Agile Open @ the IAF Benelux conference

Thursday, May 31st, 2007

I hope to write something substantial again, soonish :) . Meanwhile some announcements you might be interested in.

On June 15 Marc Evers and yours truly are hosting  Agile Open @ the International Association of Facilitators Benelux conference (In De Bovendonk, Hoeven, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands) . This year we are taking our eXPerience with open spaces on the road, and do open space related workshops inside other conferences. The one @ the IAF conference is more meta – a small experience of Open Space followed by reflective practitioners :) And then some more practice in the Open Space that afternoon, facilitated by Nynke Fokma an participants in the morning workshop.

I have heard registration for the IAF conference is going well (around a hundred registrants), and there are still some places available. The event is partially in Dutch, but I’m sure the Open Space will adapt to the right people :) .  And the Appreciative Inquiry workshop by Andrew Ballance (parrallel with Agile Open @ IAF) will be in English for sure.  Hope to see you there!

Agile Open Europe, Summer 2007 Edition

Thursday, May 3rd, 2007

smiling faceAgile Open Europe, the Summer 2007 edition is coming up soon (June 11 and 12, Hilversum, the Netherlands). So far we have eleven registrants from five different countries: France, Poland, United States, Great Britain and, last but not least, The Netherlands – host country :) . That means that we have about nineteen places left. They are going moderately fast. If you are thinking about joining us, please register soon-ish, so we can keep all the rooms we booked.

More about the location

Diana Larsen asked us whether the location was easy to reach from Schiphol/Amsterdam Airport.

We chose Hilversum specifically, because it is not far from Schiphol Airport (www.schiphol.nl) (the main airport, near Amsterdam), hoping to attract people from the US who would be ‘around’ in that time of year anyway… :)

There is a direct train connection from Schiphol to Hilversum (takes bout 40 minutes, connection about every 15 minutes), and then it is about 10 minutes by Taxi to the conference location. ( train connections are at http://www.ns.nl/ – the ‘english’ switch is on top right of the page). Train stations are called ‘schiphol’ and ‘hilversum’.

I mentioned a Taxi ride, since the location is surrounded by heath with patches of forest, and walking from the bus stop down the entry lane would take you about ten, fifteen minutes maybe…

agile open logo

If we fill up, it will be a very nice location indeed – the conference location is on fairly large grounds, with only a few buildings on it, one will be dedicated to Agile Open. We hope to see you there :)

The shortest open space how-to that could possibly work

Wednesday, February 28th, 2007

A friend of a friend asked me: How do I prepare for my first open space event?.

surprised to prepared be...

Here is my zeroth draft answer to her:

Short answer: Decide what the theme for your meeting is, book a room and invite participants. Then create a context that gets everyone into creative flow, and at the start of the meeting explain the mechanics of open space. This way, your meeting is very likely to generate useful results for everyone and … be a lot of fun.

Open space is the simplest meeting format that could possibly work.

It is based on (un)common sense of what people do naturally in productive meetings.

Long answer:

A clear theme is important, as are the principles. For me the principles are the most important, I’ll explain the open space conference format ‘by the book’ after the principles. If you understand the principles and have some experience running open space, you can adapt the format to fit more situations.

Principles (from Wikipedia on Open_Space_Technology):

While the mechanics of Open Space provide a simple means to self-organize, it is the underlying principles that make it effective both for meetings and as a guidepost for individual and collectiveeffectiveness.

The Law of Two Feet — a foot of passion and a foot of responsibility — expresses the core idea of taking responsibility for what you love. In practical terms, the law says that if you’re neither contributing nor getting value where you are, use your two feet (or available form of mobility) and go somewhere where you can. It is also a reminder to stand up for your passion.

From the law flow four principles:

  • Whoever comes is the right people
  • Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
  • Whenever it starts is the right time
  • When it’s over, it’s over

And finally, the open space rallying cry:

prepare to be surprised

Mechanics:
Since the meeting is supposed to be self-organising, the conveners put their energy _not in running the meeting_ but creating a setting that gets everyone’s creative energy flowing.

Stages:
before-meeting preparation, on-site preparation, Opening, marketplace of ideas, break-out sessions, closing, (optional action planning session).

Before-meeting preparation:
Decide on the theme. Possibly appoint someone to be a sponsor (the person that introduces the theme of the meeting) and facilitator(s) – the people who create the context before and guide participants during the meeting. Book a suitable venue, decide on size etc. (room/rooms). Invite people. You may or may not have formal registration, sometimes having people sign up on a wiki can be enough.

