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What Went Well
- Beating the traffic jams to arrive first at the conference center.
- The helpful staff at Elewijt Center going beyond the call of duty. E.g. the night watchman doubled as barman to offer us coffee and hot chocolate before the bar staff arrived.
- The organisers quickly self-organised and divided the work before and at the conference.
- Preparing the Business Value Game just-in-time.
- Organising the new version of the Business Value Game with Portia and Vera. We’ll publish this new version soon and explain the ideas in the closing retrospective more.
- Talking with participants between sessions and after the conference.
- Plenty of useful feedback about the conference and the sessions.
- The retrospective dinner in Mechelen with the organisers.
- The conference goodies organised by Vera and the traditional Belgian presenter gifts of Carolus beer and chocolate.
What Went Wrong
- We started the conference late because many participants were stuck in traffic. Throughout the day, sessions started late and/or overran so that there was less time for breaks, lunch and some sessions.
- Not enough time to talk to everybody during and (especially) after the conference.
Puzzles
- Why so few participants from The Netherlands?
- Many sessions got “Needs more time” as feedback. As these sessions were re-run, we’d expect that presenters would know how much material would fit. Or is this a case of “second-system syndrome“?
Lessons Re-Learnt
- Agile, communication, collaboration, feedback and trust work when you need to organise something like a conference.
- Interest in Agile methods remains high.
- Participants report that Agile methods have improved how they work. At the least, they make issues a lot more visible. The difficult bit is tackling those issues, especially when they touch upon “sacred cows” like how the company is organised, how people are rewarded, how to collaborate over departments, local goals…
Do you want to play?
Portia, Vera and I have published a new version of the Agile Coach website. There you’ll find coaching tools we use like games, tutorials and presentations. Topics range from introductions to Agile (the XP Game, the Business Value Game, XP Loops, First Five Steps to Become Really Agile), Theory of Constraints, Real Options, Toyota Way, Interviewing techniques to Agile Fairytales.
 More materials and translations will be added. All of these games are licensed “Creative Commons“, so that you can use and reuse them. If you want to help translate or improve the games, let us know.
We run retrospectives after each session so that we can improve. You can read the results of the retrospectives on the Past Events page. This transparency allows you to verify if we really take the feedback into account.
Come and play at XP Days
If you want to play the “Business Value Game” or “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall… Why Me?” come and see us at the Mini XP Day Benelux in Mechelen, Belgium (May 11th) or XP Days France in Paris, France (May 25-26th). Or invite us to come and play in your company or usergroup. Or better yet, download the games and play them yourself.
 
 What went well?
- Present a session in French with Portia.
- Running and walking in the Jardin Botanique, along the lake and in the old town.
- Drawing, cutting, making placards with bits of string and paper to prepare the “presentation” and games the night before the conference.
- Great organisation by the Swiss team.
- Dominic Williams offers us the red or the blue pill, weaving philosphy and methodology together. Vive le développement hédoniste!
- Doing an instant retro at the end of the session to take participants’ feedback into account. Not just talking about Agile Values, but applying them.
- A great night out at “Les oubliettes” in restaurant “Les armuriers” with raclette, cheese fondue, cool white wine and great conversations ranging from “the relationship between Plato and class-based object oriented languages” to “the (lack of) style of conference goodies bags”.
- Meeting old and new acquaintances from Belgium, France and Switzerland.
What went wrong?
- We didn’t do a full tryout of the session before the conference, so we weren’t sure about the timing. We removed some explanations because we were afraid of going over our 60 min timebox. In the end the session went faster than expected. We could have taken the time to explain each item more.
- The session was a bit crowded because more participants than expected came to our session. Most of the games scaled well, though.
- We rushed the start of the session and didn’t do a proper introduction, which left many people wondering “who are they? Where do they come from?” Answer: Portia and Pascal from London and Brussels.
Puzzles
- What is the state of agility in Switzerland? We know some companies (like Hortis) have been applying it for some time. Most participants seemed to be new to agile.
Learned
- Tryout! Tryout! Tryout a new session!
- Philosophy can be fun and useful.
- The Erlang session brought back lots of student memories: CSP, Lisp, Prolog, FP,….
 Les cinq premiers pas…
Aujourd’hui, Portia et moi présentons une nouvelle session, “Les cinq premiers pas pour devenir agile” au XP Day Suisse à Geneve. C’est une présentation courte et interactive (les participants jouent 5 jeux) qui introduit cinq “outils” que nous utilisons quand nous commencons à travailler avec une équipe.
Plus de nouvelles après le congrès.
Cinq outils… et plus
 Si vous voulez apprendre ces cinq outils et plein d’autres pour aider votre équipe a réaliser plus de résultats, devenir plus agile et s’amuser plus, la formation “Agile en Pratique” de Zenika est toute faite pour vous.
Vous aimeriez appliquer les méthodes agiles. Comment les appliquer dans votre équipe, sur votre projet ? Comment faire la transition vers les méthodes agiles? Cette formation répond à toutes ces questions. A travers des exercices, des jeux et des simulations vous expérimenterez les techniques agiles. Vous saurez comment, pourquoi et quand les appliquer afin d’améliorer la qualité du résultat et du travail de votre équipe.
Rendez-vous les 21 et 22 Avril à Paris!
The five first steps to become really agile
Portia and I present the “Five first steps to become really agile” at the Swiss XP Day. This new session presents five simple “tools” that we use when we start to work with a new team.
This is the first session that we developed first in french. We’ll translate it in English and do a tryout soon. Then we’ll publish the session on our Agile Coach site with the other games we’ve made.
More about the session when it’s published.
Another reaction to the Zenika Kaizen presentation
Last January I presented an overview of the Toyota Way at a Zenika seminar in Paris.
Claire has written a summary of the session (in French).
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