Beyond Agile: Cultural Patterns video on InfoQ

Saturday, May 30th, 2009

In our quest to put into words and pictures how important context is to choose practices, to show that there is no one-size-fits all solution for process and change strategy, Marc Evers and me went on tour last year with a presentation on Cultural Patterns. Take a look over at InfoQ – Beyond Agile: Cultural Patterns.

Willem and Marc introduce cultural patterns that can be found in software organizations. By understanding the cultural patterns then you can better adapt your practices. (more…)

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.

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The joy of Refactoring – Reveal intentions

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007

three programmes staring at code, going - ohhh. Text on photo says: Reveal intentions - write code for who comes after you, not the computer.

 

 

This is a slide I made for a workshop on Refactoring Legacy Systems I ran yesterday. I love the puzzled look on their faces.

The photo was made in the open space at agile2007, featuring JB Rainsberger and two others (sorry, remembering names at large events like agile200* is difficult for me – the guy in the middle was a volunteer in a session I co-hosted at agile2006).

The agile2008 call for participation is out, to give you an idea what is going to happen. Major change for next year is the idea of stages, each stage with a specific theme.

 

Close to my heart is of course:

 

Agile and Organizational Culture
Producer: Marc Evers; Assistant Producer: Linda Rising
Agile is not only about changing the way you work and changing the way you think – doing agile in a sustainable way requires changing principles and values. An agile initiative doesn’t take place in a vacuum, it has to interface with the existing organizational culture. It will influence the organizational context and the other way around. This stage provides a space for discussions, teaching, learning, and sharing experiences about agile and organizational culture.

Space for new session organisers and pushing the envelope:

Breaking Acts
Producer: Laurent Bossavit
Agile as it stands today is still a work in progress. For Agile software development to remain relevant, it must incorporate new ideas continuously. This stage is for speakers who bring a fresh and surprising look to aspects of Agile we thought familiar, and speakers interested in ideas that are relevant to Agile but not accepted yet as “mainstream”. First-time speakers are particularly welcome.

And of course, another Open Space :)

Open Jam
Producer: Esther Derby
The regular program presents a wide range of presentations and experiential sessions. The Open Jam stage is a place to share questions and quandaries, talk to the experts, demonstrate software and techniques, and experiment with emerging Agile practices and ideas.

There’s also a francophone stage, hosted by Emmanuel Gaillot, since Agile2008 will be in Toronto, Canada. I will be visiting Toronto December 6 through 9 for an agile alliance board meeting – that way, board members involved in the conference organisation can combine two things in a trip. Let me know if you’re in the area and would like to go for a beer :)

Presentation styles

Tuesday, May 9th, 2006

I participated in the presentation zen session at agile open hosted by Pascal van Cauwenberghe. Pascal already did a writeup on the session as a whole.

The main reason for me to attend this session is if I want to be better at creating and giving presentations, I might as well go all the way, look what works for other people and see what fits for me.
Vera, Willem, Kristel and Lieven presenting at agile open This is the group I was in, with (left to right) Vera, myself, Kristel and Lieven.

This session worked very well for me. I took some things away that I applied the next monday, while making a presentation for a client – for those of you who wonder whether going to conferences contributes to the bottom-line, agile open did to mine, and quickly :-) .
I’ve been to several presentation and communication trainings, when done badly, they had the opposite effect – one made me more afraid of giving presentations rather than more relaxed. So hats off to Pascal for making space for a relaxed and fun session. I guess creating and presenting in groups made it a lot more fun and less scary than it would have been experimenting individually.

Practicing in a group was also very productive. in about twenty minutes we created a presentation with three co-presenters, did a trial run with feedback in a few more minutes , and then a re-run for the other participants a few minutes later.

The second run went already noticeably smoother, even though we had no opportunity to update the slides based on the feedback and new ideas we got from the first run.
presentation styles slideWe started with an anti-slide, extra filled with bullets in an illogical order. Vera told a long story somewhate unrelated to the bullets.

To see if the participants read the slide or listened to Vera, we inserted some jokes at the end – if people laughed, they were reading, otherwise they were listening to Vera. Our hypothesis was, that people could either read the slides, or hear Vera speak.

Some participants were laughing, others were not, so we concluded that some were listening, and others were reading. We verified it with questions after the presentation, our assumption seems to have been correct. The next slides were in lessig / takashi style: just one to a few words per slide.

That gives much more…Focus

Slides like this are much easier to read from a distance, and are also friendlier to older people (It’s not called senior management for nothing… ;-) ) .

In our group we discussed about what presentations are used for. In-company presentations are often used as ‘discussion documents’ ‘process documentation’, and more in general, presentations are often also used as handouts (I do that too in courses). It seems presentations are better considered a separate medium from those. Presentations are less cluttered, and handouts, process documentation and discussion documents are better served with more detail than can fit in a slide.

Getting better at presenting takes practice (lots!) and fresh ideas from elsewhere – this session provided both.