Preparation on the (first) day:

Put chairs in a circle for the start of the meeting. If you have more than seven participants, make a big circle for the start and create circles of chairs elsewhere for the break-out spaces.
Break-out-spaces are where the bulk of the meeting, after the theme setting and creation of the agenda takes place.

 

Have bold markers and pieces of paper ready. Prepare a wall where people can post their issues for break-out-sessions. Divide the wall into a matrix of timeslots and break-out spaces.

 

If possible, have food and drinks on-site, so that people don’t have to wait or go elsewhere for that. This helps the attendees gel more. Also, try to have a space for your group only.

Opening:

  1. Show the timeline, how the event breaks down into Opening, Marketplace of ideas, break-out-session, closing.
  2. Sponsor introduces the theme. Briefly. One or two minutes max. Long openings drain the energy of the meeting quickly. Get participants to work ASAP.
  3. Facilitators introduce the principles and the format. Explain how the marketplace of ideas works.

Marketplace of ideas:

  1. Participants write ‘issues’ on pieces of paper. Preferably with bold markers, so they are easy to read from a distance.
  2. Participants choose a timeslot for their topic on the agenda wall.
  3. One by one, participants explain their issue to the others, with the aim of drawing the right people to their break-out-session.

Break-out sessions:
Once people do not come up with new issues (wait a little bit, and ask ‘are we done?’. I find the silence that often happens at the beginning and end of the marketplace the scariest. However, this silence seems to be very productive.
You may ask people to put their name on sessions they want to attend. More than one session per slot is OK… (law of two feet :) ). This gives conveners an idea of how busy their session is going to be. It gives participants an image of how the break-out session is going.

People may shuffle sessions around, or merge sessions as they are deciding where to go.
Have a wiki where people can record outcomes of sessions, or provide paper forms for note-taking during sessions (recording who attended, a summary of the session and outcomes/questions for further work) that you
can collect into a ‘book of proceedings’.

The facilitators’ role in this bit of the conference is to answer questions, and make sure everyone has the materials they need to run their break-out session. They do not (in principle) intervene in the sessions – the participants are supposed to self-organize.

Closing:
Have everyone back in the circle. A simple and effective way to close is to have the participants pass a ‘talking stick’ around, and let them (briefly, e.g. in a sentence or a word) say what they feel about the day.

Optional: action planning.
Have a bit where people can convene around flipcharts to plan actions for things that came out of the break-out sessions. This uses a mini-marketplace (since there is just one timeslot). I’m not entirely convinced this works wel, although I’ve seen it work well recently at Agile Open Northwest. Maybe more on this later.

More…

The book Open Space Technology by Harrison Owen uses more text to explain open space. I’ve left some things out, to make this howto short – some people may feel that this is stripped beyond the bare necessities… :) Oh well, I believe this is enough to get started. I may pontificate on subtleties and my experiences later… Or I may find a way to make the how-to even shorter.

surprised, prepare to be...

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Agile Open NorthWest was a blast!

Friday, February 9th, 2007

Agile Open NorthWest gave me a lot of energy. The participants were amazing, newbies and old hands alike – because everyone was actually doing stuff with it in the real world, following the theme “Agile for Real”. I got some answers on questions I had and I came out with stuff to continue working on.

This blog entry is a bit late, which is in no small part due to the fact that I’m still buzzed by this event…

I did not take many photos during the event, as I was too busy participating. I enjoyed most of the sessions I went to, and at several timeslots wished I could be in multiple places at the same time, so I could go to other sessions.

Sessions I enjoyed & gave me almost instant business value:

FunctionalTestingTools, Agile Testing with Testers, TDD for Managers (I still have to post the notes for that one… a session on how to let non-technical people experience Test Driven Development), Green Eggs and Ham, Tools/Techniques for Distributed Communication, Filling out SCRUM with XP, CoEvolutionPicnic. Two sessions I wished I could have also gone: AppreciatoriumProject, and FutureOfUnitTesting .

The action planning at the end of the event turned out to be pretty succesful. Future of Unit testing is getting its’ own workshop (hosted by Kent Beck), some people started preparing a product owners’ workshop, to collect experiences from product owners and… yet another Agile Open got initiated – a group from the San Francisco Bay Area got together to plan one :) .

This goes to show that open space can be very goal- and action-oriented, and that whatever happens in the sessions is actionable – because people do what matters most to them, just in time.

Some of the few photos.

img_1853

Elizabeth Hendrickson hosting a session on educational games

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Charlie Poole welcomes the participants

Going to Agile Open NorthWest

Wednesday, January 24th, 2007

agile open northwest logoSome of my friends wonder where I am from time to time :) Haven’t been blogging for a while now – ruminating on stuff, writing on a book project with a couple of people, going out on coaching assignments, and this week teaching the tenth eXperience Agile course here in Eindhoven. Oh, and while I was procrastinating on my bookkeeping I redesigned livingsoftware.nl (again :) ), now running on drupal, and some minor edits to the text. Because of the book project, I’m having fun in writing again.

