourg, in the Elzas). Contrary to what I stated before, the dates are 5, 6 and 7 March.

To keep you up to date with upcoming courses and places I’ll be, I added two feeds to the sidebar: the RSS Public courses feed and the RSS Events I’ll be at feed . In case you notice I’m in your area, don’t hesitate contact me for a conversation over dinner and/or drinks :)

Agile Open France – March 5,6 and 7

Thursday, January 10th, 2008

I was just chatting with Bernard Notarianni. The first Agile Open France is about to happen … Probably on March 7 and 8 (update: it is now March 5,6 and 7), somewhere near Paris – Bernard, Emmanuel and Raphael are finalizing the location details and hope to start marketing next week.

They plan to have the conference site in the general Agile Open website, so I made it bi-lingual, technically at least, translations are probably best left to the french :)

“France Villandry” by Francisco Antunes