It might be a while until you hear from me again, pollen of Agile Open have blown to Portland Oregon, and I’m going there to attend Agile Open Northwest and an Agile Alliance Board meeting. And… a few days off. I travelled to some nice places last year, and did not take the time to see the surrounding. And then, on the way back, thinking, why did I not spend a couple of days extra here…
The Agile Open Northwest Logo is interesting, they crossbred Marc’s logo with a tree :) You’ve got to love branches.

The TAO of holding space

Thursday, October 19th, 2006

Marc Evers pointed me to a PDF book published by Chris CorriganThe TAO of open space. I’ve never seen a book quite like it – it’s got chapters of the Tao Te ching on the same page as how that chapter translates to Open Space.

The chapters are brief, and seem to provide interesting quotes (from chapter 14):

Harrison Owen once called Open Space “vapourware.” There are a million people who want to describe it, but no one is ever satisfied with the explanation.

Opening the space

Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006

I’m having an open space themed week:

  • I’m going to CITCON in London – the unconference on continous integration and testing, friday evening and saturday.
  • Preparations for the International Open Space Technology Training in Berlin (November 2 through to 9) have started. Another participant has created a mailing list, to virtually open the space, and the organisers inform us there are still a few places available (currently 41 participants, 15 places left). I’m looking forward to this. Since leaving university I haven’t been on a course this long… (it’s a full week, including a weekend).
  • Two sessions in the XP Days Benelux program have joined forces to form an open space track divided over two afternoons. Thursday afternoon features a themed open space track on How can your business benefit from agile facilitated by Anko Tijman and friday afternoon wil be ‘open’ open space (the session previously known as the planned unprepared session) intended to let the participants reflect on sessions they’ve attended so far and discuss important last-minute topics. We’ve got an energetic bunch of people together preparing these – if the sessions are going to be as much fun as the preparation… :) A manager says:

    I spend a lot of my time dealing with and talking to managers about agility and how the principles of XP are relevant to the non programmers in the organisation. It may seem obvious to us but sometimes it needs to be spelled out. There is a sort of fear of loss of control from most of the management people I talk to. I have to assure them that control is an illusion at the best of times and that trust is a better, more productive way. One of the things I like about the open open session is that it grasps that fear and says “ok lets see what happens if you do relinquish control – will people mutiny and waste time or will they rally and try to address the issues.”. We can use these sessions to show that people will naturally allow the real priorities to surface and in a more direct way than they might otherwise be able to on a rigid agenda.

  • Diana Larsen said at Agile2006 there might be an american open space conference on agile. Her company’s event calendar says its on January 30 – 31, 2007 and it goes by the name Agile Open NW in Portland, OR USA. More Agile Opens :) . The website isn’t up yet apparently, hope it will be soon.

Continuous Integration and Testing (un)Conference near…

Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006

The second continuous integration & testing conference (still labeled conference, still Open Space) is taking place in London, October 6 and 7, which is a bit closer to me than last years’ in Chicago. I’ve heard good things about CITCON (don’t know exactly what…) and as continuous integration and integration and acceptance testing are still areas with lots of development and challenges, this is bound to be interesting again.

This would also be the first conference announcement I got through a comment on this blog, so the organisers have an interesting approach to marketing at least :) .

Oh, and did I mention this conference is free (as in free beer)? – it would also be free as in free software, as the contents are up to you, the potential participants…

Change club

Saturday, May 20th, 2006

I’m driving down to a small seaside town in France to participate in an open space unconference for consultants but I can’t tell you about it…
fight club comic by Repoort

‘Fight club’ comic by Adam Hally

Just a few nights of sleep before Agile Open

Thursday, April 20th, 2006

Having Agile Open, is like having a birthday. A big surprise, and i’m not sure what I’m going to get…

It seems we are not slacking off (as I feared in Princess Risk ). We had a standup meeting over skype yesterday, that gave a lot of focus. We have virtual ‘standup’ meetings in a chat window. They last a bit longer than ordinary standups, passing the ‘talking stick’ is more difficult. But they are usually good fun, and quite effective.

One thing we were puzzled about, was wether to do a last-minute marketing effort. With twentyfour participants and seventeen ideas for sessions, it is looking to be a fun-filled conference. Maybe more participants would be even more fun? I don’t know. Today is the last day you can still join though :-)

Ideas for sessions will be welcome until the start of the conference, and possibly on the second day of the conference as well.